(Sweet?) Childhood Memories, Part One

Nowadays I find myself listening to music from the Beach Boys, the Hollies, Scott Walker, Electric Light Orchestra, the Sun Sawed in 1/2, and many others. However, this has not always been the case. I have thought about writing something about the origins of my music (and melody) obsession for quite some time. There is really no point in making a deep analysis out of this, so I will just point out some of the most important things concerning how yours truly started her music-listening career. This four-part story is silly, tragic, nostalgic, fun, empowering, strange, or a combination of these, make your pick.

When my parents were kids/teenagers, they heard music from the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and Sweet. I myself was a child in the 1990s, so my music listening career happened to start from this.

Me and my parents obviously grew up in the same North European country but popular music changed quite a bit in 30 years time. This song by German group Mr. President was a huge hit in Finland back in 1996 and it is in fact one of my earliest music memories. I never saw this video back in the day but it probably goes without saying that your typical 90s eurodance video was low-budget and often featured singers in some kind of sunny holiday setting. Coco Jamboo was taken from Mr. President's second album We See the Same Sun, an album I spent a whole lot of time listening to, as well as the group's first and third album. I always enjoyed Lady Danii's strong lead vocals, and I didn't even mind Lazy Dee's rapping.

Eurodance music was sung (and rapped) by young, good-looking people and it was mostly written by producers. After all, eurodance is a form of electronic pop music. Generally speaking eurodance was melodic and almost everyone liked it even though you might say it was cheaply produced and all artists sounded like each other.

When you think about this music from today's perspective, I find it a little unsettling that as a child in the 90s I listened to eurodance almost all the time. Children surely tend to listen to whatever they happen to hear around them, and I have to admit eurodance music is catchy even though it may also be somewhat dated. I don't enjoy pounding synthetic beats much anymore and will probably get anxious rather than happy hearing music like that but I guess I will always like Mr. President anyway.

However, I also remember something different from this period. A couple of years after Mr. President's fame I discovered a cassette of 1950s rock'n roll including music from Bill Haley & His Comets, Gene Vincent and others. This didn't grow into much anything bigger at the time but it really seems like I enjoyed old times music already as a child.