Backstreet's Back

I now work with only two other girls who are approximately my age. We're in an office all by ourselves and well, things can get girly sometimes. Like today when one of them put on the Backstreet Boys Pandora channel (You know who you are! And I thank you too that I can extract material like this from work to write in my blog instead of all the other drama we had to go through!). It's funny how tied the memory is to music. I know that people say that the olfactory sense is most tied to memory and I do find that to be true, but because I grew up with music and have always been what I consider a 'musical' person, I find that audition is just as strongly linked to memory. For example, when I hear Christina Aguillera's "Genie in a Bottle" I am instantly taken back to the 7th grade. I was on a school bus with my entire class and we were on our way up the mountain going back to school after a field trip. And yes, we were all singing, and yes, I can see how 7th graders singing those suggestive lyrics is really not only laughable but horrifying. "I'm a genie in a bottle baby, gotta rub me the right way honey"? Yikes. The start of dirty lyrics? No. And I can remember so much worse that I know I learned before I had any clue what they meant, but I knew those words. I surely sang them out loud and it was probably a source of embarrassment for whoever was around me if they understood what I was singing. 

Take the Boyz II Men classic "Make Love to You". I love me some Boyz II Men. But I also find it to be somewhat disturbing that I know most all of the lyrics and that song came out in 1995. I was 8 years old. 

"Throw your clothes on the floor
I'm gonna take my clothes off too
I made plans to be with you
Girl whatever you ask me you know I'll do"

Yowza.

Reliving all these songs also made me realize how pathetic most of the lyrics are. The Backstreet Boys' "As Long As You Love Me" is a prime example. The lyrics actually say, "I don't care who you are, where you're from, what you did, as long as you love me". Apparently for the Boys, that's all it takes. As long as you love me, I'm good and the rest of the stuff doesn't really matter. Wow. It's pretty sad when you think about it.

And then, of course, there was Celine. It's funny when you think about it. Her music really doesn't match any qualities of the Backstreet Boys, but oddly, none of us questioned her being present on that Pandora station. It just made sense. And the song that came on just happened to be "My Heart Will Go On" (thanks L.S. for reminding me what the song is actually called. I probably would've ended up calling it "Near, Far"). Which brings me to this: 

I know it's a little long, but stick with it. It's worth it. You gotta love Ana Gasteyer.