Soundtrack To My (So-Called) 90's Life

At 16, I scoured the pages of my dELiA's catalogue desperately seeking something unique to call my own. Constructing myself like a magazine collage, I carefully procured each aspect of who I wanted to be. I hoped that in my small town of 10,000 people, the end result was individuality without seeming eccentric.

With my chunky-soled mary-janes, rainbow striped tank tops and flared Silver jeans, I felt secure in my teenhood, and used that same collage-method to develop my music tastes.

Being the youngest of three, I had leverage on most of my friends when it came to cool, new music, and as a result of my brother and sister's eclectic sounds, I was able to inherit a broad taste in my own music's repertoire.

It was in the mid-90's when my curiosity for music began bending towards my older sister's listening habits. Prior to that I had mainly listened to whatever the radio and MTV or Much Music played. The sounds coming from her boombox, however, were new and unique. They filled the room with a deep melancholic rhythm I had never heard before. Bands like Portishead and Better Than Ezra, Hayden and Tori Amos.

The beats from Portishead's Wandering Stars vibrated through me as I imagined myself a woman in a dim-lit lounge smoking thin menthols.

Hayden's Girl Of My Dreams was reminiscent of my own small town, his deep grainy voice had the same vibes of some of my sister's love interests at the time. I envisioned myself in a packed local pub with plaid-donning older boys playing pool while the girls danced on the checkerboard floor.

Tori Amos' by far blew my mind the most with her bizarre lyrics and beautiful piano playing. She was someone that intrigued me, yet too eccentric to aspire to be. Her lyrics were like a puzzle I was desparately trying to complete. I snuck her Boys From Pele CD from my sister's room when she wasn't home, and lay on my bed with earphones in, memorizing all the lyrics while I read the inserts cover to cover.

My older brother on the other hand was heavily into rap in those days, and until I got my licence, he was my chauffer and as a result, his music was the backdrop to our drives. We listened to everything from Alia to Snoop Dogg's album Doggystyle. We weren't allowed to listen to that type of music in the house and so by driving around, sometimes taking the long way home, we found ourselves learning the lyrics and belting them out. Often on repeat until we nailed it. If I could have plucked a mood off the shelf to wear, this music was definitely my Happy choice.

It took me a few years of navigating between my brother and sister's alternative and rap backdrops, wading through hitlist boyband garbage, and finally resting on my own taste in music. I found my nesting place amongst Matthew Good Band's Beautiful Midnight album, moving on to Dave Matthews' Crash album, and always on repeat was Ben Harper's Fight For Your Mind album. These artists gave voice to the deepest feelings I had never explored before. With each listen, my mind opened up a little more, I began to relax into this understanding of myself and that these voices that strung such beautiful sounds and woven poetic lines together were becoming a part of me.

As Ben Harper says, While you got the time, you gotta fight for your mind.

And I was doing just that. I was procuring my tastes in all aspects of my life; the books I would read, the shows I enjoyed watching, the activities that gave me purpose and joy, the image I portrayed to the world, and the music that gave voice to all the emotions that lay just under the surface of it all.