2026-08-09

--== Recollections from the 90s ==--

Like my millenial generation being obsessed with the 70s, it seems
the gen Z/gen alpha(?) has the strange fascination with the 90s.
Since I lived the 90s I figure I'd write down some random memories
I have of them.

Today's story takes place when I was in high school in 1999. One
of my best friends was having his birthday come up and me and his
mutual friends all decided to chip in and buy him a gag gift. That
gag gift was a CD of the 1st album from an up-and-coming pop star
called Britney Spears. Of course, all of us immature dudes found
this gift hilarious since Britney's music was like an anathema to
us "cool dudes" who only listened to cool bands like The Offspring
and Linkin Park (LOL).

Ah but who would take the embarrasment bullet and actually buy the
compact disc? Well I lost the rock-paper-scissors and it was up to
me to buy it.

For some reason this particular 90s memory really stuck with me
over the years. After school was over, I drove over to an extremely
popular book and music store called Borders...now defunct of course.

The Borders store was 2 stories and the 2nd floor contained the CD
section. And right there next to the cash register was a giant
cardboard display of Britney Spears with about 8 cubbies full of
her CDs. The top of the cut-out was basically her album picture of
her in her skirt sitting on the floor and the entire thing was the
same color pink as the album.

Of course at the time, I remember feeling excruciatingly embarrased
to approach the display and pick-up the CD. The display was shockingly
large and shockingly pink and must have contained more than 50 CDs.

So I bit the bullet and picked up the CD and went to the register
feeling completely un-cool and embarrassing. I remember the CD
itself was $16.99 which for the time was quite expensive. You have
to remember at this point in time in America, Whopper sandwiches
were 99 cents and gas was 99 cents a gallon. So blowing a whole
$17 dollars on one CD with maybe 13 songs on it was to me at the
time considered quite pricey.

And that's the end of my memory. I don't really recall when or how
we gave the CD to my friend or even his reaction to it. I just
remember the journey.

But in hindsight there's a few things that I can now pick up on.
First of all, the fact that there was such a large display full of
just Britney Spears CDs is really telling. At the time, nobody in
the US had any real idea just how big and influential Britney Spears
would turn out to be. It is completely fair to say that this first
album of hers changed the course of musical history in the United
States and Britney herself would go on to dominate the early 2000s.
You couldn't turn on any radio station without hearing her song at
least 2 or 3 times an hour!

The second thing is really just how dependent artists really were
on CD sales. In 1999, most of my friends had MP3s and were just
getting into Napster and p2p downloading. But still, none of us
could conceive that an entire industry would collapse in just a
half a decade. Going to the store and buying CD albums for yourself
or family or friends was just a natural part of life.

In fact a lot of use would go to Borders, Barnes and Noble, Suncoast,
Best Buy, Circuit City, etc etc, just to browse CDs and DVDs. That's
just what we did on the weekends even with the advent of Napster.
It wasn't until the early 2000s with the real advent of residential
broadband like cable modem and DSL that we really just stopped
buying CDs and started relying exclusively on  Napster and Kazaa.

oh well anyways, that's my geniune 90s memory as a I remember it.
I'll try to keep these things going as they strike me with more or
less commentary as needed. Peace out!