I’m 38 and I hated that song when it was popular. A few years later, I heard it again, and pop music had deteriorated so much in the meantime that in comparison it sounded pretty damn good and I liked it.
And it is fun to howl in the car.
I thought about adding it to his other thread. I just couldn’t remember the name.
For the record, the first time I heard it, I was living in a college town, had come home from a night of drinking and heard someone blasting it. I like it. No toaster ovens in sight.
I am old, and I have not noticed this song until about six months ago. I kinda like it, but then again I have always liked listening to female singers with guitars.
But I missed most of the 90s, what with raising kids and all.
I *am *a heartless bastard, it’s true.
But it is funny - there are songs I am completely indifferent to from a listening standpoint that are just a blast to sing or play. So while I would group the two songs differently as a listener - I am indifferent to this song but love Janis, as you do - but they do fit in the same group from a fun-to-howl standpoint, along with some Melissa Etheridge, Aretha’s You Make Me Feel (as immortalized when Candice Bergen belted it as Murphy Brown), Bonnie Raitt’s cover of Del Shannon’s Runaway and a buncha others…
The only affinity that I have to the song is that it is first song I learned to play lead guitar for. I still “air fret” to it if I hear it in the car.
I forgot to mention…Whee! I’m a woman of a certain age! Well, technically a tad older.
I said Hey! What’s going on?
Is the 4 Non Blondes a cover version?
'Cause I distinctly remember my high school pom pom squad (I wasn’t a member) doing a routine to that song at football game halftimes and pep rallies.
I graduated in '90.
It’s only emblematic of your cohort to the OP, and his only given reason for thinking that is that he’s heard a few 30-something women cover it in clubs.
I can easily believe that bienville has heard this song covered several times, but it’s a big leap from that to concluding that the song is especially beloved by 30-something women in general.
Certainly not a cover. Either your memory is conflated with another time or it was a similar-sounding song.
It’s got a great hook and is fun to sing, but for Og’s sake it’s almost five minutes long. :eek:
The mystery is how I conflated it to a time when I was actually in high school, but it was definitely the song I’m thinking of.
There was a big flap when the school administration banned the use of the song by the pom pon squad, because some parents had complained because OMG the song was about drug use and we can’t have our girls dancing to that.
Yes, drug use. Because of the line where “I wake in the morning and I step outside, and I take a deep breath, and I get real high…” Clearly this is a full-on encouragement for kids to use drugs, and who knows how many kids might have started smoking pot if they had been allowed to see a dance routine to this song during a football game. Sure, it was getting heavy rotation on the radio too, but that one extra performance, with their classmates shaking their heinies in those short skirts, might have pushed them over the edge into heroin or something.
I remember watching the routine they used, at least once, at a time I wouldn’t have been driving two hours back home on a Friday to attend high-school football games. I remember the flap, and the people involved, from a time that must have been when I was in college, and wouldn’t have cared what piddly typical overreaction censorship shit was going on back in my old school. I’m flummoxed as to how I’ve managed to mix this up with an earlier time.
Jenaroph, I’m with you. I remember that song from when I was a kid. How can it not be a cover? I wonder what I’m conflating it with?
I have a very strong memory of singing it in the van at summer camp. The only years I went to summer camp were '91 and '92. Wikipedia says it was released in '93. They gotta be off by at least a year.
No, 1993 is the correct date for the single. But Wikipedia also says that the album Bigger, Better, Faster, More! was released in 1992. “What’s Up?” wasn’t released as a single until the next year and few people would have heard of 4 Non Blondes before then, but it’s possible that someone you knew had the album.
I think it’s more likely that you (and other people who “remember” this song before 1993) are just misremembering, though. I could swear that I “remembered” Edwyn Collins’s one big American hit, “A Girl Like You”, from my childhood, but I would be wrong. It wasn’t released until 1994. Memory simply isn’t reliable when it comes to these things.
Ditto the above. And her hat sucks too. I thought she looked like “Punky Brewster Goes Goth Goes Dr. Seuss”. Along with the Crash Test Dummies (any song of theirs), that song is one of the worst of the 90s. This 38 year old has spoken!
Cisco, I remember it being a big song during the summer of 93, when I met my ex while working at Ames Dept. store. Bad memories all around.
I think I don’t get the question. I’m mid-30s, I like that song in the way where I don’t think about it very often but would belt along if it came on the radio, it’d never occur to me to do it at a karaoke night. But there are hundreds of songs from my high school/college years that I think were crap but other people - even people who normally share my taste - seem to remember fondly. What’s weird about that? What’s specific to this song? What kind of ‘insight’ would make it less weird?
Or is the question just ‘How could anyone like this song?’ In which case, the answer is ‘Just do.’
Good Lord. I’ve been trying to find out who does this song since I first heard it (Never thought about it when online, but the fershlugginer radio D.J.s don’t announce song titles anymore) I like it! I like it! Thanks to the lyrics poster above.
Mid-cough-40s here.
I’m willing to believe that my memory is wrong. Obviously, it must be. But when I first heard this song, I instantly identified it as a remake of something that had been popular in my childhood, ie, the 70s. Anyone else have that kind of feeling, or was I alone in my wrongness?
Your condemnation has turned my hair from black into bright white.
Not really. I hated them too.
I thought the singer was kind of cute. The bass player, on the other hand, I mistook for a dude.
I don’t like the song at all, but this nails why female singers like to cover it. It’s a singer’s song. It’s big and melodic without being really all that technically challenging. It’s a fat, hanging curveball over the plate for female singers. It’s something even minor leaguers can hit out of the park.