Millenial Music to Survive On

Baby Got Back - Sir Mix-Alot

MMMBop - Hanson

Affirmation - Savage Garden

Aaliyah - Try Again

Say My Name - Destiny's Child

Never, Ever - All Saints

Don't Let Go - En Vogue

Crossroads - Bone Thugs and Harmony

All Eyez On Me - Tupac

Livin' La Vida Loca - Ricky Martin

The Kids Aren't Alright - The Offspring

Otherside - Red Hot Chili Peppers

December - Collective Soul

Runaway Train - Soul Asylum

Pictures - The Cure

I’m A Slave (4U) – Britney Spears

Chapter One, A New Beginning – The Moffatts

Pony – Ginuwine

Losing my Religion – R.E.M.

Sex and Candy – Marcy’s Playground

Bitch – Meredith Brooks

Photograph – Nickelback

God Must’ve Spent (A Little More Time) – Nsync

All the Small Things – Blink-182

Blackhole Sun – Soundgarden

Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana

Mouth – Bush

With Arms Wide Open – Creed

Move Along – All American Rejects

Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous – Good Charlotte

Lips of An Angel – Hinder

Time of Your Life – Green Day

I’m Just a Kid – Simple Plan

Wonderful – Everclear

Face Down – The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

Gone Forever – Three Days Grace

These are some of the songs that I recall listening to over and over as an introverted teenage girl full of angst and uncertainty. I could probably list countless others but these fit what I remember most and the music helped me cope while transitioning through some of the hardest and most traumatic years of my life. I think that many of them are reflective of the nineties grunge era, which makes sense because I grew up during the height of their splendor.

Lyrics have always been incredibly important to me because I am a writer and words mean a lot. I’ve always searched for music that had a great sound and vibe but also told a story or gave me some kind of advising for life. I feel that music is one of the primary ways we can connect and relate to one another and I find that as I have grown through life some of these creators have stuck with me because of the influence they shaped in myself. There are a few bands on this list that are completely different, however.

One I’d point out in particular is Hanson.

Hanson is a band that saved my life. I first discovered them the weekend after my thirteenth birthday. They had just released MMMBop and were nearly about to release Where’s the Love before I finally saw their music or even heard one of their songs, but from the moment I watched them I knew that I had found a muse that would save my otherwise angsty teenage soul from a world that seemed crushingly bleak. I dealt with bullying in six grade and had to be placed into homeschooling for the duration of seventh which made me really anxious and feel incredibly isolated. But, the alternative was to attend a school where girls made false claims about my sexuality and threatened to beat me up, or worse, daily. I lived in a town that had either the very impoverished or the very privileged. There was honestly no in-between and many of the students at my public school were children whose parents had nice homes and worked for the automobile manufacturer, Saturn, at the time.

This was in Spring Hill, TN to give some background and a little understanding of what it was like for me to attend school with students whose parents could afford new cars while I had to rip food stamps out of a booklet because the EBT card had still not yet been released to the public. But, again, music was something that saved me from all my depression; coupled with writing, which seems to be the two things that still propel me forward to this very day.