Two Years After “Ordinary World”

On December 19, 1992, Duran Duran released “Ordinary World,” the first single off what was, essentially, their comeback album. I say “essentially” because at this point Duran Duran — and the entirety of the bands that arrived as a part of the New Romantic movement — had disappeared from the charts in favor of whatever was happening in the early 90s.

And, for the last 32 years, I’ve been convincing myself I don’t like it.

I was 14. I was in eighth grade, still in middle school. I was a confused bundle of anxiety and awkwardness and puberty and my musical tastes followed. I still held tight to “Weird” Al and still listened to a bit of Poison and Bon Jovi, but I was branching out. I owned an Anthrax album by this point. I had started (secretly) listening to gangster rap — an unlabeled dubbed cassette tape; one side: Dr. Dre’s The Chronic (good!), the other: House of Pain’s self-titled (embarrassing!).

I was ready for a musical explosion, and “Ordinary World” was my last signpost before the journey.

As I write this, I am sitting in the passenger seat while my 17YO drives to St. Paul, sharing a combined playlist of country and folk, trading Julien Baker & TORRES and Neil Young songs, explaining why First Aid Kit mentions June and Johnny in their song “Emmylou.” It’s sweet, honestly. But it’s also bittersweet.

For over a decade, I was deeply involved in each of my kids’ tastes. I did this both out of necessity — I was involved in helping them find the things they like — and out of safety, because YouTube is weird and locking it down a bit helps protect our kids from The Horrors of Awful People for as long as we can. Because of this, I knew exactly what they liked. If we bought tickets to a concert, I knew if they’d want to go (or not). I could make traveling playlists with confidence. I was in tune. I was in touch.

A few years ago, that all changed. Now it’s a bit of a crap shoot. The time in between purchasing tickets to a show or a musical and actually attending that show or musical might as well be a billion years. Tastes change fast. Teens change fast. Songs I will forever associate with my 17YO are no longer in the rotation. They’re passé; they represent childish frivolity and impulsiveness. The 15YO is no different — he insists he’s never cared much for Green Day despite a series of past photos where he’s prominently wearing a bright orange Green Day shirt.

Suddenly, the kids don’t want chicken nuggets anymore. Suddenly, it’s embarrassing to admit you liked Hamilton. Suddenly, you’re not as confident with what will make them smile and what will make them mad. It’s all different, and it’s all kind of frustrating and also kind of sad. I struggled with it, a bit — I want these kids to be on their own, but maybe not this fast?

But it’s not fast. It’s two years. And this didn’t really make sense to me until earlier this week, when I heard “Ordinary World” again, and then later, when I *looked at the Wikipedia page* for “Ordinary World,” because until that point I had convinced myself that the song was from the late 80s.

It’s not. It’s contemporary to music I consider to be formative.

“Ordinary World” was on the radio, all the time. More specifically, 1992 — and then 1993, and then 1994 — were happening, all the time. I was 14, then 15, then 16. My own musical explosion occurred alongside the explosion of differentiation — the moment when the monoculture was defeated by a combination of better data and an alternative land-rush. I was starting to form opinions on my own, and one key opinion was that I didn’t like “Ordinary World.” I knew that much if I knew anything at all.

It was only two years, and everything I thought about music changed over, maybe twice. My parents knew nothing about this because I had taken control of my own taste. They were no longer a part of what I listened to — which is where I’m at, now.

As adults, we observe what our kids like, and we sometimes incorrectly assume they’ll like those things forever. We think this because we still love things we loved as kids, and so there’s an assumption that when you love something, it’s forever, when in fact it’s just survivorship bias. We only remember what we keep. We collect experiences and sell them off when they don’t fit, and don’t give any mind to what was sold.

Kids do this too, but as they get older they stop being vocal about it. They just give it up — we’re no longer aware of what they’re selling. They’re on their own, and they’re making their own decisions. Just like we did.

That’s what I’m working through right now. The point where growth happens without us, and we go from leading to lagging. While it feels like a few seconds, it’s actually just the normal passage of time. Life feels like an eternity when it happens. Each school year is a fully formed lifetime; each summer vacation is a decades-long sabbatical.

My 17YO just graduated from high school, and she’s spent nearly a quarter of her life in high school. She can’t possibly be ready for the world; for college and living on her own and fighting her own battles and choosing her own music, even, honestly, and yet here we are. She’s driving me to St. Paul. She’s fought her own battles. She’s been doing this all behind our back and that’s because life is an eternity when it happens. Life is an eternity when it happens to us, but an absolute blip when it happens to others. We’re different people when we make it through the other side. That’s the whole idea.

On September 6, 1994, Bad Religion released their second major label album, Stranger Than Fiction. This was a new foundation — from here, I narrowed in and found my space, forming what still stands as the core of my musical taste. For me, without Stranger Than Fiction, there’s no Sunny Day Real Estate, no Fugazi, no hardcore punk and no Pomp Room and no house shows and no random parties where we all probably drank too much and decided to like ska. But for the previous two years — 1993, 1994 — the entirety of modern music was on shuffle, everything trying to make its way into my mind, everything trying to find a foothold. It was the variety, more than anything, that shaped me. We think about the points where the carousel stops, but forget that the real thrill was being on the ride in the first place. And I did it all on my own.

Our kids are going to be okay. They move faster than we think, and when they’ve abandoned their old ways, it’s not because we were wrong. It’s because every day and every moment they’re growing, just like we did. Faster than we expect, but still along the same timeline. They’ll never admit it until they’re older, but those embarrassing songs are just as important as the new stuff.

They’ll do the same thing we do — they’ll rediscover, and dive back into the rabbit hole. They’ll find their version of “Ordinary World” again, and they’ll smile when they hear it because it will remind them of when they found their own taste. Their own voice. They might even admit that they’ve liked it the whole time.