Remember your favorite song as a teenager? Remember watching MTV and singing along to “Fly” by Sugar Ray or “Tubthumping” by Chumbawamba? Those are just two of the many popular hits of the late ’90s.
Around the time when our generation was buying their first cds, the Spice Girls were introducing their hit, “Wannabe” to teenage girls. Savage Garden and Hanson were singing to the young girls with “To the Moon and Back” and “MMMBop” while Puff Daddy at the time and Will Smith were releasing “It’s All About the Benjamins” and “Men in Black.”
Other musical groups such as Aqua, Counting Crows, Dave Mathews Band, Sublime and Third Eye Blind were also in the spotlight during this time.
In 1997, Sugar Ray’s album “Floored” was certified double platinum because they sold so many CDs. Will Smith’s album “Big Willie Style” was so popular, it went platinum also. Smith’s hit, “Gettin’ Jiggy Wit It” made “jiggy” a popular catch phrase in the late ’90s.
The three brothers from Tulsa, Okla. were known as Hanson created such chaos in the teenage girl world. Every girl between the ages of 9-14 was head over heels for this young boy band. These girls didn’t know what was coming because soon the Backstreet Boys and N’SYNC took over the spotlight.
All of these music artists defined the musical taste for most teenagers in 1997. Today the spotlight has significantly shifted to other, newer bands but many still remember what was listened to as teens. The old CDs are buried in rooms somewhere waiting to be listened to every so often while others will remain lost to not propose a threat to our improved musical taste that we’ve acquired over the years.
