90s songs that haven't got old yet

It doesn't matter how much you love or hate the 90s, the fact of the matter is that 90s music rules. Every one of these songs is very, very 90s, whether it was on a movie soundtrack, by an iconic band or by a not very good band who made quite a nice cheesy song that everyone liked (and still likes) to dance too. 90s songs seem to have some sort of magical power to never get old and rubbish, and provide a safe nostalgic couple of minutes for us 90s kids.

There are SO many songs I could have chosen from, but I've somehow managed to narrow it down to fifteen (and in no particular order either, I couldn't possibly choose). For me, these 90s songs haven't got old yet, probably never will, and I'm pretty sure they'll be on my iPod (or one click away on youtube) for a good while.

Under the Bridge- Red Hot Chili Peppers

One of their best songs and also inspired a pretty good cover version by All Saints.

Don't Speak- No Doubt

Catchy but not cheesy, allegedly written about a break up between two band members and a video featuring Gwen Stefani rockin' a lot of polka dots. Love it.

Coffee and TV- Blur

Classic britpop favourites Blur and the cutest lost milk cartoon you've ever seen.

Don’t Look Back in Anger- Oasis

More amazing britpop from Oasis at their peak.

S Club Party- S Club 7

It's S Club 7! I don't need to say any more than that.

Truly Madly Deeply- Savage Garden

Everyone in the world probably knows the lyrics to this. Good, they should do.

My Favourite Game- The Cardigans

You know those Greatest Road Trip Music Ever! type albums? This should be on every one. Also, I wouldn't mind driving around a Californian desert in a convertible.

Come As You Are- Nirvana

You can't have a list like this without a bit of Nirvana on it. Plus, this is one of their best songs.

Creep- Radiohead

Another one everyone knows the lyrics too. Also, RADIOHEAD!!!

Bittersweet Symphony-The Verve

Watch the video! The main bloke walks down the street bumping into everyone and they get really annoyed but he just pretends they're not there.

Black Hole Sun- Soundgarden

If you've never heard this song before, please do it now coz it's really, really good.

Alive- Pearl Jam

Some more grunge. Grunge was the best.

Learn to Fly- Foo Fighters

Not only is the song pretty good, the video is HILARIOUS.

Ironic- Alanis Morissette

She may have got the meaning of the word 'ironic' wrong, but this is still a lovely little song. Plus, Alanis rules.

Buddy Holly- Weezer

I love this because it's like they're in Happy Days with The Fonz.

10 things I learnt about high school from 90s teen movies.

I don't know about you, but when I was younger I would watch tv shows or movies and believe that what happened on screen was pretty much exactly how things really were in the real world. This was clearly either wishful thinking or just plain stupidity (place your bets now). So when the late 90s rolled around with all those American teen comedies (She's All That, Never Been Kissed, 10 Things I Hate About You to name just a few...) and I was almost about to go to high school and was wondering what it would be like, I looked to them to show me the way...

10 things I learnt about high school from 90s teen movies

1) Despite being between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, everyone will look twenty five.

This lot were 17, believe it or not!

2) There will be a group of cool kids. These will include a 'popular jock', a 'nasty cheerleader', a 'cocky blonde guy', 'the cruelest girl in school' and a 'token black guy'.

3) Your high school will look AMAZING. It will be huge and sunlit, even in winter. It will have massive hallways that you can't possibly get squashed in and lockers will adorn the sides. There will be a large green football field and track course outside with bleachers you can sit on and it might even have some of those big artificial light things.

4) There will be cliques of kids who will all look and act exactly the same. You must join a clique. Then you must adopt their ways. You must except that these will be your only friends for the duration of high school. According to that guy in 10 Things I Hate About You these are: the beautiful people, the coffee kids, the white rastas, the cowboys and the future MBAs (smart kids).

That guy knows his stuff.

5) If you aren't a football player, cheerleader or if your parents don't own half of Manhattan, you'll be a loser.

The beautiful people.

6) The school faculty might all be aliens!

If they are, Josh Hartnett will be the only one recruited to save you. Good luck with that.

7) There will be an extremely cool party that you somehow manage to get into. Someone unexpected will dance on a table, people will have enlightened revelations about their lives, someone's parents house will get wrecked and the police will end up breaking the whole thing up.

Even Heath's confused.

8) It will be REALLY easy for anyone at all to impersonate a high school kid, so watch out for that.

           Guess which one's not supposed to be in high school? That's right,

           it's our favourite 25 year old reporter, the fabulous Drew Barrymore.

9) A lot goes on at high school. Everything that is, but school work. You can get away with going only to the odd class, never seeming to do any homework and still get into an ivy league college.

Like this guy apparently.

10) If you wear glasses and have a ponytail, one day someone will give you a makeover that consists of removing your glasses and taking your ponytail out. This will make you instantly prettier and your wildest dreams will come true as Mr-generic-bland-jock-guy aka Freddie Prinze Jr (see above) will now take you to the prom.

Before

After

The main lesson I should have learnt is that this is not what high school is like. But it is what high school would have been like if I had been in a 90s teen movie.

Titanic. Nothing on earth could come between us, except the fact that I was too young to go and see you in the cinema.

4th April 2012. This date is a massive deal for me. Why? you ask. Why is a random Wednesday that will probably be raining or cloudy, is still ages away from summer is not my birthday such a massive deal?

Well, this is the day that I'll finally get to do something that I so long ago wanted to. This is the day that I thought would never come, that I thought had passed me by and I would never see again...

Yes, that's right. This is the day that Titanic is released in cinemas. And I'm finally old enough to go and see it.

I remember the first time around. It was the beginning of 1998 and I was ten years old. Too young to really appreciate the truly massive hype surrounding the 12 rated film but old enough to want to go. Badly.

No wonder I was so bothered, it was in your face everywhere you went. On breakfast radio before you went to school, in tv adverts when you got home from school. Everyone was talking about it. It's not like I was even invested in it for any particular reason. I was a bit too young (at that point anyway) to be a Leo fangirl and I wasn't a die hard action fan. But what I did know was that this film was being talked about, that it looked epic, and I wanted to go.

So you can imagine how difficult this must have been for a relative of mine, who for some reason was around our house on the night he was due to go and see it. I can't remember much from 1998, it was a long time ago, I was only ten. But I remember this. All through dinner I had been begging, pleading to go with them only to be told something to the effect of, 'We would take you, but it's a 12. You won't get in, then we won't get in and none of us will be able to see it.' I can see their logic now, but as a ten year old kid watching them walk out the door on that cold February school night to see the biggest. film. ever. it didn't seem all that fair. Why couldn't 12As have been invented then?

So, needless to say I didn't get to see Titanic in the cinema. I did however get to see it when it came out on video the next Christmas, when I still wasn't 12, but luckily no one seemed to care. Words cannot describe how much I loved that movie. It gave me nightmares and I didn't sleep that night but it was worth it. I loved Leo and his boyish good looks. I wanted to be Kate. I liked Celine Dion's cheesy song at the end. I wondered why, when they were on the raft at the end, Kate told Leo she would never let go and then she let go of his hand and left him to plummet to the bottom of the ocean. I know he was dead by then, but couldn't she have moved up a bit on the raft before that? Was there really no room at all for Leo?

Watch out Leo! She says she'll never let go...

...but she will!

Anyway, whilst I was lucky enough to see it, I had a friend at school who was about as desperate to see it as I had been. Unfortunately she had to wait all the way until she was actually twelve years old. Her excitement for the film did not die, and one and half years after it hit the big screen, a group of us watched it around her house on the small screen at her twelfth birthday sleepover. She loved it about as much as I did (which was a lot), and we even ended up performing Celine Dion's 'My Heart Will Go On' with her fantastic singing and my clumsy but enthusiastic keyboard playing at a school assembly.

Leo and his curtains.

So this April I'm gonna make like it's 1998 and go and see Titanic in its second release in 3D. I simply have no choice, it would be wrong if I didn't go, like I was betraying Leo and Kate and my ten year old self.

Top 5 most popular 90s Disney films

If there's only one thing any 90s kid will remember about, well, being a 90s kid, it's Disney films. Disney was going through some sort of super phase and managed to churn out tons of great animated cartoon films at exactly the right time for us 90s kids.

I've compiled a list of the most popular ones. However, please note that it's actually incredibly hard to find out what people's top Disney films are, so I went to wikipedia and found some stats on how well they did at the box office and in dvd sales, which more or less does the job.


5. Pocahontas (1995). All time worldwide box office revenue- $346,079,773.

I was pleasantly surprised when I saw that Pocahontas had done so well. I certainly loved it anyway, it was my favourite Disney film as a kid. This story was very, very loosely based on the true events of the first English settlers who went over to America, clashed with the Native Americans and a guy and a girl from each side fell for each other. It's all a bit Romeo and Juliet and to be honest, probably too grown up for little kids, especially little boys. However, there's no denying that it's a magical story with stunning visuals and this is probably what captivated audiences then and continues to do so today.


4. Beauty and the Beast (1991). All time worldwide box office revenue- $424,477,231.

I'm not surprised at all that Beauty and the Beast has done so well. It's got all the right ingredients to make it as a successful Disney film: fairy tale plot, cute secondary characters, catchy sing and dance scenes. The story is set in olden day France and tells of selfless Belle who takes the place of her father under house arrest to 'the beast' and teaches him the error of his ways. It's really quite magical and has something in it that everyone in the family will like, which is always a bonus.


3. Tarzan (1999).  All time worldwide box office revenue- $448,191,819.

Does anyone actually remember Tarzan? No? Thought not. Well actually some of you younger folk might, or anyone that got dragged along to see it at the cinema with their kid brother/sister. On the whole I'm not really sure why it did so well. In fact I'm not even sure if I've seen it at all.






2. Aladdin (1992). All time worldwide box office revenue- $504,050,219.

I knew this would be high up on the list. I remember all the hype about it at the time and the fact that literally everyone was going to see it. I thought it was alright I suppose, nothing to write home about though. Except for one thing: Robin Williams. His voice work as the genie is possibly the best thing he's ever done. Along with that, the action and lamps and wishes and everything else makes Aladdin the second biggest hit.


1. The Lion King (1994). All time worldwide box office revenue- $951,583,777.

Now this was a movie. Obviously everyone thinks this too as it is by far the most popular Disney film of the 90s and probably all time. It's taken tons of box office money, won loads of awards and continues to be featured on hundreds of 'best of' lists today. It certainly pulled out all the stops: the legendary Elton John did all the music (who can forget 'Circle of Life'), and an A list cast including Woopi Goldberg, Matthew Broderick and Rowan Atkinson (aka Mr Bean) were recruited to do the voice overs. But it's the epic story that grabbed viewers attention the most. Who can forget the tale of Simba, the lion cub who was forced into exile while being tricked into thinking he killed his father by his evil Uncle. It really grabbed at viewers heartstrings and has earned its rightful place as the reigning number one on the list!

Honorable mentions go to-

The Little Mermaid (1989). All time worldwide box office revenue- $211,343,479.

I was shocked when I discovered The Little Mermaid didn't make as much as some of the others in the box office, so I'm including it in the honorable mentions section. It wasn't actually released in 1989 which means it isn't technically a 90s film, but no one cares about tiny little insignificant details like that. Any true 90s child will remember it and how good it was, so all go out and buy the dvd so we can increase its rating!


Toy Story (1995). All time worldwide box office revenue- $361, 958, 736.

It's not traditionally animated, which is why I didn't include it in the above list. However, I thought I'd include it now because you can't write a post about 90s Disney films without including Toy Story, it's just not right. It was of course an amazing film and featured two of possibly the best kids film characters ever, Woody and Buzz. It was also the first film to be made entirely using that fancy CGI stuff which every kids film seems to be made of now.

Thomas the Tank Engine, Postman Pat and Fireman Sam and why 90s preschool TV is so much better than it is now!

Call me old fashioned, but I really don't think kids TV is what it used to be back in the day. Today out of curiosity, I turned on my TV to the kids channels. Not any old  kids channels, these were CBeebies and Nickelodeon. I mean one of them is made by the BBC, so they should be showing only top quality programming. Instead what I got was something called 'Grandpa in my Pocket'. Then next up, 'Peppa Pig'. To be honest, I don't really have a clue what 'Peppa Pig' is about. But what I do know is there's too many pigs and pink and it's too much of a cartoon. What I also know is that none of those programmes can hold a candle to all that stuff we got to watch in the 90s.

'Thomas and Friends'

One of these of course was 'Thomas and Friends' which followed the adventures of Thomas and some of the other trains in the station. Thomas (the blue one, just in case you used to live under a rock) was the nice one, Percy (the green one) was the mischievous one, and James (the red one) was the sometimes mean one. One great thing about the show was that Ringo Starr used to do the narration and voices, which for a kids show is pretty cool. At some point, even James Bond himself, Pierce Brosnan did the voice over.

Another great thing about the show was its catchy theme tune. Two other shows that had a catchy theme tune and were just as cool were 'Postman Pat' and 'Fireman Sam'.

'Postman Pat'

'Fireman Sam'

Both of these shows were incredibly similar as they were both about guy who had a job (postman or fireman) and had a lot of dealings within his town. Pat was very English, and Sam was very Welsh.

The good news is that all of these shows are still going today. The bad news is that they are now much worse. 'Thomas and Friends' and 'Fireman Sam' are now made using CGI, so they don't have that old school magic to them.

But the real news is Postman Pat. The Royal Mail stopped sponsoring it, as they apparently felt the character no longer fitted with the company's 'corporate image'. (what?) They probably should have just stopped making the show, but instead the creators gave Pat a new fancier job of head of the Special Delivery Service (again, what?). And with this new job comes new responsibility. Basically, the show now consists of him delivering 'special deliveries' in his new van and...a helicopter (?). The theme tune is even different, no longer referring to his 'bright red van', instead going, 'special delivery service, Pat's on his way...' To be honest it's all a bit confusing as Pat still looks like a village postman, yet he's flying around in helicopters like he's in MI5. Maybe he's having a midlife crisis...

Here's the damage:

But at least all three shows are still going today in one form or another, so kids have more to watch than just this:

'Grandpa in my Pocket'. I won't try and make fun of this, I think the picture covers that.

Here's some more:

Toy scooters

Toy scooters, or 'kick scooters' which is apparently the official name, were pretty hot stuff back in the late nineties. For about a year or so pretty much every kid had one of these. Even quite a few adults had one. That is until like every good fad, they disappeared into obscurity never to be seen again.

However, unlike many good fads, they were actually useful. For the window in time in which these things were in fashion they were the ultimate tool for getting out of walking, but still getting exercise. And what's more, the exercise was fun! Parents capitalised on this of course, making sure the scooter was used to and from school, on trips to the supermarket, and on long, long, long family country walks.

Something about the design of the scooter screams millennium. Sleek, silver and different from anything else, they were very much a product of their time. Which is probably why they've come and gone. However, seeing as they were less hassle than a bike, lightweight, compact and eco-friendly, it's hard to see why these scooters ever went of fashion. Surely they'd be perfect for the city professional getting around town?

Err, perhaps not.  

The tamagotchi

Do you remember the tamagotchi? The instant pet that required no cage cleaning, no hairs sticking to the furniture, and no messy little 'surprises' left on the carpet? In other words, a parent's dream. However, the one thing our old folks didn't bank on, was just how real our disappointment would be when our little electrical pet died. Which was a lot.

Yes, if you didn't constantly feed, play with and look after your tamagotchi when it was sick (yes, they sometimes got sick), then your pet wouldn't go through the next stage of growing up and would ultimately die. Seeing as trying to keep one of these alive required round the clock supervision, they were banned from schools. Teachers, already fed up with the usual 'can I go to the toilet Miss', clearly didn't have the patience for , 'Miss, can I go and feed my tamagotchi'. Obviously, this led to the poor little tamagotchis being neglected even more.

If you didn't look after your tamagotchi right, they would grow up to be bad little tamagotchis.

One thing's for sure, there's no denying that tamagotchis were cute. I say bring 'em back. They were fun, great company and came in all different colours!