issues
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side B - song 4
"Fallin'"
Teenage Fanclub & De La Soul
from the Judgment Night soundtrack, released 1993 on Epic Records.


This is the sugar crash from the last pop over-indulgence. It's not unlike the mix of the “Shitmix 2000” in its ideals, but it was actually created at the high point of early nineties pop guilt and insincerity that was rap-metal. This was a great soundtrack for a horrible movie that time mercifully forgot on the discard rack. There are a few pairings that have been left behind (anyone remember Therapy? and Fatal?) but the pairings of Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill, as well as Mudhoney and Sir Mix-A-Lot, do more than any downloadable mash-up could. Then there is De La Soul, backed by the loose and understated Teenage Fan Club, and suddenly all the other attachments, movie and other forced concept traps, are gone and it fells like it's raining in the sunshine. This is a song more relevant to De La Soul than the soundtrack, there is the bounce, sway and laughter of undeniable failure. At a point in their career where they had survived the pop success of songs like “Me, Myself, and I” and “Potholes In My Lawn” they were still trying to find direction and out last the “hippie hip-hop” label they'd been unfairly straddled with, but without the following they'd enjoyed some years prior. In this song, most of the time is spent laughing at themselves and how badly they'd thrown it all away. Not all lamentations are ones of teeth-gnashing sorrow, sometimes when failure is so complete and absolute, it's hilarious to think that success was ever thought to be possible and worth a celebratory song on the folly of thinking you can win.

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comments: mix tape
subject: Viva la Friends Forever!
date: 10.01.2004
name: kristy f.
comment:
DENVER - ow!