Top Hundred Songs Of The - 90s

I looked up at my uncle. He was staring out the window at the rain, his forty-six-year-old hands wrapped around a mug that said WORST. MILLENNIUM. EVER.

And at the top of page forty-seven, centered, underlined three times: top hundred songs of the 90s

I was twelve when the 90s ended. Old enough to remember the last gasps of grunge on MTV, young enough that my strongest musical memory was the Digimon theme song. Rick, on the other hand, had been seventeen in 1990. He’d lived it: flannel from Goodwill, Doc Martens held together with safety pins, a mixtape collection that required its own shelving unit. I looked up at my uncle

The binder was the color of a faded Jawbreaker sticker—electric lime green, now softened by twenty-five years of basement humidity and garage-sale purgatory. My uncle Rick slid it across his coffee table, the duct-taped spine groaning. Rick, on the other hand, had been seventeen in 1990

– “The decade’s last great dance anthem. Play this at 2 AM in a bad club and watch strangers become family.”