Every month, we\u2019ll be looking back at the music from 1995 to explore why these albums are still relevant to us 25 years later. This month brings us Filter’s<\/em> Short Bus, Disney’s<\/em> Pocahontas Soundtrack, and Pink Floyd’s<\/em> Pulse. \n<\/em><\/p>\n\n
Filter- Short Bus<\/h2>\n
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by Caemeron Crain<\/p>\n
I\u2019m pretty sure I bought Filter\u2019s Short Bus<\/em> shortly after it was released. \u201cHey Man Nice Shot\u201d was on the radio and I\u2019d been taken up by Nine Inch Nails even if I hadn\u2019t gotten quite taken up by the whole industrial scene just yet. I knew that Richard Patrick was a friend of Trent, or something like that, but not much else about the band. It was the \u201890s, after all.<\/p>\n
I\u2019ve always liked it, though. This is a really solid album. I still enjoy every song, and the whole coheres, with one track flowing into the next. And when I listen to it now it takes me right back to that time when I was a disaffected teenager in the \u201890s.<\/p>\n
In retrospect, though, I feel like there are a number of things that feel problematic about the lyrics. In the zeitgeist of the times, it may have all just felt like a middle finger to \u201cthe Man,\u201d but I can\u2019t feel so good about the way they come across now. It gets me thinking about how the ethos of the \u201890s that this album embodies was not overtly political, or clearly on the side of progress, so much as it was contrarian. And while I can still connect to that I guess I worry as I imagine someone who identifies as \u201calt-right\u201d rocking out to this album. The point being that it is very easy for me to imagine this.<\/p>\n
Equally, it is a bit harder to get into \u201cHey Man Nice Shot,\u201d which was the biggest single off the album, after Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, and other mass shootings. I know the song is about suicide, and there is a definite irony to it, but I guess I\u2019m not sure if my issue is that it is 25 years later, or that I\u2019m 25 years older, or somewhere in between.<\/p>\n