People tend to paint the 90s into an over-simplified caricature, wherein everyone was in flannel and had long hair and listened to Sub-Pop Seattle-scene music while navel-gazing about the generations collective identity.

As someone who spent 1992 in flannel (and super-hero TV shirts; some things never change) with long hair, listening to Sub-Pop Seattle scene music while navel-gazing about the generation’s collective identity, I am here to tell you: People like me were in the minority. We were a reaction to THIS. This was a big radio hit.

By the time the larger media world identified the world of music and aesthetic that rejected the popular crap of the day (remember, the 90s were also the time of Michael Bolton, C+C Music Factory, Vanilla Ice, Color Me Badd, the Backstreet Boys, etc.) as “grunge” and “alternative,” the whole scene was largely over. Nobody referred to it as “grunge” when it was happening, and if you did, you weren’t there when it was actually happening. Rap music also had an evolution during this time that became commercialized to a greater extent. Both were sort of “underground,” to a degree, in that you had to go looking for them and trading albums with other enthusiasts, because you would never hear either Screaming Trees or Das EFX on the radio or MTV.

Anyway, check this out. This is some serious Babylon-stuff right here. A dancing baby, forced to perform a terrible song for Prince and Whitney Huston (who alone, in the crowd, seems to understand the awful absurdity of it all. Maybe the only sane reaction to being in that world is to go crackhead crazy.)