Once something's documented in The Cut, it's burned. Like the Julia Fox feature coming out after Kanye dumped her. Expect something about people getting jacked and moving out of the city by next fall. So you can't lean on its trend coverage unless you're old enough to remember whatever the trend is referencing (Is PBR back? Skins fits? Flannel and SBs? Answer at the bottom.) Of course, the focal point of a Gen Z RETVRN trend will be what was actually hot, but not the lucrative stuff. Not what got pushed on people. Hence, Dunks over Air Maxes, Nudie over Cheap Monday, Kreayshawn over Uffie, A-trak over Ed Banger. Looking right by all the sickass corporate co-opting of whatever the hell the shit was.
If you're too young to remember this stuff, or if you were a normal 7th grader busy kissing people and smoking weed instead of foaming at the mouth at the Contra press cycle and making your French teacher play that Yelle remix with the pop-locking, then just know it didn't seem that fun to be an adult at the time. Everyone like, threw out their guitars in 2008. It was just cheaper and the coke was better. They didn't even have hard seltzer.
I didn't put any of this together when it was happening. My first memory is the Hilary Duff threesome on Gossip Girl, but in the news. There was a phone booth on my tutor's block in the east 60s.
I've since gathered media, some shlosh, some actually good shit, that I feel reflects being a kid trying to figure out if the Vice Seapunk documentary was earnest. Stuff I wasn't even around for, really. This isn't going to be a "What's Electroclash" playlist or a secret guide to movies. It's just stuff that I think of when I force myself to read trend reports lately. Most of the music I've already gathered in playlists I made for K*t K**n*n in high school pre-calc. Never sent them.
Here's number one - Vampire Weekend's Contra
If you know me personally, you either know or have reasoned that my parents provided me private education my entire life. I was essentially, on financial aid and scholarship from 2003 to 2020.
So in 2010 I was in a strange place, identity-wise. I was twelve, and charities had begun to mail invites to socials and dances. The first was ice skating at Chelsea Piers. I think I went alone, staring at the back of Chapin girls' heads as I traced circuits on poorly-fitting rental skates. I remember sitting at a table, alone, probably listening to "I Feel Like Dying” from The Carter 3 Mixtape or Pendulum or music from Sonic Rush on the Nintendo DS on my iPod Nano.
I knew about Vampire Weekend, vaguely. “A-Punk” was inescapable at that point. I saw the “Holiday” video, with the dandy-skating on TV. But it was awhile before I was actually listening to them, before they led me to shed my CCS Jerry Hsu cosplay for Nantucket Reds and Sperrys, for a summer or two.
Here are a few indisputable truths of my middle school experience: I was terrified of girls and I had friends I'd discuss indie rock with. Crystal Castles and VW, mostly. That really annoying Fun. record. (Fuck that dogshit band.) One of these friends was, during Obama's first term, literally a diplomat's son. Another was the only other black boy in my year. The last was Grace, my good buddy.
I poured over those first two Vampire Weekend records, in my room at night and on the 6 train and at the diplomat's son's place on Park Avenue. I didn't understand much of what Rashida's husband was saying. I could feel that outsider within the castle walls thing. I connected with it. And the songs held up, regardless of my understanding. Lot of care or whatever.
Now, to me, those lyrics are like, the blood to the music's bones. I know what kafir is. I wrote about the Richard Serra Skatepark in my undergrad thesis. They have a song about the Wellesley Fuck Truck. Fucking a girl with a beach house. A girl dumping you at school but you see her everywhere anywhere because you're at school.
These records followed me as I toured... private high schools in the city and in the Hudson Valley. Of course, I went to a downtown progressive and then cherry came out my sophomore year and I knew pretty much who I was by then, but I was a prep for moment. And a lot of that stuff stood in college.
Different to listen to now. Koenig’s one of those guys that “cancel culture doesn’t exist” people should trot around. So crazy at 30 years old to sex-abuse the most well-read teenager in the country, maybe the world if not for Malala.
Anyway, good records.
*it’s flannel and SBs, unfortunately.