Tubthumping

Tubthumping by Chumbawamba

Pop music is weird. In a way I've never been into it... I rarely ever have the 'it' song. The idea that some Top-40 radio station actually played consistently good music did not exist and still does not really exist in my mind. I didn't listen to the Top-40 stations, I stuck to XRT, the Hip, and the Who for much of the late '90s.

It wasn't that I was musically ignorant, because all hit songs have a way of oozing into the mainstream to the point where it would take someone who neglects media to not know the big songs. Eventually I would hear them. It's just that I wasn't always conscious of the big songs from the get go.

My younger sister helped at times - a year younger than me in school she was much more conscious of what was cool. While I attempted to find indie music (with little success), she would play whomever was big at the time (within reason and in her defense I don't think she ever seriously played the Backstreet Boys).

The first time I hard about "Tubthumping", was the night of the first dance of the school year. I was a sophomore and she was a freshman. It was the fall of 1997 and as we were about to go, my mom looked us both over and then probably went to give us a kiss. She looked at my sister and said, "I hope they play that Tub-song!"

"What song?" I asked.

"The big song that everyone is listening too. Come on Bobby!" responded my mom. At this point I probably shrugged and moved on with the night. I didn't know it. And that night they did play Tubthumping at the dance. It would be the first time I had heard it and probably used it as a conversation piece the rest of the night.

For the next few months it was impossible to avoid "Tubthumping" on the radio. And this wasn't a bad thing. I mean the song is catchy as hell, and it's a really hard song to not like. The song is just fun and it proves that pop music and Top-40 radio isn't evil. The world, in my opinion, is a better place for having "Tubthumping" dominating the air waves for a few months in late 1997.

And then the song disappeared forever. Why, I'm not sure. Ben Folds, Oasis, and Elliott Smith still get solid play, but one of the few illegitimately fun songs of the late 1990s has died out. For reasons that I cannot figure.

Maybe it can be the "Bohemian Rhapsody" of the 2010s...