2. Molly Nilsson - “1995″

This song is thoroughly steeped in nostalgia, like a tea bag that’s been forgotten and left to soak in a mug on a windowsill that’s caught under the brittle light of a winter sun. It carries a warmth even in its coldness. Almost as if it’s simply the memory of forgotten warmth. It’s like you’re trapped out in cold, and robbed of all other senses, you can only gaze at it from a distance. Stuck outside, you willfully choose to believe that it’s hot. You long for it, so much so that the subject becomes idealized in spite of its obvious flaws.

Much of Molly’s music is like that. It carries an intrinsic brightness that shines through all the smudges. You can’t really explain why, but you’re drawn to it. This song doubles down on that nostalgia, perfectly resonating with those of us who find ourselves in our late twenties expiring into our thirties. Windows 1995 is an iconic symbol that for many of us was our first brush with the ensuing technological revolution. It represents a golden age, a period of simplicity when the world was full of wonder and infinite possibility. Our generation - more than any other, has this predilection toward early onset nostalgia. We grew up in a world that often outpaced us, aging alongside technology, attached to it at the hip and loving it every step of the way. Technology is second nature to us. We don’t learn it, we adapt to it - discovering it through the trial and error of every day life. It’s intuitive almost, a connection that transcends any sort of explanation. We are part of it, and it is part of us - and for many of us Windows ‘95 was our first love. It holds a special place in our hearts, whether through snake, Oregon trail, Minesweeper or endless other pixelated vanguards of the digital age. These were idealized times, when the indoor frontier was as far-reaching as the one outside our doors.

Yet as glorious as these times were, they we’re short lived. Technology marched on, and before we knew it Windows ‘95 became obsolete. We grew apart, and our lover was replaced with a newer and faster version. Our youths seem so incredibly distant because things have changed so incredibly fast. We continued to age at the plodding pace of biology, while technology sped away exponentially. It got bigger while getting smaller, more complicated and less magical. So that now Windows ‘95 seems so much more distant than it really is. 1995 is ancient history. What for us is only a little over a decade, to technology seems like a millennia. Our childhoods now exist in a distant past that we can no longer reach and will never again come close to reliving, because with technology more than anything else, there is no reverse.

Now this is true of all generations, yet for them the pace of progress moved slower than the humans that inhabited it. However for us the opposite is true. The past for us is increasingly idyllic. Caught in the dual vice of progress, it seems both incredibly distant and short-lived. It’s like a lover that we will never have back, a lover that moved on too quickly, and has now slept with everyone while becoming ridiculously successful in the process. We stare at it and all we can remember is the intimate Saturday mornings we used to spend together, when we were both living in the ‘future’ together, side-by-side, not stuck in the actual future left reminiscing of the past.