Book Review: 60 Songs That Explain the 90s by Rob Harvilla

I was very excited to read this book, as I've been a long-time reader of Rob Harvilla's 60 Songs That Explain the 90s podcast on the Ringer. And I do mean "reader" - I've never listened to the podcast itself (I only like listening to the Faraci brothers argue about Star Wars and superheroes), but I love reading the printed excerpts. What always strikes me is the depth of knowledge. Take this week's excerpt - song #110 of the podcast (due to the popularity of the podcast, Harvilla is going up to 120 songs), Sublime's "Santeria". In the excerpt - a full-length column in its own righr - Harvilla never even gets past Sublime's first album when the excerpt ends. And with Harvilla's completely engaging writing style, covering a band in this much depth - even when it's a band you don't particularly like, as I discovered in his N*SYNC column - is always a treat.

I ordered this book months ago when I saw it would be coming out, but wasn't entirely sure what it would be. I was hoping it would be a collection of his podcast transcriptions - would love to read the entire entries - but instead Harvilla created an original work.

The book version of 60 Songs That Explain the 90s replaces depth with breadth, and instead of going in-depth on the bands or songs, he attempts to live up to the title and actually explain the decade through music. In such, it's less a competitor to Steven Hyden's books (although his book on band rivalries is referenced) and more of a complement to Chuck Klosterman's The 90s, which is referenced a few times over the course of the book.

But exchanging depth for breadth can feel like a whirlwind. Take the opening of the book, where he starts with Celene Dion, falls into Hole, which bleeds into Madonna, and ends with the Spice Girls.

That's not the first chapter. That's the first PART of the first chapter.

Harvilla's easy-going yet thorough writing still shines through, and he still manages to shine a light on parts of 90s music that have been forgotten (Mariah Carey basically being Tommy Motolla's prisoner during their marriage) or might not be known at all (the tragic life of the guy who wrote the song "Hey Jealousy". And one thing the book does accomplish is to remind you of how diverse the 90s music scene was - I pretty much listened to grunge, gangster rap, and electronica (the only major 90s music genre that I feel was under-represented in the book - especially since the Daft Punk podcast excerpt was so good), but at the same time there were major works by artists like Whitney Houston, Pantera, Shania Twain, the Backstreet Boys, and Bonnie Raitt.

But overall this book is like drinking out of a firehose. And I LIVED through the 90s - I can hardly imagine what kind of read this would be for someone younger than me.

I hate thinking I'm giving low ratings to someone because of what their work is NOT. As much as I love Harvilla's podcast, and as much as he could have made an easy buck by printing out his full podcasts and do little work, he took a chance and did something different. I would love to reward this. However, overall, as someone who is still listening to 90s music almost a quarter century after it ended, even I couldn't follow everthing he wrote. So, reluctantly, only six out of ten hot dogs.