My name is Ben Johnson, and I enjoy late 1990s top forty pop rock.
It’s something I didn’t ever see coming, but now that I’ve said it out loud, it feels inevitable and — honestly — something of a relief to admit. It’s one less thing to give a fuck about as I inch closer to middle age.
I first realized I had a problem when I was at the gym and, tired of the same two “Workout” playlists I created seven years ago, I opted for one of those “because you like X” playlists and let the algorithmic gods take me where they may. A few minutes into my breathy, post-weights elliptical jaunt, I realized with some sense of alarm that I was listening to Smash Mouth’s “Walkin’ on The Sun.” Not only that, I realized I knew every word to the song and I was…singing along?
What the fuck.
Truth be told, this incident was actually just the latest in a spat of similar “Who have I become?” moments I’ve experienced in recent months. They had come largely as the result of me not having a functioning attachment for my phone to my car stereo. I have in fact, been driving my car and listening to terrestrial radio—like some sort of cave person.
Indeed, the Smash Mouth incident had followed shortly on the heels of a handful of incidents in my car where I inexplicably found myself singing along to shit like Collective Soul, Third Eye Blind, and Live.
These weren’t bands I’d ever sought out* as an angsty, vaguely punk teen. Most of them were the sort of “corporate rock” I loathed when the songs were new; and yet…I know the words. I know all the words.
Who is this man in a Subaru singing “Popular” by Nada Surf?
But if you’re around my age, you’ve probably had a similar experience lately. Maybe you too have found yourself drumming your fingers on your steering wheel to a jam that’s now on the — what the fuck — classic rock station? Or maybe you’ve found yourself humming along to a Big Shiny Tune as you push a shopping cart up the frozen food aisle. We might not have loved it when it was happening, but for people my age, 90s corporate rock is just part of our cultural zeitgeist.
Before curated playlists and algorithm-crafted playlists, we all kind of listened to the same shit.
We had no choice. We were perhaps the last generation that actually routinely listened to the radio — on purpose. Hell, we came of age at a time when they still played music videos on TV. There were entire multi-hour chunks of television just playing music that we didn’t have any control over, interrupted only occasionally by Rick the Temp or Master T and the odd ad for Sunny D (fuck the purple stuff).
Creed was the soundtrack to the summer I worked in a mattress warehouse. “My Own Worst Enemy” by Lit and “Kryptonite” by 3 Doors Down blared from radios in the kitchens of restaurants I worked in university. We pre-drank and rolled joints with Silverchair’s Intimate and Interactive playing on the background on TV in our friends’ parents’ basements.
What I’m saying is that I watched the world float to the dark side of the moon.
And if you’re my age, you’re in the same boat. It’s ok. Admit it. “What It’s Like” by Everlast and “Smooth” by Santana featuring Rob Thomas are burned into our fucking brains forever.
But what I also realized, sweating in a dank Good Life Fitness last week while walkin’ on the sun with Steve Harwell (RIP), is that all the reasons I might be singing my heart out on my regular drive to swimming lessons might be the same reasons that I like to drink lagers.
Because, like the music of Gavin Rossdale and Jakob Dylan, lagers harken back to simpler times.
Sure, I’ve upped my game considerably with craft Helles and Italian pilsners from local breweries instead of buying a 2-8 of Budweiser, but ultimately there’s something nostalgic in the essential “beeriness” of a good lager that’s just…comfortable.
It doesn’t require a special glass. I don’t have to let it warm up a bit. There aren’t yeast strains in it that I need an undergrad in microbiology to understand. It’s just beer.
And that’s fucking great.
I’m clearly not alone in my yearning for simple (albeit elevated) beer styles. In recent years lagers have surged in popularity among North American craft brewers. You can see brewers across Ontario tapping into the same wistful revery that I have for straightforward beers. There are of course myriad reasons brewers have turned back to lagers: If you have the space to spare for the extended lagering, it’s a cheaper style to make, plus it’s approachable so you can entice less adventurous drinkers and actually — EGAD– sell more beer.
But for a very long time craft brewers seemed to be trying to make anything BUT lagers. It was a rejection of the mainstream “fizzy yellow water” of macrobreweries, but it seems you can only fight the world’s most prolific beer style for so long before you come crawling back. Now we seem to be trending evermore toward the traditional. The crowd pleasing. the simple.
Lager is reassuring. It’s familiar. It’s fine.
You can see it in the nostalgia-friendly branding of beers like Burdock Brewery’s excellent lager, Deluxe. Hamilton’s Merit Brewing just released “You Can’t Spell Love Without It,” their brewing team’s tribute to OV. Great Lakes Brewery in Etobicoke recently revamped and leaned into their lager. Wellington’s Helles is a Beer Store mainstay these days. It used to be that every Ontario brewery needed some bastardized hybrid of an IPA and English Pale Ale but these days, if you don’t have an approachable lager, you’re crazy.
Of course, seeking out new and exciting beers made with unique ingredients and a painstaking attention to technique is fun. And it’s rewarding. We all like trying new and weird shit. It’s essentially the equivalent of buying a great record on vinyl, getting it home, and pouring over the liner notes while you blast your new tunes on your great sound system.
But sometimes you just want the beer equivalent to a 1990s-era radio-friendly alternative rock song. Sometimes you don’t want to think about your beer. You want it as background to whatever you’re doing. Sometimes you just want Smash Mouth.
And that ain’t no joke.
*just getting this in before my brother outs me somewhere on social media. I definitely owned Smash Mouth’s 1997 album Fush Yu Mang. I’m pretty sure I bought it on the same day I bought Sugar Ray’s Floored. I may have been a self-style suburban punk rocker, but I also owned my fair share of schlock.
