The Top 9 at 9
On the pursuit of coolness, the pop hits of 1989/1990, and the songs other kids sang in elementary school
Our local pop hits station, Power 104 KRBE, had a nighttime countdown show called the Top 9 at 9. This fact might not mean much to you, but it meant a great deal to me in fourth grade, when I’d just started to concern myself with what was popular. I’d overheard some kids at recess—kids who seemed worldlier than me, kids who casually used slang terms I hadn’t learned yet—talking about the Top 9 at 9, saying that they listened to it every night, commenting on various songs in the countdown. I wanted to join that conversation. I wanted to know what was popular, so that I might be popular myself.
Actually, that’s not right. I didn’t care all that much about being popular. Not yet. But I’d suddenly become aware that certain things—certain songs, clothes, shoes, songs, football teams—were popular among my peers, and I wanted to align myself with the popular things. I wanted Stüssy shirts and Skidz pants, even if I didn’t know why either of these were cool. I just knew that they were cool, because I’d been told that they were cool. (Or, more likely, I’d overheard someone saying they were cool.) That’s all it took for me—hearing that something was cool, from the right sources, made it cool.
And thus it was with the Top 9 at 9. I heard kids talking about it, and it began to seem like an oracle of coolness. The countdown literally ranked the songs. Every night! It was MTV for kids without cable. Instead of having to piece together what was popular on the playground, I could just listen to the countdown all the way to the top song and know. And then I would automatically be less ignorant, more worldly. Listening to the Top 9 at 9 would make me cool.
There were a couple problems, though: I had a bedtime. And I didn’t have a radio.
I’m gonna assume you don’t care what my bedtime was, but let’s just say this: it required me to go to sleep before the completion of the Top 9 at 9. And I didn’t have a radio not because I was deprived of one, but because I’d never cared about listening to music on my own. Up to this point, I thought music was something you just listened to with your family, in the living room or in your dad’s gray Oldsmobile. My parents chose the music, and they never chose Power 104 KRBE. They listened to oldies, country1, Christian, easy-listening. But I wanted to listen to what the kids listened to.
Nobody ever tells you that this is one of the earliest signs of approaching adolescence: you suddenly want to listen to music you choose yourself, by yourself.
My attempt to achieve this goal was thwarted until my dad purchased a new stereo for himself, at which point I convinced my parents to let me lug the massive old one—receiver, speakers, tape player—up to my room. The giant stereo gave my room a teenage vibe, I thought. This would be the beginning of the new, cool version of myself.
Now I just needed a chance to stay up past nine o’clock.
***
If fourth grade was a strange transitional period in my life—the year I stopped being a little kid2, the year I started caring about coolness—it was also a strange transitional period in popular music.
It was the end of the eighties and the beginning of the nineties. The Billboard Hot 100 charts of the time were an odd mix: En Vogue next to Billy Idol, Tone Loc next to The Bangles, Michael Bolton next to Technotronic. The borderlines of decades are always weird, musically, at least in retrospect. Although, looking back now, this particular weird mix also seems pretty great.
Before the Top 9 at 9, the playgrounds and hallways of Sugar Mill Elementary were essentially my radio. That year, a lot of fourth graders sang “Paradise City” and “Opposites Attract.” They sang “My Prerogative” and did the “Vogue” dance. They sang “Blame It on the Rain” and “Hangin’ Tough,” but they also constantly made fun of Milli Vanilli—we all talked about them “lip-singing” until we finally realized that wasn’t the term—and the polarizing New Kids on the Block. (Most of the girls defended the New Kids and most of the boys claimed to hate them.) The wilder kids on the playground sang “The Humpty Dance” and “Do Me!”
I somehow knew about “Poison” by Bell Biv DeVoe, but I didn’t know about Poison, the band.3 I knew about Janet Jackson, but I didn’t know about Boy George or Bon Jovi or Biz Markie. I knew about the B-52s but I didn’t know about R.E.M. I knew the music of Prince only from the Batman movie. I knew about Wilson Phillips because some girls in my fourth-grade class did a choreographed dance to “Hold On” in P.E. class and I fell a little bit in love with all of them.4
I gathered my musical information only in these brief glimpses and reflections. Elementary school was a Plato’s Cave of pop music. I heard my buddy Cody sing Guns N’ Roses way before I heard Axl Rose. I knew several Paula Abdul songs—“Straight Up” is still my fav—before I ever heard Paula Abdul.5 And I knew this: you can’t seem cool if you only have secondhand knowledge of the cool things.
That’s why I needed the Top 9 at 9.
***
And then, one Friday night, I finally got my chance. My parents had some friends over, all of them talking and laughing downstairs. That meant I’d probably be able to stay up late, listening to the Top 9 at 9 all the way through, on my own new (i.e. used) stereo, without anyone else noticing.
My parents’ friends had brought their kids over too, but none were my age and the closest one to my age was a girl, Roxanne. Roxanne was nice. She had glasses. I had no problem with Roxanne. We always got along when we hung out with our families. But now I was nearly ten, no longer a child (in my own mind), and Roxanne was a year or two younger. The barriers of gender and age seemed big at that point. So I didn’t tell her about the Top 9 at 9. She was too young to understand why it mattered.
Instead, after eating dinner and playing with the younger kids for a while, I snuck up to my room and closed my door. There was no lock on the door, otherwise I would’ve locked it. I checked the time: 8:57. I turned the radio to 104 KRBE and waited.
I kept the volume low. For some reason, I didn’t want anyone to know that I was doing this. It was one of my first experiences with the weird shame of adolescence, when things that would come across as totally normal—a kid listening to the radio in his room—become freighted with anxiety and potential embarrassment. What if someone catches me LISTENING TO POP HITS ON THE RADIO? Ironically, this was a mirror image of the fear that led me to this point in the first place: What if someone at school finds out that I DON’T KNOW ANY OF THE SONGS ON THE RADIO?
The show started. I had this initial satisfied thought: I’m listening to the Top 9 at 9. The DJ introduced the first song. I waited with anticipation. I felt like I was getting one of my first glimpses into the world of popularity and coolness, the world of teenagers.
I knew one teenager, basically. His name was Eric, another one of my parents’ friends’ kids. Eric was blonde, handsome, athletic, played on the school tennis team, wore Polo-brand denim button-downs (I remember thinking, “Wow, you can wear jeans on your shirt?”). He’d been in trouble with his parents for smoking (somehow I’d learned this). He was cool by all the standard metrics of that time and place, while also having his own unique coolness. He was who I wanted to be, minus the smoking.6 I didn’t have to know he was popular to know that he was popular. Eric, of course, listened to Power 104.
And now I finally got to hear what Eric listened to. And the music wasn’t quite what I expected, though I’m not sure what I expected. I made it through several songs—number 9, number 8, number 7—and everything I heard was a sort of Britishy, New-Wavy pop. Almost all the songs fit into the Tears for Fears/Depeche Mode category. I can’t remember all the specifics, but Adam Ant and The Mighty Lemon Drops were in heavy rotation on Power 104 at this time, so they probably made an appearance. The Cure, too.7 I didn’t know how I felt about any of it.
Picture me there, folks, hiding in my room, listening to “Enjoy the Silence.” I could hear sounds of laughter coming from downstairs, sounds of joy. Meanwhile, I was upstairs, feeling strange.8 My big moment of discovery wasn’t going as expected. But maybe these moments never do.
Still, as the countdown continued—number six, number five, number four—I studied each song carefully, taking the rankings to be definitive indications of not just popularity but coolness. I really, really, really wanted to know what the top songs were. Especially #1 song. Then I could tell people about it. Casually mention that I’d been listening to it. Casually mention that it was my favorite song.
After another commercial break and some more DJ talk, we were getting very close to the Top Three. And that’s when my door opened. It was Roxanne.
I hurried to turn off the radio, hoping she hadn’t heard anything, as if I was listening to that show of sex advice that would come on late-night radio a few years later. And then, after I turned it off and before she even had a chance to speak, I yelled at her.
“Get out of my room! Now!”
This isn’t like me, people. Wasn’t. Isn’t. I’m not a yeller.9 I don’t tell people to get out of my house or out of my room. I didn’t do it back then, either. I was generally a nice kid. (Although, once, come to think of it, when I was even younger, at Roxanne’s parents’ house, I’d told them, “I hate your stupid dog and I hate your stupid house!”) I don’t know what came over me. I just really wanted to listen to my Top 9 at 9 without interruptions. I really wanted to be cool.
Roxanne ran away, crying. The sound of her crying got fainter as she moved down the hall away from my room. I turned my music back on.
***
Halfway through Number Three, my dad came in. My dad didn’t come up to my room a lot—except when I was in trouble. I turned off the radio again. He shut the door behind him.
“Roxanne said that you yelled at her. She said you shouted at her to get out of your room when she just wanted to play with you. Is that true?”
I stared at him. Nodded.
“Why would you do that?” (This was always my dad’s favorite question when we did something wrong. Impossible to answer. I swore to myself that I’d never ask my kids that if I ever became a father. Now I found myself asking it at least once a week, if not once a day.)
I didn’t say anything, since there was no way to answer the question that would make me look justified.
“Why would you do that?” he repeated. “Why would you yell at her?”
“I wanted to listen to music by myself.”
“Why can’t she listen to music with you?”
I couldn’t explain.
“Why do you have to be alone?” my dad said.
Even more impossible to answer! I didn’t even understand the answer myself. I still don’t fully understand it now. When you’re trying to figure out the ways of the world, the ways of the world beyond childhood, you don’t want another child with you. (Unless, maybe, it’s your best friend.) You feel vulnerable. You don’t know what you’re going to find out about yourself or the world. You need to be alone.
“You need to apologize to her, understand me?”
I nodded.
He brought Roxanne back up. She had blotchy eyes behind her glasses.
“Roxanne,” I said, “I’m sorry I yelled at you.”
She nodded, maybe looking a little scared of me now. I knew the yelling was uncalled for, although I was oblivious to the larger lesson: if you’re not careful, the pursuit of coolness can make you act like a real jerk. You become a different person, just like you wanted, except not in a good way. I’d fail to learn that lesson more than once during adolescence. And I’d witness plenty of others who failed to learn it, too. Too many of us do.
“You can stay in here,” I said, in a not entirely-inviting tone, “and listen if you want.”
“Okay,” she said.
My dad left. He made sure to leave the door open. I closed it, though. I was annoyed. I didn’t explain anything. Didn’t tell her about the Top 9 at 9. I was determined to ignore her and focus on the music.
I turned the radio back on. They’d just finished the last song. I’d missed it.
As you might already know, I wrote about my relationship with nineties country music (and my next door neighbor) in the Southwest Review last year. You can find a PDF at the bottom of this introductory post.
I had a girlfriend in fourth grade, people. Our teacher made us stay after school one day and told us that our relationship was interfering with our school work. I ran home crying.
I’d take that song over that band every time.
The girls in P.E., not the the women in the band. But I’ve been listening to those Wilson Phillips hits the last couple days and, wow, beautiful stuff. Although I’m also starting to question my memory: Maybe the girls in P.E. danced to “(I’ve Had) The Time of My Life.”
Although, come to think of it, I do remember her flirting with a cartoon cat in the “Opposites Attract” video. Maybe I saw that at a friend’s house?
Here’s how much I wanted to be like Eric. One time I noticed that he said “alright” instead of “yeah,” so I consciously made an effort to say “alright” instead of “yeah” myself. And I still say “alright” to this day.
“Lovesong,” maybe? Or possibly “Pictures of You.” As a matter of fact, I later asked Eric what kind of music he liked, and he only said one band: The Cure. I didn’t know what to make of that. It took me decades to realize what a cool answer it was.
The very first YouTube comment for “Enjoy the Silence” says this: “There’s something about this song that makes you feel so lonely and empty at night yet this song is just super fulfilling.” Not sure about the super fulfilling part, but yeah.
I do sometimes yell at my kids, with true shame and regret afterwards. Also my pickup basketball opponents.