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I graduated in 1995 and in Sweden back then, Techno, or euro techno was playing in the clubs.
The regular Goa and Trans techno that was playing at the original rave parties in 1990-1991 was not as popular anymore.
1972~Girls were just permitted to wear pants to school. Long hair, parted in the middle, doing calculus and trig on graph paper, all computations (formulas had to be memorized) were done w/ paper and pencil, and we used a slide rule in chemistry. Typing on a manual typewriter with erasable paper, no white out or correction pen. Minimum wage was $1.65 an hour~my goal was to bring home (after taxes) $100 month from a part time job.
2000....I don't know if I'm the first class to have graduated in the new millennium or not. There's still debate about that.
Music was horrible. The boy band craze was on with Backstreet Boys, 98 Degrees, N'SYNC.....Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera tug of war on which one was the best. The Thong Song by Sisqo.........Ugh.
Glad I got into real music, The Cars, Talking Heads, The Four Tops, Del Shannon, Pat Benatar, Electric Light Orchestra, Steely Dan....and the list goes on.
2000 grad here too--you just took me down memory lane! We definitely went to school in the era of boy bands and Christina vs. Britney. Looking back, that music was terrible, but you know you were dancing to it back then, LOL I'm kidding!
What year did you graduate high school and what fad/style do you most vividly remember?
I graduated in 1994 and remember most vividly that most girls had "HUGE hair" and rap music was just becoming popular, as was hip-hop. It was pretty much the same from the late 1980s to early 1990s, then a big change seemed to occur in styles/fads in 1995-1996.
Ironically, two years later, "big hair" was about history.
I graduated in 2005.
In my later years of high school, "faded tees" (usually imprinted with beach- or surf-related themes) were popular on both boys and girls. The "skater" hair style on boys was becoming popular just as I graduated. Those ugly muffin tops (I don't know the real name....you know, the ones with the really wide waist that extend to about the upper thigh) were a short-lived fad for girls the summer I graduated. Abercrombie and Hollister were the most popular clothing stores. Other than that, I can't really tell much of a difference between the style now (other than skinny jeans and other fads that only 10% of people can pull off) and then. Definitely not like I can the style in 2011 and the style in 1994 (or even worse, 1990)... In fact, I still wear a lot of the same shirts that I bought in 12th and 11th grade!
For music, there definitely is a difference between THEN and NOW. When I graduated, the popular "musicians" if you will grant them that title were 50 Cent, Gwen Stefani, Ludacris, Lil' Jon on the one hand and Rascal Flatts, Gretchen Wilson, Kenny Chesney, and Toby Keith on the other...and many of my classmates liked both at the same time! Electro-pop was basically unheard of on the radio, as was pretty much any other style of dance music. Now electro-pop dominates (Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Rihanna) and even rappers have integrated melody into their music, unlike then.
In terms of technology, it was also very much a different world. Most kids got cell phones around the time they got their drivers' licenses, which for my grade was 2002, 2003, and the beginning of 2004. Text messaging took off around that time. Facebook was still restricted to select universities, and MySpace was unheard of, though both sites would become very popular during most of my classmate's freshman year of college (2005-2006). Smartphones, although they existed, were very rare or non-existent among my graduating class; compare this today when 90% of the updates you see say "Sent via Text Message", "Sent via an iPhone", "Sent via Blackberry", etc. Illicit MP3 downloads via Limewire, Kazaa, etc., burnt to CD for friends or playback in car, were probably the most popular method of music distribution, yet iTunes was just becoming popular as I graduated. The change in technology between when I entered high school and when I graduated was impressive: upon entrance, I had the only (known) digital camera out of my class of 160, I got a Sony Clie (PDA) and MP3/CD player (plays MP3's burnt onto a CD) and was the only person who had that stuff. I was also one of the few people who could edit videos and send them to VHS or CD. When I graduated, pretty much everybody had a digital camera and iPods were very common. Mid-market cell phones also had cameras on them.
As for politics and the economy, Bush was re-elected my senior year - many classmates, including myself, voted for him. I didn't really like his foreign policy, but with pro-abortion Kerry as the only other presidential candidate with a chance, I felt morally obligated to vote for him. Although I got a 99 on my ASVAB, military service was out of the question as my chances of being shipped to Iraq or Afghanistan were great. The Asian tsunami - a tragedy with an immediate magnitude far greater than 9/11 - occurred the December of my senior year, but didn't seem to have that great of an effect on insular local life. Pope John Paul II died that April while I and many other members of my Spanish class were in Costa Rica.
The fixation with "missing white girls" was at its peak, and Natalee Holloway disappeared shortly before or shortly after my graduation date, sparking an absolute media frenzy and increasing my aversion to the American news media, as well as the average Joe or Judy. The summer after I graduated, Hurricane Katrina and the whole New Orleans debacle occurred. The economy was excellent, although it was fueled by the same consumer debt and increased housing values (which led to home equity loans, which my dad took out, which...) that would be responsible for its collapse. Although I never looked for a job, being happily employed at our family business, I have the sense that should I have searched for one, I would have found one right away - a big contrast to today, when only a small portion of applicants on the McDonalds Job Fair day were actually accepted. Acceptance of homosexuality had made a lot of progress (2003, I think, was the key year), but was not nearly widespread as today. Gas was at about $1.60 when I began my senior year; it shot up to about $3.00 the summer after I graduated as the result of Katrina. Despite the war, there seemed to be a palpable optimism in the air that today is all but missing.
Location: Huntersville/Charlotte, NC and Washington, DC
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Tennesseestorm
What year did you graduate high school and what fad/style do you most vividly remember?
I graduated in 1994 and remember most vividly that most girls had "HUGE hair" and rap music was just becoming popular, as was hip-hop. It was pretty much the same from the late 1980s to early 1990s, then a big change seemed to occur in styles/fads in 1995-1996.
Ironically, two years later, "big hair" was about history.
2006. The main thing I remember is that the main "hip" brand of clothing in the DC area was called Universal Madness. They charged $40 for a shirt.
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I'm kidding!
