Nineties Nostalgia (zigazig ah)
I’ll tell you what I want, what I really, really want. So tell me what you want, what you really, really want. I wanna – I wanna – I wanna – I wanna – I really, really, really wanna zigazig ah. – The Spice Girls, Wannabe
What goes around, comes around
Fifteen years ago, we were obsessed with the Eighties. Everything became neon again and synthpop was back in. Now, it’s the Nineties’ turn. Yes, the cycle’s the natural state of things, but why are we so nostalgic for the Nineties? Well, I’m a Millennial, born in 1992, so I have a pretty good memory of the mid-Nineties onwards and I have some theories as to why this particular decade is so ‘in’ right now.
Firstly, Millennials are now old enough and apparently responsible enough to be producing a lot of pop culture, from music to literature to fashion, and our own personal longing for our childhood is probably going to influence that (this Guardian article explores this in greater detail).
Second of all, it was a genuinely simpler time. It definitely wasn’t better in terms of progressive identity politics, but there was a sweet spot between the Good Friday Agreement and 9/11 that felt genuinely optimistic. Things could only get better, after all. A new Millennium was dawning on us and the potential seemed limitless. Compare that to our post-Covid, geopolitically unstable world and the Nineties seem really quite tempting.
Finally, there’s just not much new going on. Why not mine the past for inspiration?
Interestingly though as Elle pointed out, it’s not just us oldies feeling like we need to spice up our lives:
A report by consumer trends experts GWI in 2023 found that 40% of those in Gen Z felt nostalgic for the decade, despite the fact that the majority of them were - get ready to feel old - not even born during it. PinkPantheress’s DOB? 18th April, 2001.
Maybe we are all just looking for something fun and frothy and like the Elle article says, far back enough to feel intriguing rather than just old and stuffy.
My Nineties Top Nine
Tamagotchi – I had a pink and green one, which I swear is still somewhere in this house; otherwise, I might just have to buy a new one. It’s been living in my mind rent-free for too long.
Spice Girls and by extension, Girl Power – a powerful message to hear for a small child, plus ‘Goodbye’ still makes me feel like I’m attending a funeral and the moves to ‘Stop’ are ingrained in every muscle in my Millennial body. As for Geri’s Union Jack dress and the blonde streak in her red hair? Iconic.
The Powerpuff Girls – pretty much see above. Honestly, that was a golden age for Cartoon Network, with the likes of Cow & Chicken and Dexter’s Laboratory. They all genuinely had a bit of darkness in them.
Great supernatural films for kids: see Hocus Pocus, The Addams Family/Addams Family Values, Casper, to name but a few.
Iconic blockbusters too, like Jurassic Park, Independence Day¸ and Men In Black – basically a Jeff Goldblum/Will Smith Venn Diagram. I might be a Brit, but Bill Pullman’s big ‘this is our independence day’ speech still gets me punching the air.
Tie-dye. I had so much tie-dye. I used to make my own tie-dye at school. That’s how much tie-dye was part of the conversation.
Windows 98. The young’uns won’t understand how much of a game-changer this was. Yes, fine, we still didn’t have the Internet either at home or school, but the programmes we could load on the PC via CD-rom (ooh…) were the future.
EastEnders. It was never better than in the second half of the Nineties. I adored Tiffany and there’s a reason why Martine McCutcheon was able to go off and do music (and then Love Actually).
Smelly gel pens. The popcorn one was the best. If you know, you know.
No Millennium Dome or Eden Project for Coldharbour
Coldharbour very deliberately starts in 1999. Partly because that’s the first year I can recall in very vivid detail (I would’ve been seven), partly because there’s something about approaching a Millennium that just feels epic, and partly because the story only works in a certain time. It’s fundamentally a mystery, even though there are lots of Gothic, horror, and fantastical elements. It’s also one of those mysteries which only works without the Internet and mobile phones being absolutely ubiquitous. Coldharbour is a world in which you have to go to the library to go online and people are still using pagers and you want to call your friend? Expect to very awkwardly and politely face an interrogation by one of their parents on the home phone first.
And, as you can imagine, there are references to Buffy, Charmed, Practical Magic, The Craft, and Sabrina – everything associated with that witchy resurgence in the Nineties (which you can read more about in one of my first blogs).
Fancy feeding your yearning for the good old days? You can now read Coldharbour I here.
