Steal My Sunshine

STEAL MY SUNSHINE, LEN

(September 1999)

Junior year of high school: I was listening to my favorite radio station, which remained Z95.7 throughout high school, and this song pops on. I'm pretty sure I heard this song on the bus, which is where I heard a lot of songs for the first time. I've always been behind in everything, but particularly technological stuff, so I didn't have a Discman, just a plain old Walkman, which was permanently stuck on Z95.7. I can still sing their variety of signature jingles, which is dorky, I know, but then again, I was just reminded that the nature of this very blog is inherently nerdy, so who am I to fight it? As a freshman, I listened to Wild 94.9, specifically the rambunctious Doghouse in the morning, but I got over them pretty quickly, not to mention the fact that I really wasn't into the hip hop they were playing (as with so much music, though, I wasn't into it then but I love that shit now). I read about The Z in the school newspaper (why there was nothing else newsworthy that day? I don't know), but the article was talking about this brand-new station blah blah blah, and lo and behold, I became a big fan. Ultimately, The Z was the most unoffensive radio station in San Francisco at the time - it played general Top 40, cleaned-up versions of mainstream hip hop (I remember when Juvenile's "Back That Ass Up" was changed to "Back That Thang Up" on most radio stations, but The Z went one step further, changing it to "Back That Back Up"... what the hell?), and subtly helping the gay agenda by playing old 90s gay dance songs, like "Finally" and "What Is Love?" making sure that plenty of high school boys got in touch with that queen inside them.

When I heard "Steal My Sunshine," I was thoroughly annoyed. I wanted to tell Marc Costanzo to clear his fucking throat. I didn't understand what the hell the song was talking about. "My sticky paws were making straws out of big fat slurpy treats"? Like, was Sharon singing about giving a guy an epic hand job? What did that have to do with sunshine being stolen or millions of miles of fun? I didn't really care for the Andrea True Connection sample. And that video? God. Obnoxious. It's so indicative of 1999, I think, looking back on it now. The weird not-fashions, the plasticity of the whole thing. Oddly enough, looking back on my old issues of Rolling Stone that I have saved from that time, there was a sort of anime-esque plastic gloss over everything, that and bright poppy colors. Seriously. Go watch Christina Aguilera's "Come on Over, Baby" video and it's like that was 1999 in a nutshell.

I didn't hear "Steal My Sunshine" for years. Years, literally, until, I want to say that my brother Daniel had this song on his Zune, and we were trading songs from our respective Zunes, and he sent this to me. "Didn't this shit come out when you were in high school?" Why, yes, and since I was in a major nostalgia kick for turn-of-the-millennium music, I listened to it and loved it. I think it's because there are two spoken interludes before each verse that were cut from the radio single edit, and these conversations (between Marc and some other guy in the band) basically confirm that they were high as kites when they wrote this song. The first conversation is spoken in code about how one of them wants to smoke out and is asking the other if he's holding ("So what do you want to do?" "Well, do you like buttertarts?"). It's either that, or a proposition for gay sex in the bushes, but I seriously doubt that. The high explanation makes the verses make complete sense, and totally adds to the carefree summer feel the song has.

I don't know if I love it now strictly for the nostalgia of it, but I know that I just think it's a lot of fun now. Do you like buttertarts?