Four Fancy Boys Club writers- Matt Drufke, Brandon Andreasen, Michael Grace and Jake Drummond- each chose 16 songs from their first two years of high school that had a profound impact on them. From there, the March Music Madness bracket was born.
From now through Friday, we’ll reveal the songs that made the cut by region and doing our first round. You can vote at our Facebook or our Twitter or at the polls at the bottom of this page.
We wish the best of luck to all the challengers.
Andreasen Region: The Songs
#1. My Name Is-Eminem: No song cut a deeper path through the suburban white kid cultural consciousness than Eminem’s first top single. It was mean, funny, and catchy as hell. Most of all, it acted as a bridge to hip hop that many people had previously been cut off from. While he would have bigger and better songs in the ensuing decade, no song was more important in it’s moment.
#2. Bawitdaba-Kid Rock: It’s easy to make fun of Kid Rock for the conservative “Ted Nugent meets Hank Williams Jr” caricature that he portrays now, but in 1999, he was EVERYWHERE. MTV played his music with the persistence and fervor normally saved for boy bands and girl-next-door pop acts. Rock’s music was rougher around the edges than his contemporaries and usually went harder. Bawitdaba is an all time banger that still holds up to this day.
#3. The Kids Aren’t All Right-The Offspring: This song crawled so bands like My Chemical Romance could run. Dark as it is catchy, The Kids Aren’t All Right was great because of how identifiable the lyrics were. We all had friends that committed suicide, dropped out of school, had kids, did drugs. This song was perfect for the moment as teenagers started to become self aware in a post-Columbine world that high school wasn’t this wonderful, shiny movie scene where everybody gets their moment. High school could be bullshit, just like the rest of life.
#4. What’s My Age Again-Blink 182: Everybody loved Blink 182. They had enough punk rock cred to draw in some groups, and enough pop catchiness to draw in everyone else. Everyone owned this CD, even if they weren’t into music. The music video was perfect for the era.
#5. Got The Life-Korn: Heavier than Kid Rock, less antagonistic than Limp Bizkit. Korn was, god I hate that i’m about to type this, the thinking man’s nu metal. The lyrics often run much deeper than their contemporaries. Their videos were absolutely top notch. Got The Life is both a send-up of the excesses of stardom while also pushing the band into levels of stardom that nobody could have seen coming 18 months prior.
#6. My Own Worst Enemy-Lit: No song in my top 16 holds up better than this song. To this very day, if you play it at a bar, you get echos of people across the building singing along. The lyrics flow easily and click into memories the moment the opening guitar riff hits. It was just a good time rock and roll song that has avoided ending up in the nostalgia waste bin by being simple and great.
#7. Ride Wit’ Me-Nelly: Every girl in high school loved this song. Every girl who was even old enough to remember this song on MTV back in the day loves this song. In fact, come to think of it, every guy loves this song, too. It’s just easy to enjoy and catchy as hell. They don’t make hip hop like this, anymore…or, they do, but it’s sang by angry looking white guys with beards who have strong opinions about vaccines.
#8. Ruff Ryders Anthem-DMX: As soon as you read the song, you immediately heard “Stop, drop, shut ’em down, open up shop” in your head. For that reason alone, it deserves to make the list. Plus, the song goes so damn hard. Goddamn I want to get rowdy just thinking about it.
#9. Guerilla Radio-Rage Against the Machine: I was suuuuuuper late to the RATM bandwagon. This song was my introduction. All of your friends who seemed super up on the news and the injustices of the world, and had dyed hair and piercings loved RATM. I wanted to be cool like them. I was never cool like them, but it turns out, they actually didn’t know dick about famines and whatnot back then, either. Trust me, this song holds up much better than the girl in the Che Gueverra shirt did.
#10. Rollin-Limp Bizkit: You didn’t think I was leaving off Fred Durst, did you?!?! The lyrics were simple enough that a child could have written them, but when you add everything else that goes into it: the guitar riffs, the egregiously over-the-top music video, and the unquestioned 1999 cool of Durst, this song was definitely the song you blasted out your window when you were cruising on a summer day.
#11. Dragula-Rob Zombie: Like Rage, I was late onto Zombie, only really being aware of him because of his brief caeo in Airheads. Dragula came out and absolutely printed money. I remember just sitting in my parents garage and listening to this song on repeat. It rattled everything that wasn’t bolted down. I think I drank my first beer listening to Dragula. Rob Zombie was cool. Rob Zombie is cool. Rob Zombie will always be cool.
#12. One Step Closer-Linkin Park: Early high school Brandon was a moody loner. He thought his problems were his and his alone. Nobody else could possibly understand the horror of being unpopular. Linkin Park got me, though. As I got older, I realized that absolutely nobody had it all figured out back then and everyone was going through their own thing, but Linkin Park and this song GOT ME.
#13. Inside Out-Eve 6: This website’s love for Eve 6 is well known. We have argued on this site over the merits of Open Road Song. Jake and I have unequivocally shared our love for Anytime from the Out Cold soundtrack. Hell, I named Max, their lead singer, Person of the Year in 2021. This song was THE song from them, though. This felt like it was on every teen movie soundtrack of the era, back when teen movies were comedies, and not dark exposes of the inner psyche of youth. Inside Out represents fun times, and pie fucking, and Seth Green…though maybe not in that order.
#14. Flagpole Sitta-Harvey Danger: This song is, and will always be, criminally underrated. Everytime the little interlude ends where they talk about piercing their nose and turning back time, and the guitar hits and the lead singer starts screaming “Paranoia, Paranoia…” still elicits head bops from me in my car. This song has stuck around long enough that it has started to get play on classic rock radio. That means this song is on the same level as Led Zeppelin. I’ll be taking no questions at this time.
#15. Higher-Creed: Creed went from being a massive, world touring act, to an absolute joke, to a band only listened to ironically, back to this point, where their music slaps harder than any whiny shit 21 Pilots will release. They are what Nickelback wishes they could be. If this song doesn’t get you pumped up, you are truly dead inside.
#16. Butterfly-Crazytown: Make fun of it all you want, but this song was EVERYWHERE back in 2000. It also makes this list automatically for being mine and my first girlfriend’s song….or wait…was our song Hanging By a Moment by Lifehouse? Shit, or was it U2? I honestly don’t remember at this point. Butterfly is a perfect song to encapsulate that era, though. Just hard enough to be of the nu metal sound, but just whiny and moody enough to bridge the gap for bands like Hinder to come later.
Round 1 Voting!
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