I know that one thing I’m going to be annoying everyone around me with is the statement “God, I miss 2012.”
I like nostalgia, and I love when the new year comes around and all I see is “X things turning 10, 20, or 30 this year.” Because even though I don’t actually remember much from that time period, I’m obsessed with the passage of time.
That being said, for me, I want to be able to remember everything about the cultural reset of 2012, and, the song of the summer, Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe.”
According to Billboard’s chart history, the song debuted in June, peaked at #4 in August, and stayed on the chart for a total of 36 weeks.
While the song was released in 2011, the chokehold it had on the world didn’t start until the next summer. Parodies, mockeries, and complaints from everyone who wasn’t a tween girl. It was even covered on the season four premiere of Glee. There was no escaping it that summer. If I would have known how much I would be missing that point in my life, I would have relished in it.
Alas, time travels on, we get older, and the songs we grew up with turn into anniversaries and nostalgia, and we have to grapple with the fact that somehow a decade has passed since that amazing summer.
Back in the fall, Jepsen posted about the impact the song had on her life. The song had blown up and her life was never the same, so she wrote about how grateful she was for the people who helped her along the way.
We’ve already had a rough start to the year. Maybe ten years ago was good because of the excitement of just being in middle school, but this year’s wave of nostalgia for these ten-year-old things is probably going to be one of the only things that will give me the much-needed bursts of happiness I need to make this year better than the past couple.
Other than that, oh my gosh, aren’t we old? Knowing that my old taste in music is starting to have anniversaries, may or may not be messing with my mortality. At least now I can look back at that amazing summer and think about what it meant to me.
I’m not going to complain about being old. I’m just going to listen to my 2012 playlist on repeat.