I don’t know if there’s a definition for the term “formative years”. If only I had access to some kind of device that would allow me to ask a question and then get information on demand. Oh well. To me, my formative years were represented by the time that I transitioned from a naive and innocent kid to the (very) young adult that I was about to become.
When you’re a kid, your world is small. Well, maybe I shouldn’t generalize. My world was small. And everything was simple. I had my parents, my sister, my extended family, school, a few friends, my toys, some recreational activities I participated in, and a few regular places I would go and things that I did. My childhood was safe and secure (and probably even a little bit sheltered). All of my needs were being met by my Mom and Dad, and most of my time was spent being fairly self-absorbed and shielded from the harsh realities of the real world.
Also, I had time. UGH—Jesus, Christ, did I have time. ALL of the time. SO much time. And I had nowhere to be—no responsibilities. I had the kind of time that allowed me to sit, alone, and watch a bug land on the top of my hand. And as that bug crawled across my hand, I would just watch it as it tried to crawl to the underside of my hand. And when it got there, I would flip my hand over, and it would just keep crawling in the same direction, trying to get to the underside once again. Every time it got there I would flip my hand over again… and again… and again.
I’m not saying that I sat and watched bugs crawl every day. I’m just trying to explain how slow and simple life was. This was the kind of time I had, all the time. I don’t ever remember being in a rush.
But somewhere along the way, the world started to feel… bigger. Less secure, even. I slowly became more aware of the “adult world” where not everything is what I thought it was. Time started to speed up. Adults either started to let me in on the struggles they were enduring, or maybe I just started to notice them on my own. Things started to feel a bit more serious, and I was now being given responsibilities.
The Changing Parent / Child Relationship
Another hallmark of childhood is that your parents generally have influence over virtually every situation that you’re involved in. At any time, your parents can just sort of swoop in and fix anything (should they choose to). So, it goes without saying that one of the hallmarks of your formative years is that you start to experience problems and concerns that your parents no longer have control or influence over. Like social situations.
If your friend of several years starts being a d*ck, your parents can’t force him to start being nice to you again. If the girl you have a crush on finds out that you like her and she suddenly starts being weird and avoiding being in the same room as you, and then a few days later, she starts holding hands with another boy, your parents can’t make her like you instead. If you start noticing that you’re the awkward kid in class, your parents can’t show up and convince everyone that you’re actually pretty cool (holy sh*t—can you imagine if they did, though?!). If you try out for some kind of team and you don’t make the cut, your parents can’t show up and force the coach to magically make you the star quarterback or captain of the cheer squad (unless they actually can, in which case, congratulations! You, and they, are everything wrong with society).
For me, these formative years were my early teen years (12-16). Roughly 1996 - 2001, or, 6th to 10th grade. These were the awkward years. These were the years where I was starting to think about really big questions—existential questions. I started to feel new kinds of pressure that I hadn’t felt before. I was considering things like, “my future” for the first time. I was realizing that the world was in a lot of ways a scary, intimidating place. It was big and it was looming just off in the distance, like a storm front right before the rain rolls in. And just like a storm, life started to look a little darker, and I could feel the chilling cool breeze of change blowing my way along with it.
I think another aspect of these years was the fact that, for the first time, I was starting to feel “apart” from my parents. They were just as present and supportive as ever. It’s just that, I could now feel my own identity developing, and I could now feel that I was distinctly me for the first time, and not either of them.
Angsty Metamorphosis
As humans, we often (wishfully) think that we’re these rational, reasonable, intelligent beings. We like to think that all of our thoughts, behaviors and actions are based on our sound assessment of objective reality. But the truth is, the majority of our reality as we know it is made up purely by our feelings and our emotions at any given moment. Life at this time was not necessarily bad, but it was certainly starting to feel different than the majority of my childhood. Gone were the days of pure positivity, cheer and everlasting sunshine. I was starting to feel weird, and anxious and moody and… different. So, this meant that my view of the world now had a dark tinge to it.
I spent a large amount of my after-school time playing outside with friends during these years; rollerblading, playing street hockey, neighborhood-wide hide ‘n’ seek, and exploring the forest behind my house. But I also spent half of my time at home, in my room, and I think this was developmentally important. My teenage bedroom would become this sort of chrysalis where I formed this expansive inner world. Like some sort of awkward, weird-ass caterpillar, I was going through a transition, and those four walls (and all of the familiar objects between them) felt like this safe, protective space where I could just sit and be introspective. Sometimes, I played video games. Sometimes I would draw. Sometimes I would make things. Occasionally, I even did homework. But no matter what I was doing in there, I was always playing music.
The Song That Defined An Era
I didn’t have a huge collection of CDs yet, and these were still the *very* early days of the internet, well before streaming entertainment was a thing. In those days, everybody listened to the radio to find and enjoy new music. In a strange way, I could already feel that my musical taste was drifting into (or perhaps was already in) the realm of the unusual. Which is to say that I could often feel myself fixating on songs that other people didn’t seem all that interested in. And one of the songs that resonated with me, very deeply, was a song called, “6 Underground” by the British electronic music trio, “Sneaker Pimps”.
(Click image above to listen to the song on YouTube)
I should clarify, it’s not like this song didn’t do well. It was a huge hit, and it got tons of airplay. Especially after it was featured on the soundtrack for the 1997 movie “The Saint” (the same movie that made the the Daft Punk song, “Da Funk” famous as well). And it would go on to be featured in countless other movies and TV shows too. The band itself would be credited as being a major influencer for both the alternative rock and electronic music scenes from that point on. It would have been impossible to talk about popular music amongst angsty teens without mentioning Sneaker Pimps.
So, if I’m suggesting that this song was unusual or that I was unusual for listening to it, what I mean is that I didn’t get a sense that other people thought it was particularly meaningful or profound. Everybody liked the song to some degree and would always nod their heads to it if it came on, but I’ve never met anyone else who became so deeply, emotionally attached to it the way I did.
What Made It So Meaningful?
The melody, the instruments, the beat, the sound effects, the tempo, the tone, the moodiness, the “weight” of it… it was the musical embodiment of everything I was going through and everything I was feeling. I think part of it was just how heavy the song felt. And in contrast, Kelli Ali’s vocals (known then as Kelli Dayton) sounded so… small. At that time, I hadn’t yet seen what Kelli looked like, but her vocals somehow conveyed that she was small in stature. Almost child-like. And yet, there she was, confidently and steadily—maybe even defiantly—singing with such beauty in the face of this huge, looming heaviness that surrounded her.
This was everything that I was feeling. Just like her singing, I felt small in the face of a looming darkness. But she sounded okay, so maybe that meant I was going to be okay too.
Part of its charm was in the first 22 seconds of the track where the main focus is a few simple plucks of some harp strings, against the back-drop of a soft, vibrating brass hum, and almost as if off in the distance, you hear a faint, echo-y flute. The whole thing is reminiscent of a very sleepy dream sequence in a movie. And maybe that resonated with me too because this phase of my life felt like I was transitioning out of a dream. Like my entire childhood was slowly fading away and I was waking up to something much more difficult and harsh.
Remember those baby toys with all of the differently-shaped wooden pegs that needed to be pushed through the matching holes? This song was like one of those. It had a Me-shaped-hole in the middle of it, and every time it came on, I fell right through it. And I can still remember the first time I made that connection—the first time I realized I loved this song and that it loved me back.
I was laying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling. And at the 2:54 mark, most of the instrumentation stops, and all that remains is the muffled hum of brass horns, and a soft steady thumping that almost felt like a heart beat. I closed my eyes as Kelli sang in an almost acapella fashion, “Tuck me down, safe and sound…” and for the first time I felt like I was dissolving into my own feelings—many feelings. For the first time, I felt peace, joy and sadness all at once. It was a novel combination.
Life would certainly continue to get harder after that, but I’d like to think, in a really strange way, that this song helped me get through it. It was comforting. The simple act of listening to this song made me feel seen and understood during a time when I was convinced no real person could ever see or understand me. To this day, when that song comes on, I’m transported right back to my teenage bedroom, to the time when I was transitioning from naiveté and carelessness, to painful self-awareness and my impending immersion into a world that no one can ever truly be ready for.
How about several side notes?: Musicians, song writers and producers will often practice something called “sampling” in their tracks. This is when they use a few seconds of sound from a previously existing recording, and they’ll often loop it, over and over to use it as a general melody. By the 90s, sampling had long since become common practice, so this wasn’t anything new. But with electronic music now growing in popularity, people were definitely finding creative new ways to put it to use.
As I mentioned above, “6 Underground” features a repeating low hum of brass horns. And it also has that iconic dreamy intro with the harp strings and flute. This was all sampled from the same musical composition. The original song was titled “Golden Girl” and it was composed by John Barry for the 1964 movie “Goldfinger” from the James Bond franchise. The song plays during a scene where Bond (played by Sean Connery) wakes up in a disoriented state to find the lifeless body of his love interest painted from head to toe in gold paint.
(Click the image above to listen to the original track)
The 90s were also an era of constant remixes. Not only was every song getting a remix now, but often times a new single would be released, and on that same album there would be multiple remixes of the same song. This was true for “6 Underground” as well, and one of the remixes became so ubiquitous that people often mistook it as being the original version. It was the “Nellee Hooper Remix”, and this one featured an additional sample from De La Soul’s “Breakadawn”. That vocal sample features the unmistakable echoing of, “A one-two, a one-two”.
It’s weird that we’re sometimes too close to an event to see how important it is, and it’s only after time has passed that you appreciate it for what it was. This band was extremely important to the late 90s alternative scene, and it had a lot to do with the vocals of Kelli Ali. Their first album, “Becoming X” released in 1996. After that, they launched an extended global tour supporting and promoting it. After that grueling 2-year stint, Kelli took a much-needed break from it all so that she could travel.
In the meantime, the band’s two original founders, Liam Howe and Chris Corner decided to start making the next album, “Splinter”. At first, Chris Corner recorded his own placeholder vocals for the purposes of developing the album, and the intention was that Kelli would record her vocals upon returning. But by the time the two had finished working on everything, they eventually decided that they liked Chris’ vocals and that they didn’t need Kelli in the picture anymore, and fired her.
Both the Sneaker Pimps and Kelli Ali would go on to make music independent of one another. And while I’m sure there’s much more to the story of their split than just the ignorance or arrogance of the other two band members, I can’t help but wonder what could have been if only Howe, Corner and Ali had stayed together and continued to put out music.
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Do you have any personal thoughts or feelings about “6 Underground”? What does it make you think of when you hear it? Likewise, what are the songs that you associate with those confusing, awkward formative years in your life? I want to hear all about it! I look forward to hearing from you in the comments: