MUSIC, as the saying goes, is the best companion.

It keeps us company through grief, joy, and now, self-isolation, which has given me ample time to self-reflect even though it’s only the second day of the movement-control order as I write this.

I was a teen hurtling towards young adulthood in the 1990s, an era whose popular rock songs often expressed strong themes centred around the now-familiar ones of isolation, depression, loss of innocence and existential angst, among others.

The internet was in its infancy and listening to music online unheard of in the mid-90s, so the youth of those days were pretty uniform in their music references and fashion sense. It was a time of furrowed brows and frowns, flannel and torn jeans (which gave rise to mass-produced pre-torn jeans), greasy long hair, and smudged Converse sneakers and oversized band T-shirts (bought at Sungei Wang).

None of my peers could dance. In fact, it was uncool.

The particular strain (that in-vogue word again) of rock music that permeated post-adolescents then was grunge, which can be traced back to Seattle in Washington. The city birthed seminal bands like Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Mudhoney and Screaming Trees, and later, two superstar outfits that defined the popular culture of that era: Pearl Jam and Nirvana.

Of course, these bands alone weren’t representative of the entire rock world at the time, but with the help of the hype machine and traditional media, they were the common references one made when discussing rock in the 90s.

In short, being depressed and disaffected was cool.

Judging by the swelling number of local Kurt Cobain and Eddie Vedder wannabes in college bands (a jamming studio near my college even put up a sign that said “Please do not play Smells Like Teen Spirit”), grunge crossed over successfully.

What really rocked my tiny world, however, was the collegiate jangle of R.E.M., whose 1987 song It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) made a comeback this past week as the globe surged in panic over Covid-19, according to Billboard. They were elder statesmen to the grunge bands, and are still held in high esteem. Their upbeat melody (which belies the darker themes expressed in the cryptic, stream-of-consciousness lyrics of frontman Michael Stipe) contrasts starkly with the doom-and-gloom distortion and drawl of grunge.

As grunge somehow transplanted itself comfortably into the suburbs and jamming studios of a more or less economically prosperous and politically stable Malaysia, I felt like a weirdo for liking what I liked. The kids in the suburbs – as I found out when I was in college – were the ones inspired by this mass-produced disaffection (rock kapak and rock ballads were the order of the day elsewhere). In hindsight, things were good; it was pre-Reformasi, pre-economic crisis, and we were one of the “Asian tigers”. Ignorant in our youthful bliss.

Fast-forward to the present. With all the recent shenanigans and crises, the music popular among and being made by Malaysian youth (I learnt through my students) is upbeat, nostalgic (the 80s) and insurgently innocent. They’re smiling, well-groomed, donning pastel-inspired fashion – and they all can dance. They don’t rock.

As much as I’m perplexed, I’ve also come to realise that when times are trying, the cultural reaction is to resist. What we’re experiencing today is unprecedented, and I’m curious to hear the music that will be made in its wake.

As my peers acquaint themselves with middle-age grumpiness, I try to tamper my bewilderment with curiosity. In the meantime, the soundtrack of the recent past, like R.E.M.’s, continues to inform and locate us emotionally, while offering us familiar companionship in unfamiliar times.

If we remain calm and rational, things should start to get interesting soon. To quote another 90s band, the end is the beginning is the end. – March 22, 2020.

* Azmyl Yunor is a touring underground recording artiste, and an academic in media and cultural studies. He has published articles on pop culture, subcultures and Malaysian cultural politics. He adheres to the three-chords-and-the-truth school of songwriting, and Woody Guthrie’s maxim “All you can write is what you see”. He is @azmyl on Twitter.

* This is the opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of The Malaysian Insight. Article may be edited for brevity and clarity.