Shamir is probably too young to be releasing a greatest hits album, so the Las Vegas native has pulled up the next best thing: A compilation of all our favorite memes, edited straight from a vintage Windows ’98 desktop to reinforce the lyrical message of his latest single, “90’s Kids.”
And holy shit are we here for it.
Shamir had us at Dat Boy and Kermit’s iced tea, but the whole romp is quite memorable. Or, meme-orable, we guess.
Lyrically, the song references a struggle young people have with being their true selves; positioned as a millennial anthem, “90’s Kids” is more an “eff you” than a rallying cry, a push-back for those who have been scrutinized and criticized. When we interviewed Shamir back in November 2015, he touched on his desire to create music that resonates without giving a shit about what anyone else thinks, something that’s now echoed in his new track. “I think there are a lot of problems with artists — and this is really annoying to me — they’re not just making music to make music,” he told Vanyaland. “It’s all about reach. It’s a bunch of selfish stuff as well. For me, it’s about being a musician. Everything else — I don’t care. I make my art, my music. If you relate to it, cool. If you don’t, on to the next one. I don’t think about what everybody else is selling. I don’t think about how anyone else perceives my music. It’s not my job to think about those things.
Shamir’s new album, Revelations, is out November 3 via Father/Daughter Records.
Featured photo by Jason MacDonald.