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“Found Out About You” – Gin Blossoms
(Words/music: Doug Hopkins, available on New Miserable Experience, A&M 1992)

I’m too young to remember the Gin Blossoms when they were active, and for a long time the only music I knew from 1992 came draped in flannel.  This is how I have little to no nostalgic attachment to their songs – I spent my free time playing Super Nintendo when their songs flooded American radio.  For whatever reason, whether it’s detachment or objectivity, these songs came to me in a unique way – first as underwhelming, unassuming relics from an era I vaguely remember, and later as a strange sort of underdog.  Somehow, through sporadic plays on the radio, these songs (mainly the singles) started to win me over.  I realized that the Gin Blossoms won me over when I heard “Found Out About You” while paying for my groceries this spring and I started to bag my food slower so I could hear the end of the song.

I do know, however, that it takes roughly three notes into the jangly opening riff to pull me in.  Perhaps a lifetime of listening to R.E.M. makes my ears perk up anytime an arpeggio rings out of a guitar, but the opening riff hooks me every time, whether I’m paying for cereal at the self-checkout or not.  It was only later that I delved a little deeper that I saw the darker side to the song.  “Found Out About You” was one of the songs guitarist Doug Hopkins wrote before getting kicked out of the band (and later committing suicide).  Appropriately, “Found Out About You” comes from a place of bitterness and resentment.  It’s certainly not the first angry song to find its way into supermarket playlists (nor will it be the last), but few encase betrayal in such a melodic package.  It also helped me pay more attention to a band I wrote off without a particular reason.

More on Gin Blossoms: Allmusic | Amazon MP3 | Emusic | Last.fm