Peach Union- On My Own

The late 1990s were a relative sanctuary for overproduced and awful dance music sung by girls. Gina G, La Bouche, Sophie B. Hawkins, Aqua, the list goes on and on of shitty dance producers and singers who cashed in with huge, cheesy late 90s dance anthems. And pop radio stations such as my then-favorite, NYC's Z100, ate them up like sugar, the pop confectinary and billion dollar productions that they were.

But the worst of the worst, the overblownest of the overblown, the cheesiest of the cheezy, was "On My Own", by Euro-crap tools Peach Union. It was a song that sounded as if every kick, snare and instrumental flourish cost about a million dollars to produce. After all, back in the late Clinton-era, that kind of money was flying around, unlike today (Obama will change that soon, but that's another story).

When this song was a hit in the US for about three days in October of 97' I was a young teenager. When you're that age, you're pretty much too young to realize that you're listening to absolute shit. You tend at 13 to take what the major-label spoonman gives you and not complain about it. Which is exactly the reason why gigantic ball of crap "High School Musical 3" is getting your money as we speak. When you're that age, you have a hard time discerning the greater forces of reality.

When I was 13, this song "On My Own" was stuck right in the center of Z100's playlist, right in between Third Eye Blind and Sister Hazel. Of course, I thought it sounded great then. But looking back on it now, I was just a stupid tween stuck in his own world. This song sucks balls in hell, right in between mediocre one-second wonders as Fort Minor's "Where'd You Go" and Jimmy Ray's "Are You Jimmy Ray".

OK, let me talking about the song's one saving grace first. After a weird operatic opening and the typical 90s' dance-pop "1-2-3-4" countoff, this weird, hypnotic bass line kicks in. This bass groove has synths, keyboards, and lots of cheese surrounding it. Enough so to make Right Said Fred roll around and cringe in his pop cultural grave. But the riff itself is dark enough to be almost cool. Like I'm pretty sure the Smashing Pumpkins could do a number with it. But not in this universe.

OK, the good part is over. The lead singer of this "Peach Union" sounds like a tenth-rate Madonna rip-off. Even her breathing and posturing in the video were likely to inspire a royal ass-whupping if Madonna ever laid ears on it. Unfortunately, during the 90's Madge existed in a completely different stratosphere than to ever be in the same room as this knock-off.

The song's chorus is manufactured cheese. No wonder this song was left "on its own" in the annals of pop. No one fucking remembers it. That's because the chorus is woefully forgettable, and contradicts itself. The name of the song is "On MY Own" and all the verses suggest that it was intended to be made as a break-up anthem for the ladies. But the chorus includes the line "Through the course of history, I hope you'll still remember me". I wonder what brilliant hired songwriter thought of this gem. Fucking history? You would think that if you're breaking up with a dude, you would want him to forget you and move on, not remember you for all of eternity. JESUS.

The song is best known for two things:
1. having the shortest and quickest time of any song as a figment of America's pop cultural zeitgeist.
2. being on the soundtrack of Gwyneth Paltrow's long-forgotten chick flick "Sliding Doors".

So it's a forgettable song that was featured in a forgettable movie, from what was turning out to be a horrible era in American music. First there was this Euro-dance crap which the song was part of.. Then there were the boy bands and TRL and all those indescribable horrors.. Then Bush got elected President.. Then everything went to hell. At least until now...