It Came From the ‘90s: Mazzy Star, “Blue Flower”

This series looks back at the 1990s and its influence on the generation of people who came of age during the decade.

Mazzy Star's "Blue Flower" has always sounded exactly like the early 1990s felt to me.

Ah, back in the day. The halcyon years of modern rock, alternative rock, whatever you want to call it—those final, peak years, before it all drifted off into the ether, to be replaced in the public consciousness by Britney and the Back Street Boys. Many of us aging Gen Xers believe that it was the last, truly great era of rock music (Get off my lawn). Music played such an enormous part in our lives back then, in the way that it only can when you're a teenager. It seemed to soundtrack every waking moment.

Hearing those '90s songs today floods my head with memories of friends, girlfriends, school, work, play, dreams, anxieties, everything and everyone that influenced who I was and who I was growing up to be. Mazzy Star's sublime, dream-pop masterpiece, "Blue Flower" (from 1990's She Hangs Brightly) is one of those songs for me. If songs have the power to transport us back in time, then "Blue Flower" is my DeLorean, hitting speeds of 88 miles per hour to bring me back to a time of endless possibilities that was equal parts electrifying and terrifying.

Hope Sandoval's voice, so lush and melancholic, is one of the most comforting sounds in all of music for me. Trust me on this one, musical crushes don't come any more fully formed or perfect than Hope Sandoval. I'm eternally grateful to be walking this earth at the same time as her.

In "Blue Flower" Sandoval's irresistibly insouciant delivery of lyrics like, "But I'm no fool / I know you're cool / I never really wanted your heart" is rife with irony—is she sincere, or is it all a put-on, a coolly emotional deflection? I've always put my money on some combination of both because it perfectly captures how my friends and I felt—we built walls out of cynicism and humor, but in the end we wore our hearts on our sleeves, goddammit.

The band's 1994 performance on Later...with Jools Holland brings the song to vibrant life, and is itself a heartwarming time capsule, pure catnip for an aging '90s alterna-kid like me. The morose band members, each barely moving, mostly looking down at their shoes like any self-respecting Gen X musician would, natch. In the center stands the petite Sandoval, a few feet ahead of her bandmates. Tambourine rattling at her side. Long, dark, cascading locks framing an angelic face. Looking up, briefly, revealing heavy-lidded eyes that could stop time in its tracks—and even rewind it, too. Back, to a time when Sandoval—and that voice—represented something pure and beautiful in the messy and confusing world of a shy teenager. The song closes out with a blissful minute of ringing guitars, propulsive rhythm playing, and Hope's jingling tambourine. Pure, aural nirvana.

Just like my world felt back then—exquisitely melancholic, surprisingly beautiful.

Comments

Paul SApril 8, 2018 at 1:04 PM
Love post, as always you make me nostalgic for a better time. "Blue Flower" is another musical gem that somehow passed me by back in the maelstrom of the 90s.
Beautiful video, I used to watch Later...with Jools Holland quite often, this episode obviously escaped my attention. I do find Youtube a fabulous resource for music, especially now my taste is stretching back into the years before I was born. The 90s will always be my decade though. The music, the films, sporting events, Michelle, drunken nights with friends. I just wish a time machine could whisk me back there once in awhile.
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