{"id":900,"date":"2026-07-12T11:34:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:34:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=900"},"modified":"2026-07-12T11:34:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-12T11:34:08","slug":"the-summer-i-surrendered-to-wilson-phillips","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=900","title":{"rendered":"The Summer I Surrendered to Wilson Phillips"},"content":{"rendered":"
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You\u2019re reading Songs of Summer<\/strong>, a series on music and memory.<\/em><\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer Iraq invaded Kuwait, and I didn\u2019t know what I was doing in Seattle. We had just moved to the United States, because of my father\u2019s job, and I was lonesome and friendless, in a weird purgatory state: while my dad spent long days at work, I was stuck in our rental house with my mom, who meant well but was growing increasingly impatient with me. And who could blame her? I was fourteen, and sullen as all hell.<\/p>\n

Read more An O.M.B. Plan to Defund Science\u2014and Anything Trump Doesn\u2019t Like<\/a><\/p>\n

Mostly, I spent my days sprawled on the beige shag carpet in the living room, watching MTV. American popular music was nearing a cusp in the summer of 1990. We were about a year away from the release of Nirvana\u2019s \u201cNevermind\u201d and the subsequent explosion of grunge into the mainstream, and a bit further still from white America\u2019s full embrace of hip-hop, with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and the Notorious B.I.G.\u2019s emergence, toward the mid-nineteen-nineties, as commercial forces to be reckoned with. In the meantime, the handful of songs that ran on heavy rotation on MTV, even when they were rock- or rap-adjacent, were still essentially pop hits, buffed to a synthetic and soulless sheen: Billy Idol\u2019s \u201cCradle of Love,\u201d Roxette\u2019s \u201cIt Must Have Been Love,\u201d MC Hammer\u2019s \u201cU Can\u2019t Touch This.\u201d<\/p>\n

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When I\u2019d begun to form my own musical taste a couple of years before, in middle school, I had found myself gravitating to alienated-youngster evergreens such as the Velvet Underground, the Cure, and the Smiths. I loved the Doors and Jim Morrison, too, drawn like many, many teens before me to the late front man\u2019s Byronic vibe. While travelling through Paris with my parents, earlier that summer, I had even made them take me to P\u00e8re Lachaise, where I strained to feel the Lizard King\u2019s presence as I stood at his grave, shoulder to shoulder with a lank-haired German tourist throwing back a morning beer and a girl wearing braids and a woven headband. In other words, I considered myself a bit alternative, an outsider, not easily given over to the treacly and simple-minded seductions of the mainstream. What was music if not an expression of angst? What was it if not a form of resistance against the complacent status quo?<\/p>\n

Initially, then, my attitude toward the hits that were constantly played on MTV was dismissive, even derisive. (To quote Morrissey: They said nothing to me about my life.) But context, as we know, is everything, and, just as a person undergoing a bad breakup begins to find special meaning in even the corniest and most cloying radio ballads, my liminal, solitary state began to open my heart and mind to MTV\u2019s middle-of-the-road siren call, which, after all, I had nothing but time to heed.<\/p>\n

Read more Ana Mendieta, the Body Artist<\/a><\/p>\n

The song that broke down my resistance was Wilson Phillips\u2019s \u201cHold On.\u201d Wilson Phillips was a trio of young women out of Los Angeles: Chynna Phillips, the daughter of the Mamas and the Papas\u2019 John and Michelle Phillips, and Carnie and Wendy Wilson, the daughters of the Beach Boys\u2019 Brian Wilson. Nepo babies before the term was invented\u2014I recall that \u201crock royalty\u201d was the phrase most often used back then\u2014the girls released \u201cHold On\u201d as the first single off their self-titled d\u00e9but album, in early 1990, and, by summer, it was a megahit. (It would end up being ranked by Billboard<\/em> as the top song of the year.)<\/p>\n

As a burgeoning rock-bio hound, I was already somewhat familiar with the lore of the Beach Boys and of the Mamas and the Papas. Brian Wilson, I knew, had struggled with debilitating mental illness, taking to his bed for months on end; John Phillips\u2019s gargantuan drug addiction, meanwhile, came near to shattering his and his family\u2019s life. There was something I liked about having these dark tidbits in my arsenal\u2014they made me feel tough and knowing. But the truth was, I was very, very soft: the scope and enormity of the things that could go wrong in life terrified me. Reading a copy of John Phillips\u2019s 1986 autobiography, \u201cPapa John,\u201d which I had picked up at a used bookstore in Seattle, I became so alarmed by the tales of heroin use and casual child neglect that I threw the book in the recycling bin as soon as I finished it.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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For the \u201cHold On\u201d video, which was directed by the Englishman Julien Temple, and which MTV aired what felt like a minimum of three dozen times a day, Wilson Phillips was filmed in a few outdoor California locations: in a snowy clearing atop the San Gabriel mountains, beachside in Venice, and marching in lockstep down a boardwalk. Fresh-faced and shiny-haired, Chynna, Carnie, and Wendy were the Platonic ideal of early-nineties girls next door. They were nothing like me, I felt. And yet, I found myself believing them, as they sang in high, sweet, clear voices about heartbreak and trust, about the power of self-reliance and letting go of old patterns. Their lilting harmonies recalled those of their parents, but, when I listened to \u201cHold On,\u201d I wasn\u2019t scared. In fact, I was soothed and reassured. I knew that there was pain, but if I held on for one more day I\u2019d break free from the chains. Yes! Eating Chips Ahoy! cookies and Ruffles in front of the television, this felt like a relief. A new decade had just begun, and, like the Wilson Phillips girls, I was ready to start fresh.\u00a0\u2666<\/p>\n

Read more Day at the Beach<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Naomi Fry on \u201cHold On,\u201d by Wilson Phillips, MTV, teen-age angst, and the summer of 1990.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":899,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[89],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-900","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-songs-of-summer"],"yoast_head":"\nThe Summer I Surrendered to Wilson Phillips - City Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=900\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Summer I Surrendered to Wilson Phillips - City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Naomi Fry on \u201cHold On,\u201d by Wilson Phillips, MTV, teen-age angst, and the summer of 1990.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/cityrelocationnews.com\/?p=900\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"City Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-12T11:34:08+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=900#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=900\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/3e7ce0c0c60d21e12a5ac61fb2b786d4\"},\"headline\":\"The Summer I Surrendered to Wilson Phillips\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-12T11:34:08+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=900\"},\"wordCount\":983,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=900#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/c48bb795ad09e5f02b2e089364cd9188.webp\",\"articleSection\":[\"Songs of Summer\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=900#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=900\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/cityrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=900\",\"name\":\"The Summer I Surrendered to Wilson Phillips - 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