Winnetka Bowling League pen a millennial anthem with Sha La La

I miss the world before it was polluted,

With space cowboy billionaires and irony was still ironic . . .

Album cover, Sha La La by Winnetka Bowling League

If you grew up during the great technological boom that defined the early 2000s, you'll think this song was written for you. As someone who grew up in the pre-9/11 world, this song resonates with me on a level that is so deeply personal and, I believe, universally human.

--> Sha La La (album) is out, via Local Weather/MDDN Records <--

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Every now and then a song stands out - like, way out from the others I enjoy listening to and evokes something ineffable. Winnetka Bowling League's "Sha La La" is literally an apex example of thisᅳa hauntingly beautiful reflection on love, loss, and the inexorable passage of time, living through numerous world changing events all while our 20s fade away year by year.

LYRICS:

I miss the 'us' before all the arguments,

waking up at 10:30, holding hands at the farmer's market

In a lyrical fashion that's both 'short and sweet' and 'right on the nose', Sha La La hits on the nostalgia of a longing for the simpler times of our youth and, yearning for the days before the dominance of divisive and argument-fueling social media that now only clouds our lives. “Waking up at 10:30, holding hands at the farmer's market”ᅳthese were moments that encapsulated the essence of happiness. They are vivid snapshots of that all-too-nostalgic youthful innocence, memories that now seem to just shimmer with a golden hue in the sepia-toned corridors of the past.

LYRICS:

I miss the us at the Archstone Apartments,

with your roommates taking mushrooms and listening to 1989 . .

Listening to "Sha La La," (now for probably the 200th time) I too am transported back to the 'Archstone Apartments'ᅳnot a specific place, but a metaphorical space where life's burdens were lighter, and the future was a distant horizon.. nothing worth spending any real time worrying about. It's a realm of first loves and endless possibilities where late-night conversations stretched until dawn and the world felt both vast and intimately connected- where the realities of age and growing up were still ages away.

LYRICS:

I miss our feed before it was political,

just pictures of us kissing and that dress you'd wear on christmas eve. .

Just as 9/11 irrevocably altered our collective reality, so too does the transition from youth into adulthood carry with it a sort of unspoken sense of loss. From 21 to 29 and then.. Boom. 30. The innocence of our social feeds (Remember your MySpace Top 5?) before they became battlegrounds of political discourse mirrors a society before global events imposed a new, harsher lens through which to view the world.

So, why is it so personal to me?

I recall standing on the streets of New York City in my early twenties as an extra chaperone on a school trip to the 9/11 Museum. We arrived and I stood looking up where the towers once billowed up in the sky, I stood where my mom and grandmother never had the chance to when they visited NYC in the years following the attacks. Then, the city was still cleaning up ground zero.

I never saw the bulldozers, dust and mess they did, I saw beautiful marble and botanicals.

I did not hear heavy machinery and their backup alarms. I heard the gentle trickle of the water as it gently rolled down the memorial into the hollowed ground of where the World Trade Centers stood.

As I stood there and took this moment in, a showing of nearly twenty hands popped up as the tour guide asked the group of high school students on their school trip, "Who here was born AFTER September 11th, 2001?"

LYRICS:

I miss America right after 9/11,

when everyone was bonded, even if it only lasted seconds..

The realization that an entire generation had been born after that fateful day was a jarring new relationship that I suddenly had with time itself.. It was as if the universe had suddenly forced an update, the maps revised, the mechanics all now, and I had a new set of eyeballs. "Sha La La" encapsulates this sentiment with poignant clarity, articulating emotions I had long felt but could never quite name.

LYRICS:

I miss the us when we were both excited,

you could tell by the Verizon bill we'd text 'til we'd fall asleep..

Well, remember when we could only send up to 25 texts a month? !..And when additional texts were.10 cents each - then they even had the audacity to raise the price of texts to.20 cents? I haven't heard any other song touch on such a specific yet huge example of just how different the world was for us then and now in terms of technology- how we communicate and disagree, all the while the lingering word 'age' floats above like a lost balloon after your birthday party..

LYRICS:

This is the part where you say,

"Hey, it's all gonna be alright"..

God I wish it was easy..

Musically, the progression and well thought out use of guitar complement the lyrical depth. The melody carries a bittersweet undertone, echoing the complexities of modern adulthood, both uplifting and introspective and a sonic embodiment of the duality we experience as we navigate the intricate dance between past and present.

"Sha La La" is more than a song; it's a shared narrative for those of us who have witnessed profound change in our world. It speaks to the disparate yet bonded feeling of a generationᅳexhausted yet astonished, contemplating the nature of time and identity. Then again, perhaps that's every generation.

Winnetka Bowling League has crafted a modern classic. "Sha La La" stands out to me as a Divine Track and stands out as one of the best opening album tracks i've heard not just this year but in quite a long while.

~

There is a GREAT stripped down live version of the song as performed on 88.5 FM The SoCal Sound Linked Below

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