Connection is a Song: Coming Up and Coming Out Through the Music of the '90s

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It is 1994. In a loft bedroom in North Yorkshire, fifteen-year-old Anna sits on a bedroom carpet immersed in the pages of Smash Hits, listening to cassette tapes that she keeps in a shoebox. She is dreaming of living inside the songs. The very same year, British music is about to be transformed and will leap from pop to rave to Britpop. This new universe will change Anna's life.

Connection is a Song is a journey through the sounds of the 1990s; the story of a life-defining love of music and the tracks that shaped this girl's journey through the decade. It travels from the impossibly mournful 'Nothing Compares 2 U' by Sinead O'Connor to the delirium of the KLF's '3am Eternal' via the cartoon swagger of EMF's 'Unbelievable', Madonna's terrifyingly sexy 'Vogue' and the guitar indie heart of the '90s where Elastica's 'Connection' beats Blur and Oasis in Anna's own Battle of Britpop.

This is a powerful, universal coming of age story - and also a coming out story - about growing up in an English provincial town, with its suspiciously sticky nightclub floors, the lingering smell of Impulse deodorant, kisses that taste of cider and songs that give Anna feelings that she has never felt before. It is the tale of an outsider who, through connections made at gigs, mysterious black feathers and conversations in smoke-filled cars, finds the people and the places that will take her to her life.

Author Bio

Anna Doble is a journalist. She is the digital editor at BBC World Service and presents weekly radio show Pick of the World. Anna previously worked at Radio 1 and Channel 4 News. During the pandemic she wrote a 40,000-word blog while listening to 300 vinyl LPs in (just about) chronological order. Since then, Anna has successfully brainwashed her sixteen-year-old daughter into loving Belle & Sebastian and Pulp. She lives in London.