How does it feel to know that Sum 41 and Avril Lavigne are "dad rock" now?
The NOW That’s What I Call Music! series has never been especially thought-out, the unifying factor among every volume more or less being “Here are some songs that are popular.” Every now and then, however, their legacy designation of a hit you love has the power to make you reckon with your own mortality. Writer Sam Maggs experienced this very sensation in a tweet about a semi-recent chapter in the NOW saga called NOW That’s What I Call Dad Rock:
The shock is palpable as Maggs and several other Twitter users of a particular age realize that, to paraphrase True Detective, time is a motherfucker, and yes, Sum 41's “In Too Deep” and Avril Lavigne’s “Complicated” are both nearly 20 years old at this point—long enough for the songs’ respective writers to date, marry, and get divorced. For someone in their 30s, any early-00s hit is now just as far-removed from them in years as anything from the ‘70s or ‘80s was when they were in high school.