What's up, guys? Just a few more editions before this series runs its course. As this is the 95th edition, we're on schedule to have our 100th (and final) edition two days after the end of the regular season, which will hopefully be a festive occasion after another victory over Michigan. 

First up in our medley today is a song by my favorite symphonic metal band, Kamelot. This song is from their 2007 album Ghost Opera, which was one of the last to feature lead singer Roy Khan (since replaced by his sound-alike, Tommy Karevik). This song, “The Human Stain” mixes in some industrial metal sounds and is based on a theme of environmental degradation and a sort of Malthusian crisis leading to the extinction of humanity.

Up next is a song everyone will recognize. Anyone born after 1980 will remember the first time they ever heard this song. Maybe they remember it on the radio when it first came out, or recall watching the video on MTV during the infancy of that network’s life, when it really did have music and not just reality tv shows. Or maybe you’re like me, and you remember your older brother playing it on a boombox, back when boomboxes were a thing. This song is an absolute anthem of the 90s and perhaps the quintessential “grunge” song. This is “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana.

Next is a song that weirdly I last heard being played by my 65 year old father, a man who knows absolutely nothing about hiphop but who somehow developed an affinity for this particular song by Coolio. This is “Gangsta’s Paradise.”

Up last is a song from one of my new favorite artists, one who’s been featured a lot lately in these Medleys as I continue to discover his music. This song by Rex Orange County (real name Alex O’Connor, from which his nickname “OC” (O’Connor) came about, hence Orange County) is the first he ever released. Entirely self-produced, with all the arrangements and instrumentation done by Rex himself, this song is about loneliness, depression, and trying to find a place in the world. This is “UNO.”