🥵 Your Teen Emo Heart Is Not Ready For This

Y’all, I really hope your weekend was less emotionally damaging than mine…because I binged all of Squid Game Season 3 in one sitting 😳.

I am not about to drop any spoilers here but…let’s just say this was quite the end to an era. Did you know that an American spin-off is in the works? What do you think the games would be like if held in Australia? I reckon recess handball would HAVE to be in there somewhere. Check out our best predictions here.

Also, did you see queen Beyoncé’s flying car malfunction at her Cowboy Carter show in Houston over the weekend? Luckily, no one was injured and the show went on, but it was giving slow-mo dramatic Fast & Furious car flip. Meanwhile, P!nk is somewhere out there singing while suspended mid-air doing 38 backflips in a row for literally no reason, and coming out unscathed. Does she have a single song where she needs to be doing all that? No. But so what? She’s still a rock star.

Also this week, we're throwing it way back to 2009. Remember when Short Stack’s debut album went straight to number one? We caught up with the band to talk about teased hair, Domino's pizza, and being dads now. Have a read below!

And on a more serious note, to all our NSW readers, please stay safe and dry during the bomb cyclone this week. Sending you warm thoughts ❤️.

Until next week,

Liv, Laugh, Lun xx (@livia_lun)

Q: How many Brit Awards have the Spice Girls won?

In the wise words of pop diva Dua Lipa: “One, don’t pick up the phone, you know he’s only callin’ ‘cause he’s drunk and alone…” Well, guess what? I picked up. And now Liam, you man child, I’m in love with you again. Someone send help (or at least confiscate my phone next weekend thanks).

Gabbie from Ingle Farm

Remember When… Three Aussie Teens Ruled The ‘00s Music Scene?

By Tahlia Pritchard

Things were different back in ‘00s Australia. Teen girls carried around hot pink Supré tote bags with pride, teen boys doused themselves heavily in Lynx Africa, and the edgier kids shopped exclusively at Jay Jays for skinny jeans, before heading to JB Hi-Fi to purchase CDs off the shelves.

Emo and scene kid culture still hit Aussie shores — and while there was no Warped Tour and My Chemical Romance didn’t come out nearly enough, some Aussie teens from the Central Coast of NSW darkened their eyes, teased their hair, and exploded onto the music scene with some pop-punk tracks that saw them touring with the likes of The Veronicas and Metro Station (remember them?), playing festivals like Soundwave, and catapulting themselves into the number one spot in many teen girls’ hearts.

I am, of course, talking about Short Stack, the minds behind catchy ‘00s anthems such as “Sway, Sway Baby” and “Princess”.

To understand Short Stack’s impact is to take a step back into time. A time where people wore Vans, long fingerless striped gloves, teased their dyed black hair high with cheap hairspray (bonus points if you had some red streaks), painted their nails black, and angstily updated their MySpace pages.

It was MySpace that helped Short Stack explode onto the music scene, with the three Budgewoi boys — Shaun, Bradie, and Andy — gaining a solid following on the social media site and capturing the hearts of many Aussie teens with their pop-punk aesthetic, good looks, and catchy tunes.

Their debut album Stack Is The New Black, released in 2009, went straight to number one on the ARIA charts. There was a time you couldn’t turn on Channel V without seeing the trio thrash their guitars around joyfully. 

This June, the band toured their album for a 15-year anniversary, playing sold out shows across the country in June, recapturing the hearts of their original fans and bringing on a legion of new followers. 

We walked down memory lane with Bradie Webb, Short Stack’s drummer, who had a chat with BuzzFeed the day before the tour officially kicked off.

“I’m so old now,” Bradie laughed, when talking about revisiting songs from 2009’s Stack Is The New Black. “We wrote these songs, I want to say 18 or 19 years ago, maybe even more. So there’s a real nostalgia. It’s part of our DNA from when we were kids, so I guess it’s a little emotional to play these songs.”

Reflecting on Short Stack’s meteoric rise of fame in Australia, Bradie said looking back it was wild to think of how young they were when they achieved mainstream success.

“I say this to my wife all the time, that I was a bit like a child star,” he said. “I think we all did become who we are because of that experience at such a young age. And I didn't realise it at the time, but we were so young to go through something so weird, but I think the one thing I've observed is that the three of us are pretty unique.”

“We're all extremely grounded and level headed and very boring now, with our boring jobs and our family, and I do wonder why that happened. I think we craved normality, and it was when we broke up the first time that was like our chance to actually get a normal job, and eventually we would start a family and have kids, and that's what we love.”

Bradie also reflected on one of the weirder moments that proved the bands’ chokehold on Aussie fans.

“We've done some really weird things, and people have let us do the weird things!” he said. “We did a partnership with Domino’s Pizza about 10 years ago, and that was a really weird experience, because they let us go in and make the pizzas and deliver them to customers. We even had a Short Stack pizza we could order online. That was just really bizarre.”

After the band first broke up in 2012, Bradie said the hardest thing was actually just finding a normal job.

“We were all finishing our HSC (High School Certificate) and we were playing shows and touring. So we really didn't know what it was like to have a normal job, but we know we craved that, like we were sick of the unpredictability of our income and just never knowing if it was all going to fall apart.”

Now the three Short Stack lads are all dads, with normal jobs, but have reunited numerous times over the years to get back on stage. But if it’s one thing that keeps them humble as they play sold out shows across Australia again, it’s their kids.

“I think our kids were just a bit confused, but my son now asks questions. He's nearly seven, and he can't understand if we're at Metallica level or just a few people in our city know who we are,” Bradie laughed. “He's like, ‘So how many millions of people are coming down? Like, no, not millions! They're starting to get it that we obviously have been successful, but they also don't care. It doesn't matter, your kids never care about how cool you might be to someone else!”

Yesterday I was at a HOYTS cinema watching the new F1 movie. When Brad Pitt first appeared on screen, the lady sitting next to me gasped and whispered to her friend, “OMG, it’s that guy who voiced Metro Man in Megamind! I love that movie!!” Brad Pitt…Hollywood legend…two-time Oscar winner…? But yes, I get it ‘cause Metro Man was a serve.

Roxanne from Liverpool

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A: The Spice Girls have five Brit Awards.

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