I Can’t Help Myself

You spend enough effort becoming an adult and leave certain things behind, and then the decade you thought you’d escaped comes crawling back. First the old Nintendo games, then the plastic pocket gadgets, and now the Kelly Family reunion tour. I can’t help myself.

Look, I liked the Kelly Family back then. Not ironically—I genuinely listened to their albums. There was something that worked, even if you’d get laughed at for saying so in the wrong company. When they announced they were reuniting, it was obvious they meant it. Patricia Kelly talked about how it felt like a dream coming true, finally getting back on stage with her siblings after all those years of ups and downs. Angelo explained it differently: twenty years had passed since their last major show in Dortmund, and it hit them that they wanted to celebrate what they’d built together as a family. It made sense. Family acts don’t really stop being families just because they stop touring.

The Kelly Family was massive across Europe in the ’90s in that inexplicable way of things that don’t hold up to scrutiny but never really fade. The kind of thing you only admit to liking once enough time has passed. Hearing about the reunion, I realized I’m not embarrassed anymore. Not because they’re suddenly cool—they’re not—but because I’m far enough from being a teenager that I can just like what I like. The earnestness, the family dynamic, the songs that stuck. It still works. Maybe that says something about me. But I’ve made peace with worse.