Remember record stores? I do, though today’s Gen Z will never understand the struggle of having to physically haul yourself to a store to score your favorite artist’s new album, and that is a sad fact that I have grown to accept. My small town’s local mall had only one CD store, and it would be my first stop every single time I went there. Whereas my town was filled with mostly farmers and hunters, the record store was filled with people like me: emo-style youth wearing too much eyeliner and those huge, buckled Tripp pants . It was a destination to express your individuality, all the while going through the latest Good Charlotte or Evanescence CDs (or better yet, the posters!).

This experience is immortalized in Empire Records, which turns 30 today. Released in 1995, it wasn’t meant t

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