There seems to be this “musical event horizon” for most people, at which point music relevant to one’s own experiences quits getting made. Once that happens, everything past the horizon kind of gets thrown into the same bin.
[/QUOTE]
I think that makes sense.
I find that as I get older, I have a larger and larger bin of music to pull from. Some of it is current. Some of it is tied to experiences I had when I was younger. Other music just happens to fit in with my current tastes, even if the music is a few years old.
Another thing. I think a lot of 90s rock music tends to have a bit more longevity than some other music. People will be listening to The Wallflowers or Matchbox Twenty songs along with Zeppelin and The Who long after any of the various current pop princesses have gone the way of Debbie Gibson and Tifanny.
[QUOTE=Ataraxy]
Shouldn’t late, not early, twentysomethings be the ones nostalgic for this music?
[/QUOTE]
No. We know it sucks.
To be more specific and less thread-crappy: in no way is Weezer a late-90s band. They got together in 1991 and released their first album, which contained their biggest hits until the last few years, in 1994. (This is from Wikipedia; I’m not a big Weezer fan.) They were dormant in the late '90s- not to be confused with the doormats who like their music.
Blues Traveler also made it big in 1994. Better than Ezra’s hit “Good,” which I thought was an absolutely abysmal song, is from 1995.
I’m not going to go through the rest of that list band by band, but I see Argent got Sugar Ray correct, time-wise. I’m surprised he didn’t mention Smash Mouth, who might be the only popular band from that period that was worse than Sugar Ray. On review I see somebody else dragged them into it, however.
[QUOTE=Angel of the Lord]
Okay, actually being, like, serious here. I have the following in heavy rotation in my iTunes/on my iPod:
“Come to My Window” --Melissa Etheridge
All of Alanis’s Jagged Little Pill
“Lovefool” --The Cartigans
“Macarena” --Los Del Rio
“Another Night” --Real McCoy
“The Mummers’ Dance” --Loreena McKennit
“I Want You” --Savage Garden
“Bittersweet Symphony” --The Verve
“Iris” --The Goo Goo Dolls
“Here With Me” --Dido
“Take a Picture” --Filter
“Angels Would Fall” --Melissa Etheridge
“Livin’ la Vida Loca” --Ricky Martin
“She’s So High” --Tal Bachman.
All off Third Eye Blind’s first album.
“Tubthumping” --Chumbawamba (to be fair, I have a LOT of other stuff by them)
“She Likes Me for Me (Hey, Leonardo)” --Blessid Union of Souls
“Steal My Sunshine” --Len
“I Don’t Wanna Wait” --Paula Cole
“It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” --Céline Dion
“Can’t Change Me” --Chris Cornell
“Kryptonite” --Three Doors Down
“I Love You Always Forever” --Donna Lewis
“Learn to Fly” --Foo Fighters
“Push” --Matchbox Twenty
“Don’t Speak” --No Doubt
“Wonderwall” --Oasis
All of Californication by The Red Hot Chili Peppers.
“You Get What You Give” --New Radicals
Fuck. . .I guess you could say nostalgia hit me hard (though a few of those are more mid-90s, and one or two might be 2000). I’m 25.
[/QUOTE]
About a 3rd of that I would use your exact description for later music. Just like people about 10 years older would do for me and my list. And on and on down the line.
You like the music you liked in high school, mostly, and the transition seems to be about 10 years.
You’re not special, and your music is no different than what is playing now, it’s just special to you.
[QUOTE=msmith537]
The Fray? The Strokes? The Killers? The Shins? The Bravery? The Arctic Monkeys? The Franz Ferdinand? The Modest Mouse?
Look kid, I shouldn’t be having to tell you where to find good music.
[/QUOTE]
Of all those bands the only one I can stomach is Modest Mouse, and even then, only their older stuff. The Fray? Yechhhh. Strokes - a few OK songs but they all sound the same, with repetitive riffs and voice filters. Franz Ferdinand, Killers and Arctic Monkeys, never thought of them as anything other than mediocre.
I know there’s good music being made right now.
My Morning Jacket. Grizzly Bear. The Bird and the Bee. Drive By Truckers, the Fiery Furnaces, Kings of Leon…
Lots of others.
I like indie rock, I hate pre-packaged commercialized indie rock.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
I’ve responded to this exact same line of reasoning before, and I’ll do it again.
I’m 22. We’re talking about half my fucking life here. 10 years may not seem like a long time to you, but it is a very long time to me, because again, it’s just about half of my entire life. That is a long time. The difference between 12 and 22 is a big one. Very big. Huge. Colossal.
Definitely a wide enough gap to have nostalgia.
[/QUOTE]
I’ll second that, 22 is precisely when it started kicking in for me. I started aggressivly making nostalgia purchases at age 22. I thought I was reaching deep into the wayback machine than anyone had ever contemplated before, buying stuff in 1993 that was big in 1983
[QUOTE=An Gadaí]
Ehhh, pretty much any indie rock you’re going to hear is pre-packaged commercialized indie rock.
[/QUOTE]
This is not true, especially if you live in a college town with a huge music scene, as I do.
Bloomington, IN is home to Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar records, two very prominent indie rock labels but I highly doubt anyone who’s not “into” the scene will have heard of them. Nevertheless they have some remarkably successful acts signed to them:
**
-Secretly Canadian-
* Animal Collective
* Antony and the Johnsons
* Ativin
* Bodies of Water
* Catfish Haven
* Danielson Famile
* The Earlies
* Early Day Miners
* Dave Fischoff
* Havergal
* The Horns of Happiness
* Frida Hyvönen
* I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
* The Impossible Shapes
* Instruments of Science & Technology
* Damien Jurado
* Suzanne Langille & Loren MazzaCane Connors
* Jens Lekman
* Magnolia Electric Co
* Marmoset
* Scout Niblett
* Normanoak
* June Panic
* The Panoply Academy
* Racebannon
* Songs: Ohia
* Nikki Sudden & The Jacobites
* Swearing at Motorists
* Swell Maps
* Richard Swift
* The War on Drugs
* Throw Me The Statue
* Bobb Trimble
* David Vandervelde
* Windsor for the Derby
-Jagjaguwar-
* Alex Delivery
* Aspera
* The Besnard Lakes
* Bevel
* Black Mountain
* Bon Iver
* Company
* Robert Creeley
* The Curious Digit
* Dirty Faces
* Julie Doiron
* Drunk
* Jad Fair
* Fuck
* Daniel Johnston
* Simon Joyner
* Ladyhawk
* Lightning Dust
* Love Life
* Manishevitz
* Minus Story
* Monroe Mustang
* Nad Navillus
* Nagisa Ni Te
* Oakley Hall
* Odawas
* Okkervil River
* Oneida
* Parker Paul
* Parts & Labor
* Patrick Phelan
* Pink Mountaintops
* Pterodactyl
* The Skygreen Leopards
* South
* Spokane
* Stigma Rock Unit
* Swan Lake
* Sunset Rubdown
* The Union of a Man and a Woman
* Sarah White
* Wilderness
* Richard Youngs**
The bands or artists I’ve highlighted in purple are all acts who have achieved a relative degree of success in the music world. Animal Collective is probably the most notable. Jens Lekman is very popular in America as well as his native Sweden. But most of them are very unlikely to be known about by the average mainstream music listener.
All those acts range from “horrible” to “absolutely amazing” but I wouldn’t describe any of them as “commercialized pre-packaged indie rock.”
90s music was just better than the 00s, wasn’t it?
Take Angel of the Lords list. There is some good stuff there. I would be hard pressed to think of a single song of this decade that is on the level of Bittersweet Symphony or Wonderwall.
Take msmith537s list of good bands from the 00s. Of that list only Franz Ferdinand and The Strokes debut is remarkable music, to me. Compare the 90s Nirvana, Blur, Radioheads OK computer duology, Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.
I agree, although of course there’s always going to be the person who has to say, “it’s all subjective!”
But I don’t think there has been one single song which has been played on top 40 radio stations, since the year 2000, which has been as good a song as Lovefool by The Cardigans or Summertime by The Sundays.
Take msmith537s list of good bands from the 00s. Of that list only Franz Ferdinand and The Strokes debut is remarkable music, to me. Compare the 90s Nirvana, Blur, Radioheads OK computer duology, Oasis, Smashing Pumpkins, etc.
[/QUOTE]
I’m sure in 10 years though we could come up with just as good a list of classic songs from the 00s.
But as a general rule, I still like music from the 90s better than music from either the 80s or 00s.
Actually, I don’t know if I would necessarily call my list “good” so much that it is derivative of music from the 80s and 90s.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
I agree, although of course there’s always going to be the person who has to say, “it’s all subjective!”
But I don’t think there has been one single song which has been played on top 40 radio stations, since the year 2000, which has been as good a song as Lovefool by The Cardigans or Summertime by The Sundays.
[/QUOTE]
Looking at Billboard’s list of #1 hits 2000-2007, you’re mostly right with a few exceptions. Gnarls Barkley’s “Crazy” is a great song, (although it only made it to #2 in the US). Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” is also fantastic IMHO, and I don’t usually like rap either.
All those acts range from “horrible” to “absolutely amazing” but I wouldn’t describe any of them as “commercialized pre-packaged indie rock.”
[/QUOTE]
I’ve got albums by a number of them, seen one or two live. Most of the bands you’ve highlighted in purple and some of the others have played sell out shows in Ireland. (I think obscure/leftfield/hipster/oddball/whatever stuff is bigger here per capita than in the US) There aren’t many of these bands that I’ve heard that I would categorise as indie rock so when you say you wouldn’t describe any of them as “commericalized pre-packaged indie rock” neither would I, I wouldn’t call them indie rock in the first place. However I get your point completely and splitting hairs musically is a silly thing for me to do so I concede your point.
I’m 26. Angel of the Lord’s playlist is pretty much exactly what I consider nostalgia music. It’s what I listened to in high school, sure enough.
Compounding that is the fact that I don’t take in much new music at all. I’ve stopped listening to the radio, I don’t have XM/Sirius, I don’t follow music at all except in exceptional circumstances. My musical ‘growth’ more or less plateaued at Three Doors Down and Foo Fighters.
[QUOTE=Argent Towers]
I’m 22.
[…]
Also, it’s very easy to be nostalgic for the radio pop of the past when everything on the radio now is CRAP! I can turn on the same exact radio station that I used to listen to in my room on my boom box after hockey practice when I was 12 years old, that would play The Sundays and Better Than Ezra and The Wallflowers, I can turn on that same radio station now and all that’s on is hump-and-bump repetitive trash rap and talentless pop-punk acts. It’s very easy to get nostalgic when that’s the situation you have.
[/QUOTE]
Furthermore, you kids stay off the lawn!
I get where you’re coming from. It was exactly the same when I was in college in the mid-90s and the big 80’s retro music boom came out. My roommate drunk-bought some TimeLife collection for $99 and played the hell out of that thing.
Feels weird to me though. I mean, the 80’s stuff was played during my formatice years. Better then Ezra was just… you know… stuff played on the radio ten years ago.
[QUOTE=Jophiel]
Furthermore, you kids stay off the lawn!
[/QUOTE]
I realize the humor here, but really - if you examine the top 40 hits that are on the radio now, and compare them to what was on in 1997 - even trying to be as objective as possible - today’s music is just not as musically interesting. It’s so much more repetitive.
I remember when Bittersweet Symphony first started getting heavy radio play, my friend James said, “the music in the background is just the same thing over and over again.” As if that was something unusual. Nowadays, it’s pretty much the standard.
Okay, just as an aside. . .I do still listen to new stuff. Not radio stuff, usually, but newer music. Lots of the Celto-punk stuff that’s more popular now than it was back then, for instance. I like AFI–which really didn’t get popular until after I graduated college–and Three Days Grace (even though I gleefully acknowledge that they suck). And different weird stuff. Idlewild. Lots of techno-y stuff I wasn’t into back then. Dan le Sac vs. Scroobius Pip is my current obsession.
But, man, if I’m feeling down, nothing gets me like the music of the late 90s…
At the time I was into 311, Sublime, Pantera, Wu Tang, Bob Marley and a ton of lesser-known stuff. Now sadly, after years of screaming that my passion for music will never die, I’m not listening to much music anymore.
