I’m not trying to troll or anything, but all that I can think of as 90’s music is Boy bands and girl bands.
So we should just write off the 90’s as a dead loss.
Britpop: Blur, Suede, Oasis, Elastica.
Appallingly cynical pop music by talentless youngsters who can dance a bit: Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, B*Witched, Take That.
The rise of rap, both in terms of the complex and intelligent stuff like the Wu Tang Clan, and in terms of the vile commercialised stuff like Puff Daddy.
Techno, becoming more than just music to dance to: Chemical Brothers, Orbital, Moby, The Orb, etc.
In R&B/urban music, a new depth and hardness of sound in artists like TLC and Aaliyah and producers like Timbaland, far from the treacly soul of the 1980s.
Riot Grrl: both properly Riot Grrl bands like Bikini Kill and Huggy Bear, and other female rock bands like Hole, Babes in Toyland, and The Breeders.
Grunge was interesting because as other people have said Nirvana seemed to be the end rather than the beginning: aside from a few copyists like Bush they didn’t have a great influence on the rest of the decade. The second half of the 1990s had very few good rock groups, and it wasn’t till this decade we got the nu-metal revival and the garage rock thing.
So, you’ve forgotten the mediocre grunge followers since Nevermind came out? I mean, sre, for the most part they sucked, but you cannot deny the existence of Bush, Everclear, Live and countless others, and more recently such horrors as Creed and Puddle of Mudd.
More important than Nirvana’s influence musically is Nirvana’s influence on the outlook and aesthetic of rock groups. Keeping it real isn’t just confined to hip-hop anymore - any band playing on a guitar has to at least fake sincerity. No-one plays wanky guitar solos, wears tights and has stage shows involving girls dancing in cages. Isn’t it odd that the basic prototype for a rock band was fairly consistent from around Led Zeppelin until the end of the eighties? That’s about 20 years of rock n roll groups being based on exactly the same idea, whether it’s Led Zeppelin and Status Quo or Guns N Roses and Poison. Page and Plant - Axl and Slash.
Nirvana changed all of that. Now bands are now made based on the Nirvana mould - 3 or four pieces playing straight up, simple songs. When was the last time you saw a band formed post 90s that contained a guitar hero?*
*RATM don’t count - Tom Morello may technically have been a guitar hero, but he wasn’t a Jimmy Page style one. Hence, Audioslave are also disqualified.
Big stage shows are a thing of the past. Post-Nirvana bands don’t cart out backup singers, saxophone players and half inflated demons. They strap on their guitars and make noise.
No-one has yet built on the Nirvana sound. But practically all rock since Nevermind has been in the Nirvana style.
Dude…that’s so 80s.
90s music consisted largely of three tracks:
1 Alternative Rock - Started with Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice & Chains, Soundgarden and so on (Seatle -style “Grunge”). It was basically a dark, flannel clad backlash against the glam-rock of the 80s. By the mid 90s, “Alternative” rock had grown to include more diverse groups like Dave Mathews Band and Phish, as well as “Grunge”. The genre had also evolved to include more “radio friendly” bands like Bush and Blues Traveler.
By 2000, “Grunge” has largely become a dead-end with the exception of perhaps bands like Linkin Park or Korn, more pop bands like Matchbox 20 or “crossover groups” like Kid Rock or Limp Bizkit.
2 Gansta Rap - Basically the natural evolution of rap with Dr Dre and Snoop Dog making the music accessible to the same disenfranchised white suburban youth who liked grunge. By 2000, the gansta/streetkeepin it real style has been mostly replaced by the “bling-bling” Ghetto-fabulous stylings of P Diddy.
3 Pop music - Pretty quiet during the 90s with the exception of a few notable bands like the Spice Girls, N*Synch and the Backstreet Boys. Tragically, the 2000s have seen this style become the norm.
The problem is stylistically, decades don’t really follow their numerical value. What a lot of people consider to the the Sounds of the Sixties is mostly very late sixties and well into the seventies. It seems like you need a two or three year lag period before the next decade starts.
Most people consider “hair bands” to be representative of the eighties, but they didn’t reach their peak popularity until the late eighties. “Slippery When Wet” was 1986. “Hysteria” was 1987. “Girls, Girls, Girls” was 1987. “Open Up and Say Ahh” was 1988. Sure these bands existed well before then, but their breakthrough hits weren’t until the tail end of the decade. And Kurt & company didn’t strike a fatal blow until 1992.
Even eighties pop artists like Pat Benetar and Madonna didn’t hit the big time until 1982/1983.
So what is generally considered “nineties music” will probably include everything you hear on the radio now. But not for much longer.
I think the “nineties” genres will include rap/rock bands, Matrix-style break beats, Britney and her clones, and the mainstream rise of hiphop from Tupac-Biggie to Eminem. All genres that existed in rudimentary froms in previous decades, but didn’t have an impact in pop culture until the “nineties”.
Wha…? :rolleyes:
Have you ever seen Zeppelin? Clips from concerts or the like? Guitar, base and drums. No stage shows, no backup chorus, no sax players. Just basic rock n roll. To lump Poison with LZ is almost pit worthy.
Janet - came unto her own in the 90’s.
The Gaspode:
I think that it easy to overrate Nirvana and Nevermind, in fact, I would say that is exactly what happened. Grunge didn’t add much to music at all. Basically, grunge is to metal what punk was to rock. The only thing grunge changed musically was that they would play “sloppy” compared to metal bands.
Furthermore, almost all grunge bands are gone, the remaining ones have gone more mainstream, and the rest of pop music seems to have forgotten that they were supposed to have learned to be sloppy - meaning that the grunge influence is out the door.
I live in Seattle and I almost never hear any grunge bands played on the radio. It was a fad that would have totally died out had Cobain not shot himself. As it is, more people talk about the grunge influence than actually play or hear it.
That’s not say that the apparent slow-death of rock pleases me, and I agree with you on the pit-worthyness of comparing LZ with Poison
Buddy Bolden, Scott Joplin, John Phillips Sousa.
Oh, those 90’s.
Oh, no, no, no. Not at all. That was certainly not the impression I meant to give. I just meant to say that there was a definite change in the aesthetic of rock groups after Nirvana, a change toward simplicity.
I feel that the previous aesthetic began with Led Zeppelin, who while somewhat straight-forward in the beginning, established the guitar hero, established double neck guitars and established complicated songs (Stairway To Heaven, for instance), thus planting the seeds for the excesses that would follow. While they didn’t have the back up singers or the sax solos, I feel that their flirtations with rock being played out on a grander scale spiralled out of control in the hands of others and ended up in the horror that was GnR and Poison.
I think, in America at least, that it’s impossible to discuss the most influential/stereotypical music for an entire decade, but half-decades are possible. For instance, to me:
Early 60’s: “Tight” rock, (guitar-driven rock, early merserybeat)
Late 60’s: Experimental psych-rock.
Early 70’s: hendrix-influenced guitar wankoffs.
Late 70’s: Disco.
Early 80’s: New Wave.
Late 80’s: Hair metal.
Then:
Early 90’s: Alternative and Grunge.
Late 90’s: 
. There were so many cross-currents here (rise of pop bands, remnants of grunge, revivial of punk/ska and swing, rise of nu-metal) that it’s hard to pin any one style.
On the other hand for the early 00’s I already have narrowed it down to nu-metal and bubblegum. That’s what we’ll be remembered for.
I immediately thought of Ace of Base.
You and me both, dbygawdcapn. And don’t forget Lillian Russell singing “Come Down, My Evenin’ Star”—and “Bird in a Gilded Cage,” “She Is More to Be Pitied Than Censured,” “Just a Song at Twilight,” “Down Went McGinty,” “After the Ball” . . . I love '90s music . . .
Opening a vein…
Cranberries for me.