Just how magnificent were the 1990s?

I think the 90s is an interesting period mainly for the amount of change that happened in the decade.

For me:

Death of hair metal to the rise of gangster rap and grunge to mid decade Mariah/Celine dominance to end of decade TRL pop.

Going from a small Arkansas town where I didn’t know anyone from my small circle to the mid-90s when I first got online and started talking to people in newsgroups then AOL chat rooms then forums.

Going from no home phone to a beeper to a cell phone.

The rise of reality TV
 
They say music is circular and I look at the decades as alternating patterns - the 60s was a mish mash where "pop" music first emerged from a hybrid of guitar based rock n roll and vocal based rhythm and blues. The 70s had enough of pop and disbanded into its own lanes, creating exciting new music in metal, hard rock, soul, funk, disco and punk. The 80s brought all those sounds back together into a time when pop music was perhaps at its most competitive but everything collided together to a point where you couldn't really tell the difference between a Whitesnake ballad and a Whitney Houston ballad other than who sung it. The 90s dissipated it again with the emergence of house, hip-hop and alternative rock from its 80s underground roots into global phenomenons creating tonnes of exciting new subgenres like grunge, neo-soul, trip-hop until pop stole them all and fought back into the noughties.

It's why I like the 70s and 90s music the best. It was just more interesting. However I grown to appreciate a lot of 60s and especially 80s music just because the pop music really was peak.

I'm generalising - the 80s had some interesting beats through the electronic era. But generally it was a pop decade.
 
RJN said:
Was it unusual that you didn’t have a home phone? Or were they not common in your town?
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We were just welfare poor and so we couldn’t afford one. I had to take a dime to the corner store payphone if I wanted to make a call lol
 
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I do agree the 90s contributed way more to music, film and culture than the 00s. I always laugh now when some gen-z trend like Y2K era style comes around because it's like... I lived through that and it wasn't iconic, it was shit. musically I think most of what came out between 04-09 has aged like milk, and 00-03 weren't that much better.

but beyond a general plethora of COOL THINGS, I think the 90s were notable for two big reasons. one as a "bridge" - between the pre-technological era and the current high tech era, between the beginning of mass consumerism that defined the 80s and the peak capitalist hell that began to take over politics and every aspect of life in the 00s... it was a little in-between pocket of time and probably the last moment in living memory when everything felt... simple.

which leads to the other thing - attitudes, a culture less obsessed with irony and cool, a culture with space for a broader audience/less fixation on youth and youth appeal, a sense that not everybody had been made cynical and there was plenty of space for earnestness and sincerity. it was in some ways a more innocent time and I think collectively we've lost a lot of innocence - 9/11 was probably the defining event that marked that and since then it's really been one thing after another. no wonder people crave a more simple time.
 
The 90s was also a seminal decade in both the visibility of the LGBT community and the change in public acceptance of them.
 
Nancy said:
But did they?

It still feels the same as 2007 or 2008 were. But 1990 feels like a complete new beginning from the 80s.
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My earnest view on when each decade really began - sticking to those i’m old enough to remember:
- 1990s: it is a cliche that the 1990s ended with 9/11 but honestly I think it works. The innocence of the nineties was lost at that point.
- 2000s: 2000s ended and 2010s essentially began with the 2008 financial crash. Any remaining nineties optimism well and truly out the window at this point. I’ve been listening to a podcast going through every number one of the 2000s and it is so clear that 2010s pop is here the moment Gaga enters the room in early 2009.
- 2010s: The pandemic happening so early in 2020 feels like a hard cut off point, but I also think it has taken a few years because of it for a definitive culture and aesthetic to emerge for the 2020s (although I always think it is hard to pin things down while they are happening). Obviously more than half the decade yet to come but I can already see it being remembered for being fucking WEIRD.
 
I remember the impact of Grunge being somewhat overstated. It might have been more in the USA or confined to 20-somethings, but for all the talk about its cultural dominance, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men didn’t half dominate the charts during the apparent peak.
 
Ellie said:
I remember the impact of Grunge being somewhat overstated. It might have been more in the USA or confined to 20-somethings, but for all the talk about its cultural dominance, Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men didn’t half dominate the charts during the apparent peak.
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Grunge was huge for a hot minute. I think the clothing lasted longer than the music. I mean they were shoving Naomi Campbell and Linda Evangelista down the runway in flannel and a beanie.
 
Grunge had a bigger impact than the artists involved (although Nirvana have an astonishing legacy... you can buy their T shirts in Primark). It was one of the last times rock music did something different. I doubt for a second Britpop would have developed without it. It's true that the music had limited chart impact.

But the lazy fashion, the indifferent attitude, the gratuitous use of personal angst and the liberal outlook in stark contrast to the dominance of neoliberalism, probably had more impact than any of the songs.
 
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Meanwhile Britpop became the flag bearer for LAD CULTURE and LADETTES (the worst failure of feminism), both of which then spilt into the 00s with dance music and drinking culture. It really was a meaningless adventure.

The legacy? WONDERWALL and a generation of BINGE DRINKERS.
 
I know Nancy wanted to talk about Game Boys, but a dissemination of cultural trends, within the context of the arbitrary barriers of time is far more interesting.
 
This is the only gameboy worth talking about, and it was 2004.

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I still don’t GET Nirvana. The dizzying heights to which the industry insists that they are the second Beatles is quite fascinating. You see everyone from the Rolling Stones and NME listing greatest artists ever lists and they’re always there in the top TEN sandwiched between the likes of Bowie and Hendrix. I do get that they were important but CALM DOWN FELLAS.

Also, “Ten” is better than “Nevermind”, I SAID WHAT I SAID.
 
funky said:
I still don’t GET Nirvana. The dizzying heights to which the industry insists that they are the second Beatles is quite fascinating. You see everyone from the Rolling Stones and NME listing greatest artists ever lists and they’re always there in the top TEN sandwiched between the likes of Bowie and Hendrix. I do get that they were important but CALM DOWN FELLAS.

Also, “Ten” is better than “Nevermind”, I SAID WHAT I SAID.
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Nirvana was so much more than just the band and it’s songs. Kurt represented the weird kid that a lot of us needed at the time. He was straight but also seemed gay/bi, he was serious about being unserious, his angst was palpable to us that were right in the teenage years that wanted rid of the misogyny of hair metal but still wanted to mosh with our friends, he didn’t dress like a rock star and we could easily emulate what he was wearing and feel individual while also being very much hive mind with it.

I think Pearl Jam was always the better rock band but Eddie never felt like “one of us”.

All that said it’s very easily just because I was the exact right age at the time but there’s a reason Nirvana continues to live on to this day. When people think of grunge they think Nirvana.
 
Christ Noel really did summarise Britpop

"There are many things that I would like to say to you, but I don't know how"
 
It's odd because I remember being miserable for most of my early teens and yet I fetishise the late 90s to the extent that nothing gives me more pleasure these days than listening to an overblown Céline ballad aggressively loudly and feeling my 90s fantasy. Is it a trauma bond?
 
Loufoque said:
It's odd because I remember being miserable for most of my early teens and yet I fetishise the late 90s to the extent that nothing gives me more pleasure these days than listening to an overblown Céline ballad aggressively loudly and feeling my 90s fantasy. Is it a trauma bond?
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I think hindsight makes it seems less traumatic than it probably was for a lot of us. I could easily think about 100 different things that were terrible from 30 years ago but my brain just says “remember how comfortable JNKO jeans and flannels were to wear”

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You weren't my kind of 90s teen queen if a lip to Can't Take That Away (Mariah's Theme) DIDN'T save your life just ahead of the Millennium (capitalised like the BSB album)
 
Joseph said:
Nirvana was so much more than just the band and it’s songs. Kurt represented the weird kid that a lot of us needed at the time. He was straight but also seemed gay/bi, he was serious about being unserious, his angst was palpable to us that were right in the teenage years that wanted rid of the misogyny of hair metal but still wanted to mosh with our friends, he didn’t dress like a rock star and we could easily emulate what he was wearing and feel individual while also being very much hive mind with it.
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I don't disagree but didn't you just describe Michael Hutchence who did it 4 years earlier?
 
funky said:
I don't disagree but didn't you just describe Michael Hutchence who did it 4 years earlier?
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I only know about over here and he wasn’t all that to us. Plus they had been around since the late 70s correct?
 
funky said:
No INXS emerged in 86 and peaked around 88.
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Ahhhh I liked some of the big songs they had but I don’t think they made a cultural impact over here. Were they huge overseas? (Genuine question)
 
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