Counter point (YMMV, Natch)… I’d argue that most of the popular music in the past century was crap and the stuff you listened to from a while ago was actually the good stuff that managed to stick around in the public consciousness in one way or another.
With the exceptions of Prong, Sepultura, Ministry and the Lunachicks (all of which got rotation on 120 mins/Alternative nation or headbangers ball) most of these bands were on regular rotation on MTV at one point or another. They’re all great and some were on indie labels (I guess if you counter interscope), but they were getting air play and many of them were on the billboard charts (some of the bands I have links to as well).
Wrong! Aren’t you forgetting Wu-Tang and lots of the early wave of the Dungeon family? Erykah Badu’s earliest stuff was in the 90s. A Tribe Called Quest. KRS-One. Missy Elliot. Lauryn Hil/fugees. Tupac. The De La Soul albums deserve a re-listen. Outstanding stuff!
I don’t actually see that as a counterpoint. I agree with you.
Yes, a lot of them got play on 120 minutes and Headbangers’ Ball. And also, as big as that may have seemed, that still wasn’t the mainstream. This video we’re commenting on was the mainstream of 1998.
Nope, I’m not. That was all great, and it was all hip hop, so if it was in the 90s that all counts as the 90s hip hop that I agree was great - and which is missing from this mainstream recap.
One of the things I’m kind of pleased about is that the video showed the international variation in pop culture that there was back in the 90s.
80s and 2000s nostalgia seems to be a lot more constant throughout the world, but pop culture (and especially music) seems to have been a lot more localised in the 90s- If you look back, the 70s had the same sort of divergence.
Thank you very much for the links to these great tunes. In the Meantime and Liar too, lol.
Actually, Liar is okay from an artistic perspective, not so much from a listening perspective. It needs the video more than I think music should. The jarring atonal bits are…jarring, and I don’t like being yelled at.
The only song I’d heard before was Debaser.
Also, I was using ‘crap’ in a jokingly oldster sort of way. I’m practicing, I just turned 60 last week.
However, to your point; I agree for the most part. Most popular music is, was, and shall continue to be crap. But there is so much that there’s still a lot of really good stuff to stick around.
I’ve just always felt that the late '60’s to late '70’s there seemed to be this explosion of creativity and musical exploration; a golden age of rock, if you will, that influenced other genres too. I think I was kinda spoiled by it. Likely a bit biased too as this was all happening during my formative years.
“But it’s not all gravy Ninety-Nine”. Disco was born in the '70’s.
Excellent! Also, I gave the thread a great play list at least.
I’m saying those were the exception to your list, though, at least in terms of rotation on MTV. Many of those charted on Billboard as well. Downward Sprial was a 4 time platinum album. Exile in Guyville went Gold, which is pretty respectable in terms of sales. Even weird-o Primus was popping up on MTV (My Name is Mud and Winona’s Big Brown Beaver were a marginal hit for them). Etc…
Wait… who misses Wu-Tang, Tupac or OutKast when talking about 90s rap?
Now, to be fair, much of this stuff was earlier in the 90s. The specific year… seems like there was some good stuff… Here’s a list of stuff released in 98:
Some solid stuff, there I have to say. Belle and Sebastian, the Portishead Live album, Jaz-Z, OutKast, possibly Madonna’s best album since her first album, Lauryn Hill, Mermaid Avenue came out that year (I love that album so much), Neutral Milk Hotel… I guess you can argue that much of that isn’t mainstream, but many of those albums have had staying power in terms of their culture impact.
Happy Birthday!
Being raised primarily in the 80s, I’d actually say the same about music in the late 70s and 1980s. New technologies were really helpful in opening up new musical vistas, both in terms of making music (I’ll actually disagree about Disco, there was some great stuff - it’s hard to argue with the ability of Nile Rodgers to make a great, danceable song) and in terms of how music was being created and shared. The ability to make a demo without a studio and the ability to afford cheaper music and recording gear in that period allowed for people to be really experimental, kicked off the whole indie movement, really. It’s wheat from chaff. There were plenty of crappy punk bands, but there were also some real innovators making music, too.
Yeah, in a way, but they started moving away from concept albums, 20 minute songs, albums intended to be enjoyed sequentially in one long sitting, psychedelia, etc. Concentrating more on the new toys.
I have a hard time coming up with redeeming qualities for Disco, maybe it’s because I don’t dance. I do like some dance music though.
I’d argue that part of what made concept albums viable was the shift to LP vinyl in the first place, though. Singles were still very popular into the early 60s. We’ve kind of gone back to singles now, although not entirely.
And there are plenty of concept albums that employed new instrumentation, too. Depeche Mode made good solid albums that were loosely conception (Songs of Faith and Devotion) or albums like Disintegration by the Cure. And let’s not forget albums like Trans Europe Express by Kraftwerk, all on those new toys. Have you heard any of This Mortal Coil’s albums - pretty much all should be heard in a single sitting, front to back, if you ask me, to get the full impact. Trent Reznor was also very much into concept albums - Downward Spiral is precisely that. Coil… Someone like Diamonda Galas, whose almost entire body of work is exploring the edges of sound/vocalizations through sound recording, general through a coherent album length work (the Plague Mass opera, for example).
I tend to think of the album as being more an aberration to how the recording industry actually functioned - artists actually making the decision to make a work of art as an album instead of worrying about creating singles for quick sale.
OH! You should totally check out this book, which is a lovely meditation on sound recording and how it changed our social interactions with music:
As for disco - songs like I Feel Love by Donna Summer are pretty wonderful songs, if you ask me. It was in part written and produced by Giorgio Morodor who is an excellent electronic musician. I think it’s like any other genre - some true classic pieces of music, and lots of imitators trying to ride the wave. But some of that is YMMV.
yeah, which is just one of several different subgenres of electronic music (which you know, of course!). The techno explosion was just as big if not bigger than disco and shaped club culture for a couple of decades to come, not to mention mainstream music. There are so many subgenres just of techno that I don’t know where to begin with that. Personally, my tastes ran towards either synthpop, industrial, or hip-hop with regards to electronic music, but there is some really great techno out there (The Orb is one, and I’ve always been partial to Aphex Twin, too).
The classic rock station around here doesn’t play anything newer than the 80s. Due to the strong presence of a sister station; owned by the same media group, playing ‘modern’ and ‘alternative’ rock.
That doesn’t surprise me. We have a couple of stations here, one more rock oriented and one an alternative station, owned by the same company (ultimately, Cox Media). I’m guessing it’s the same with that, as well? The alternative station only recently started, so I guess they might have stopped playing stuff from the 90s now on the other station (which they used to).
Weirdly enough, the alternative station is generally commercial free, except for broadcasting one of the local minor league baseball teams. It’s certainly a commercial station, but I never hear commercials when I listen.
I think of techno and house as being a continuation of disco. If there was no disco, then there would be no Chicago house or Detroit techno, and without those then electronic all music since then would be very different.
I think this is important to remember, along with the influence of hip hop, too. It’s not just about what you hear in a song, it’s about how those songs are made in the studio as well. Disco producers were just as influential as, say Phil Spector, in the long run.
While I was never that much of a “clubber”, I went out once on a lark somewhere around '88-90. It was almost baffling, as everything that wasn’t actually disco sure sounded influenced by it, which led me to conclude its death had been greatly exaggerated.
It’s Cumulus Media, but yeah, same general idea. One group bought up all the local stations and has them running the programming they’ve historically been running but now with greater attention paid to not ‘poaching’ the listeners of sister stations for various reasons.
Interesting. I wonder if that can be considered a form of collusion? Seems like it to me. If so, is it aimed at pulling listeners away from the public alternatives on the lower end of the dial? Probably more aimed at satellite radio, I guess?
Muddying the waters, by then “trash disco” (ironic disco, I guess?) was a thing. Within a few years, Top 40 stations had “way back” days when much of the playlist was disco, or disco era.
In some cases it’s the same producer:
The latter is my favorite Madonna song, FWIW – also FWIW, both of these tracks are one step removed from Miles Davis.
Yep! And Nile Rodgers keeps popping up all over the place. He did a song with Daft Punk a couple of years ago, and recently popped up on a new Duran Duran song (with JANELLE MONAE, TOO!).
