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How do you try to make a 90s music canon without grunge/alternative? There are a plethora of other genres that developed or emerged into relative popularity in
by robear 6y ago
How do you try to make a 90s music canon without grunge/alternative? There are a plethora of other genres that developed or emerged into relative popularity in the 90s that were hugely influential on music going forward.
Taking the most popular songs at the time is not a recipe for finding the best songs/songs that will be remembered in the future. A good percentage of the songs listed were crap then and not worth remembering now.
- trimbo 6y agoIt boggles my mind that "Smells like Teen Spirit" is missing here.
- amanaplanacanal 6y agoI think I lived through a different 90’s than the article talks about. No nirvana, no soundgarden, no STP, no alice in chains. I did see a single Pearl Jam song listed though.
- oriolid 6y agoI checked the first part linked at bottom, and apparently their version of 60s doesn't have The Beatles. They had The Doors, though, so it's not like they ignore all alternative-ish rock. Just almost all of it.
- caf 6y agoOn one of their other pages they have a note that The Beatles is a notable artist that isn't in Spotify (or wasn't, at the time), so that is probably why.
- chrisseaton 6y agoHave you checked how popular these artists really were at the time outside your group of friends? None of them have ever had a top-five single in the US. Several of them have very barely had a top-hundred single!
- wink 6y agoI don't know "STP" but Nirvana and Soundgarden got airplay in Germany on MTV, Viva (the other music TV channel) and most mainstream radio stations. I suppose the whole thing is US-centric, but at least those 2 I'd have missed as well.
- alberto_ol 6y agoStone Temple Pilots?
- uxp100 6y agoNirvana was not just popular among the posters friends. Pop radio play is a narrow way to measure popularity.
- secabeen 6y agoIt's just short of their qualifying requirement, which is top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Smells like Teen Spirit" reached a high of #6: https://www.billboard.com/music/nirvana https://www.billboard.com/music/nirvana
- ardy42 6y ago> It's just short of their qualifying requirement, which is top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Smells like Teen Spirit" reached a high of #6: https://www.billboard.com/music/nirvana https://www.billboard.com/music/nirvana That seems like a pretty bad criteria for a list like this, because it's heavily biased towards "flashes in the pan" and exudes "steady fires." They should have probably used a "total" metric or at least augmented the list based on it. I think something like total airplay or total sales in the 5 years after release would have caught many of the songs people thing they should have included.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- hoorayimhelping 6y agoIt's any music that wasn't played on pop stations. No mention of Wu Tang, Tupac, Biggie, Green Day, Radiohead or even less known but influential artists like Aphex Twin. Resounding meh.
- kitteh 6y agoThing is the artists you specify did get play on MTV and the radio. Except for aphex twin, but out of all the artists here aphex twin had a bigger impact on my life.
- caf 6y agoBiggie is in that list, as Notorious B.I.G.
- pfranz 6y agoIf you look at the bottom there are 3 or 4 Biggie songs graphed. I imagine none of them stood out enough to make the article.
- paganel 6y ago> It's any music that wasn't played on pop stations Not sure about the US but in the early to mid-1990s MTV Europe was playing groups like Nirvana or Soundgarden in heavy rotation, all day, it was glorious. I was telling my SO just yesterday how interesting those times were, when a 13-old kid like I was back then could have a video like "Black Hole Sun" playing in the background on television at 12 in the afternoon while doing homework, just before going to school (we were studying in the afternoon). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg
- vnce 6y agoGod I miss this. Thanks for reminding me :)
- function_seven 6y agoFor some reason I still remember vividly where I was when I first saw that video (with the melting Barbie doll on the barbecue). My family had just moved to a new house—quickly on account of an eviction—and it was a hot summer day. I had a grape Welch's soda and we had just got the cable hooked up. Random story that's apropos of nothing, but to this day, when I hear that song, it still transports me to that time and place. I never really drank grape soda. Not before and not since. Not sure why I had it that day. But damn if I don't taste it when Black Hole sun is playing.
- jariel 6y agoThere are very deep limitations in a) chart toppers vs. otherwise popular and b) ethnicity i.e. White/African American/Latino have quite a different slot of pop culture references in the US, much less pronounced for example in UK or Canada. The other 'big thing' to consider is that Gen Z are still quite young, and sometimes it takes time to pick up on a lot of music. We hear tracks in films, living in other conditions. Also seems like Gen X has pretty good musical knowledge overall! But probably due to being the 'right age' for having been able to listen to a lot of stuff. Finally, dismayed by the 90's top-charters. I couldn't fathom listening to most of that even back then.
- usrusr 6y ago> Also seems like Gen X has pretty good musical knowledge overall! It's the generation defined by having watched MTV from the first broadcast to when it stopped showing music videos.
- 082349872349872 6y agoI once tried to figure out the soviet equivalent to Video Killed the Radio Star. At the time I thought it had a definite answer (involving people in golden lamé bouncing on trampolines?), but can't seem to re-search it now. Taking "music video" to be an edited video with footage distinct from a studio performance, and not part of a larger work (to avoid musicals), I find 1984: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJApqjVuGb4 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJApqjVuGb4 1983: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXEPghBgTXA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXEPghBgTXA Anyone have 1982 or earlier?
- aasasd 6y agoAfaik Soviet ‘estrada’ had lots of videos filmed like they're concert performances but made specifically for TV. With characteristic mannequin stage presence of the artists, the ‘singing hand’, and backing ‘bands’ wriggling incoherently, hands flopping around on the instruments. And no audience shown. The only thing this mess could kill is my will to listen to anything until Western electronic and grunge stuff finally became widely available.
- nl 6y agoSee their other article for this: https://pudding.cool/2017/03/timeless/index.html https://pudding.cool/2017/03/timeless/index.html (linked in another comment)
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoPopular music started to more or less "split" in the 90's. It was the beginning of the end of a single music as a shared cultural experience I think. Hip-hop and alt-rock, for example, had massive trends that defined the 90's in their own way, but it's possible one wasn't really following both. Then you had popular undercurrents in tandem - e.g. in the beginning of the 90's a bit of industrial, rave, and techno and at end electronica and nu-metal. You did have the top-40 stuff that at least in Chicagoland would play the dance-oriented stuff and pop-R&B in the beginning of the decade. Looking back it's hard to unify the 90's musically as one popular trend unless you're confining it to specific "super-genres" like rap/hip-hop, alt-rock, or top-40.
- globular-toast 6y agoThe article seems to suggest that hip-hop like "No Diggity" should be a defining song, while lots of people here are suggesting bands like Nirvana, or genres like dance/trance (e.g. Robert Miles). The thing is in the 90s all of this music was highly polarising. There were people who would simply not acknowledge any "rap" or "dance" as music at all. There were others who considered "guitar music" to be completely uncool. The most well-known songs in the article like Britney Spears, Spice Girls etc. were by far the most universally appealing songs at the time. Not everyone loved it, but not many people really hated it. It's no surprise that those are the songs that have stood the test of time.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]