Considering the live performances use the same music that she releases generally there isn't much difference. During the SNL skit where she was singing along with whatever award was being presented, I thought I heard some actual musical ability.

Bingo. One can find outstanding music in every decade if you look beyond just the top-40 and what was popular. It's one thing to say "the songs heard on top-40 in the '90's sucked", and another thing completely to say "the music in the '90's sucked".

I'm not saying the 90's didn't have its moments, but to even attempt to say its one of the BEST decades is laughable. no matter how drunk you might be.

I was the dude who said it before, and I'll say it again: the music in the '90s sucked.

Sure, you could dig and find any number of great highs (and I saw Nirvana open for Dinosaur Jr. on the back of a flat-bed truck, wrote every other check over to Matador Records in the '90s, and some of my favorite individual records come out of that era, for whatever that's worth), but you could do the same for any other decade as well. 90s soul was fucking horrible. 90s (white-boy) funk was fucking horrible, 90s rap was horrible, 90s metal was (mostly) horrible, 90s country ushered in the death of real country, and 90s mainstream rock and pop were absolutely horrible.

I'd certainly be willing to cede that the '00s and beyond may be worse, but by that time I already had no interest in the main-to-mid-stream, and I barely come across enough modern music anymore to judge.

That's awesome. Stonehenge is so cool. The day I went there it was very typical weather, overcast and drizzly. But man it seemed...magical.

And I'll say again, if you're looking beyond just the mainstream, there was plenty of fantastic music. The beginning of the decade had the best of "grunge", including several great records from Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Screaming Trees, Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots. It had what may be R.E.M.'s best record "Automatic For the People". It featured two of the best records Red Hot Chili Peppers put out, "Blood Sugar Sex Magik" and "Californication". It debuted three of the best bands going right now in Radiohead, Tool and White Stripes. It featured some of the best work by P.J. Harvey and Bjork. U2 reinvented themselves with "Achtung Baby", their best record. Industrial music really hit its stride with records from Ministry and Nine Inch Nails. The Beastie Boys hit their creative peak with "Check Your Head" and "Ill Communication".

Digging a little deeper, it saw the rise of such electronic music stars like Aphex Twin, The Orb, Chemical Brothers and The Crystal Method. There were great shoegazing records by Lush and My Bloody Valentine. There were some great British rock acts like Blur, The Charlatans and The Verve debuting and hitting their peak. There was some great post-rock acts debuting like Tortoise, Flying Saucer Attack and LaBradford. There were acts like DJ Shadow and Fatboy Slim redefining the DJ/producer as a unique artistic form.

As you say, every decade has high points, and every decade has some horrible music. To make a blanket statement that music in the '90's sucked is stupid - it really just depends on what types of music you are looking at.

The 90's spawned TOOL, which alone makes is a solid decade for music.

Dawgfan has a point, music appreciation is very individualized...

All that stuff he just listed?


With one or 2 exceptions its utter shyte.

YMMV.

Good to know that I can dismiss your opinions on music. And I don't mean that in a snarky way - musical tastes are indeed individualized. We obviously have wildly different taste in music.

Well, sure....if you wanna come down on the side of semantics and literalism, making a blanket statement that every piece of music that was released between '90-'00 is stupid and indefensible. I guess you got me there.

..and for whatever it's worth, I probably owned half the records you were talking about, at the time....but if you tried to put them in my cd player NOW, I'd stab you in the eye with a fork.

This thread suddenly sucks again

Pics, people, PICS!!

I was talking about the amazing indie scene of the 90's. It was fucking amazing.

Edit: Wanted to add another amazing.

Bonjour.

Whooooooooooo dat

Just to reiterate, I loved the 90s indie scene too, but note that even dawgfan's list is incredibly narrow and focused entirely on rock (including those Beastie Boys and Chili Peppers, Ministry and Nine-Inch-Nails records, which definitely push at but don't transcend those boundaries).

I'm not expecting anybody to chime in anytime soon about the historic merits of TLC and new-jack soul like Boyz II Men, and that crap, or variations on it, is pretty much all that was coming out of soul at the time. Likewise Garth Brooks takeover of country radio was sadly and admittedly hard for me to hate entirely, but I certainly hate everything he brought with him and left in his wake.

Is it fair for me to say that ON THE WHOLE, 90s music was crappy?

Ok this was just uncalled for.


This is the gayest picture I've seen in at least a year. Don't ever do this again.


Thank you, that was...refreshing...


Absolutely, and you'd be understating the fact far too much as well.

Aside from some great alt-metal from 90-92 and the re-spawning of power pop in the late 90s, the 90s music scene was, on a whole, pretty bad. I got into and over grunge very quickly, and from about 95-99 I lost interest in almost all music - metal was buried under grunge, hip hop and R&B, and mainstream rock went the way of Creed. Most of the alt rock was way light on melody and featured tuneless vocalists with very little use of harmony, which personally did not suit my tastes.

There are probably a couple dozen or so great albums from the 90s I still go back to, but the rest of the decade you can keep.

Having attended middle and high school in the '90s, I have a very healthy appreciation for the music of the '90s. That being said, I think it's tough to say that the '90s were one of the best decades for music. The '60s and '70s were freaking amazing, and I don't think the '90s come close to either decade.

all music's become homogenous to me. i couldn't tell you what's good or bad. that said, cd's came out in the 90's which suddenly made music extremely profitable.

eww...it wasn't three pigs.

That's pretty neat. Where exactly is Equador?

I'm really more of an 80's guy myself, but on my way to work today, a couple Jamiroquai songs came up on my ipod, and it made me want to defend 90's music. Incidentally, if I were playing cards with my ipod, I'd accuse it of not shuffling well enough -- the first 5 songs had two by Jamiroquai and two by Beirut. Incidentally, if I were defending the naughts, I'd be mentioning Beirut.

Anyway -- you start the 90's, and you've got some pop acts from the 80's really maturing their sound, resulting in albums better than anything they'd done before: Depeche Mode with Violator and Songs of Faith and Devotion, Erasure with Chorus, Pet Shop Boys with Very, and even George Michael with Listen Without Prejudice.

Then you've got Nirvana, Pearl Jam, et al -- not exactly my cup of tea, but I'm not sure you could come up with stuff from any other decade that changed rock music so much for the better, except maybe the 60's.

You've got some better hard acts in the early 90's also in Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine.

Some chick bands that were pretty good: Cranberries/Tori Amos/Liz Phair/Sarah McLachlan/Aimee Mann/Portishead

Everyone loves Gorrilas now, but no one gave Blur any love, though they had some great stuff.

Ben Folds Five came around in the mid-to-late 90's also.

Someone mentioned REM, which I agree with, though I'd go with Out of Time as their best. Although I disagree on U2 -- those guys stopped being good after War.

On first glance, I thought this was a rather ironic question. Looking more closely, it's actually a pretty valid one.

obligatory "there are a couple Jamiroquai songs?" jab

To my knowledge there are exactly two (Canned Heat and Virtual Insanity). I literally don't know of any others. Most people will recognize VI, but a lot of people know Canned Heat from Napoleon Dynamite.

Pumpy, awesome pic :)

Macro, awesome response :)

SI

He was the Stevie Wonder OK GO with couches instead of treadmills.

Nothing Erasure, Pet shop boys, or Depeche Mode did in the 90's was "better" than anything they did in the 80's. Most of it was nothing more than remixes of their originals.

Tori, Amy mann, and the Cranberries were all solid 80's people that simply kept going in the 90's so they don't count either.


The list gets thinner and thinner for the 90's support...

Less music bullshit, more pictures of bouncing titties.

We shouldn't forget that acts like Beck, Pavement, Weezer and Of Montreal got their start in the 90s.

RendeR, twisting facts to fit his hypotheses since Aug 2001.

Tori Amos - no studio albums, no singles in the 80s.

The Cranberries - no studio albums, no singles in the 80s.

Aimee Mann - no solo albums in the 80s.

As an expert on early 90's "chick" music, you couldn't be more wrong on this point, buddy boy. Tori Amos didn't hit big until "Little Earthquakes", which was released in 1992.

The Cranberries debut album "Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?" was released in 1993.

While Mann was kicking around in "'Til Tuesday" in the 1980's, she didn't really "hit big" until her solo debut "Whatever" in 1993.

Sarah McLachlan's debut album, "Solace", was in 1991 and her biggest album, "Fumbling Toward Ecstasy" was released in 1993.

The early 1990's was the "hey day" for chick music. It was a glorious time that has not been surpassed since and was not surpassed prior.

I pretty much stopped paying attention to music in 2001, so I can't comment on the last decade. I love a lot of 80's and 90's stuff, but the chick music in the 1990's was the bomb shazam.

Oh and:

*checks thread title, checks thread, checks thread title, checks thread*

Dude, I mentioned the albums. If you think those albums are remixes of their originals, I don't know what to tell you.


Oh, here's the problem. I guess you just don't know when the 90's actually *were*. :p

Oh Reaaaaallly:

Tori Amos:
Born Myra Ellen Amos on August 22, 1963, in Newton, NC daughter of Edison (a Methodist minister) and Mary Ellen Amos; married Mark Hawley (a sound engineer), 1998; children: Natashya. Education: Studied classical piano at the Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, 1968-74.

Played clubs in and around Baltimore and Washington, D.C.; signed by Atlantic Records; formed hard rock band Y Kant Tori Read and released self-titled album, 1988; embarked on solo career; moved to London, early 1990s; released debut solo album, Little Earthquakes, 1992; released Under the Pink, 1994; released Boys for Pele, 1996; released From the Choirgirl Hotel, 1998; toured with Alanis Morissette, released To Venus and Back, 1999; released cover album Strange Little Girls, 2001; signed with Epic, released concept album Scarlet’s Walk, 2002.


Cranberries:(I admit to picking knits on this one)
The Cranberries are an Irish rock band formed in Limerick in 1989 under the name The Cranberry Saw Us, later changed by vocalist Dolores O'Riordan. The band currently consists of O'Riordan, guitarist Noel Hogan, bassist Mike Hogan and drummer Fergal Lawler. Although widely associated with alternative rock, the band's sound also incorporates indie, indie pop, rock, post-punk, Irish folk and pop rock elements.

Aimee Mann: (Claiming *I* twist the facts and you want to say we're only talking about SOLO...wow)
Aimee Mann grew up in Bon Air, Virginia, graduated from Midlothian High School in 1978^{[citation needed]} and attended the Berklee College of Music in Boston, but dropped out to sing with her first punk rock band, the Young Snakes.^{[citation needed]} The band released the EP Bark Along with the Young Snakes in 1982, and a compilation album was issued in 2004.
In 1983, she co-founded with Berklee classmate and boyfriend Michael Hausman the new wave band 'Til Tuesday, which achieved success in 1985 with its first album, Voices Carry. The title song is said to be inspired by Hausman and Mann's breakup.^[2] The record producer, Mike Thorne, in a March 1999 article disputed this and stated the lyrics originally had Mann singing to another woman. The gender was changed due to pressure from the record label.^[3] The video became an MTV staple, winning the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist, although Mann's then-signature spiky hair would lead some to dismiss the group. Mann was featured on the Rush song "Time Stand Still" (from Hold Your Fire, 1987) which became a minor UK hit, singing backup vocals and appearing in the music video.^[2] Her laughter is also heard at the start of "Force Ten," from the same album. With Mann playing an increasingly important role in songwriting, 'Til Tuesday released two more albums, Welcome Home and Everything's Different Now. On their final tour, musician Jon Brion joined the band, which broke up in 1990 when Mann left to start her solo career.^[2]
Around the time of the first album's release, Mann began a romantic relationship with Jules Shear;^{[citation needed]} they broke up before the final 'Til Tuesday album, which contained the song "J For Jules." Professional relationships from the band would continue: Hausman later became Mann's manager, and Brion produced her first two solo albums, along with the Magnolia soundtrack.








Now frankly you ought to get up outta my ass about this since I'm right, and you're not. Go try making yourself look important with some of the noobs who don't know anything.

I had a similar moment when I saw the Stonehenge pic. I was all, "What does Stonehenge have to do with 90s music? Is he trying to make a point about the greater idea of time moving on, or looking at this more big picture or something?" then I realized what thread I was in.

You truly are a gift to this whole board. Thanks for posting. :)

Dude. Name one song any of those acts did in the 80s besides Voices Carry (which wasn't even Aimee Mann solo).

Yes, because Tori Amos is so totally well known for her rock band "Y Kant Tori Read."

Move along, kiddo. This is an adult conversation where reason and reality trump make believe.

Did you actually read anything that you just wrote? Tori Amos was in a horrible heavy metal band in the '80s which nobody ever heard of until she got famous in the '90s? The Cranberries existed under a different lineup in 1989 but no one outside of their family ever heard of them? What powerful evidence you have brought.

I don't think anyone was claiming these people did not *exist* in the '80s.

I wasn't arguing Sarah, though I'm sure I could find something she did prior to 1990 as well.


Oh and Great picture =)

Also, I don't want this post to go unnoticed -- especially if when these people started out is suddenly becoming really important -- props for mentioning Of Montreal.

To make up for my sin above

perhaps you all should learn to read. The statement was that these people did NOTHING in the 80's.

That is in fact totally false, which is exactly what I posted.

And anyone who actually knows ANYTHING about Tori Amos knows she was a massively popular club singer in DC long before she ever hit the air waves.

My god you people are pathetic.