90s music essay

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‘rising down’: when the roots uplifted the masses, ‘california dreamin’’: mamas and the papas’ homesick shade of winter, remembering blossom dearie: a small voice with a mighty impact, ‘lo mato’: willie colón and héctor lavoe’s 70s salsa gem, surprise albums: 16 drops that shocked the music world, ‘stuck in the middle with you’: stealers wheel’s clowns and jokers, karol g and feid win big at latin american music awards, ringo starr offers up ‘gonna need someone’ music video, florence + the machine announce ‘symphony of lungs’ bbc proms performance, def leppard share 40th anniversary edition of ‘pyromania’, billy idol releases 40th anniversary edition of ‘rebel yell’, the warning share music video for ‘qué más quieres’, liana flores signs with verve records, unveils ‘i wish for the rain’, the 90s: the decade that doesn’t fit.

Oddball and eclectic, the decade defies easy categorization, but it’s this cross-pollination of sounds that left a boundary-breaking legacy that remains today.

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In A Hard Day’s Night , the exceptional madcap 1964 film 1964 starring The Beatles , a reporter asks Ringo Starr , “Are you a mod or a rocker?” She’s referring to the long-warring British musical subcultures, also captured with anxious sincerity a decade later in The Who ’s Quadrophenia . The Beatles’ drummer replies with the rather deft portmanteau, “Um, no, I’m a mocker.” The joke being: there’s no way you could be both.

But, 30 years later, in the broad-stroked soundscape that was the 90s music industry, such posturing would look preposterous. The beauty of that decade was that you could be mod, rocker, hip-hop explorer, R&B fan, and country fan – all at the same time. Because the notion of what popular music was had shifted so radically.

While you’re reading, listen to our 90s Music playlist here .

‘Throwing Copper’: How Live Fashioned A Platinum-Grade Alt.Rock Classic

‘little broken hearts’: how norah jones turned hurt into art, along came grunge.

The biggest curveball that 90s music threw us was, of course, grunge. In the lead-up to its inflection point ( Nirvana ’s Nevermind ), guitar-based music roughly fell into three categories: alternative rock, classic-rock standbys, and an already-dimming hair metal scene. It was so lost that 1989 also marked the curious year that Jethro Tull won the best hard-rock/metal Grammy .

Still, at that time, the impact of MTV as the arbiter of youth culture could not be understated. The video for Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” quietly premiered on 120 Minutes , the network’s late-night stepchild, and was almost exotic in its betrayal of the channel’s visual conventions. It was dark, cynical, and so squarely “I don’t give a f__k” in a way that the industry’s self-aware harder rock acts fundamentally were not. But what makes Nirvana such a great microcosm of 90s music was that their sound was not singular in scope. It referenced everything from punk to garage rock to indie pop to country and blues.

Heavy metal didn’t disappear; it just reconfigured itself . The more formidable acts ( Guns N’ Roses , Metallica , Aerosmith ) transcended fads, becoming stadium bands. Still, for the most part, rock fans diverted their attentions to grunge, with Nevermind and its follow-up, In Utero , serving as a gateway to other bands related to the scene: former labelmates Mudhoney, the metal-inspired Soundgarden , classic-rockers-in-the-making Pearl Jam and the gloomier Alice In Chains. Not to mention non-Seattle groups Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, and a pre-art rock Radiohead – all essentially distillations of the above.

Grunge was resoundingly male-dominated. Regardless, Hole (fronted by Cobain’s wife, Courtney Love, a provocateur with a propensity for stage-diving) managed to benefit greatly from grunge’s popularity. The group’s breakthrough album, the presciently named release Live Through This , dropped in 1994, a mere week after Cobain’s death. Celebrity Skin , its 1998 follow-up, ended up being their best-selling album.

Girls to the front

Most female-fronted rock bands didn’t chart as well, but they did deal in a cultural currency that produced a vibrant feminist-rock scene. Hole drew attention to Love’s contemporaries, including Bikini Kill, Babes In Toyland, Bratmobile, and, later, Sleater-Kinney. Then there was L7. All flying-V riffs, head-banging hair, and “screw you” lyrics, L7 (along with Mudhoney) helped pioneer grunge before grunge broke. And after it did, the group’s 1992 album, Bricks Are Heavy , won acclaim for skillfully toeing the line between the grunge, alternative, and riot grrrl worlds.

Towards the decade’s end, a rise of feminism (and female spending power) in 90s music would trickle up the pop charts. This led to an explosion of multi-platinum singer-songwriters: Sarah McLachlan, Alanis Morissette, Sheryl Crow , Lisa Loeb, Paula Cole, Fiona Apple, Jewel, and the lone woman of color, Tracy Chapman. All of the above (less Morissette) also appeared on the inaugural Lilith Fair tour, McLachlan’s answer to Lollapalooza . It became the best-selling touring festival of 1997.

Counterculture goes mainstream

The larger impact of grunge on 90s music was that it normalized what was once deemed countercultural. Suddenly, middle-of-the-road music listeners were nudged towards exploring what was once considered the domain of indie-music fans, who initially viewed these newcomers as interlopers. Sonic Youth – idols to countless punk bands, including Nirvana, who had opened for them in Europe just before Nevermind exploded – were finally getting radio and MTV airplay. Pixies and R.E.M. , already highly respected in the underground, also grew their fanbases, alongside like-minded newcomers such as Pavement, Elliott Smith , Weezer , and Beck .

Meanwhile, the louder alt.rock scene assumed the space left by heavy metal. Industrial music ’s Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson , rap-rock’s Rage Against the Machine and Faith No More, the funk-centric Red Hot Chili Peppers and Primus, as well as the transcendent rock of The Smashing Pumpkins and Jane’s Addiction – all capitalized on the new thirst for angst. In this new environment, even a reissue of “Mother,” by the dystopian goth-metal beast Glenn Danzig , became a hit. Perry Farrell, Jane’s Addiction’s eccentric frontman, became a nexus for this phenomenon in 90s music when he created the then-quixotic Lollapalooza festival (its name a Webster dictionary deep cut meaning “extraordinarily impressive”) in the auspicious year of 1991.

After a decade of jock-versus-nerd narratives, being weird became cool, with grunge’s influence permeating into the aesthetics of fashion. Movies such as Cameron Crowe’s Seattle-centric Singles, Ben Stiller’s Reality Bites, and Allan Moyle’s Empire Records jumped on board to celebrate the virtues of outsiders.

As the trajectory of 90 music continued to be reshaped by grunge, the genre itself began to peter out by the middle of the decade. Some influential bands struggled with catastrophic substance-abuse issues. Others felt a disenchantment with becoming part of the establishment they worked so hard to surmount. The progenitors that did survive – Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, for instance – switched up their sounds. The latter went a step further: they simply stopped the machine by refusing to make music videos. And in an even more gutsy move, Pearl Jam refused to work with the events behemoth Ticketmaster.

The rise of Britpop

In the UK, grunge’s chart-takeover of the early 90s created a backlash in the form of Britpop. It’s no coincidence that Blur’s second, sound-defining album was titled Modern Life Is Rubbish (or that its alternate title was Britain Versus America ). The Cool Britannia movement hearkened back to the 60s and the fertile music scene it cultivated, referencing music legends such as The Jam , The Kinks , and The Who.

Blur led the way for 90s music in the UK, albeit in fierce competition with their genre-defining peers Suede, whose just-as-buzzy self-titled debut emerged in 1993. By 1994, Blur had released the seminal Parklife and a whole scene corralled around it, yielding some exceptional albums: Pulp’s quick-witted Different Class , Elastica’s indie-cool self-titled LP, Supergrass’ gleefully pop I Should Coco , and new rivals Oasis’ no-frills rock Definitely Maybe. Bad blood between Blur and Oasis infamously underscored 1995’s Battle Of Britpop, an unofficial singles competition in which both groups released a track on the same day. A modern take on mods versus rockers, the press surrounding it was nothing short of dizzying, framing it as a tug-of-war between middle-class and working-class bands.

In the end, Blur’s “Country House” outsold Oasis’ “Roll With It.” But within a year, Oasis went on to achieve staggering international fame and even broke America, which eluded Blur. This culminated in two sold-out shows at Knebworth Park, resulting in England’s largest ever outdoor concert. It was a mixed bag: the event also marked the rapid decline of Britpop, which, like grunge, had reached saturation point. Death knell theories include: Oasis’ overexposure and in-band fighting; Blur making a lo-fi album; and even the Spice Girls co-opting and diluting a Brit-centric image for global fame.

Assuming the rock’n’roll mantle

Back in the US, post-grunge acts assumed rock’s mantle by pushing the genre towards a less destructive style of brooding through longhairs such as Collective Soul, Candlebox, Goo Goo Dolls, Creed, Silverchair, and Incubus. In retort (and due to angst fatigue), an assortment of colorful ska and pop-punk acts – No Doubt , Blink-182 , Green Day, and Rancid – jettisoned up the charts. Notably, the untimely death of singer Brad Nowell helped Sublime ’s self-titled album move more than five million CDs by the end of the decade. There was longevity in that bright sound, which ensured success for many of those bands into the next decade.

A technological shift

Going back to 1991, there was also one pivotal music-industry development, above and beyond grunge, that indelibly shifted music tastes for decades. This was the year that Billboard updated charts to reflect actual SoundScan sales figures. Up until that point, chart rankings were determined by the projections of record-store clerks and managers. Those “guesstimations” were frequently biased in genre and did not always reflect public consumption. Doing away with that almost immediately made the charts more genre-diverse.

Teen-pop confections , a resilient market draw, never went away. Fans of Backstreet Boys and NSYNC – and, later, Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera – continued to make a significant dent in sales. And the stalwart adult-contemporary demographic made megastars out of Kenny G, Whitney Houston, Michael Bolton, and Céline Dion. Then things got interesting.

Earthier offerings such as Hootie & The Blowfish and Blues Traveler seemed to suddenly pop up out of nowhere. The runaway success of Tejano legend Selena , once relegated to the Latin world, began to pop up on mainstream charts. And Garth Brooks became an unlikely bellwether of things to come. His 1991 album, Ropin’ The Wind , released mere months after the implementation of SoundScan, marked the first time a country artist had hit No.1 on the Billboard 200 album chart.

Newcomers Billy Ray Cyrus and Tim McGraw soon followed, as did a palpable uptick in the interest of established artists ( George Strait , Reba McEntire, Alan Jackson , Vince Gill, and Clint Black). And, in 1995, thanks to Shania Twain ’s massive, multi-platinum The Woman In Me , country-pop became its own female-fronted genre dominated also by Dixie Chicks, Faith Hill, and LeAnn Rimes.

Hip-hop gets soulful

But Billboard ’s new accounting actually had its greatest impact on R&B and hip-hop, revealing the two genres’ growing relationship with one another. The 90s kicked off with New Jack Swing in full effect, its most effective purveyors being Bell Biv DeVoe, Al B Sure, Keith Sweat, and Boys II Men. As New Jack Swing waned, R&B embraced a soul-and-groove sound typified by Janet Jackson , D’Angelo , Erykah Badu, Usher, Toni Braxton, and Mary J Blige .

But they had some competition. During the 90s, many rap acts were hitting not just the Hot 100 charts, but also Billboard ’s R&B charts. This was helped by singers such as Lauryn Hill and TLC, who integrated hip-hop into their sounds. In particular, Mariah Carey’s 1995 collaboration with Ol’ Dirty Bastard on “Fantasy” became a defining moment in this crossover period in 90s music.

Hip-hop had become so pervasive because it was so dynamic; its growth spurt precipitated an intriguing assortment of subgenres. Public Enemy , Queen Latifah, Arrested Development , A Tribe Called Quest, Cypress Hill, and OutKast were waxing intellectually on social issues. And Public Enemy got alternative music’s seal of approval with Chuck D’s cameo on Sonic Youth’s “Kool Thing.” Some rappers, such as Salt-N-Pepa , MC Hammer, Coolio, Will Smith, and, later, Missy Elliot, focused on cutting anthemic jams primed for the pop charts. Others were grabbing the masses by the jugular.

When hip-hop took over

The decade started with gangsta-rap frenemies Ice Cube and Eazy-E forging their own paths, with former NWA bandmate Dr. Dre innovating G-Funk through his monumental 1992 release, The Chronic. This evolved into an epic East Coast-West Coast feud (essentially, Bad Boy Records vs Death Row Records), during which time Warren G and Nate Dogg, Puff Daddy, Jay Z, Nas, Wu-Tang Clan, Busta Rhymes, Snoop Dogg , and Eminem all found fame. In fact, the latter’s Doggystyle became the first time an artist’s first album debuted at No.1. After the deaths of The Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac , Nation Of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan held a peace summit in 1997, which ended in Cube and Common hugging it out.

Rap was little more peaceful and a lot more profitable after that. This watershed event in 90s music even primed the genre for the absolute dominance that we see today: a hip hop-led soundscape that’s a mash-up of rock, pop, and R&B. It isn’t one thing; it’s everything. And maybe that’s the true legacy of 90s music.

One-hit wonders

One last thing… As with any decade, there was also a treasure trove of one-hit wonders that arrived and slipped from the charts (at least) without a trace. Bookending the decade, you have Sinéad O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” in 1990 and Lou Bega’s 1999 smash “Mambo No. 5.” The two seemingly have little in common except large sources of outside inspiration. O’Connor’s song is arguably one of the best ever Prince covers, while Bega’s tune sampled Latin music legend Perez Prado. And no survey of 90s music would be complete without a collection of 1997 gems: Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn,” Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” (the “I get knocked down” song), and Hanson’s “MMMBop.” All of them may have been released in a single year, but they’ve endured far longer. – Sam Armstrong

Listen to our 90s Music playlist here .

June 1, 2018 at 12:37 pm

This article brought back a flood of memories. What a wonderful period of music where every genre was appreciated by all. You did so happe to however leave out the band that may have most summed up the 90’s the most “Gin Blossom.” Well written article nonetheless.

December 20, 2018 at 6:25 pm

Micheal Afton

May 20, 2020 at 2:52 pm

I like music it brought me back the cars.

June 10, 2019 at 9:22 am

Fucking millennials ‍♀️

May 20, 2020 at 2:50 pm

I like the 90s music

August 21, 2020 at 12:15 pm

Although Grunge initially set out with good intent was too close to heavy metal and dad rock that it ruined music. If you wanted to go to a club where they might play Sonic Youth, Pavement, The Breeders, PJ Harvey etc. you had to sit and wait for headbangers to get their rocks off to Metallica, Iron Maiden and ACDC, not before the tepid middle of the roaders got their chance to dance to Counting Crows, Alanis Morrisette, Green Day, and Collective Soul. Because there was a prevailing belief was that ALL guitar driven music was ”Alternative” and thus listened to by like minded people, which wasn’t the case at all. This is why I opted out and went to dance / rave clubs instead. I didn’t even like that type of music and the ”peace, love and unity” motto was phony as hell but at least there were better looking people.

Johnny Jensen

April 24, 2022 at 4:04 pm

My decade are the 90’s, no doubt about that.

But it hurts my feelings that you have left out a whole category of music which had its birth in the last half of the 80’s with groups like M.A.A.R.S, Westbam & Technotronic.

The whole Eurodance scene was practically the predecessor to what we today know as Goa, Trance, Progressive, Industrial etc. etc.

Richard Reast

May 27, 2022 at 7:13 am

Where is trip hop in all of this. No mention of Portishead, Tricky, Morcheeba or for that matter Bjork. Where also is shoegazing or did you lump that in with grunge? Ride, Lush, My Bloody Valentine.

March 18, 2023 at 9:07 am

Is it POSSSIBLE, when mentioning female artists, you didn’t mention Cranberries, Garbage, Republica, Skunk Anansie or Guano Apes?!

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Music Throughout The ages

Just another weblog, music of the 90’s.

The 90’s was an era filled with all different genre’s of music. The early 90’s were dominated by Techno, and Hip-Hop. Night clubs, and bars blasted Techno, or house music through their speakers and listeners could get down and let go of their worries.

Hip-Hop was huge as well in the 90’s. Artists such as Ice Cube, Ice T, 2Pac, De La Soul, and Geto Boys ruled the sound waves with original hits throughout the 90’s. Ice T, from Newark, NJ was insanely successful in the 1990’s with albums such as “O.G. Original Gangster” and “Home Invasion” blasted off his career in the late 1980’s and continued to rule the Hip-Hop Scene. Ice T still makes a whopping $4,848,00.00 per year, leaving his net worth at $40 million dollars.

By the late 1990’s new forms of more Pop like songs began to get more and more popular. Bands like the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync began to rise. Teen girls across the world “fangirled” over boybands. Bands like these remained popular throughout the 90’s and the following 2000’s.

4 thoughts on “ Music of the 90’s ”

It is fascinating how culture has changed throughout the decades. This is very evident in music with polar different styles surfacing in different eras. The 90s was especially diverse which you made clear in your post. There is nothing like listening to some relatively throwback hits from the 90s.

I think that looking back at trends in music is really interesting because a lot of times, there are many different genres falling in and out of favor at the same time. I like how you made an effort to cover a little bit about each of the prominent genres and acknowledged that no decade has just one popular genre, since each has a different demographic. If you’re going with this idea of covering popular genres in a decade, I think you could also tie it to whatever was going on politically or socially at the time, since those things have traditionally had a big impact on music. Good job!

This post really interested me because even though I knew some of those rappers and that this was a common style in the 90’s as well as groups like the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync, I never juxtaposed them together. But, woah those are extremely different! The 90’s was definitely a time for musical experimentation, and I wonder if that was the segway to modern day where we accept all different genres and styles. Nice job!

As someone who isn’t that “into” music, except for the small spectrum that I listen to, its always good to be reminded of these trends through time. It’s so amazing to see how quickly music has changed in the previous 20 years due to the technology we’re around.

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60 SONGS THAT EXPLAIN THE '90S

by Rob Harvilla ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 14, 2023

A personal ’90s music overview that is far from definitive, but nevertheless instructive and often poignant.

An oddly entertaining collection of essays that covers more than 100 songs but doesn’t really explain the decade that created them—which may be beside the point.

A senior staff writer at the Ringer , Harvilla adapts this book from his podcast of the same name, in which he outlines the importance of a song from the 1990s and then discusses it with a guest. The adaptation can be clunky, as the author looks for writing conventions to group often disparate songs and artists together under themes like “Chaos Agents,” “Villains + Adversaries,” and “Romance + Sex + Immaturity.” The way he switches gears from rapturous praise of Celine Dion to the misheard lyrics of Hole’s “Doll Parts” is as jarring as riding with a teenager driving a stick shift for the first time. Harvilla deftly moves from explaining a song’s backstory to how it connects to him or the music of the time. However, he rarely connects a song to the outside world, which may be by design. He purposefully removes Whitney Houston’s “I Will Always Love You” from everything that came after its stunning success. “What I’m saying is that sometimes you gotta let the singer be the singer and let the song be the song, and not hold its former culture-throttling ubiquity against it, nor hold its long-term unbearable biographical baggage against it,” he writes. “Empty your mind of all unpleasant and unnecessary context.” That approach doesn’t help to explain the ’90s—musically or historically—despite what the title promises. It can be forgiven, though, because Harvilla successfully captures what the ’90s felt like through his personal stories’ intriguing observations—e.g., “paging through somebody’s CD book was…like drinking beer out of someone else’s mouth.”

Pub Date: Nov. 14, 2023

ISBN: 9781538759462

Page Count: 288

Publisher: Twelve

Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2023

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2023

ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | GENERAL NONFICTION

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New York Times Bestseller

by Stephanie Johnson & Brandon Stanton illustrated by Henry Sene Yee ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 12, 2022

A blissfully vicarious, heartfelt glimpse into the life of a Manhattan burlesque dancer.

A former New York City dancer reflects on her zesty heyday in the 1970s.

Discovered on a Manhattan street in 2020 and introduced on Stanton’s Humans of New York Instagram page, Johnson, then 76, shares her dynamic history as a “fiercely independent” Black burlesque dancer who used the stage name Tanqueray and became a celebrated fixture in midtown adult theaters. “I was the only black girl making white girl money,” she boasts, telling a vibrant story about sex and struggle in a bygone era. Frank and unapologetic, Johnson vividly captures aspects of her former life as a stage seductress shimmying to blues tracks during 18-minute sets or sewing lingerie for plus-sized dancers. Though her work was far from the Broadway shows she dreamed about, it eventually became all about the nightly hustle to simply survive. Her anecdotes are humorous, heartfelt, and supremely captivating, recounted with the passion of a true survivor and the acerbic wit of a weathered, street-wise New Yorker. She shares stories of growing up in an abusive household in Albany in the 1940s, a teenage pregnancy, and prison time for robbery as nonchalantly as she recalls selling rhinestone G-strings to prostitutes to make them sparkle in the headlights of passing cars. Complemented by an array of revealing personal photographs, the narrative alternates between heartfelt nostalgia about the seedier side of Manhattan’s go-go scene and funny quips about her unconventional stage performances. Encounters with a variety of hardworking dancers, drag queens, and pimps, plus an account of the complexities of a first love with a drug-addled hustler, fill out the memoir with personality and candor. With a narrative assist from Stanton, the result is a consistently titillating and often moving story of human struggle as well as an insider glimpse into the days when Times Square was considered the Big Apple’s gloriously unpolished underbelly. The book also includes Yee’s lush watercolor illustrations.

Pub Date: July 12, 2022

ISBN: 978-1-250-27827-2

Page Count: 192

Publisher: St. Martin's

Review Posted Online: July 27, 2022

BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | ENTERTAINMENT, SPORTS & CELEBRITY | GENERAL BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR

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by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton photographed by Brandon Stanton

by Brandon Stanton ; photographed by Brandon Stanton

LOVE, PAMELA

by Pamela Anderson ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 31, 2023

A juicy story with some truly crazy moments, yet Anderson's good heart shines through.

The iconic model tells the story of her eventful life.

According to the acknowledgments, this memoir started as "a fifty-page poem and then grew into hundreds of pages of…more poetry." Readers will be glad that Anderson eventually turned to writing prose, since the well-told anecdotes and memorable character sketches are what make it a page-turner. The poetry (more accurately described as italicized notes-to-self with line breaks) remains strewn liberally through the pages, often summarizing the takeaway or the emotional impact of the events described: "I was / and still am / an exceptionally / easy target. / And, / I'm proud of that ." This way of expressing herself is part of who she is, formed partly by her passion for Anaïs Nin and other writers; she is a serious maven of literature and the arts. The narrative gets off to a good start with Anderson’s nostalgic memories of her childhood in coastal Vancouver, raised by very young, very wild, and not very competent parents. Here and throughout the book, the author displays a remarkable lack of anger. She has faced abuse and mistreatment of many kinds over the decades, but she touches on the most appalling passages lightly—though not so lightly you don't feel the torment of the media attention on the events leading up to her divorce from Tommy Lee. Her trip to the pages of Playboy , which involved an escape from a violent fiance and sneaking across the border, is one of many jaw-dropping stories. In one interesting passage, Julian Assange's mother counsels Anderson to desexualize her image in order to be taken more seriously as an activist. She decided that “it was too late to turn back now”—that sexy is an inalienable part of who she is. Throughout her account of this kooky, messed-up, enviable, and often thrilling life, her humility (her sons "are true miracles, considering the gene pool") never fails her.

Pub Date: Jan. 31, 2023

ISBN: 9780063226562

Page Count: 256

Publisher: Dey Street/HarperCollins

Review Posted Online: Dec. 5, 2022

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023

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The evolution of R&B: from the 90s to now

R &B, along with hip-hop, are arguably the two biggest genres of contemporary mainstream music. Nowadays they are arguably interchangeable. Their rise to becoming the most popular genres amongst our generation is an almost 50-year journey beginning in the 90s and culminating with the stardom now enjoyed by prominent R&B artists, such as Lizzo and The Weeknd.

30 years ago, 1990 was a major turning point for R&B. The R&B singles chart in America became known as ‘Hot R&B singles’ in October of that year, after eight years of being called the ‘Hot Black Singles’. The significance and root of this racial label is clear; R&B was considered a genre listened to specifically by black people. R&B’s transcendence beyond racial lines in the present shows that there has been a clear, and much welcomed, shift in the way in which society tries to label everything.

At the beginning of the 90s, R&B was heavily infused in the sub-genre of new jack swing: an amalgamation of 80s R&B and hip-hop production techniques. Examples of new jack swing songs from this time are Michael Jackson’s ‘Remember the Time’ and Whitney Houston’s ‘I’m Your Baby Tonight’.

R&B traded in the slow-jams and chill vibes of the late 90s for funkier and more upbeat sounds with faster tempos

In 1995, Mariah Carey, who was the most popular mainstream singer of the time thanks to her pop ballads, gained more creative control over her artistry and opted to produce more R&B orientated music. The executives at her record company were very wary of her transitioning into full on R&B as it wasn’t considered commercially bankable at the time. When she revealed she wanted to include rapper Ol’ Dirty Bastard on the lead single for her album that year, they thought she was deluded to believe people would enjoy an R&B/hip-hop hybrid song. The single, ‘Fantasy’, made her the first ever woman to debut at the top of the charts and she stayed there for eight weeks. Her gamble paid off and ushered in a new era for R&B, the hip-pop hybrid, that went on to influence other famous songs featuring both R&B singers and rappers such as ‘Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems’ by The Notorious B.I.G., and ‘Crazy in Love’ by Beyoncé and Jay-Z.

At the beginning of the 00s, R&B traded in the slow-jams and chill vibes of the late 90s for funkier and more upbeat sounds with faster tempos. Some 90s artists like Aaliyah and Mariah Carey were able to embrace the change for a new era that kicked off with dance infused R&B tracks like Ciara with ‘1, 2 Step’, and Chris Brown with ‘Run It!’. The new century also saw the debut of Rihanna, who emulated the dance infused R&B genre with songs such as ‘Pon de Replay’, but later on experimented with more genre-bending R&B songs such as ‘California King Bed’ and ‘What’s My Name?’.

Beyoncé is still an R&B artist, albeit one who has mastered the art of genre-fluidity

It was the 10s that marked the advent of classic R&B’s death. Up until this point, R&B had evolved drastically but there was still a common sound connecting all these different eras and movements. 00s artists such as Justin Timberlake and Alicia Keys were still able to top the charts at this time with hits such as ‘Suit & Tie’ and ‘Girl on Fire’ respectively. The beginning of this decade saw the last days of classic R&B artists, whilst the rest of the decade saw R&B become a genre of many different faces and sounds.

An artist who has survived many different eras of R&B is Beyoncé. She comes from the hip-pop era of the late 90s and has successfully experimented in many different forms of the genre. In 2018, with husband Jay-Z, she released a collaborative album, Everything is Love . The album’s lead single, ‘Apeshit’, sees Beyoncé, famous for her pioneering sounds in R&B, deliver a flawless performance in what can only be described as a trap song. Despite this transition into pure hip-hop, Beyoncé is still an R&B artist, albeit one who has mastered the art of genre-fluidity.

R&B over the past 30 years has evolved, from what was originally a genre of rigid conformity, guidelines and tropes, into a style of music permeated by different sounds and explored by artists such as Frank Ocean, with sometimes experimental R&B, and SZA, who has at times incorporated more traditional neo-soul sounds. It is a genre now only defined by the artist’s intentions and creativity rather than their colour or a specific sound.

Comments (1)

I remember watching this video on MTV for the first time in the 90s. Never thought it would become such a classic. In fact, all Mariah’s big songs became classic.

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The 1990s: When Technology Upended Our World

By: Tiffanie Darke

Updated: October 3, 2023 | Original: June 22, 2018

If you were to pick the one, singular, culture-defining moment from the ’90s—a decade that gave us so many—you’d be hard pressed to beat Bill Clinton – Monica Lewinsky affair. Even now, in our current climate of oversharing and punch-drunk numbness to the spewing of digital media, the Lewinsky affair still seems incredible in the excruciating level of its detail. That that detail should eventually bring down a president was an unprecedented moment in American politics. There has been endless analysis of how it all happened, but essentially, you can blame it on technology.

The ’90s was a decade of enormous disruption, the axis on which the old world ended and a new one began. Often a vehicle for affectionate nostalgia among Generation Xers, this is a gross underestimation of the decade. The ’90s was not just a decade that gave us Kurt Cobain and “The Simpsons.” Its political events were deeply transformative, and the thread that ran through them all was technology.

Speaking to those who lived through some of its most compelling moments, “The Untold Story of the 90s” makes a compelling case for a decade that saw the changing of the Western order. As Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida tells it, “That period of the ’90s from the fall of the Berlin wall to 9/11 was one of extraordinary transformation societally, economically and in our politics. A lot of the roots of the things we are facing today came from that period.”

The growing power of the Internet , the scrutiny of an ever more powerful press, the rise of entertainment culture in politics and the advance of technology in collecting DNA evidence all came together in 1998. Clinton’s affair struck at just the moment when technology, science, the press and popular culture met. Rumors of the Lewinsky affair first surfaced on the Drudge Report, at that time an insignificant politics blog.

“Bloggers used to be ridiculed as guys working in their pajamas out their basements, but what really changed that perception was the Drudge Report,” says Dana Perino, who served as White House press secretary between 2007 and 2009. “It had an edginess to it, and a little bit of opinion. The Drudge Report absolutely changed things for news coverage and politics in particular.”

Traditional media relied on phalanxes of editors and lawyers, but bloggers—they could just post and be damned. Once the information was out, it was out, and there was—and still is—no comeback. Thinking he could face this one down, Clinton uttered those memorable words that would ultimately bring him down. The Internet hummed with rumor and speculation, the newly born cable channels were competing for ratings and coverage was 24/7.

By now even “Saturday Night Live” was running an investigation. The presidency was reduced to a conversation around blowjobs and cigar dildos.

And then investigators found DNA evidence on a blue dress . An independent investigator was appointed to ascertain whether the president had lied. Eleven months and acres of media coverage later, both parties were left shamed and broken.

To illustrate the series of events that signaled the power shift, the film begins with the fall of the Berlin Wall .

The manner of its disintegration was an accident of human judgement , as Mary Sarotte, Kravis Distinguished Professor of Historical Studies at Johns Hopkins University, explains.

Events were spurred to unravel when a policy wonk droning on in a press conference misspeaks. Journalists reported the story on their cable channels within minutes, and by the time the hour was up, East and West Berliners were hammering on the gates—thanks to new media, the flow of information crossed borders, and both sides now understood the wall was open, even while the policy wonk was still droning on.

Next up came the world’s first televised war—one that was broadcast in real time, on a 24-hour news cycle. CNN reporters embedded in Baghdad and on the Kuwaiti border were providing the White House with more information than it was getting from its own generals.

Back in the U.S., the beating of Rodney King by white police officers, filmed on a video camera by a bystander, showed the world the reality of the treatment black people endured at the hands of a white police force. “The Rodney King tape was the beginning of what we see today—now that everyone has a cell phone,” says Julián Castro, former secretary of Housing and Urban Development.

That tape, replayed on news media, triggered a social crisis where policing and justice no longer had legitimacy. When the fires of Los Angeles stopped burning, a new generation of voters needed change. They wanted a different kind of authority, a different kind of president. One who spoke their language and understood their culture.

Bill Clinton, who had run an unpromising campaign up to this point, changed tack, and met the people where the people were: on late-night TV. He appeared on “The Arsenio Hall Show,” and instead of speaking policy, he played his saxophone. Everything changed. Yeah, he smoked (but he didn’t inhale). MTV became a legitimate media outlet for his messages and Generation X and the Baby Boomers got it. The World War 2 generation didn’t—but they no longer mattered. The generation whose world view had been defined by the Cold War, an us-and-them protectionism and a conservative pride had had their day. President George Bush was out, Clinton was in and the ’90s were on their way.

The technological revolution—so far powered by satellite TV and 24-hour news reporting—was about to take a major injection from the Internet. Yes, it was to wreak havoc, but it was also to deliver real beneficial change. Netscape, the Mosaic consumer-facing Internet browser, opened up the web to the entire world. Everyone could access each other now, they could share information and collapse time and distance.

Communities and causes had a channel. When a young gay man named Matthew Shepard was brutally beaten , burned and strung up on a fence left for dead, the Internet surfaced the story. The gay community finally had a way to talk.

As Jon Barrett, former editor-in-chief of The Advocate says, “Up until the internet we often didn’t hear what was going on in the gay community. You had a sense that there were people out there like you, but you may not be able to find them. I didn’t come out until I had access to AOL.” Gay hate crimes were at peak levels back then—in 1998, 1000 were reported, and many more went unreported.

“In times of struggle there are often defining moments that help the broader community see how wrong their actions have been,” says Sen. Chris Coons of Delaware. Matthew Shepard’s death was one of those moments. John Aravosis, a journalist, activist and politician, posted news of the murder on his blog at the time.

“It was amazing how much the crime touched people, but also the sense of community this website gave people,” he says. “People found other people they could commune with. We came up with these ideas of candlelit vigils, 77 happened simultaneously. Having these vigils in each town created local news too. It raised awareness to a new level that empowered and encouraged people to come out and fight.”

The great social liberalization of the ’90s is no better expressed than in the change that was wrought around gay rights. As Matthew’s mother, Judy Shepard, says: “A whole generation of advocates and activists were born in that moment.” The emergence of gay marriage and gay rights as a mainstream idea was one of the ’90s finest moments. “And it happened with lightning speed,” says professor of history Gil Troy of McGill University. “It was about culture and much more about technology.”

“You felt in the ’90s you were in the midst of this tech explosion. There was a lot that was good about that, but we also lost something,” says Castro.

Few felt this more painfully—or still feels this—as much as business. Shawn Fanning, the college student who founded Napster, set it in motion. Fanning’s breakthrough idea signaled the end of the analog world. Inventing a way for users to download music files for free, Napster was responsible for the greatest transfer of intellectual property in history. It was the beginning of free. The music industry didn’t like it one little bit, but once the genie was out, it could not be returned.

“Napster felt like this magical amazing thing—like why doesn’t music work like this? It was like the Internet should enable things like this,” says Jonah Peretti, the digital founder behind HuffPost and BuzzFeed.

Not realizing this was a terminal situation, the industry fought back—namely in the shape of the band Metallica, which filed a lawsuit and triggered a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing. The testimony of a young Gene Kan, an anonymous developer at Gnutella (a platform offering a similar service to Napster), proved very prescient that day in June 2001. “The benefits of digital downloadable media are infinite,” he told the committee. “20m Napster users can’t be wrong. 20m today—100m tomorrow. Technology moves forward and leaves the stragglers behind. The adopters always win, and the stalwarts always lose. Mechanized farming is a good example. You don’t see anyone out there with a horse and plow these days. The Internet touches everyone and everything. Everyone must adapt, business and intellectual property owners are not excluded.”

In the end Napster was ahead of its time, and the Senate ruled that it be shut down . But Napster was the canary in the coal mine for all media, and a new paradigm had been set.

“It was incredible how many years it took after Napster was shut down to get back to something that was even half as good as Napster,” says Peretti. “We’ve got closer to it now with paid models like Spotify. Napster pointed to the way the world could work, the Internet could work.”

Politics was also experiencing its own disruption: The Florida recount in the 2000 Bush–Gore presidential deadlock defined how divided a nation America had become. But it also had an even more pernicious effect. Days of uncertainty revolving around the unlikely “hanging chads” stalled a resolution. The election mechanisms—yet another institution—had failed.

The Supreme Court was called in to decide, divisively overruling the recount. This threw into doubt any idea that the system was one of fairness and justice, forcing both sides to entrench themselves further.

The fallout of that is a matter of deep discussion today, but this was the moment it all began.

“In the 1990s, with all the cynicism in the media, with all the individuation in the Internet, [something happens],” says Troy, the history professor. “When I go to the Internet I go deeper and deeper into my right-wing rabbit hole, I go deeper and deeper in my left-wing rabbit hole. And so the Internet—which becomes the world’s greatest organizing tool, and the world’s greatest community-building tool—could also be the world’s, and America’s, most polarizing tool.”

Technology had one more killer blow to deliver. The Internet also helped usher in the unseen ascent of a global terror network that was to scorch itself onto the world’s conscience on the morning of September 11, 2001 . The ’90s were over and a new decade—with a new set of problems—was beginning.

Hear from the people quoted in this story by watching “The Untold Story of the 90s.”

Tiffanie Darke is author of Now we Are 40, Whatever Happened to Generation X?   (HarperCollins ). Follow her on Twitter @tiffaniedarke.

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The Messed Up Truth About The 1990s Music Industry

If you were around in the '90s (or, alternatively, if your parents were), then you probably have some warm and fuzzy feelings about the music of that era. (Most of it, anyway — the decade did seem to have a disproportionate number of massively annoying smash hits .) To be sure, lots of great, iconic music came out of the rap, grunge, and EDM genres, and the perpetual mixed bag of pop wasn't really any heavier on the schlock than any other decade.

'90s music, though, suffered from the same major problem as the music of every other era: the actual music industry. Yes, the '90s were a time of great change and upheaval not just for a number of genres, but for the industry itself: CDs quickly became the dominant format only to be promptly challenged by the rise of digital music, and the role of music videos in promotion changed drastically, for example. But the shady business practices and cash-driven approach to decision-making that defined the industry in previous decades remained firmly in place, and in many ways, the '90s were the sketchiest decade to that point to be a professional musician — or a fan. Here are the most messed-up aspects of the '90s music industry.

The biggest concert ticket outlet went to war with the biggest band

Avid concertgoers have found their hobby getting more and more expensive for decades, and the trend toward more pricey concert tickets began in earnest in the early '90s. According to the Los Angeles Times , it was then that the country's biggest ticket seller, Ticketmaster, acquired its biggest competitor, Ticketron, which enabled it to ramp up a practice that music fans already weren't too keen on: Charging hidden "service fees" that, depending on the ticket price set by the venues, could increase the cost of a ticket by 50% or more.

Fortunately for the fans, the Justice Department — concerned about Ticketmaster's all-but-cornering of the market — approached the biggest rock band on the planet at the time, Pearl Jam, about a possible counter-offensive (via Rolling Stone ). In 1994, at the DOJ's urging, Pearl Jam cut ties with the ticket giant, filed a formal complaint with the DOJ, and mounted their own darned tour, demanding that venues charge only an $18 flat fee and a reasonable $1.80 service charge. Yay! Ticketmaster backed right down, and — oh no, wait. While the ticket behemoth did trim some of its more exorbitant fees, the antitrust probe against it was thrown out, and Pearl Jam's DIY tour collapsed amid logistical difficulties, as also reported by the Los Angeles Times . Welp, all's well that ends well — except this didn't, and to this day, the practice of tacking hidden fees onto concert tickets continues largely unchecked.

One court ruling changed rap music forever

The controversy around sampling is nearly as old as rap music itself, as that genre was created by wildly inventive inner-city youths with easier access to turntables and records than guitars and drums. Today, the art of constructing compositions out of carefully curated, often heavily processed pieces of other compositions is recognized as just that, an art form — but in the '80s and '90s, many of the sampled artists who unwittingly contributed to rap's growth viewed it as simple theft. Of course, with no legal precedent to refer to, lawsuits over sampling mostly (with some notable exceptions involving out-of-court settlements) went nowhere — until 1991, when that precedent was established by Judge Kevin Duffy, according to NPR .

The issue before Duffy: The late, great Biz Markie's tune "Alone Again," which prominently sampled singer-slash-songwriter Gilbert O'Sullivan's 1972 hit "Alone Again (Naturally)." In this case, there would be no settlement, and the decision handed down by Duffy was as astonishing as it was far-reaching. He ordered Biz to pay a cool quarter-million dollars, barred his label from continuing to sell the album on which the song was featured, and recommended that Biz be tried in  criminal court for theft (no, really). That never happened, but as noted by Pitchfork , the decision effectively kneecapped all but those artists who could afford to pay to clear samples with the original artists — a situation which has dictated how rap artists practice their craft for the last three-plus decades.

The consolidation of radio stations killed diversity on the airwaves

If you listened to a lot of radio in the mid-to-late '90s, you may have noticed a slight change to your favorite station's playlists. That is, they began to shrink until they seemed to only play the same 20 or so songs over and over again. You may have also heard said station begin referring to something called "Clear Channel," which was a media conglomerate that once owned a few dozen stations, because that's all it legally  could  own. But, as noted by LA Times reporter Jeff Leeds (via PBS ), that all changed in 1996, when the broadcast lobby successfully implored Congress to help the struggling radio industry by removing that cap. Overnight, instead of a hard limit of 40 stations, a huge company could buy as many stations as it wanted — and, also seemingly overnight, Clear Channel bought up roughly all of them.

With one conglomerate in control of all those playlists, the effect was noticeable and immediate. If you weren't listening to those same 20 songs on a Clear Channel station, you were probably listening to a slightly more diverse "JACK" station owned by Canadian conglomerate SparkNet Communications (via Radio Today ), and neither were exactly kind to smaller artists or subgenres. Perhaps ironically, the advent of streaming in recent years has put Clear Channel (rebranded as the slightly friendlier-sounding iHeart Radio) on the financial ropes, according to Texas Monthly — but you still can't find much diversity on the radio to this day, and that one act of Congress in 1996 is why.

MTV went from playing everything to playing nothing

It's impossible to describe the impact MTV had from the day it showed up on your local cable carrier — on music, on television, on the radio, and on pretty much everything else. The channel launched on August 1, 1981, and while it took a bit for it to spread to all of the major markets, its power to break artists nobody had ever heard of — artists like Wall of Voodoo, The Tubes, and Culture Club — and turn them into overnight sensations soon became undeniable. Later in the decade, MTV helped facilitate the advent of rap, and in the early '90s, it did the same for grunge ... but around that same time, a noticeable shift started to happen.

Beginning with the reality series "The Real World" (the first non-scripted reality show ever, according to CNET ), MTV began to focus more on increasingly weird reality offerings, and much less on music, which was, you know, the "M" part of its name. By the end of the '90s, reality-slash-competition shows like " Lip Service " and " Road Rules ," along with straight-up reality series like " True Life " and " FANatic ," had muscled their way into more and more of the network's programming, and by the middle of the next decade, music had all but disappeared from the rotation . Speaking with CNET in 2011, former VJ Adam Curry explained the reason for the change, which should surprise no one: "It was the best business decision they ever made." At that time, according to Curry, MTV was raking in $4 billion per year — great for MTV, not so great for musicians and their fans.

The '80s obsession with music censorship continued to affect the industry

It might sound odd if you weren't around, but there was a time in the mid-'80s when the government decided to go to war with music — specifically, with lyrics that were deemed by a bunch of senators' wives to be inappropriate. Their organization, the "Parents' Music Resource Center" or PMRC, is the one responsible for those "Parental Advisory — Explicit Lyrics" stickers that are probably featured on all of your old CDs, and the damage it did to freedom of expression continued to have a dramatic effect in the '90s.

For one thing, censorship likely played a role in MTV's transformation. According to the National Coalition Against Censorship , between 1984 and 1994, the number of videos the network was forced to edit due to content rose from one in 10 to one in three, which really sounds like a hassle for everyone involved. For another thing, that Parental Advisory sticker had an immense chilling effect. As outlined in a scholarly paper by Shoshana Samole for the University of Miami (we're all scholars here), Wal-Mart — the nation's largest retailer — refused to carry any release carrying it, a practice that continues to this day. On the bright side, all the hostility toward anything remotely badass forced '90s artists and their mix engineers to master the "clean version" — alternate versions of songs featuring scrubbed-clean lyrics (via NPR ) — and who doesn't love those? (Hint: Nobody. Nobody loves those.)

The biggest music festival of the decade was an utter disaster

The '90s were generally a pretty sweet decade for music festivals; it's the decade in which Lollapalooza and Vans Warped Tour were born, and in '94, one of the biggest festivals in history — Woodstock, which took place in 1969 — got a pretty successful reboot. To close out the decade and the millennium, a group of intrepid organizers including veteran promoter John Scher (via the Washington Post ) decided to once more capitalize on a name synonymous with peace, love, and all that mushy stuff to stage what was then one of the biggest festivals in history: Woodstock '99. It did not go well.

A combination of poor planning, virtually non-existent crowd control, blazing hundred-degree heat, and a lack of water and shelter combined to turn the event into a powder keg packed with over 200,000 extremely annoyed people. According to SFGate , some of the artists themselves assisted in driving the event toward complete chaos: Those lovable rascals Insane Clown Posse tossed hundred dollar bills into the crowd to predictable effect, that wily scamp Kid Rock demanded that festivalgoers pelt the stage with overpriced water bottles, and that jolly idiot Fred Durst of Limp Bizkit all but openly encouraged a stampede. When it was all over, the festival made headlines for all the wrong reasons ... namely arson, looting, vandalism, and dozens of hospitalized fans. Said Scher in the aftermath, "I'm bummed big time." Eloquent in its brevity.

Rap went from counterculture to mainstream

The period from 1986 to 1993, give or take a year or so on either side, is often referred to as the "Golden Age of Rap." During this time, the genre went from a borderline-novelty regional thing to a worldwide phenomenon exploding with innovation and creativity, a status it has retained to this day. Psych! Unfortunately, beginning in the mid-'90s, rap inexplicably went from lyrical and political to simplistic and gangster-y (some outliers, like Eminem and OutKast, notwithstanding), and today, it can seem like an impossible task to cut through the mumbly, clunky clutter to find what good stuff remains. The reason for the change? Well, it probably has to do with money, as the genre is more popular than ever — and if one legendary essay published online in 2012 is to be believed, it's even more nefarious than that (via Business Insider ).

In it, an anonymous "decision maker" within the music industry describes a secret meeting of bigwigs he attended in the mid-'90s, where representatives of the private prison industry were in attendance. Their job, they said, was to keep those prisons filled — and those in the rap biz were being enlisted to help, by way of pushing violent, druggy content in lyrics. Our anonymous hero was horrified, shortly thereafter leaving the industry and watching in dismay as the plan came to fruition. Now, this probably isn't exactly true — but the fact that it's even remotely plausible speaks volumes about rap's astonishing metamorphosis, and the bizarre quickness with which it happened.

Many of the decade's top-selling artists went broke

It's no secret that the music business isn't exactly the least shady of industries, and there have always been managers, promoters, and executives more than willing to take advantage of hot artists to their own ends. But some of the more ultra-shady practices, as outlined by legendary producer Steve Albini in his essay "The Problem With Music," really came into vogue in the '80s and '90s — notably, the practice of throwing absurd amounts of money at new signees, only to forcibly recoup all those Benjamins for stuff like studio time and promotional expenses. This resulted in '90s icons like Toni Braxton (via BBC ) and Hole front woman Courtney Love (via The Fix ) going broke, sometimes filing multiple bankruptcies — and perhaps nobody got shafted harder than TLC.

Despite selling more records than any girl group in history other than the Supremes, TLC endured financial hardships even at the height of their fame as a result of poor management and wack contracts. As reported by Beat , all three members filed for bankruptcy on July 3, 1995 — at the exact moment their hit single "Waterfalls" was screaming toward the top of the Billboard chart . A decade and a half later, in 2011, that same publication was reporting that lead singer Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins was filing for bankruptcy again — for the second time that year. Unfortunately, the practice of artist-shafting has only gotten worse with the advent of streaming, as — according to Digital Music News — today's hot artists typically earn jaw-droppingly little for racking up millions of streams.

The exploitation of young stars was horrifying

It's pretty common knowledge that many of the Disney Channel's stars of the early '90s became the massive pop stars of the late '90s — think Justin Timberlake, Britney Spears, and Christina Aguilera. Of course, some of these — like Spears, for instance — became the cautionary tales of the '00s, unprepared as they were for the ridiculous level of fame they were thrust into. As pointed out by Complex , for every former child star of the '90s who successfully made the transition to adult stardom, there seems to be a dozen (Lindsay Lohan, Amanda Bynes, Demi Lovato, Justin Bieber, and on and on) who struggled mightily.

If there's one individual who exemplified the decade's seeming ultra-willingness to chew up and spit out young stars, it would be Lou Pearlman, the infamous former manager for the Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC, among others. As outlined by In Touch Weekly , Pearlman's abuses were myriad, from the financial (he pocketed the vast majority of the Backstreet Boys' earnings during the height of their fame, to name one example) to the allegedly sexual. Said former LFO singer Rich Cronin, one of Pearlman's young charges, "Honestly, I don't think Lou ever thought we would become stars ... I just think he wanted cute guys around him; this was all an excuse. And then lightning crazily struck and an empire was created. It was all dumb luck." Perhaps, but the $300 million Ponzi scheme Pearlman was running during his rise certainly wasn't (via Washington Post ); he was charged with financial crimes and sentenced to prison in 2008, where he died eight years later (via ABC News ).

A few Swedish songwriters and producers rose to dominate pop

Sweden has a long tradition of involvement on the global pop scene; just look at ABBA, Ace of Base, and The Hives, who all rose to international prominence in their respective eras. Here's something you may not know, however: The way that pop music has been composed, mixed, and recorded since the mid-to-late '90s has been the result of the influence of a handful of Swedish dudes, and one Swedish dude in particular. His name is Karl Martin Sandberg, but if you know him at all, you know him as Max Martin (via New Yorker ).

Martin made his bones in the early '90s in his home country, working under legendary producer Dag Krister Bolle, aka Denniz PoP. In 1995, he hooked up with Lou Pearlman and the Backstreet Boys, and he ended up writing and producing the bulk of their 1997 debut album , including " Everybody (Backstreet's Back) ," which is now stuck in your head for the rest of the day (via " The Song Machine "). Over the next two decades-plus, Martin and his proteges would virtually define the sound of pop radio, working with the likes of Kelly Clarkson, Britney Spears, Pink, Usher, Avril Lavigne, Katy Perry, Taylor Swift — the list could go on, but you'd literally be here naming legendary pop artists all day. The Swedish juggernaut and his acolytes made it tough to get your foot in the door as a budding composer or producer and contributed mightily to the homogenezation of the pop sound over the last 25 years — but consumers don't seem to care, as Martin (via HuffPost ) has notched more top 10 hits than the Beatles ... a lot more.

The seeds of the Loudness War were sown

When it comes to the way music is actually recorded — and, therefore, the way the final product sounds — few periods were more significant than the '90s, and not in a fantastic way. The rise of digital audio workstations like Pro Tools removed a lot of warmth from recordings (via Reverb ), to the extent that many engineers would simply dub digital tracks back onto tape to add it back in. Part of the issue, though, was the new dominant medium — CDs, which removed a limitation of vinyl that actually ended up making many recordings sound much, much worse.

See, if a mix engineer pushed the limits of loudness prior to CDs, it wouldn't work — played back on a vinyl record, the earth-shaking volume would force the needle right out of the groove. Digital recording enabled engineers to go buckwild with pushing the volume shelf, to the detriment of the finished product (via NPR ). While this trend was born in the '90s, it arguably reached its nadir with Metallica's 2008 album "Death Magnetic," which famously sounds like it's being played on a single loudspeaker which has been gently placed inside a filthy dumpster. This trend likely played a part in vinyl's unlikely resurgence within the last decade or so (via New York Times ) — because it turns out that when it comes to recorded music, even if your band plays music designed to wake the dead, sheer volume isn't everything.

One song changed the way pop vocals are recorded to this day

The '90s were a decade in which terrible trends tended to snowball out of control pretty quickly. The most terrible of them all took a while to gain traction, but once it did, it posted up on the pop scene like a crappy, freeloading roommate who doesn't pay rent and refuses to leave. It started, though, with literal genius: In 1997, brilliant research engineer Andy Hildebrand used his enormous brain to invent an audio plug-in that could correct the pitch of an incoming signal, allowing even the pitchiest singers to sing in tune (via Priceonomics ). He named his invention "Auto-Tune," and it would take all of one year before someone used the innovation in flagrant violation of its intended purpose.

You see, Auto-Tune, used properly, sounds subtle and completely natural — but in 1998, producers Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling discovered that if you dialed each setting down to zero, the result was the complete opposite of that (via Musician Wave ). Sure, it would force a vocal right on pitch, and it also made the vocalist sound like a soulless android. Elated, Taylor and Rawling applied the technique to the lead vocal on Cher's hit single "Believe" — and that was it, folks, game over. The aggressively wrong use of Auto-Tune swiftly became a mainstay in popular music, and as noted by NPR , it has remained so ever since.

The Editor’s Manual

Free learning resource on English grammar, punctuation, usage, and style.

How to Write the Decade

Use numerals for decades in formal texts (“the 1990s”). In informal and creative writing, you may use either words or figures (“the nineties” or “the 1990s”). Names of decades may be abbreviated in informal writing (“the ’90s”).

• Anita’s thesis discusses the chat-room culture of the 1990s .
• Overalls first became popular in the nineties .
• Here are the top rock songs of the ’90s .

An apostrophe before the s is unnecessary, though not incorrect (“1990s” or “1990’s”).

What years make a decade?

A decade is a 10-year period . A specific decade (e.g., the 1990s) is generally considered to begin with a year ending in zero. Decades may be written in various styles: in words or numerals, with an apostrophe or without, and with or without the century specified.

• Online businesses first became popular in the late nineties .
• Pagers were ubiquitous in the 1990s .
• Alternative rock became mainstream in the ’90s .

In this article, we discuss how decades are shown in formal and other writing, and how to write decades correctly in various styles.

Words vs. numerals

Write decades in numerals instead of words in formal writing (such as a thesis or a report). Specify both century and decade. No apostrophe is necessary before the s that appears after the numerals.

• We conducted a survey of those vaccinated in the 1980s . pronounced “nineteen eighties”
• The boomers were the generation that entered adulthood in the 1960s and 1970s .
• The 1890s were a decade of transition and change.
• There are many challenges to overcome in the 2020s .

In casual communication, where context makes the century clear, the numbers denoting the century may be omitted.

• She loves the music of the ’80s and ’90s .

Decades may be considered either singular or plural .

• Correct: The 1970s was a time of great social change.
• Correct: The 1970s were the best years of her life.

In creative and other writing, decades are often written in words (although they may also be shown using numerals). Use the article the before the decade. The century is generally omitted.

• She was a child of the eighties .
• In the early sixties , my mother worked as a journalist.
• The fifties was a time of prosperity and excess.
• Around the world, people welcomed the twenties at midnight, mercifully unaware of what was to come.

Capitalization

Don’t capitalize the names of decades.

• Poor: China saw healthy economic growth in the Nineties . Better: China saw healthy economic growth in the nineties .
• Poor: The Twenties were marked by multiple financial crises around the world. Better: The twenties were marked by multiple financial crises around the world.

Apostrophe before s

An apostrophe before the s in a decade is generally omitted in formal writing.

• In our study, we investigate how digital communication of the 2000s and 2010s has affected international politics.
• Those born in the 1980s dreamed constantly of space travel.
• The 1930s was a period of great political turmoil.
• Globalization began in the 1850s .

Most style guides , like the Chicago Manual of Style and the AP Stylebook , recommend omitting the apostrophe in names of decades and other plural words. This is a matter of style rather than grammar. If you are editing a piece of creative writing, respect the preference of the writer.

In informal writing, an apostrophe may or may not be used, depending on preference. Note that using one is unnecessary, though not incorrect.

• The band began to experiment with other instruments in the late 1980’s .
• The 2010’s will be remembered as the decade of social media, avocado toast, bubble tea, and unicorn cakes.
• The 1990’s were a great time to be young.

Don’t use an apostrophe in the name of a decade written in words.

• Incorrect: Here are some fashion tips from the eightie’s . Incorrect: Here are some fashion tips from the eighties’ . Correct: Here are some fashion tips from the eighties .

The decade abbreviated

In informal writing, names of decades may be abbreviated by using an apostrophe.

• In today’s episode, we discuss forgotten cars from the ’60s and ’70s . instead of “the 1960s and 1970s”
• The band became briefly popular in the ’90s .
• James’s family moved to Canada in the late ’80s .

Use an apostrophe, not an opening quotation mark to mark the omission of the century from the name of the decade.

• Incorrect: Sitcoms came into their own in the ‘90s . Correct: Sitcoms came into their own in the ’90s .

The before decade

Use the definite article the before the name of a decade, whether written in numerals or words.

• She is a child of the nineties .
• This playlist has all my favorite songs from the ’80s .
• Bell-bottoms were a popular style of trousers in the 1970s .

The article the may not be necessary when the decade is used as an adjective instead of a noun .

• She’s a nineties kid at heart.
• Maya loves listening to ’80s rock .
• This style is so 1970s .

How to pronounce

To say the name of a decade written in numerals—for example, the 2010s—divide it into two parts: say the first two and then the second two digits as if they were individual numbers.

• 1980s = nineteen eighties
• 1990s = nineteen nineties
• 2010s = twenty tens, not two thousand tens
• 2020s = twenty twenties

An exception is the first decade of the twenty-first century. The 2000s is pronounced “two thousands,” not “twenty hundreds.”

The first decade: Aughties , Noughties , or 2000s ?

In informal American usage, the first decade of the twenty-first century (the years 2000–2009) is often called the aughties or the aughts . The British generally refer to this decade as the noughties .

• American: When the aughties weren’t horrifying, they were tough. — “Arthur magazine, a counterculture favorite, returns to print,” Washington Post (December 25, 2012)
• British: Justin Timberlake has formally apologised for his fashion sense during his time with NSYNC in the noughties . — “All the times Justin Timberlake’s outfits seemed right, but were so wrong,” BBC News (February 9, 2017)

The terms noughties and aughties come from the words nought and aught , which mean zero .

In formal prose, the first decade of a century should not be written the same way as other decades. For example, while it is clear which time period the term “1920s” refers to, the “1900s” could mean either the decade from 1900 to 1909 or the entire twentieth century. Consider making it clear to your readers that you mean the decade and not the century.

• Confusing: These photographs show that exercise was taken seriously even in the 1900s . The years 1900–1909 or 1900–1999? Clearer: These photographs show that exercise was taken seriously even in the first decade of the twentieth century .

Of course, if context makes it clear that you’re referring to the decade and not the century, there is no need to clarify.

• The scientific spirit of the 1890s saw itself carried into the 1900s and 1910s .

Also keep in mind that until the twenty-first century has passed and become part of history, people are unlikely to find the term “2000s” confusing.

The second decade: Tens , teens , or 2010s ?

The second decade of a century is generally written in numerals rather than words: 1910s, 2010s, etc. Some people do informally call the second decade the tens or the teens . Avoid such usage in formal texts.

• Children’s fashions changed significantly in the 1910s .
• The 2010s saw populism rise across the globe.

Share this article

Decades may be written in either numerals or words. An apostrophe may be used to abbreviate the name of a decade.

In formal texts, write decades in numerals rather than words.

An apostrophe before the s in the name of a decade, while not incorrect, is generally omitted in formal writing.

“The 1900s” could refer to the first decade or to the entire century. Prefer to make the meaning clear to your reader.

Friday essay: the 90s – why you had to be there

Senior Lecturer in Writing and Publishing, Griffith University

Disclosure statement

Sally Breen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

Griffith University provides funding as a member of The Conversation AU.

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Van Gogh shot himself in a wheat field. Kurt Cobain in a greenhouse. Van Gogh took two days to die. Cobain’s shot was more effective. On a chilly, wintry morning in Melbourne, there are far more people lining up at the NGV for the Van Gogh exhibition than there ever will be for an exhibition on the 1990s. This is only fitting. A world travelling exhibition – Van Gogh and the Seasons vs the press call for Every Brilliant Eye: Australian Art of the 1990s . Outside, the line for Van Gogh snakes in a well ordered fashion onto the causeway. In the other gallery up the road, there’s only me and one other guy. Perfect. I wouldn’t expect anything less because it’s not possible for it to be less. A reality a 90s kid like me has learnt to deal with.

Some movements travel in ubiquitous ways. Others explode like fireworks in a black sky and then creep into the rest of your life influencing far more than they’re ever acknowledged for. And here I am caught in the moment. The Impressionists vs the DIYs. The Starry Starry Nights vs the Gangland freefall. A generational condition author Mark Davis described in 1997 as a “virtual gerrymander” of the ideas market. The 1990s alternative cultural movement creeps through my brain. In many ways it has defined me. My sensibility (resilient); the way I operate (untethered); my morality (questionable). The 1990s is the forgotten decade of the 20th century. The Lost Decade, as it is fittingly referred to by burnt out Japanese economists. But perhaps the resurgences are becoming more frequent.

Every Brilliant Eye is certainly contributing to a wave of recognition of this decade. Since 2015, nearly every major global media outlet has run an article declaring a revival of 1990s pop culture, articles less centred on ideas than the easy symbolic markers of drugs and fashion – ecstasy is back, flannos are back – the headline of “They Might be Dad’s Now” an exemplar of completely missing the point.

Nevertheless, this move from NGV curator Pip Wallace is timely. Before I left my hotel on Swanston Street to visit the show, Double J announced it was dedicating the whole week to 90s music. Online, someone who clearly lives in the suburbs now too described Courtney Love, as “totally committed but easily distracted. Fiercely intelligent and painfully self-aware”. Middle finger down my throat. Is this the best musical decade of all time? Next question.

The first thing I want to do once I’m inside Every Brilliant Eye is make something. Mash something up. Scratch something out in a piece of plastic, stitch my name in an old dress, slap a slogan down just to undo it. There are good reasons for this. The exhibition appears to be loosely split into a series of rooms. The first is about being rowdy and unpopular, the political stuff people wanna say but usually don’t: grunge, happenings, the collision between art and performance and music.

The second space is quieter and more about feel; abstract emotions, textures, tactility, and the last – a supersonic blast of room, the gay nightclub of my dreams, an in-your-face contemplation of the beauty and danger of who and how and why we might like to fuck. In all three stages, there’s work from some big names – the moody, muted photography of Bill Henson, Patricia Piccinini’s surreal brainscapes featuring twisted 90s sister Sophie Lee, the intricate botanical plumbing of Fiona Hall and Scott Redford’s unco babes chopping up surfboards. Names synonymous with contemporary Australian art, all producing rich and varied work in the 1990s, even if they were not really young Gen Xers but their big brothers and sisters.

Mix tapes, Bic pens and zines

The first room comes at me like someone’s upended all the drawers in an inner city share-house and maybe transported it in go karts or the dirty boots of Escorts to whatever collective happening space was scraping together the ability keep to its doors open. No one much cared about all this detritus in the 1990s but now it’s on plinths.

Vinyl and limited edition zines encased in glass and worshipped like the lovely, fragile artefacts they are. A single mix tape marked “For Starlie” conjuring late night drives through suburban streets where the faint flicker of Neighbours glowed on every telly and we glided past with the lover of that week, listening to the Jesus and Mary Chain or Died Pretty on loop.

Even the titles of the artworks and the written language appearing sometimes within them appeals to the twentysomething girl in me, reading like psalms I’ve forgotten how to say. “Love and Death Are the Same Thing” reminding me of how our days in the 1990s were heavily punctuated with poetry and song lyrics – guys in bands quoting Rimbaud while pulling cones, friends scrawling out their minds and hearts in public diaries, one of my poems printed on the inside cover of a CD.

It’s as if I’ve been thrust back into the language of a time by a team of demented phenomenologists armed with Bic pens and ink jet printers, VHS players and tape recorders – innocuous phrases that could be refrains from David Lynch movies or Nick Cave and Bad Seeds album covers, notes left to me on the fridge by my flatmates, the kind of statements that only make sense when I’m staring at the ceiling or a dripping tap for a really long time and am really, really out of it. “The Artists Fairy Floss Sold on the Merry Go Round of Life” and “Someone Looks at Something”.

Model for a Sunken Monument is a highlight. Ricky Swallow’s brilliant, giant melting pot of a head, Darth Vader looking like he’s made out of Lego and rising out of (or disappearing into) the floor – depending on your equilibrium or perspective. Swallow is one the youngest artists in the exhibition and his preoccupations with pop culture reflect that difference. Nearly every other artist featured here was born in the 1950s or 1960s.

Most weren’t in their twenties in the 1990s but edging towards or making a living out of being established. In liner notes written elsewhere about Swallow’s work (he’s also made art out of BMX bikes and playful nods to ET), there’s a kind of reluctant nod to his ability – but of course, they say, here Darth Vader is empty, hollowed out. A defeated vessel. Not really. If you graduated high school in 1990 you know Darth Vader is never vacuous. It’s the same kind of misconception levelled at another featured artist Kathy Temin, who visual arts commentator Jeff Gibson once described as “the worst nightmare” of conservative critics because her preferred sculptural medium was soft fur.

Kathy credits her break and her ability to keep showing work in her formative years in Melbourne in large part to curator and gallery owner Rose Lang and the now infamous Gertrude Contemporary arts space. And it’s the work on loan from this gallery that really gets me.

Two pieces shot on dodgy hand held video. Punchline by the so-called DAMP collection of artists and Player Guitar by A Constructed World - both staged for the first time in 1999, as if in a desperate effort to ward off Prince’s prophecy about the end of the world.

In the Punchline video, a series of interventions occur in a gallery when a meltdown between two lovers gets out of hand and the punters are not sure what the real story is. This is pre-9/11 art, where everyone gets into it and no one goes default anti-terrorist. Player Guitar gives the exhibition some much needed audio muse – people live are invited to play the double barrel electric guitar while watching the people who did it last time. Yeah. Everyone’s in a band. Everyone’s made it.

The Gertrude Contemporary scene as featured here is emblematic of underground movements of a kind everywhere from Tokyo to Seattle to New York. The interesting thing about the 90s is that the DIY aesthetic mashed up against developing technologies. The advent of the internet meant such movements were as much about pressure cooker of geographical isolation in the first half of the decade until they absolutely weren’t in the last.

In the 90s, you didn’t necessarily have to survive on the trickle down effects, the half-hearted drip feed, of bigger more powerful arts and cultural machines in major cities. People got into making shit and playing in bands and writing poetry on pokies in small towns and spaces off the beaten track, in small pockets all over the world. Hire a video camera that weighs a ton – send it to a party instead of yourself. Check. Crash a rich friend’s party and steal an amplifier. Check. Start a multi-arts centre above a fish and chip shop on the Gold Coast. Check.

The 1990s alternative artistic ethos was infectious because you didn’t need an address or rich parents to fund your warehouse space or your magazine. All you needed was will and creativity and attitude and maybe a good survival instinct. Because, of course, many of these individual forays and collective ventures were ill fated but even when they did die, as some people and places sadly did, they’d contributed in ways we’re only just beginning to understand. That arts centre that smelled like overcooked calamari came and went but some of the names you now know walked through the door there, just like they did at Gertrude.

Even if, when I visited the latter place this week, they were preparing to move out to the sticks (well Preston South). Apparently not even a good combination of nostalgia and relevance can save you from sky rocketing real estate values and a street in Fitzroy reeking of bespoke custom made furniture and high end, high shine homewares. In an article for Art News on the enduring influence of the 1990s on contemporary art, Linda Yablonksy says,

In fact, the Nineties took place on what now seems an intriguing distant planet, when the art world didn’t cater to money in the same way that it does today.

Striped Ts and Drugstore Cowboy hair

A week before I found myself in the bird’s nest of the NGV, I’d schlepped up the Pacific Highway to a 1990s reunion in Brisbane’s West End - the first time I’d hung with many of the people I’d spent the formative part of that decade with in over 20 years.

The artwork in Every Brilliant Eye reminded me of the scratchy non-digi photos we posted on the Facebook event page to mark the reunion. We look comfortable clumped on roadsides, backs up against the walls of buildings, sprawled on lounge room floors or other people’s beds. We’re obviously waiting for things. Daybreak, trains. The future. The delivery of mates or sticks. Burnt toast. Unhurried. Half bored and poor.

We wanted to be in Wim Wenders’ movies without realising we were Wim Wenders movies, everyone impossibly beautiful only because we were impossibly young. Drugstore Cowboy hair. Striped T’s and unlaced Docs. The kids in Elephant even though it hadn’t been made yet. Grunge back then was retro and futuristic because it didn’t know it was – grunge was retro with a ripped edge, the future, in a tripper’s eye. The 1990s – the stuff that had already happened or was about to happen – with holes in it.

And I guess that’s the beautiful charm and familiarity of this exhibition. Everything feels like you did it, like you might have seen it before, and you drift around with your mouth open, grateful, like a big blue whale everyone’s forgotten about in a sea of lovely plankton. Yes, I think my friend Karen made fur balls and crazy mobiles out of Spotlight knocks offs and pill packets too. Yes, it seems someone has made an artwork out of my friend Peta’s tights. And if you don’t recognise all of this where the hell were you?

Every Brilliant Eye is at NGV Australia until October 1.

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Essay on Music for Students and Children

500+ words essay on music.

Music is a vital part of different moments of human life. It spreads happiness and joy in a person’s life. Music is the soul of life and gives immense peace to us. In the words of William Shakespeare, “If music is the food of love, play on, Give me excess of it; that surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die.” Thus, Music helps us in connecting with our souls or real self.

What is Music?

Music is a pleasant sound which is a combination of melodies and harmony and which soothes you. Music may also refer to the art of composing such pleasant sounds with the help of the various musical instruments. A person who knows music is a Musician.

The music consists of Sargam, Ragas, Taals, etc. Music is not only what is composed of men but also which exists in nature. Have you ever heard the sound of a waterfall or a flowing river ? Could you hear music there? Thus, everything in harmony has music. Here, I would like to quote a line by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, one of the greatest musicians, “The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.”

Importance of Music:

Music has great qualities of healing a person emotionally and mentally. Music is a form of meditation. While composing or listening music ones tends to forget all his worries, sorrows and pains. But, in order to appreciate good music, we need to cultivate our musical taste. It can be cited that in the Dwapar Yug, the Gopis would get mesmerized with the music that flowed from Lord Krishna’s flute. They would surrender themselves to Him. Also, the research has proved that the plants which hear the Music grow at a faster rate in comparison to the others.

Get the huge list of more than 500 Essay Topics and Ideas

Magical Powers of Music:

It has the power to cure diseases such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, etc. The power of Music can be testified by the legends about Tansen of his bringing the rains by singing Raag Megh Malhar and lighting lamps by Raga Deepak. It also helps in improving the concentration and is thus of great help to the students.

Conclusion:

Music is the essence of life. Everything that has rhythm has music. Our breathing also has a rhythm. Thus, we can say that there is music in every human being or a living creature. Music has the ability to convey all sorts of emotions to people. Music is also a very powerful means to connect with God. We can conclude that Music is the purest form of worship of God and to connect with our soul.

FAQs on Essay on Music:

Q.1. Why is Music known as the Universal Language?

Ans.1. Music is known as the Universal language because it knows no boundaries. It flows freely beyond the barriers of language, religion, country, etc. Anybody can enjoy music irrespective of his age.

Q.2. What are the various styles of Music in India?

Ans.2. India is a country of diversities. Thus, it has numerous styles of music. Some of them are Classical, Pop, Ghazals, Bhajans, Carnatic, Folk, Khyal, Thumri, Qawwali, Bhangra, Drupad, Dadra, Dhamar, Bandish, Baithak Gana, Sufi, Indo Jazz, Odissi, Tarana, Sugama Sangeet, Bhavageet, etc.

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11 Things You'd Only Know If You Lived Through The '90s Because They're Very Much Forgotten About Or Completely Skipped Over Today

You just had to be there.

BuzzFeed Staff

If you've been on TikTok or are around young Gen Z or Gen Alpha kids, then you know some of them really, really have an affinity for '90s culture — the clothes, the music, the movies, etc.

And honestly, there are many, many things to appreciate and love about the '90s. However, if you lived through them then you know there are a lot of things that '90s nostalgia today gets wrong or just skips over completely.

So, it was with that in mind that I put together a list of things that will make millennials and Gen X'ers say, "Yup! That was very much the '90s," and give Gen Z and Alpha a look into what life was like:

1. most people did not own computers..

Many people associate the '90s with AOL, chatrooms, Oregon Trail , and AIM, but the truth is that most people in the US did not own a home computer. However, owning a computer did become more common as the decade went on, though it was still low — according to this report by the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 1990, about 15% of Americans owned a computer, and by 1997, the number had risen to 35% (it wouldn't be until 2000 that 51% of households owned computers).

The internet was even less common. According to the US Census, in 1998, only 26% of US households had internet access. It did jump significantly by 2000, but it was still less than half of US households at only 42% percent.  

The reality was that computers were very expensive, and unless your parents needed them to work at home or were early adopters of technology, you were likely not to own one. You also wouldn't buy one for just your kids to play on. 

2. Very old people during that time were from an era before sliced bread, chocolate chip cookies , and television were invented.

There are a lot of jokes about how Gen Z and Alpha refer to the '80s and '90s as the late 1900s (and, by extension, naming that the era when millennials were born). However, in the '90s, if you knew a senior citizen in their 90s or older, then there was a likely chance they were born in the 1890s (aka the late 1800s) — like George Burns for example, who was born in 1896 (he died in 1996 at age 100). 

Meanwhile, seniors in their 80s and 70s would have been born in the 1910s or 1920s. This also made it not uncommon to know/meet veterans of WWII, Holocaust survivors, and people who lived through the Great Depression.  

3. Smoking was frowned upon but still very common.

In 1990, the CDC estimated that 25.5% of US adults were smokers. While that might not sound like a lot, smoking in public and indoors wasn't as restricted (it wouldn't even be entirely restricted on planes until 2000, when smoking was banned on international flights to and from the US), so you could be seated in restaurants that allowed smoking in certain sections or be seated next to someone at little league game who would be puffing away on a few cigarettes. Advertising for them was also everywhere, like on billboards and in magazines (not on TV though). 

Yes, people knew it was bad for them (they'd known it since the '60s), but it was a holdover social thing/habit. There were also lots of PSAs aimed at kids and adults to discourage them from smoking throughout the decade. In 1998 , California would be the first state to ban smoking indoors, workplaces, clubs, bars, and restaurants.

4. People watched the same TV shows.

If you didn't live through the '90s, you might be saying, "Duh, of course, everyone watched the same shows!" or "What do you mean everyone watched the same shows?" Well, today in the US streaming accounts for nearly 40% of what's viewed on TV, while broadcast TV is just 22.5% (with cable at 28.3% and "other" being 10.7%). However, back in the '90s that competition just did not exist for broadcast TV — even cable offered few original things that could rival it.

Most people watched primetime shows from one of the big four networks: CBS, NBC, ABC, and Fox, which meant they got HUGE audiences. For example, in the week of Sept. 22, 1997, the highest-rated show that week was the season premiere of E.R. , which had 42.71 million viewers (and no other show in the top 10 had below 20 million viewers). By contrast, in the 2022–23 TV season, NCIS was the most-watched primetime broadcast (non-sports) show with 9.86 million viewers.

There also were no DVRs, so — unless you programmed your VCR to record it — you watched things as they aired live. Also, if you didn't watch something live you risked someone spoiling it for you the next day.

5. People didn't have huge VHS movie collections and did actually rent a lot of movies.

If you've ever seen a '90s BuzzFeed post or, frankly, seen a '90s nostalgia post anywhere else, Blockbuster always appears on the list. That's because it really was the spot to hit up on Friday nights to get a few movies to rent for the weekend.

Now, before everyone comes in the comments and says, "I owned movies!!!" Yes, people owned movies — especially if you were a kid, your parents would usually get you the latest Disney movies so you could watch them over and over — but unless you were an avid movie fan, most people had smaller VHS collections of movies that were their favorites and that they wanted to own so they could watch it at any time.

Renting movies was convenient because the selection was always bigger than what you could usually find at any store that sold VHS movies. They also sometimes had the exclusive rights to certain bigger films. This meant you couldn't buy them even if you wanted to because the studio had an agreement with video rental stores that there would be an exclusive window where only they had copies of them, and they wouldn't be on sale for the general public. 

It wouldn't be until the early 2000s, when DVDs started to become popular that people really started building large movie collections . And because it became an even bigger revenue stream for the studios, they started releasing newer and older titles directly to retailers and loaded them with all sorts of extras. This eventually started to affect the rental market. 

6. Not everyone lived in homes decorated with '90s interior design trends.

I know, I know, this is true of every decade. But, I say this for two reasons; first, social media has conditioned us to think that it's always been normal to full-on redecorate every year. Second, if you watch TV shows or movies from that era ( The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air and Clueless come to mind), the home interiors look, well, oh-so-'90s. However, there were also a lot of people who were still living with furniture from the '70s and '80s, had wood-paneled walls, shag carpeting, and old appliances (those things were truly built to last). 

This was also especially true if you visited older people (like grandparents), who might live in a home they hadn't redecorated since the '70s, '60s, or '50s. They'd also have an old wood console TV that they hadn't replaced since 1973. 

7. Celebrities from the '40s and '50s were still very much part of the cultural zeitgeist.

Believe it or not, some people in the '90s still thought Elvis was alive and had faked his death. This had started not long after he died in the late '70s, but even in the '90s, there probably wasn't a month that went by without a front-page story about him in a tabloid (at the supermarket checkout) about somebody spotting him alive.

Elizabeth Taylor still acted occasionally but was a humanitarian who worked to raise money and attention for AIDS research (through her foundation). However, she was still in the tabloids (usually speculating on her health or who she would marry next) and was still a go-to punchline of late-night comedians' jokes because of how many marriages she had had.

Marlon Brando still acted regularly and, like Elizabeth, was a go-to for punchlines, but because of his weight (like on The Simpsons ).

Frank Sinatra still performed in Vegas until the mid-'90s and was even the subject of a recurring SNL skit, " The Sinatra Group ," where he was portrayed by Phil Hartman.

And these are just a few examples of Golden Age of Hollywood celebs that were still around and part of pop culture.

8. People did not take a lot of photos.

Today, everyone documents every second of their lives by taking photos or videos of everything from the outfit they wore that day to the dinner they made. Obviously, that was unheard of in the '90s and would seem excessive and strange. Most people would only take photos of birthdays, vacations, holiday get-togethers, or special things like the first day of school, etc. 

Photo film was sort of expensive to waste on photos of "nothing." For example, in 1995 , a roll of Kodak Royal Gold 400 (a go-to film because it worked in both daytime and night) would cost $8.82, which is about $18.14 today when adjusted for inflation (and that's not factoring in the cost of getting the film developed which would cost you another few bucks). That film also only allowed you to take 36 photos. It wasn't unusual to take film to get developed and get photos from three or four different events that were months old.  

9. Titanic was an unexpected blockbuster movie; in fact, most people thought it was going to be a box-office bomb.

Now, I will start by saying that Titanic needed to be a big box-office hit given its cost. Before its release in 1997, many critics and Hollywood insiders predicted that Titanic would be a box-office bomb . And there were several reasons why it was predicted to be a failure. First off, at the time it was the most expensive movie ever made and was getting compared to the costly  Waterworld  — which had been released a couple of years before and, like  Titanic , was the then–most expensive movie ever made. Even though  Waterworld  grossed over $200 million at the box office, it was deemed a failure/moderate success 'cause it barely made a profit, and it also became the butt of jokes.

Second, aside from the cost of filming,  Titanic  also took a long time to film. Going way over schedule also delayed the movie's release — as it was originally meant to be released during the summer (the blockbuster movie season). Moving its release date to December set off red flags.

Lastly, many on-set stories were reported throughout the film's production, everything from the difficulty of working with director James Cameron to the PCP poisoning of some crew members. All these things combined added to the "doomed film" narrative.

The movie had a very good opening weekend when it was finally released, grossing $28.6 million . However, that didn't scream blockbuster movie; for comparison, Men in Black , which was a blockbuster movie that had come out in the summer of '97, grossed $51 million on its opening weekend. What made Titanic different was that it actually grossed even more on its second weekend (grossing $35.4 million) because of word-of-mouth. Another unheard-of thing was that the movie would continue to gross between $21–36 million every weekend for the next two months, which was mainly due to people doing repeat viewings. The movie would go on to be the No. 1 movie at the box office for the next 15 weeks straight and ignite Titanic -mania, which turned the film into an iconic '90s pop culture phenomenon. 

10. People refused to wear seat belts while driving.

The first mandatory seat belt laws weren't passed by states until the 1980s, and by 1991, 37 states had some form of it in place (some only enforced front passengers, while others enforced every passenger in the car). 

While seatbelt laws continued to be enacted nationwide in the '90s, some drivers claimed that it was their personal choice whether or not to wear a seatbelt . Starting in the '80s and throughout the '90s, many PSAs aimed at both kids and adults (most iconically Vince and Larry, the Crash Test Dummies ) ran on TV and on the radio to encourage people to wear seatbelts. Between the PSAs and drivers getting fined for not wearing them, people began getting used to buckling up. By 2000, 71% of front passengers wore seatbelts.

11. Lastly: We lived in a media black hole.

This wasn’t exclusive to the ‘90s, but it would the last decade that this existed. Now, if you’re someone who didn’t live through the decade and are wondering what I mean by “media black hole,” the best way I can explain it is that we couldn’t just access anything we wanted. For example, if you loved a cartoon or TV show and it got canceled and was not put into reruns, then there would be NO way you could watch it. It literally ceased to exist, and all you could do was reminisce with your family or friends and say, “Remember that…” and hope they knew what you were talking about. 

If you wanted to watch a movie you had heard of and the video store didn’t have it available to rent, and the store didn’t have it in stock to buy, you just couldn’t watch it; you could only hope that it might pop up on TV. 

Did you miss a new episode of a TV show you liked? Well, if you didn’t program your VCR to tape it then you were shit out of luck and would have to wait — sometimes until the summer — for the episode to be played in reruns.

Similarly, if you wanted to hear a new song that had just been released by an artist you liked from an upcoming album of theirs, you had to wait for the radio or MTV to play it — if you were smart, you’d tape it off the radio so you could hear it at any time. 

Essentially, we had only some control over what media we consumed and were at the whim of whatever physical media we could access.

Okay, folks who lived through the '90s, do you remember these things? Did they sound right? What did I miss? Let me know in the comments below!!!

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