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What is the 90s sound? The 00s sound?

22:22 / 21.06.05

It's pretty much all in the summary. I always figured once we were out of the 90s, it'd be easier to determine what the most 90s song is, but it's not quite there. What is that decade's 'Axel F,' a song that could not have been made at any other time, and what are the characteristics of a 90s song?

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

22:48 / 21.06.05

Ooh, it's a tricky one. If the '80s are largely gonna be remembered for the synths and the New Romantics, hmmm... maybe that "grunge"/"alt-rock" stuff?

Regrettable Juvenilia

23:05 / 21.06.05

It might be easy to describe a song as "very 80s/70s/60s", but that doesn't make it any less misleading, inaccurate, reductive, etc.

Same goes for the 90s and 00s.

Tryphena Absent

23:24 / 21.06.05

Higher State of Conciousness by Josh Wink?? Violet by Hole? Parklife? There's loads of music that you can hear the 90s in but the genre that you pick is going to be pretty specific to you. I don't want to call a downer on your thread but isn't that what makes this game a bit silly? I mean, since elctroclash was the big thing of 2004 a lot of songs appeared that sounded like they were straight out of the 80s but they were produced last February.

00:18 / 22.06.05

Yeah, my sister and I were trying to work this out in a way on the weekend. We were filesharing, trying to find a bunch of those uberhit early techno dance songs and trying to guess from their year when they were released, because we couldn't remember any of their names, but had a vague idea of when they came out. So we were trawling through lists of hits of various years in the late 80s. We didn't have much luck until we started trawling the early 90s, but when we found them they were there in abundance - things like BADII's 'Rush', Black Box's 'Ride on Time', Snap's 'I've Got the Power', C+C Music company, Young MC, Technotronic... all of it kind of fit into its own kind of dance music, sort of, and we were trying to work out what 'sound' it represented - late 80s, early 90s?

So maybe that whole move from acidhousey stuff to trite dance was a 90s style?

It's the same with the 80s - so many different kinds of music in that decade. Here in Australia there was a big renaissance of 'pub rock' with bands like AC/DC, Cold Chisel, Australian Crawl, &c, then there was the indie punk thing going on with The Scientists and The Birthday Party and The Saints, plus there was a huge MOR thing going on too with Sherbet, The Little River Band, Air Supply...

But still, in terms of creating the cliched archetype of the 90s and the music it represented, I reckon grunge and the heavier rock-based music as typified by bands like Nirvana, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Faith No More, Living Colour, Bodycount, even things like NIN and that, would probably fit your cliched archetype pretty well.

m.

07:24 / 22.06.05

It's pretty easy to describe a song as very 80s (obvious synth, bad drum machine), very 70s (disco strings), or very 60s (folky sound, hippie lyrics), but what could be described as very 90s or very 00s?

It might be easy to describe a song as "very 80s/70s/60s", but that doesn't make it any less misleading, inaccurate, reductive, etc.

Same goes for the 90s and 00s.

part of this issue is the broader cultural shift from mass culture to niche culture. in the past, most TV viewers had a handful of television networks and a few sources for hearing about and listening to new kinds of recorded music. now, obviously, the situation has changed, and we are blessed with an abudance of options. this has led to the fragmentation of pop culture into a number of subcultures and "scenes" and niches and such. as a result, there really is no more "mainstream" in pop culture. even really popular pop stars or prime time TV shows attract a fraction of the audience share that the dominant stars/shows/products did in previous decades. as such, it's become much harder to classify any given sound as characteristic of "90s" or "00s" music, because pop culture just isn't nearly as monolithic as it used to be.

however, even though it was more monolithic, it's worth noting that pop culture was never really as monolithic as it appeared to be. it's just that the pop music of the politically and economically dominant cultural, racial, and ethnic groups hogged the bandwidth, so to speak.

basically, to make a broad generalization, the pop music of relatively affluent heterosexual white people tended to dominate access to the major media, in large part because there were fewer such channels of access to be had. as a result, the types of music people associate with, say, the 60s and the "60s sound", are those types of music young white Baby Boomers rocked out to in the 60s.

so, when we note that the 90s and 00s seem to have a less cohesive pop culture identity, that's partially because 90s-00s pop culture is more fragmented and partially because our conceptions of past decades are a bit warped by the cultural power dominant groups have to make less powerful groups culturally invisible.

that said, the most utterly 90s song is "Unbelievable" by EMF. this is not up for debate.

07:37 / 22.06.05

One of the more bullshitty ways the '90s framed itself was as a reaction to the 'greed is good' ethos of the '80s; I remember vacuous style magazines banging on about 'less is more' and 'non-conspicuous' consumption, and even, God forbid, 'spiritual living'.

Bearing this in mind... Moby?

08:13 / 22.06.05

The 90s sound, the mainstream sound, is Ibiza anthems. Case closed! [sound of gavel hitting home]

bucky diz gun:

"we are blessed with an abudance of options. this has led to the fragmentation of pop culture into a number of subcultures and "scenes" and niches and such. as a result, there really is no more "mainstream" in pop culture."

All of that = Beck = the 90s-just-off-the-mainstream-sound

Come on, what was more 90s than Beck? You've got the magpie approach to the past, the slacker doo-dah and the "is it ironic or what?" business. When you think of Beck you think of people chucking words like 'hipster' around as if it were normal, right?

09:53 / 22.06.05

I think late '90s/ early '00s will be remembered as a time when the desire to feed off / reconstruct the past became all-consuming. The sound of 'now' effectively IS the 60s/70s/80s - we're strip-mining the various larger-than-life aesthetics of those decades for all the fun they're worth, one after the other. (The very fact we're discussing it could be a symptom of this right?)

The idealised memories of past music scenes/movements we've now built up provide a vast canvas of different utopias, styles and ideas that musicians and fans can launch themselves into at will depending on their particular tastes, whether drifting deep into cultish realms or emerging regularly to drag in elements somebody else's idea of perfection, mixing the gene pool as they see fit.

As early hip-hop, synth-pop, classic rawk and whatever else gets boring, we can see attention shifting to previously uncharted realms of, say, folk, metal and New York disco for a while.

This is not necessarily a bad thing.

Neither am I suggesting that there aren't also new sounds and aesthetics being forged all over the place - I just think that this is the dominant approach taken by our (well, MY, dunno about you) generation, and the one that'll stick.

02:19 / 23.06.05

How could anybody discuss the nineties and not argue for Nirvana's sound (even though they were mentioned). For me, the nineties are completely encapsulated by Smells like Teen Spirit. Let's look at the criteria. (Strong note: I could do a little research and back up my arguments, but I think you all get the drift)

Bucky wrote:
so, when we note that the 90s and 00s seem to have a less cohesive pop culture identity, that's partially because 90s-00s pop culture is more fragmented .
-->Cobain himself wrote fragmented and disjointed lyrics, even delivering them in a sort of identity-less voice.

Next, Ganesh wrote:
One of the more bullshitty ways the '90s framed itself was as a reaction to the 'greed is good' ethos of the '80s; I remember vacuous style magazines banging on about 'less is more' and 'non-conspicuous' consumption, and even, God forbid, 'spiritual living'.
-->Cobain's whole lifestyle was in direct reaction to the 80's "money is power" philosophy. He wore crap outfits, played crap chords on crap instruments.

Rizla wrote:
I think late '90s/ early '00s will be remembered as a time when the desire to feed off / reconstruct the past became all-consuming. The sound of 'now' effectively IS the 60s/70s/80s -
-->Cobain was truly riffing on Cream, Steppenwolf, and of course, Neil Young, using them, changing them, and altering them to suit a specific goal, the grunge ethos.

Bear in mind, I do not like Cobain or Nirvana. I am merely presenting the case for Nirvana as the band of the nineties. No other band in the nineties had such long-lasting influence. Of course Pearl Jam and Soundgarden came first. That doesn't mean they were the nineties. I think Cobain's personal philosophy of grunge, the anti-greed-is-good.

If you live in the UK, I might suggest Oasis otherwise. Who could forget Wonderwall?

02:51 / 23.06.05

It's interesting that all of this stripmining of the past we're talking about here is dealing with post-rock'n'roll music. Does the fragmentation of musical culture we're alluding to perhaps have something to do with contemporary iterations of the emergence of the teenager as a market demographic?

Has there been any stripmining of pre-50s music in any significant way? I'm thinking that'd be jazz and big band and crooners and stuff.

m.

05:53 / 23.06.05

i think part of the reason i get the shivering hives whenever people call Nirvana the definitive band of the 90s, aside from the more general argument against the whole idea to begin with, is quite simply that they're a rock band, and the 90s were when rock ceased to be the dominant form of pop music. right now, the top-selling genre of pop music in the US is hip-hop, followed by country. even though the dominant form isn't as dominant as dominant forms have been in the past, that's a sort of seismic shift in the landscape and it seems odd to cling to one of the big rock albums of the 90s as the defining moment. the 90s were the time when hip-hop took over the sales charts and electronic music exploded, and it seems like that should be recognized.

07:35 / 23.06.05

Diz, you took the words right out of my mouth (it must've been when you were kissing me).

Nirvana? Perlease.

19:42 / 30.06.05

So one might suggest Snoop Dogg and Dre, then?

21:14 / 30.06.05

It's interesting that all of this stripmining of the past we're talking about here is dealing with post-rock'n'roll music.

Rock'n'roll was over with Little Anthony & The Imperials.

21:25 / 30.06.05

I'd agree that the 90s definitely marked the end of rock as a dominant mode of music. Look at Radiohead, one of the most critically acclaimed, beloved bands, but I bet your average person on the street couldn't recognize one of their songs. So, in rock the most critically acclaimed, and written about stuff, just wasn't very popular, or at least it didn't get that much radioplay, compared to hip hop where there was an underground scene, but the popular people were much more well respected, as in the case of Jay-Z, Snoop, etc.

In looking at the 00s, I certainly wouldn't call The Strokes and that sort of retro-indie rock emblematic of the musical climate today, because rock is just too peripheral to the overall music scene. I would say the style of the Neptunes defines the decade, they've produced so many big hits and there's a certain similarity to them in the same way that those very 60s or 70s songs have a similar 'flavor.'

23:11 / 30.06.05

Rock'n'roll was over with Little Anthony & The Imperials.

I still HAVE that record of Little Anthony & The Imperials. But someone stole my record player. Now how do you like that?

m.

Haus of Mystery

10:02 / 01.07.05

Who could forget Wonderwall?

I've tried DIY frontal lobotomy with a screw-driver, and that didn't work.
Any other sggestions?

10:04 / 01.07.05

diz:

"the 90s were when rock ceased to be the dominant form of pop music"

Yep. When future TV directors do the episode where a character's musical past is revisited for nostalgia or comedy reasons, and it happens to be the 90s, it's possible they will put them in the role of failed grunger or nu-metaller, but far more likely that they will cast them as failed DJs. Every person in the country did, at some point between the years 1990 to 1999, describe themselves as a DJ.

That is why I say again - Ibiza anthems! Well, okay, dance anthems. TOTP: a couple of blokes parked behind a keyboard and a load of dancers in silver lycra. DJ Thingummy feat. Ning Nang Noo.

Gah, it's so bleedin' obvious! Was there a more oft-heard sound back in the 90s than "Doosh! Doosh! Doosh! Doosh!" ? No, there was not. Even if you had no interest in that kind of music you couldn't escape it. Walk up any street and you'd hear it pumping out of a car or a bedroom window. Stay indoors and you'd hear it thumping through the ceiling from the upstairs flat.

Yeah, that's it then - the sound of the 90s was 'Doosh! Doosh! Doosh! Doosh!' And synh rushes that went 'ninganinganinganinga", and female vocalists going "waaaayayay-ooo-ooh-wah-ah-ah-ah!"

10:15 / 01.07.05

((I was gonna post what follows just before the big crash, and as such I apologise for making EXACTLY the same joke as McGyver..))

If you live in the UK, I might suggest Oasis otherwise. Who could forget Wonderwall?

Give me a powerdrill and an x-ray of your brain - I can make you forget.

Does the fragmentation of musical culture we're alluding to perhaps have something to do with contemporary iterations of the emergence of the teenager as a market demographic?

Has there been any stripmining of pre-50s music in any significant way? I'm thinking that'd be jazz and big band and crooners and stuff.

hmm... interesting notion. I can quite possibly see that happening, in the UK at least; look at this whole new cash cow that seems to have emerged around all those photogenic Radio 2-approved easy listening practitioners who all seem to define themselves in relation to jazz and "the great singers" and so on.

Of course, they're not jazz, they're shit, and they have about as much right to claim a place in the lineage of jazz as I do to declare myself a member of the Wu-Tang Clan.

But that's just me talking from my post-rock n roll angry young man perspective... interesting thing about these million dollar ivory tinklers, and why they fit into Matsya's theory so neatly, is that they're hoisting a flag for the music of the pre-teenage era whilst aiming themselves ruthlessly at the middle-age / middle-class segment of the music-buying public... which you could argue is exactly the same market the original practitioners of golden-age jazz and showtunes and stuff were gunning for..

Of course, as regards other forms of pre-50s music, I'm sure I don't need to tell anybody how thoroughly blues and folk forms have been assimilated into pop culture, and I'd say it's probably considered more acceptable at the moment for young people to take them directly to heart and start going on about pickin' cotton or merry olde maidens or whatever than it has been at any time since punk.

15:10 / 01.07.05

Another possible angle, based on fashions in production:

80s = overcompressed drums, so everything sounds a little like a drum machine, even if a human is playing it. You hear this in everything from, oh, Phil Collins & Huey Lewis to Run DMC to Motley Crue.

90s = drums pitch-bent down an octave or so, so they sound like a combination between the loosest snare in the world and ocean waves. You hear this in, oh, a lot of techno & hip-hop (not familiar enough to name too many names -- I know Chemical Brothers' soundtracks do this), but also in Natalie Merchant's Tigerlily. A similar spacey sound is on a few Cracker albums.

I'm not sure about the 00s, but I think there's been a return to room tone -- the sound of natural spaces, distance, a drum in a room somewhere with a sensitive microphone a few feet away. An instrument, rather than a unit of rhythm (80s) or special effect (90s). I know I heard this on a Black-Eyed Peas track this morning, but it's also on Loretta Lynne's Van Lear Rose and some of the singer-songwriter stuff I've heard -- Aimee Mann's latest, maybe. "Since U Been Gone" flirts with that 80s sound, but is basically this sound.

A lot of this probably reflects technological innovations, but lately I've been thinking that pop music really isn't the work of a few dozen bands as much as it is a handful of producers. They define the sound of the decade as much as fashion designers define the look (as opposed to models).

17:24 / 01.07.05

The best selling album of the nineties was without question, Come on Over by Shania Twain.

The second best selling album was Jagged Little Pill by Alanis.

I think it's interesting to say rock "died" in the nineties. I'd rather say it was killed in the eighties.

00:08 / 04.07.05

those photogenic Radio 2-approved easy listening practitioners who all seem to define themselves in relation to jazz and "the great singers" and so on

Riz, care to name names? I'm intrigued (from an anthropologica perspec', obviously... heh)

I think it's interesting to say rock "died" in the nineties. I'd rather say it was killed in the eighties.

mlc - see, this is where regional differences come up. Rock was well and truly alive and healthy all the way through the eighties in Australia. Specifically this thing they call "pub rock", which dovetailed very nicely with the emergency of "indie" in the early nineties. You go from Jimmy Barnes to You Am I and Magic Dirt without skipping a beat, really.

m.

16:35 / 04.07.05

Midnight Oil.

00:31 / 05.07.05

Yeah, that kind of thing.

m.