The 1990s

The defining strands in the 1990s include:

Rock and Indie

Britpop, Grunge, Punk revival, Nu-metal

Dance
Drum’n’bass, garage, house, R’nB, Rap, Big Beat

Manufactured Pop
Take That, Spice Girls

Other influencing factors include technology - The Internet -Digital

Music Revolution

An Introduction to the 90s..

Sandwiched between the Walkman-wearing 1980s and the MP3-sharing Noughties

sits the decade of Discman dominance: the 1990s. But in musical terms it wasn't just
the people's format of choice that changed dramatically during this time; electronic
music became omnipresent and in response British rock enjoyed a bracing revival,
while image triumphed over talent and the music industry was caught sleeping as the
digital revolution set about demolishing the business model of the old guard.

The New Romantics were dead, the hairy metal bands abandoned chart jostling for
touring and the boybands of the 1970s were revived in the 1990s as ultra-
commercial, well-groomed puppets.

R'n'B, Rap, Hip-hop

With its roots in the late 1970s and early 1980s, rap gave
impoverished Black America a voice. Fast forward to the
1990s and it became...well, a bit silly. The fantastically-named
Robert Matthew Van Winkle - aka Vanilla Ice - was one of
the first white rappers to achieve notable success. Ice cut his
own kind of cool with the one-hit wonder 'Ice, Ice Baby', which
was helped out by a sample from Queen's 'Under Pressure' and
which sported the ridiculously un-street lyric, 'Cooking MCs like
a pound of bacon'.

'Hammer Time' arrived, more or less, at the start of the 1990s, with Stanley Kirk
Burrell - aka MC Hammer3 - parading about in oversized silk slacks and scoring a
chart smash with 'U Can't Touch This'. Following bankruptcy, Burrell became a
preacher and later went on to host his own obligatory television show.

California's Latin-American hip-hop combo Cypress Hill used the medium of rap
to deliver an altogether different message - that bong hits for breakfast were a
reasonable pursuit, and that baggy, below-the-knee shorts could reach the height of
1
 The 1990s

fashion. Delivered in vocal timbres resembling

helium-sucking, nose-pegged madmen, many of
the band's songs were lambasted by the media
and groups against recreational drug use - no
doubt helping them achieve cult status, various
awards and even an appearance in The
Simpsons.

The reason these - let's call them 'novelty' -

acts managed to break through to the mainstream
is that hip-hop exploded in popularity throughout the 1990s. At the beginning of the
decade, while it had made some inroads into mainstream musical culture it was still
primarily a fringe genre; by the end, recordings by hip-hop artists made up the single
highest-selling music genre in the western world. With 1980s acts like Run DMC
and Public Enemy being considered 'old school', new acts such as the Dr Dre-
sponsored Snoop Doggy Dogg, Jay-Z, Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan took
hip-hop in a whole new direction.

The major musical movement in hip-hop during the 1990s was the continuing rise of
so-called 'Gangsta rap': the stylistic and gang-related differences between artists
from the East and West coasts of the United States contributed to verbal sparring
and, tragically, the drive-by shootings of popular artists Notorious BIG (from the
East) and Tupac Shakur (from the West coast).

Trip-Hop in the UK

Meanwhile, a downbeat variant of hip-hop was being

percolated by UK acts whose
albums of sample-based, laid-back hip-hop and soul
produced the new genre called 'Trip-Hop', or the 'Bristol
sound' thanks to its three main protagonists who came
from this multi-ethnic, bohemian city. Portishead,
Tricky and Massive Attack all favoured ambient rap
with smouldering lyrics about romantic and social angst
against a background of jazzy horn breaks and off-kilter
beats. Portishead's album 'Dummy' was nominated for a Mercury Prize in 1995.

The sounds of R 'n' B continued alongside hip-hop, with acts like Boyz II Men and
Whitney Houston (particularly her soundtrack to the film The Bodyguard) providing
some light to go with the darkness of gangsta rap and trip-hop. Mariah Carey became
the biggest-selling female artist of the 1990s on the back of several multi-million-
selling albums in the U

Grunge

Hardly the most alluring name for a musical genre - though apt considering the
dishevelled demeanour of its devotees - grunge evolved in the early 1990s from the
Northwest American (especially Seattle) punk scene to become hugely popular with
teenagers both in the US and the UK. The term 'grunge', meaning dirty, was coined
by the vocalist of Green River (and later Mudhoney), describing a style of music
2
 The 1990s

that grew out of indie and thrash metal. Melodies

were dissonant, sentiments summed up the
disenchantments of 'Generation X' and songs
featured soft verses/hard choruses, with guitars
squealing feedback, often before being flung across
the stage at the end of a gig. Moshing, stage-diving
and crowd-surfing were the norm at gigs and plaid
shirts, ripped jeans, black leather jackets and
checked flannel shirts were the fashion of the day.

Grunge settled on a slower tempo than punk, with

its often angst-ridden lyrical content voicing the
adolescent discontentment of a generation. Late in the 1980s, bands like Boston's
Pixies and Seattle's Soundgarden were doing interesting (and very loud) takes
on punk rock. The Seattle scene in particular was buzzing with the likes of Mudhoney
and Pearl Jam; when Soundgarden and later, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Alice In
Chains secured major label record deals, the scene was set for an explosion.

For many teenagers, Nirvana's 'Smells Like Teen Spirit' was like a siren
going off - a blazing burst of rebellion and guitar riffery that propelled the group into
ill-fated superstardom; the single quickly became the definitive grunge anthem. To
this day, Nirvana have sold more than 50 million albums worldwide - a figure that
might have been unfortunately assisted by Kurt Cobain's suicide in 1994.

In an MTV-led assault on the charts in the USA, Nirvana's second album Nevermind
and Pearl Jam's debut Ten sold millions of copies. Record companies scrambled over
themselves to sign edgy grunge bands from Seattle and elsewhere; the UK's rock-
lovers were converted to the new sound, and the ascendance of grunge in the
popular culture continued unabated until Kurt Cobain's death. Nirvana's drummer
Dave Grohl went on to front the highly successful Foo Fighters, a rock act with a
more consciously upbeat, decidedly ironic approach; not a continuation of the sub-
genre that soap forgot

The Grunge wave took American pop culture and, as record producer Gary Smith
put it, 'shifted it a few feet to the left.' This opened the door for major label debuts
from other acts. Chicago's Smashing Pumpkins proved immensely popular on
both sides of the Atlantic, even featuring on the soundtrack to a major Hollywood
movie (though we should probably not make too much of that, considering it was
Batman and Robin). Although lumped in with the grunge movement, the band had
stylistic and geographic differences that set them apart both in terms of the sound
they honed and the audience they drew. As well as Smashing Pumpkins, Californian
punk bands such as Green Day, the Offspring, Pennywise and, later, the so-called 'nu-
metal' rock-rap acts of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park, all emerged in Grunge's
wake in the early years of the 21st Century.

The cultural shift also meant that people didn't want their angst solely in a male
form: the explosion in female solo artists was undoubtedly popularised by the
release of Alanis Morissette's major label debut Jagged Little Pill. This opened
the door for the recognition of those that had gone before, principally PJ Harvey and
Liz Phair, as well as encouraged major labels to sign new acts such as Fiona Apple.

3
 The 1990s

All-woman bands like L7 and Courtney Love's band, Hole, took on a 'Riot Grrrl'
ardent feminist approach and pushed their way forward.

BRITPOP – The British Resistance

Partly as a reaction to grunge, the British artists of

the early to mid-1990s became more parochial and
looked toward their illustrious forebears. Starting
with the so-called 'Madchester' bands encompassing
the Stone Roses, Inspiral Carpets and the
Happy Mondays, they mined the best bits from
glam rock and the social commentary of The Kinks,
the melodies of The Beatles and the odd acid
house-fuelled drum-beat. And, for a while, it
seemed as though what became known as Britpop
would take over the world.

Though coined by musician and journalist John Robb in the 1980s, it wasn't until the
mid-1990s that the term 'Britpop' began to appear almost incessantly in UK music
magazines and newspaper columns to describe the resurgence of the UK's
alternative rock scene. The bands widely acknowledged to be the movement's main
protagonists toed a very British line in their lyrical content: Oasis combined the
songs of Slade and Paul Weller to create working class rock 'n' roll anthems in the
form of 'Cigarettes and Alcohol' and 'Live Forever'; Blur served up sharp social
commentary with 'Girls and Boys' and 'Parklife'; Pulp unleashed a scathing, comical
critique of the middle-class with 'Common People', and of 1990s drug culture with
'Sorted for Es and Whizz'; while Suede's 'Animal Nitrate' paraded references to gay
sex and drug use into the UK Top Ten during the closing months of 1992.

Drawing influence from a largely British gene pool - bands such as The Smiths, The
Jam, David Bowie and The Jesus and Mary Chain - the Britpop scene swam against
the rising tide of electronically-programmed grooves and American-influenced
grunge. Although the Stone Roses' eponymous album in 1989 is often cited as the
first ever Britpop album, its ties to the 'Baggy Madchester' sound separate it from the
later Britpop; the music of Blur, Oasis and Suede - along with other contemporaries
like Supergrass, Elastica, Sleeper, Cast, Ocean Colour Scene and The Verve - is more
indicative of the banner.

Like all good rock stories, the relationship between bands wasn't without its share of
animosity. The strained relationship between the two biggest acts in 1995, Blur and
Oasis, was blown up by the press into a major battle – one that was exacerbated by
Blur moving its single 'Country House' so it would be released on the same day as
the Oasis track 'Roll With It.' The resulting race to Number One would eventually
be won by Blur, though the Oasis album (What's the Story) Morning Glory outsold
Blur's Modern Life is Rubbish four-to-one, spending three years in the UK charts.
There'd be further hits for both bands, but arguably neither act would scale quite the
same heights again.

4
 The 1990s

The Dance Music Revolution

Links between music and drugs have been well-documented since the 1960s, but the
rise in ecstasy use during the 1990s, following the birth of rave culture and the UK
free party scene commanded irrefutable influence over the music of the time. The
1980s had seen US club culture infiltrate the upper echelons of the charts with the
likes of Farley 'Jackmaster' Funk and Steve 'Silk' Hurley, but many people
still saw music 'wholly or predominantly characterised by a succession of repetitive
beats' as some kind of audio antichrist. Ecstasy changed this: modern 'dance' music
was everywhere, from raves around the M25 when the decade commenced, to
adverts for toothpaste and tinned food products when it drew to a close.

One of the most subversive moments in the history of the UK charts came in
September, 1992, when The Shamen spent four weeks at Number One with their
nauseatingly anthemic, thinly-veiled ode to E-culture: 'Ebeneezer Goode'.

The refrain of the song goes 'eezer Goode, eezer Goode, he's Ebeneezer Goode'.
Do you get it? Es are good, you see. Pulp's front man, Jarvis Cocker, was not exactly
impressed: 'I thought it was a despicable record. With a clever play on words they
covered the fact that they thought Es were good and got it to Number One...' The
BBC banned it, the tabloids hounded the band, and they withdrew the single after
four tempestuous weeks. Incredibly the band continued to deny it was a song about
ecstasy, although the fact that some of their critics thought Goode was spelled with
an E as a drugs reference indicates that they really were stretching it a bit.

Two super-clubs soon emerged that attempted to capture the energy of the rave
while keeping it all legal; Cream in Liverpool and The Ministry of Sound in London.
With dance music in vogue and consequently all over the UK's radio and media, it
wasn't long before those who weren't on drugs realised that some electronic music
was actually quite good. As its popularity mushroomed, so did the number of musical
genres that appeared in record racks at the local HMV. House music morphed into
dynamic new forms such as techno, hardcore and breakbeat, with each of
these splintering into a myriad of sub-genres.

Drum’n’Bass

Another big player was the arrival of Drum’n’Bass and

its short lived little brother Jungle. Drum and bass
music (drum n bass, DnB) is an electronic music style.
Drum and bass, originally an offshoot of the United
Kingdom breakbeat hardcore and rave scene, came into
existence when people mixed reggae basslines with sped-up
hip hop breakbeats and influences from techno. Pioneers such
as raggamuffin DJ General Levy and other DJs quickly became the stars of Drum and
bass, then still called jungle. Producers such as Goldie and 4 Hero transformed the
current art and turned drum and bass in more instrumental direction, spawning sub-
genres like techstep and moving the genre closer to techno. Some of the more
5
 The 1990s

popular and defining artists include Shy FX, Ed Rush & Optical, LTJ Bukem, Goldie,
and Roni Size.

Jungle- the origins..

Based almost entirely in England, Drum'n'Bass (then called 'jungle' ) emerged in the
early '90s. It is one of the most rhythmically complex of all forms of dance music,
relying on extremely fast polyrhythms and breakbeats . Usually, it's entirely
instrumental — consisting of nothing but fast drum machines and deep bass.
As its name implies, jungle does have more overt reggae, dub, and R&B influences
than most hardcore — and that is why some critics claimed that the music was the
sound of black techno musicians and DJs reclaiming it from the white musicians and
DJs who dominated the hardcore scene. Nevertheless, jungle never slows down to
develop a groove — it just speeds along. Like most dance music genres, jungle is
primarily a 'twelve inch' genre designed for a small, dedicated audience, although the
crossover success of Goldie and his 1995 debut Timeless suggested a broader
appeal.

Dozens of respected artists started fusing breakbeats with influences lifted from jazz
, film music, ambient, and trip-hop.

Big Beat - Block-rocking Beats

For dance fans, the decade began with Detroit techno

as king in the USA with acid house the leading form in
the UK (influencing such crossover acts as the Happy
Mondays). However, in terms of record sales, the
decade belonged to a sample-heavy form of dance
music that was later to be called 'Big Beat'. The major
proponents of this style were the Chemical
Brothers, technopunks Prodigy, Apollo 440 and a
former member of the Housemartins, Norman
Cook, who performed under a number of different
names, though his most enduring has been Fat Boy Slim.

Boybands and Girl Power

From the mid-1990s onwards, the UK chart was so awash with the buttery ballads,
catchy power-pop and high octane dance routines of manufactured pop acts, there
seemed little room for anything else. And though one can look back at 1960s and
The Monkees to see the genesis of the formula, the term 'boyband' is forever
synonymous with the 90s.

TAKE THAT, BOYZONE, WESTLIFE, EAST 17

Like many British trends, the cult of the Boyband came

from the US courtesy of New Kids of the Block, whose
brief reign at the top of the pops bridged the turn of the
decade from the 1980s to 1990s. Their success inspired
pop promoter Nigel Martin-Smith to create his own
6
 The 1990s

version. He took five lads from Manchester - Gary Barlow, Robbie Williams, Mark
Owen, Howard Donald and Jason Orange and called them Take That. They spent
two years touring schools and gay clubs to build a reputation as a hard-working
dance band, with each member styled to appeal to different tastes.

The band barely entered the charts with their first three releases, but in May 1992,
their cover of Jonathan King's 'It Only Takes a Minute' breached the hallowed Top
Ten and was quickly followed by a string of Top Twenty hits. The band reached the
Number One position in July 1993 with 'Pray', and went on to achieve a further
seven Number One hits..

Spice and a bit of Zig-a-zig Ah!

In 1996, pop manager Simon Fuller unleashed his canny

commercial creation in the form of five vivacious irreverent
women nicknamed Scary, Sporty, Baby, Posh and Ginger -
aka the Spice Girls - who, against all probability, ambushed
the charts with their assertive pop smash, 'Wannabe'.
They broke records by getting their first six singles to
Number One, with nine Number Ones in total, including
three consecutive Christmas chart-toppers.

The band sold in excess of 55 million records, conquered America, released a

comedy feature film - Spiceworld: The Movie - and received a slew of awards,
including four Brits.

LINKS:
Great audio history of Drum’n’bass can be found via Radio 1 here:
• http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00f14qc