Jul 23rd, 2009 at 5:28 pm
Memories of a Bleak Era
Personally, I consider myself someone who enjoys nostalgia. But this article (via Alyssa Rosenberg) about the boom in twentysomething nostalgia mostly reminded me of bad times via the phrase “three of the biggest bands of the period — Blink-182, Limp Bizkit and Creed — have each reunited for summer tours.” What a bleak period! Those bands are terrible. Any time you have a list of bands such that Blink-182 is by far the best, you’re in big trouble.
Can’t we have nostalgia for other, better moments of fin de millennium music? Keep it Like a Secret, Emergency & I, and 69 Love Songs were all released in 1999.
104 Responses to “Memories of a Bleak Era”
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July 23rd, 2009 at 5:34 pm
Oasis, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Smashing Pumpkins. There you go. No, don’t thank me. Thank you.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:35 pm
I realize that nothing that has happened in your entire life happened long enough ago to be a subject of nostalgia for me. Thanks a lot!
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:38 pm
Ugh. It wasn’t a bleak era. It’s just your taste in the era that is bleak.
The eponymous Supergrass album came out in 1999.
Judging from a quick look at my iTunes library, quite excellent Sigur Ros, Fiona Apple, and Sparklehorse albums came out in 1999 too…
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:40 pm
1999 was also the best year for film in the last two decades. Good times.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:41 pm
Limp Bizkit, Blink-182, Creed, add some Korn and not to mention the somewhat less offensive but equally craptacular Live, Silverchair and Candlebox, mix with Kenneth Starr, Monica Lewinsky and the rise of teen pop, stir in some Boy Bands and “Young Hollywood” and praise the Lord that I stumbled, quite literally, into a fair amount of dot-com money, and I picked a great time to go through with my alcoholic/junkie phase.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:46 pm
Wow, if you’re going to be an elitist douche about your tastes, don’t pick that bullshit.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:48 pm
The early and mid-90s were pretty interesting, musically. For me that mostly means trip-hop — Massive Attack, Portishead, My Bloody Valentine, etc etc.
But I have to admit that the *last* few years of the 90s seemed like a real musical wasteland at the time. Things picked up a bit around 2002, as I recall.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:49 pm
I still bump Limp Bizkit all the time. It’s great workout music – “rollin rollin rollin!”.
Yes, it’s “stupid” music, simple, dumb, etc. But still, good to listen to, at times.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:50 pm
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:51 pm
*Wilco, Summerteeth
*The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin
*Mos Def, Black On Both Sides
*Modest Mouse, The Moon and Antartica
*The Dismemberment Plan, Emergency & I
*Built To Spill, Keep It Like a Secret
*The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
*Blur, 13
*Beck, Midnight Vultures
*The Beta Band, The Three EPs
Best year for music I’ve been around for, at least.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:52 pm
Wilco released their best album to date, Summerteeth, in 1999.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:53 pm
I can and do still listen to Emergency & I regularly straight through. Great stuff–too bad their other albums (as well as the Plan’s lead singer’s solo stuff) don’t even really come close.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:55 pm
Weren’t the late ’90s the hey-day of boy bands and Britney Spears? Wouldn’t it be really nostalgic to go listen to “Bye, Bye, Bye” or “Oops I Did It Again”.
As I recall, hip-hop in the late ’90s was where the innovation and buzz was: Outkast, Nelly, Jay-Z, even smaller players like Fabolous, &c.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:56 pm
Don’t forget:
*The Roots – Things Fall Apart
*Damien Jurado – Rehearsals for Departure
That Magnetic Fields album is ridiculously good.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I’ll go on record as saying that Blink 182 remains my favorite band, although their two big mainstream hits (”All the Small Things” and “What’s My Age Again”) are not my favorites. Songs like “Dammit,” “M&M’s,” and “Carousel” are absolute classics.
Needless to say, I don’t think Blink 182 should be lumped in with Creed or Limp Bizkit.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I’m certainly not going to defend those three doofs of Blink-182 — but, dammit, they were an intentionally snotty thumb in the critics’ orifices and I liked that. Which brings me to the ostensibly “nostaligic” choice, Magnetic Fields — as soon as those insufferable hipsters were canonized by the Village Voice, I knew to stay away. Does anyone think that music sounded good, in retrospect, really? Hopefully only in Manhattan.
July 23rd, 2009 at 5:59 pm
I remember really loving the song “Dammit” in 1997.
A few years later I was lured to a liver show of theirs. Of things I am ashamed of this experience is second only to the fact that I once had to watch the Baha Men sing a song during half-time of a Nets game,
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
Live, and Candlebox, check, plus coming down off of Pearl Jam. I was in the midst of moving to HI, so that whole year was a major jolt to the system.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:00 pm
“*Beck, Midnight Vultures”
That is a fucking killer album.
A pretty sweet version…
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:01 pm
I think of this era as the last gasp of the record industry as a force in the “alternative” genre. It really is amazing how much has changed in the past ten years of Internet has changed things. Oh, and 1999 brought us Mermaid avenue and a lot of good music was there, but radio never played it.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Blink-182 is fine, if you’re nostalgic for your teenage asshole driver days. Which I have been, from time to time. But really, Creed? We just got rid of those assholes not too long ago! Why must Scott Stapp be inflicted on an unsuspecting American psyche once again?
@Abe: Oasis?! Dude, one of these things is not like the others in your list.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:10 pm
I was an old fart when Blink 182 appeared on the scene, I always considered them something like a novelty act. Creed was also a joke, one that neither Scott Stapp nor a whole lot of corporate programmers seemed to get.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:16 pm
late 90s nostalgia and no one mentions the techno/rave stuff? The Chemical Brothers, Moby, that Firestarter guy…didn’t that go hand in hand with the glitter go-go dot com era? Doesn’t the movie Go capture the zeitgeist?
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
“late 90s nostalgia and no one mentions the techno/rave stuff? The Chemical Brothers, Moby, that Firestarter guy…didn’t that go hand in hand with the glitter go-go dot com era? Doesn’t the movie Go capture the zeitgeist?”
I’d ascribe the foundations of that aesthetic more to MDMA than dot.coms.
And The Crystal Method is better than any of the artists named, though they were quiescent in 1999…
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:29 pm
God I’m old.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:31 pm
Prince won’t let you listen to that particular year.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
1. Am I the only one who prefers Change to Emergency and I? That is a seriously good album
2.Leftfield, Underworld, et al were the perfect music for playing a rented copy of X-Men: Mutant Apocalypse for the SNES on a friday night. Anyone who is 23 right now would agree with that, I think.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
I think of the late 90s as the Jay-Z, Eminem era.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:35 pm
Well, at least it’s good to see that Scott Stapp didn’t actually have to go to jail for beating his girlfriend. It’s all a part of the group’s “Christian” image.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:38 pm
In 1999, I was just getting into my “raver” phase. Every weekend in 1999, you’d find me in some dark warehouse somewhere in the Bay Area bumping to some great house or dnb tracks…..I think the existence of bands such as Creed, Limp Bizkit, etc helped me to explore other kinds of music…and, viola, I became a huge fan of house and dnb music…still am.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:39 pm
For what it’s worth, my 1999 faves:
Nurse with Wound: An Awkward Pause
The Fall: The Marshall Suite
Beck: Midnight Vultures
Faust: Ravvivando
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:40 pm
GO is a great movie. However, I think the movie “Groove” captures that moment in time much better.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:42 pm
Everyone should check out:
Cassius – 1999
Seminole house track.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:43 pm
“Blink-182, Limp Bizkit and Creed … I think of the late 90s as the Jay-Z, Eminem era.”
Look, if the search is for the bad music of 1999, can’t we give a moment of remembrance for Kid Rock’s Cowboy?
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
What? No Mogwai, Labradford, Sleater-Kinney, or Ghost? Don’t tell me I’m the only one here with real taste.
PS – 1997 is secretly the best year for ’90s music.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:54 pm
Retro ain’t what it used to be.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/29830
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:55 pm
My college roommate from that year still probably listens to all that shit. You should have seen how happy he was after he got back from a Creed concert. Oh, and he always wore a red NY Yankees hat backwards just like Fred Durst.
Haven’t talked to him since then, and I’m better off for it.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:57 pm
Tom Waits – Mule Variations
Second Grammy for him. Sold out four nights at the Beacon Theater in a couple of hours.
July 23rd, 2009 at 6:58 pm
I can’t believe we’re talking about hip-hop from 1999 and all you motherfuckers forgot about Dre.
(Again.)
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:00 pm
Somewhere, Ricky Martin is reading this thread and absolutely fuming.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:11 pm
Keep it Like a Secret is still a favorite album of mine. Loved it then, forgot about it for about 5 years, and rediscovered it in law school.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:14 pm
Aren’t there different degrees or categories of “terrible,” at least with respect to music? I mean, I would start with the “Insufferable” — that is, the stuff that makes you angry or spiteful when you are forced to hear it (as a matter of personal taste, I would put Magnetic Fields or Belle and Sebastian in that category); but when you move along the degrees of awfulness, you get to the “Trash” — that is, human-created noise that by its very existence has made the world qualitatively worse than it might have been without it (I think there is consensus that Creed and Bizkit fit in that category). Upon reminiscence, I’d say there’s a lot to work with in the 90s.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:31 pm
I think the existence of bands such as Creed, Limp Bizkit, etc helped me to explore other kinds of music…and, viola, I became a huge fan of house and dnb music…still am.
Ditto.
With grunge flaming out and mutating into Nu Metal, with punk turning into snot nosed teenage whining, with my ambivalence toward gangsta rap and an irritation with the pro-tools-ization of radio r&b, I started listening to trip-hop, downbeat, chill, electronica, dub, drum and bass, neo-soul, bascailly any groove-based music.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:34 pm
The late nineties/early aughts were a time when shallowness prevailed in both popular music and movies (take American Beauty — please!), not to mention popular thinking about regulation, markets, and the role of government.
July 23rd, 2009 at 7:50 pm
I’ve got a few years on some of you (graduated college in ‘93) which may be why I’m inclined to think the decade peaked early, in 1991. You had:
Nevermind—Nirvana
Loveless—My Bloody Valentine
Bandwagonesque—Teenaqe Fanclub
Green Mind—Dinosaur Jr.
Ten—Pearl Jam
Gish—Smashing Pumpkins
Spine of God—Monster Magnet
Blue Lines—Massive Attack
Achtung Baby—U2
O.G. Original Gangster—Ice T
De La Soul Is Dead—De La Soul
Seamonsters—The Wedding Present
Screamadelica—Primal Scream
Dreamy—Beat Happening
Low End Theory—A Tribe Called Quest
Recurring—Spacemen 3
Girlfriend—Matthew Sweet
Bloodsugarsexmagick—Red Hots
Still Feel Gone—Uncle Tupelo
And a bunch more besides. I can’t come up with another year that has so many great releases; even ‘99 doesn’t touch it.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:37 pm
….and, I just had a late nineties flashback of the job I had, very briefly, in the same office as the woman who would belt out MatchBox20’s “If you’re gone…” as if she were alone in her car, with very sincere feeling. Looking back, I think I was supposed to compliment her voice.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:41 pm
I think the way the dynamic is working is that Blink-182, Limp Bizkit, and Creed (especially Creed) where essentially late-stage, 1999-era knockoffs of higher-quality sounds and bands that originated in the early 90s. The impressive music that came out in 1999 were bands that were just getting recognized and getting attention rather than making themselves out to be 90s alterna-bands.
And in the sense, the good music from 1999 isn’t really “90s music,” since it would go on to become the music that was popular in the early 00s.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:49 pm
1993 and 1999 were the best years for American movies since the Golden Era of Hollywood: 1938, 1939, and 1941.
Who Else by Jeff Beck came out in 1999.
July 23rd, 2009 at 8:57 pm
@45 Agreed, the early 90s were better than the late 90s. A decade earlier was better still. I think the punk/post-punk era was really quite amazing. A lot of the popular stuff was still quite good, which can’t be said for the late 90s, or even the early 90s.
OT: People running around with brooms between their legs throwing a ball at each other is pretty absurd. Lose the broom and you have handball, which is OK.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:06 pm
Unmentioned ‘99: Bonnie “Prince” Billy, I See a Darkness.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Nostalgia is bringing the disposable media of the time back. Blink 182 is nostalgia because it was disposable entertainment at the time, and as such was disposed. Stuff such as late 90s Belle and Sebastian EPs, Summerteeth and 69 Love Songs don’t cause nostalgia because we never disposed of them.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:38 pm
A few years later I was lured to a liver show of theirs.
I don’t even want to know the details.
Ditto the Bonnie Prince Billy. Also the mellow and underrated Terror Twilight by Pavement and TNT by Tortoise.
As I recall, though, the music press in the late 1990s was overwhelmingly focused on rap/hip-hop, “electronica” and DJ-as-rockstar–with few exceptions, the music of that era just has not aged very well.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:40 pm
And The Crystal Method is better than any of the artists named, though they were quiescent in 1999…
But the one-good album boys from The Crystal Method are nothing compared to Orbital, The Orb, the first 2 Chemical Brothers albums, and the incredible wave of Goa Trance like Astral Projection, Hallucinogen, Orforia, Man With No Name, Cosmosis and Pleiadeans, not to mention the glory days of Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and John Digweed or IDM like the brilliant Autechre.
I was *way* in to the electronic scene in the 90’s and I was totally clean & sober the whole time.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:45 pm
Great unmention ‘99 albums
The Dillinger Escape Plan – Calculating Infinity
Mos Def – Black on Both Sides
And was also the year the White Stripes debut and At the Drive-in’s Vaya EP came out.
And God help me, the year that piece of shit Mambo No. 5 came out.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:46 pm
I am so fucking old.
Really though, it was all downhill after 1978. (The Cure, Three Imagininary Boys.)
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:47 pm
Second Terror Twilight. Late-era Pavement is great. They toned down the detachment and learned how to deconstruct a popsong.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:48 pm
Henry, The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld is incredible. What a debut.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:49 pm
The Mos Def lp was mentioned, but deserves to be mentioned again and again. It is a shame he didn’t release a decent album again until this year.
July 23rd, 2009 at 9:53 pm
@lobstakilla
I think the good goes through *Faith*. But then I listen to more post-punky stuff.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:06 pm
…also, Utopia Parkway by Fountains of Wayne, Aimee Mann’s Magnolia soundtrack, the self-titled Le Tigre album, Selenography by Rachel’s, The Hot Rock by Sleater-Kinney, and if we stretch a bit, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel (actually 1998). Not a bad year, actually.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:26 pm
@James Gary
That Neutral Milk Hotel album is really brilliant.
July 23rd, 2009 at 10:38 pm
@lhcont
I “disposed” of “If You’re Feeling Sinister” almost immediately after I purchased it — being the victim of an unfortunate review comparing B&S (he,he) to my all-time favorite band, The Smiths. Which may be why I hated…hate…them, really.
Agree with you about Pavement, though. Also, if anyone ever saw a live Superchunk show, you would probably agree they were really good.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:09 pm
I guess the question that needs to be raised is what makes a good year in music. In my mind, any year will have stellar albums, but great music years are defined by when you turn on the radio and you do not immediately want to throw-up and rip-out your car stereo in rage at the garbage being forced upon you.
in my mind, this means that 1999 was absolutely one of the worst, periods, while conversely, the 1991 – 1994 era was the last great era for top 40 music.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:30 pm
No, I’m sorry, your music sucked. Even your generation’s _R.E.M._ albums sucked. That’s how lousy your music scene was.
July 23rd, 2009 at 11:51 pm
@Craig
Yes, the early 80s has amazing REM albums, too. Score another point for that time being an high-point in popular music.
@Brad
The music in the early 90s on the radio was listenable, but the last time it was good was the early-mid 80s. The corporate influence on music flowered with the crap of the late 90s, and shows no sign of going away (see, Lady Gaga–and not do say that all music of the late 90s was crap).
July 24th, 2009 at 12:14 am
Thread got me lookin’ stuff up:
Kid A released ‘00
Figure 8 (Eliot Smith) released ‘00
Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea (PJ Harvey) ‘00
So, Midnight Vultures and some of my favorite albums those were likely recorded if not released in ‘99.
P.S. Also, Leif Ove Andsnes was recording his Haydn keyboard (Sonatas and Concertos) music in ‘99, you uncultured yahoos!
July 24th, 2009 at 12:20 am
Anyone still reading this thread should go check this out:
http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A398283
July 24th, 2009 at 12:23 am
Agreed on the bands; never liked ‘em and don’t miss ‘em.
Missing from article: any mention of the superb Batman, Superman, and Justice League shows, as well as maybe X-Men (which are good but don’t measure up to Batman), Ren and Stimpy, Doug, Rugrats, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, “What-A-Cartoon” and the shows it spawned: The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and Dexter’s Laboratory, and many other really amazing feats of classic animation on Nickelodeon, the nascent Cartoon Network, and broadcast TV. Oh, and let’s not forget Ducktales and Chip ‘N Dale, though I would imagine they don’t hold up nearly as well over time as the DC shows on ABC, Tartakovsky on Cartoon Network, or the Spielberg-produced shows on broadcast tv.
Honestly, what kids TV programming even approaches these shows today? Spongebob????
July 24th, 2009 at 12:32 am
Yes, the key difference between the early 90s music scene and the late 90s music scene was the horrible, grisly, flaming death of modern rock radio at some point near the middle of the decade. I’d say the death blow came from Telecom deregulation and the rise of Clear Channel, but there were warning signs long before then.
There was good music to be found in 1999 if you went looking for it, but you sure as hell weren’t going to find it on the radio in a mid-sized market.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:36 am
@LaFollette 69
Amen.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:39 am
@live
Sound Opinions on Merge Records:
http://www.soundopinions.org/shownotes/2009/032009/shownotes.html
July 24th, 2009 at 12:47 am
@live 67
Glad to see Superchunk are still giving back…hadn’t kept up with them, but this is what artists do (or should do) as they mature. Bet they still put on a great show; if only they’d come back to the Black Cat.
@Lorax, thanks for the tip.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:55 am
Looks like there was some fantastic music released in 1999. Wish someone would have told my seventeen-year old past self about it. Even at the time, I realized that the music defining my generation unquestionably blew.
As a few others have noted, however, it was a damn fine year for film.
July 24th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Man, what a depressing article. 21 and your pining for your childhood?
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July 24th, 2009 at 7:47 am
Missing from article: any mention of the superb Batman, Superman, and Justice League shows, as well as maybe X-Men (which are good but don’t measure up to Batman), Ren and Stimpy, Doug, Rugrats, Animaniacs, Pinky and the Brain, “What-A-Cartoon” and the shows it spawned:
How could you forget “The Tick”?
21 and your pining for your childhood?
Eh. By the time I was 21 we were throwing “80s parties” quite regularly.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:27 am
I guess the question that needs to be raised is what makes a good year in music. In my mind, any year will have stellar albums, but great music years are defined by when you turn on the radio and you do not immediately want to throw-up and rip-out your car stereo in rage at the garbage being forced upon you.
This. There’s always going to be good stuff released, so you all can keep your indignant references to Kid A and Sleater Kinney and whatever else to yourselves. 1999 was a terrible year because everything on the radio was horrible. Take a look at the <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org
/wiki/1999_in_music#Top_Singles” top singles of the year, as recorded (without any clear attribution) by wikipedia.
There are some songs on the list which, if not actually good, are at least enjoyable, but the year that brought us “Pretty Fly for a White Guy,” “Mambo No. 5,” “Bawitdaba,” “Nookie,” and “Smooth” (by far the biggest song of the year) ought to be considered a bad year for music.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:39 am
You younguns can feel free to enjoy your insipid, derivative pap to your ignorant hearts’ content, but with precious few exceptions there hasn’t been a good new rock band formed since the 70’s.
Sad. But true.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:44 am
[...] 24, 2009 by Lee Comes from Matt Yglesias: Personally, I consider myself someone who enjoys nostalgia. But this article (via Alyssa [...]
July 24th, 2009 at 9:46 am
You want know a good year in music? Here are 11 of them:
1965
1966
1967
1968
1969
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
1975
July 24th, 2009 at 10:47 am
Agreed on the Clear Channel parasitization and strangulation of pop or public music. But there’s also the fact that a lot of pop music has been thoroughly mined, the older listeners are more sophisticated than ever, and . . . tastes change. I’m not ashamed to admit that I was a big Rush fan in the early 70’s before I got exposed to more diverse stuff like Eno and Iggy Pop. But I was in my early teens then (and actually reading Rand, big surprise), and these days, I’m more into Dimtri Shostakovich, Gabriela Monterelo, old Blue Grass, etc.
Whatever else, even the music today – debased and derivative as some say it is – still appears fresh to the younger listeners, and good. And why not? they’ve never heard anything else. Plenty of time for them to develop their own sensibilities and trace for themselves the history of modern music. They’ll get to original sources eventually; I expect my snooty daughter will tell me after a semester or three of college about this fabulous guy that nobody else knows about – Thelonius Monk. And how he’s undeservedly obscure, only the cool people know who he is
July 24th, 2009 at 11:18 am
The NYT article didn’t mention any of those bands/albums you like for a pretty obvious reason: if these kids that they’re talking about were in grade school (or even younger) in 1999, they would need an older sibling (or maybe young and really with-it parents) to have even heard of Built To Spill or the Dismemberment Plan.
It was either teen pop by former Mouseketeers or the Creed/Bizkit/Blink 182 on rock radio. Depressing, ain’t it?
July 24th, 2009 at 11:37 am
Christopher, lobstakilla, The Fool: How about we meet at some dive for bourbon and Metamucil cocktails? First round’s on me.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:08 pm
Metamucil?
The funny thing is oldsters like me can outparty today’s lame youth any day of the week — or every day of the week, as the case may be. They don’t party like they used to either — trust me, bro.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
Kraftwerk: playing Helsinki in August + they have the best band site of all time.
July 24th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Count me in with Henry Holland. The best music of the ’90s was the electronica, although I should add that for the most part that peaked a few years earlier than 1999.
I should point out that the first Coachella festival was in October 1999.
July 24th, 2009 at 1:30 pm
@Henry Holland, Adam Villani,
The thing with IDM and trip hop, though, is that both turned out to be dead-end genres, i.e. unsustainable as genres, though IDM diffused itself into the ears and beats of R&B producers like Timba, Neptunes, etc. Trip hop, which blunted itself into irrelevance and non-existence, had exactly 5 (Tricky, MA, Portishead, Lamb, DJ Shadow) acts worth remembering, one of whom abandoned the genre to try his hand at straight rap, and another that became a soft-rock act.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Since nobody else has mentioned it, I’ll say that Nine Inch Nails’ “The Fragile” is an amazing album, their (Trent’s?)last truly great one.
Smashing Pumpkins were good, but Machina: The Machines of God, which came out in ‘99, was overproduced shit.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:32 pm
For me, outside of u underground punk and goth/darkwave, pop music stopped being relevant circa 1994 and that’s just because some actual good bands like Mudhoney, Sleater-Kinney, Nirvana etc. made it big. Other than that pop music has been a zombie genre for the last 35 years.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:35 pm
All I have to add is that Creed’s singer got his ASS kicked by the guys from 311 a few years ago. Rarely have I been happier about an event that affected me so little.
July 24th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
A recent Ask Metafilter post produced some interesting repsonses to a similar question
July 24th, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Music snobs. gotta love’em.
July 24th, 2009 at 3:22 pm
@Tyro: Whoops! I also forgot to mention Rocko’s Modern Life and the Angry Beavers, though I suspect those haven’t held up nearly as well.
July 24th, 2009 at 4:47 pm
Most overrated band evuh? Sleater-Kinney.
Many say they are great, but here in reality, they blow. They blow hard.
July 24th, 2009 at 5:56 pm
1999 is probably just about the nadir of mass-culture popular music, between the rap-rock, the thrice-watered-down powerpop, and the rise of the new generation of manufactured teen pop idols.
Cultural and economic forces are pretty much going to mean that the 1980s will always be the last time that popular music and critically-laudable music overlapped to as much of a degree, but I do think this decade has benefitted greatly from rock (which, on the popular level, is intolerably awful these days) getting largely crowded out by R&B and hip-hop where interesting and listenable music is still produced.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:07 pm
The late 90’s were pretty much the worst time of my life, so, no nostalgia for me. I remember the music being particulary bad, although all I really had access to at the time was radio. Flaming Lips are and were awesome. Blink 182…..not really my thing.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:29 pm
The Kraftwerk site is truly awesome. Maybe I’ll go see them in Helsinki. I never have and always have wanted to.
@Leee I still like Rush, even after finding better stuff from the late 70s. Even without the 90s, there’s still a surfeit of good stuff, including jazz and classical (as you suggest). Eno is an amazing producer, though I’m still not convinced of his genius as a musician (maybe you can convince me). “Fun House” is one of the greatest records ever.
July 24th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
@Kropotkin
“For me, outside of u underground punk and goth/darkwave, pop music stopped being relevant circa 1994″
Punk and goth, at least if you include post-punk, encompasses some large percentage of the good music made since 1970, no?
July 24th, 2009 at 9:35 pm
@g
The Ask Metafilter post has reminded me how bad, with a few exceptions, music has been this decade.
July 25th, 2009 at 2:08 am
Leee wrote:
The thing with IDM and trip hop, though, is that both turned out to be dead-end genres, i.e. unsustainable as genres, though IDM diffused itself into the ears and beats of R&B producers like Timba, Neptunes, etc.
Just because it’s not as popular as it was in the 90s doesn’t mean the genre has died out. For some IDMish stuff from the 2000s that’s fairly popular by electronica standards, check out Air, Boards of Canada, Venetian Snares, or Ulrich Schnauss. And several of the big 90s IDM artists still put out albums semi-regularly, like Aphex Twin and Underworld. Also, besides influencing R&B producers, electronica is pretty closely connected to all that electroclash stuff which has become popular lately (I especially like the band ‘Justice’)…there’s also some groups that cross electronica and different kinds of indie rock, like M83 and Midnight Juggernauts and School of Seven Bells.
July 25th, 2009 at 4:30 am
I’m definitely on the side of 1999 movie greatness, but before we get too enthusiastic over 1999 movies remember that the Thomas Crown Affair was released in that year. And that movie was just shockingly horrible.
July 25th, 2009 at 7:33 pm
“For me, outside of u underground punk and goth/darkwave, pop music stopped being relevant circa 1994″
Punk and goth, at least if you include post-punk, encompasses some large percentage of the good music made since 1970, no?
@Lorax,
yes. I pretty much include all underground acts from that era that had roots in the whole ’70s punk/two tone/garage movement, from crust punk, new wave to proto industrial/goth like skinny puppy. Though the sub-genres and terminology used for those kinds of groups got so numerous it’s kinda of useless to put labels on them today.
July 25th, 2009 at 10:42 pm
Jesse,
Don’t get me wrong, I still dig on electronic music but to a far lesser degree. I like the electro revival/electroclash thing with Ladytron and The Knife, and from what I hear LCD Soundsystem is the truth, but IDM the specific genre is dead and has been for a while. If you liked Quaristice, good on you, but Autechre have been getting further and further away from what I liked about them. Boards of Canada have become a self-parodying joke with Dayvan Cowboy, Aphex hasn’t released anything since Analord — IDM’s hardly a creative hotbed nowadays. Who would’ve thought 10 years ago that Mira Calix would be the one Warp IDM artist to be doing interesting things?
Air is trip hop, and they’ve been largely irrelevant (and always too cheesy for my tastes), Underworld aren’t IDM (they’re techno/house) and the guy who made them good has booked it.