The 90s: Worst Decade for Pop Music

[Janszoon]

I bought the Passengers album they did with Brian Eno in the mid 90s. Also not great, but some good/pleasant songs there.

Wow, I had totally forgotten about that album! I'm not sure if I've ever even heard it

Also Pulse is one of my favorite live records ever. It had a red pulsing LED light on the spine!

I remember it well. I worked in the electronics section of a department store when that album was new and I remember watching all the blinking lights on the shelf going in and out of sync.

[Guybrush]

Wow, I had totally forgotten about that album! I'm not sure if I've ever even heard it

You probably remember the single Miss Sarajevo that also featured Luciano Pavarotti

This is the closest that album ever got to sounding like a U2 album. The rest of it sounds more like an Eno album.

I remember it well. I worked in the electronics section of a department store when that album was new and I remember watching all the blinking lights on the shelf going in and out of sync.

I think it was my second PF album after the wall, so that was my first meeting with a lot of their older material. The second disc where they play dark side and wish you were here is a lot better than disc 1 with newer material Disc 1 starts with a very nice version of Shine on you [...], though.

I think the whole concert vid is on YouTube now.

[Janszoon]

You probably remember the single Miss Sarajevo that also featured Luciano Pavarotti

This is the closest that album ever got to sounding like a U2 album. The rest of it sounds more like an Eno album.

I just listened to "Miss Sarajevo" on YouTube. I don't think I've ever heard it before. Looking at the Wikipedia page, I don't think it even charted over here.

I should give the album a listen though. I like Eno.

[Lexi Darling]

I think of Achtung Baby and Zooropa as sort of an unofficial double album, so it's surprising to hear of someone loving one and hating the other.

I can understand why. Zooropa has a couple of more oddball elements in some songs, like I couldn't imagine Numb or Lemon or The Wanderer fitting in at all with Achtung Baby. I love both albums but they do have some subtle different vibes going on.

[Janszoon]

I can understand why. Zooropa has a couple of more oddball elements in some songs, like I couldn't imagine Numb or Lemon or The Wanderer fitting in at all with Achtung Baby. I love both albums but they do have some subtle different vibes going on.

One thing that's always been funny to me is that, for some reason, Zooropa has always felt like an EP to me even though it's almost as long as Achtung Baby. I think it might have to do with how it was written, on a break from the Zoo TV tour. It gives it a sort of experimental vibe.

[Guybrush]

I can understand why. Zooropa has a couple of more oddball elements in some songs, like I couldn't imagine Numb or Lemon or The Wanderer fitting in at all with Achtung Baby. I love both albums but they do have some subtle different vibes going on.

One thing that's always been funny to me is that, for some reason, Zooropa has always felt like an EP to me even though it's almost as long as Achtung Baby. I think it might have to do with how it was written, on a break from the Zoo TV tour. It gives it a sort of experimental vibe.

This is funny cause you put in words something that was bugging me a bit about Zooropa. It DOES feel like more of an EP. Maybe it's because it's a bit more all over the place? Achtung Baby was a lot more cohesive to my mind. Pop too. Also if I remember correctly, Zooropa did have fewer (but possibly longer?) songs.

[robhr]

I agree, I've been saying this to people for ages. Good era for alternative though.

[Comus]

This is an interesting concept, the 90's had some absolute shite like Radiohead garnering attention. On the other hands grunge and pop punk bands really knocked it out of the park here and there. Of course if we're talking pure pop maybe? but that has been shit forever and continues to be shit today.

[Comus]

Just re-read topic, honestly based on this criteria popular music gets worse each decade @Guybrush maybe you're just too old to have tried to listen to the popular music that has plagued us since the 90's. To call it shite is offensive to faeces.

[Comus]

Continuing on this point, (woo triple post). The 80's are the clear worst decade of modern music (starting in the mid 50's) in terms of an overall quality level. Sure popular music keeps getting worse, but music as a whole peaked in the 70's completely crashed in the 80's and has improved since. Just look at the metal of the 90's and onward.

EDIT (even  fucking good non-metal music sounds the same in the 80's, that fucking sound that plagues the future of current music,)

[Comus]

My point is, an I am so fucked at this point, is that popular music of the 90's is a product of the 80's essentially removing the soul of music, and every year since then has been cursed to be utterly shit because the formulka was figured out in the 80's and just iterated on ad infinitum.

[Janszoon]

Continuing on this point, (woo triple post). The 80's are the clear worst decade of modern music (starting in the mid 50's) in terms of an overall quality level. Sure popular music keeps getting worse, but music as a whole peaked in the 70's completely crashed in the 80's and has improved since. Just look at the metal of the 90's and onward.

I have to disagree with you here, there's a lot of great music from the 80s. Pop, new wave, no wave, post punk, hardcore punk, grindcore, hip hop, dub, goth, college rock, electro, industrial, EBM, thrash metal, death metal, black metal, noise rock, world music, folk, house, techno, Italo disco, acid jazz, free jazz and avant garde music was thriving. There was a great deal of variety and a lot of fantastic music.

[Guybrush]

I too think the 80s is a pretty good decade for popular music. It's also true that it's a decade that supercharged the commerciality of music even more and I can sorta get the argument that some soul may have been lost. But no decade's pop music is as soulless as the 90s.

One thing that's definitely happening is popular music is getting less diverse for each decade. There are scientific studies about this so from a diversity point of view, it has gotten progressively more shitty. I believe that's basically due to natural selection. You have certain discoveries that happen in music, like distorted guitars or the synthesizer, that open up a lot of new possibilities and leads music to branch out into new shapes and forms. This happened more often before and less and less today. When there's no big events to mutate music into radically new directions, you're left with a culture that only tweaks what has come before, shedding off the varieties that were less competitive / culturally viable (which causes variety to decrease) and just distilling the forms and shapes that kinda work. This makes music dull.

So popular music is getting duller as a whole, but is it getting worse? You might have to define very clearly what worse means. While I don't like much pop music today, I generally think the quality from a production point of view seems rather good compared to before. It just doesn't grab my attention very often.

My argument is basically that you won't find cheaply produced, absolute shit trash music in the hit lists today to the extent that you did in the 90s. You always find it, of course, but it's a matter of how bad is it and how much of it is there.

And I don't think a mention of Radiohead as an example of shit in a decade that had I'm blue dabadi dabadai can be taken seriously.

[Comus]

Continuing on this point, (woo triple post). The 80's are the clear worst decade of modern music (starting in the mid 50's) in terms of an overall quality level. Sure popular music keeps getting worse, but music as a whole peaked in the 70's completely crashed in the 80's and has improved since. Just look at the metal of the 90's and onward.

I have to disagree with you here, there's a lot of great music from the 80s. Pop, new wave, no wave, post punk, hardcore punk, grindcore, hip hop, dub, goth, college rock, electro, industrial, EBM, thrash metal, death metal, black metal, noise rock, world music, folk, house, techno, Italo disco, acid jazz, free jazz and avant garde music was thriving. There was a great deal of variety and a lot of fantastic music.

Sure, lots of great music. Nowhere near the 70's, nowhere near the 90's.

[Guybrush]

I'll admit my biggest beef here is with eurodance which has got to be the worst thing to ever hit pop music across pop history.

Like this putrid, soulless junk:

Then there were the boy bands.

Grunge came and went quickly. I wasn't all that interested in Blur or Oasis, but britpop may have been one of the more tolerable pop trends of the decade.

Edit:

Remember how these guys became super popular again?