An alternative guide to the history of pop music - Part 4 - The 1990s

The 1990s

Music began to evolve in the 1990s away from contemporary straight-laced pop into fusions of different genres. Urban music had offshoots which blended with soul, jazz and funk to create new jack swing, neo-soul, hip hop soul, g-funk and whatever Martika has started doing after she went to Prince’s house one afternoon. 

Martika, in the kitchen

Grunge became popular because people couldn’t be bothered to wash and comb their hair. Britpop happened and everyone wished it hadn’t. Then there was the emergence of industrial rock (produced in massive factories) and alternative rock emerged alongside it. Electronic music gave rise to trance (what happened to you when you listened to more than 15 seconds of it), Techno (which was cool until that bloke from 2 Unlimited shouted the word eighty times in one of his songs), happy hardcore (two words which should never have been put together), drum and bass (which are two instruments most bands have had since the 1920s) and trip hop (which taught us to always tie our shoelaces before attempting to go anywhere on one foot).

2 Unlimited, the wilderness years

In the 90s, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers sang ‘Under the Bridge’ but nobody could hear them so they started performing in theatres instead. There were more shouty bands around such as Linkin Park, Pantera, Sepultura and Pearl Jam. Marilyn Manson also decided to make us all feel a little bit uncomfortable with his one weird eye but the antidote to all this was Alanis Morissette who was herself ‘a bit shouty’ but could enunciate so it was clear what she was angry about (ex-boyfriends mainly).

What's known as 'A bit odd'

Alanis and Sheryl Crow paved the way for more female singer-songwriters to emerge such as Tori Amos and Lisa Loeb (a 90s Nana Mouskouri). Bryan Adams released ‘Everything I do’ which despite containing the same graceful and intricate rhyming couplets as a deaf woodlouse would write, stayed at number one for fifteen years.  Shania Twain (the female Bryan Adams) also released what some called ‘music’ but it didn’t impress me much.

Never trust a man who plays guitar in the woods

Madonna made us all gag when she released the album and art project that was ‘erotica’. Anyone who experienced any of that went immediately to have a wash, paying particular attention to their eyes and ears with powerful soap. Something similar happened when Celine Dion released ‘My heart will go on’ though people decided to squirt cavity wall insulation in their ears until the song stopped being played everywhere.

What's known as 'a little bit odd'

It seemed people couldn’t get enough of buying bland music. As mentioned before ‘Everything I do’ by Bryan Adams topped the charts for far longer than it should, ‘I will always love you’ by Whitney Houston stayed at the top of the chart for a bazillion weeks and Wet Wet Wet had to stop production of their record ‘Love is all around’ because even they couldn’t stand it being number one for another week.  They, as we did, wanted Right Said Fred to have a chance. Whitney and her contemporary Mariah Carey brought Gospel music to the masses and gave every single female X-factor contestant something to murder in their auditions for the next twenty years.

 

I can't sing, but I've got a great back-story.

Urban Adult contemporary music was also born in the 90s through artists such as SWV, Mary J. Blige, Toni Braxton, Brandy, Monica, Brandy and Monica, R. Kelly, your Kelly, my Kelly, Sean Combs, Puff Daddy, Puffy, Diddy, P. Diddy and Boys II Men (who later became just ‘men’).  Being ‘retro’ became cool and the use of old songs to make new music was prevalent in the 90s (as was the practice of one artist ‘featuring’ another, as you’ll see).  ‘U can’t touch this’ by MC Hammer ‘sampled’ the song ‘Super Freak’ and ‘Ice Ice Baby’ made use of the riff in the Queen song ‘Under Pressure’.  Other aberrations of this practice include, ‘Jump Around’ by House of pain, ‘Mo money Mo Problems’ by Notorious B.I.G., ‘Killing me softly’ by the Fugees, ‘I’ll be missing you’ by Puff Puffy Diddy Daddy FEATURING Faith Evans, ‘Gangsters Paradise’ by Coolio FEATURING L.V.,  ‘Hey Lover’ by Boyz II Men FEATURING LL Cool J and every single song Will Smith has ever released.

 

For the early part of the 1990s, everyone wanted to move to Madchester, despite it not existing. The Happy Mondays made it cool to spend all your money and time on ‘recreational substances’ and end up with no teeth and a brain that’s always about three months behind your mouth. 

Apparently, it was all worth it

The Stone Roses also adopted the ‘cool’ look of having your eyes half open, crouching a bit on the spot whilst murmuring into a microphone about pretty colours and imaginary friends. Oasis continued this ‘green anorak-parker-thing’ look into the mid-90s but ‘borrowed’ heavily from the Gallagher’s parents music collection of 70s glam rock and 60s Mersey-beat so much so they might as well have called themselves The Beat-Slade-Rex-les.

Beatles tribute act, Oasis

The mid-90s for most people was a Blur where they Preached on Manic Street, wore Suede, beat themselves to a Pulp with Verve on some Super-Grass whilst wearing Shell Suit bottoms with an Elastica waist band. However, we’re all still waiting in anticipation for the Boo Radley’s follow up single to ‘Wake up it’s a beautiful morning’.

Jarvis Cocker and some other people who may or may not have been in Pulp

Pop music still held a firm grip on the world’s attention by the end of the 90s with the Backstreet Boys achieving massive commercial success and Britney Spears asking us to hit her one more time. The Spice Girls set the foundations for both Britney and Christina Aguilera to come along and sing lots of innuendo-laden yet purportedly innocent pop music. Backstreet Boys were closely followed by NSYNC (including a fluffy haired Justin Timberlake), girl group ‘Hanson’, Jennifer ‘from the block’ Lopez and Destiny’s child. Cher returned with a wobbly mechanical voice on her song ‘Believe’ making us all ‘believe’ that she’d taken the plastic surgery too far and had in fact been made into some kind of immortal robot.

An android from the future

The Corrs proved that you could still get in the charts with a violinist in your band (most notably following Dexy’s Midnight Runners) and with the lead singer playing the penny whistle and the one at the back playing the bodhrán now and again. Robbie Williams left Take That and had a solo career which was even better, then co-wrote ‘Angels’ which he modestly introduced at his live shows as ‘a really really good song, this’. There was a Seal in the charts at one point too along with Milli Vanilli who didn’t actually do anything other than dance about a bit and mime. Boyzone were a kind of ‘Diet’ Take That, again proving that you only need two people in a group of five who can actually sing. Then Aqua came along and killed everything Kurt Cobain, Freddie Mercury, James Brown, Marvin Gaye and Tina Turner had worked so hard to build when they got to Number One with ‘Barbie Girl’. It proved that novelty acts still had a look-in and variety was still the spice of the charts with acts as diverse as Sinead O’connor, The Cranberries, Los del Rio, The Prodigy and Roxette competing for chart space.

 

I just want to be your friend

Music began to die when computers took over the world in 1998, or at least allowed people with no musical ability to make tunes happen in their bedrooms.  Moby started the trend along with ‘White town’ and his/her single ‘Your Woman’.  It started the decline of people with discernible talent in the music industry and led us to where we are today, with DJs ‘making’ the music with computers instead of playing it on their turntables after it had been performed by actual people with actual talent and actual musical instruments. Culprits include Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and Pete Tong who ironically made everything go a bit ‘Pete Tong’ in the charts. 

This became famous somehow

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Garth Brooks was tearing up the record books for album sales and concert attendance with his honky-tonk ways and songs about heartbreak, loneliness and mamma’s hot apple pies. Thanks to Garth’s intervention, ‘boot-scootin’ boogie’ was on the rise and line-dancing took over the world, metaphorically. We all had an ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ at one point and we were all asking ‘How do I live without you’ whilst concurrently stating that ‘You’re still the one’ but eventually along came The Mavericks and ruined the entire decade for everyone. Also, Dr. Alban, Scatman John and Haddaway happened so we’re just going to have to accept it.

It's a Scooby-dooby-doooby-scooby-dooby-mel-o-dee

In other news, Australia gave us more Kylie (not that we asked for it), Natalie Imbruglia (another soap actress), Tina Arena (who sounds more like a venue than a person), Savage Garden (which sounds like an awful place to look at butterflies) and Peter ‘ooh, look at my tummy bits’ Andre.  Thanks Australia, no really. Oh, and New Zealand gave us a band called OMC. How Bizarre!

Thanks very much the 90s, no really, thanks a lot

This is an excerpt from the book 'The worst pop lyrics in the world EVER!' by Peter Nuttall.  Available in Paperback and on Kindle here :

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