Musical Decades: The Nerve-Racking 1990s
The 1990s were so much simpler than the 2000s, don't you think? It was a time before American Idol made critical comments king. A time (mostly) before digital downloading transformed your favorite record store into yet another Victoria Secret's at the mall. A time when wrinkled flannels, well-worn jeans and a pair of Doc Martens constituted a complete wardrobe.
Hootie & The Blowfish didn't ask anything more of us than hand-holding, and Britney Spears was still within hailing distance of her Disney roots. In the background at every Pizza Hut in the country, boy bands harmonized like modern reincarnations of old-time barber shop quartets.
It was a happy time, right?
Time to take a closer look.
I grew up listening to Casey Kasem's American Top 40. Casey always let listeners know how many weeks a song had ruled the charts. And to this day I crave knowing what's going on in the music world. And not just last week either. Looking at the artists, songs and albums that conquered the 1990s has turned into a fascinating exercise. Mariah Carey, of course, killed off all comers with a whopping 14 chart-topping songs. Her closest competition? Boyz II Men (remember them?) with six.
But of course it wasn't about tracks in the '90s. It was about albums. And in that decade-long horserace, Shania Twain's 1997 release Come on Over comes out on top, having shipped 20 million units. Whitney Houston's Bodyguard soundtrack, believe it or not, was No. 2. Rounding out the Top 10 were Garth Brooks, Alanis Morissette, Hootie & The Blowfish, Metallica, Santana, Britney Spears and the Backstreet Boys.
None of these bands, though, are the first thing I think about when the subject of the Nerve-Racking '90s comes up. That honor belongs to one tragic figure, the influential band he founded and the musical movement he all-but-single-handedly launched: Kurt Cobain. Nirvana. Grunge.
My First Nerve
Forests of trees have been harvested to produce the articles and books already written about Cobain's enormous influence on our culture. Because without ever intending to do so, he became the unlikely poster boy for a generational sea change—and the musical movement that accompanied it. On one shore was the hedonistic '80s. On the other, the angst-filled '90s.
The shallow excess of hair metal and synth pop had begun to wear thin. "Dr. Feelgood" was getting too old and crotchety to live up to his name anymore. And Kurt Cobain was absolutely not feeling "Footloose" and fancy-free. He and millions of his fans were searching … for something to get Def Leppard out of their heads. So when Nirvana released its biggest hit, "Smells Like Teen Spirit," the lyric hinged on this line: "I found it hard, it's hard to find/Oh well, whatever, never mind."
I'm speaking in broad generalities here, but Cobain's Seattle-born grunge movement got one thing about the human condition very right: We're a desperately broken race. What grunge lacked almost entirely, however, was any sense of where redemption for that brokenness might be found. And that resulted in songs drenched with honest angst, but largely devoid of anything resembling hope.
Ultimately the burden of his own broken condition, coupled with the fame and fortune his music unexpectedly brought, proved too heavy for Nirvana's frontman. At 27, Cobain took his own life with a shotgun on April 8, 1994, barely three years after his outsider anthems had captured the imagination of Generation X.
Suddenly, Nirvana was no more. But the Seattle scene from which it came continued exerting planet-wide influence throughout the mid-'90s, with bands such as Pearl Jam, Alice in Chains and Soundgarden carrying the banner forward. The movement eventually morphed and splintered. But the generally smile-free vision of life it birthed is evident even today when you look at the lyrics and perspective of many of the post-grunge rock acts that stepped in to fill the vacuum.
My Second Nerve
Alanis Morissette didn't help this situation. The most popular songs before her had almost always been something of an antidote to what might be ailing the rest of the music world. Themes weren't always good, but they were usually, well, poppy. But that wasn't who Alanis was. Omnipresent on the radio during the decade's middle years, Alanis' in-your-face attitude exactly mirrored the angst-filled spirit of the grunge age while marrying it to an accessible, pop sensibility that put it on everybody's map, not just those coffee-overdosing downers from lumberjack country.
Oh, she sang several sunny songs, such as "You Learn" and "Head Over Feet." And there's that smile-inducing, aw-that's-too-bad list of misfortunes on "Ironic." But it's the rage on "You Oughta Know," the first single from Jagged Little Pill, that I remember most. Despite having certain nasty words bleeped for radio, the wrath of a woman exhaling her contempt for an ex's shortcomings was as bitter as it was raw. "It was a slap in the face," this Canadian howled. "How quickly I was replaced/And are you thinking of me when you f‑‑‑ her?"
That kind of language had found its way into rap offerings before. But hearing it on mainstream radio—in those Pizza Huts I mentioned earlier—seriously pushed the envelope of what could be expressed in public and what our culture was willing to embrace.
But embrace it we did.
Alanis, it turned out, was but the first of a new breed of female singer/songwriters who were unashamed to talk candidly about life and love, successes and failures, in stark—at times filthy—ways. She took Madonna-style sexual liberation and fierce independence, and blended it with anger and confession in a way that we've seen repeated quite a lot since in the form of P!nk, Lady Gaga, Avril Lavigne and Katy Perry, to name a few.
My Third Nerve
Rap. I could almost stop there, as this subject is so universally suspect, but it's an integral part of the overcast outlook assigned to the 1990s.
It's tempting to oversimplify rap's pre-millennium story. After all, in 1990 it was all about MC Hammer's parachute pants and 10X platinum hit "Can't Touch This." Nine years later, we were "greeted" by Eminem's "Just Don't Give a F‑‑‑." A straight line going downhill fast. It's not quite that simple, though.
While Will Smith was still the Fresh Prince, some of the most critically acclaimed rap albums were already lashing audiences with the struggles of life on the mean streets. Public Enemy's Fear of a Black Planet comes to mind immediately. And it came out in 1990. In the jarringly titled track "Anti-N-gga Machine," for instance, we hear, "Went to Cally, a rally/Was for a brother's death/It was the fuzz who shot him."
There's no shortage of violence and profanity in Public Enemy's material. But when that pioneering rap act talked about violence, it was usually decrying specific injustices perpetrated upon people simply because they were poor and black. Racism was the root of the band's rage.
The difference a decade made was that visceral visions of violence in the 'hood became an endpoint, not a tool designed to prick our consciences. Gangsta rap's excess—drugs, Glocks, hos and f-words—quickly eclipsed any pretense of social commentary.
"Until I die, live the life of a boss playa," Tupac Shakur rapped in 1996 on "All Eyez on Me." "'Cause even when I'm high, f‑‑‑ with me and get crossed later." Further detailing rap's false gospel, Tupac added, "All I want is cash and thangs/A five-double-O Benz, flauntin' flashy rings/B‑‑ches pursue me like a dream/ … Live the life of a thug, n-gga, until the day I die."
Tupac did die, gunned down in a drive-by shooting on Sept. 7, 1996. But if his conspicuous absence from the scene offered a chance for rappers and hip-hoppers to reflect on how their lyrics might be contributing to the violence rather than condemning it, it was an opportunity missed. By the time Eminem showed up, Tupac was a revered folk hero, not an object lesson. "I'll slit your m‑‑‑‑‑f‑‑‑ing throat worse than Ron Goldman," Eminem bragged as the decade ground to a weary halt, "So when you see me on your block with two Glocks/Screamin' 'F‑‑‑ the world' like Tupac/I just don't give a f‑‑‑."
My Last Nerve
Angst. Anger. Nihilism. Narcissism. Despair. From Nirvana to Alanis to Eminem to Rage Against the Machine, the 1990s did indeed fray more than its share of nerves. And when you add the likes of Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails, well, you'll forgive me for spending so much time taking the decade to task.
Never mind for a moment that a layer of saccharine was slathered over everything. The Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync, Shania Twain and Garth Brooks—these artists didn't major in unbridled angst, they pumped out plenty of feel-good smashes. It still seems like the darker-hued bands and trends stand out.
Anger and rock have a long and storied relationship. Fury fueled Vietnam protest songs in the '60s and punk anthems in the '70s. What seems different about the '90s is that ire grew out of a brokenness, confusion and disillusionment related to … nothing. At least not anything that could be pinned to a specific source. As our culture fully embraced postmodernism's rejection of absolute truth, we lost touch with the bearings that could help us navigate an increasingly disorienting world.
So, collectively, we got mad. Korn and Limp Bizkit—and practically the whole nu metal genre for that matter—represent a movement birthed and sustained by its own self-feeding, self-destroying, nihilistic anger. And that's just one genre.
A few artists eventually grew up. Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder left behind a little more angst with each album, and today his band offers a much more mature perspective on life than it did in 1991.
Most didn't, though. The art of racking nerves gradually grew into a big-business brand. And once a brand catches on, its manufacturers are hard-pressed to change it.
That means the 1990s' melancholy music still lingers like a choking smog in our culture. It's a legacy we're left to reckon with as we decide how best to deal with the anger, hurt and confusion that sometimes haunts our own hearts.
Musical Decades: The Techie 2000s
Musical Decades: The Nerve-Racking 1990s
Musical Decades: The Feel-Good 1980s
Musical Decades: The Swinging 1970s
Musical Decades: The Revolutionary 1960s
Musical Decades: The Rockin' and Rollin' 1950s