Last year, my recurring theme for the year was the best albums of the decade. This year I've decided its going to be reliving 1990, looking back at the charts, albums and other pop music events of the year.
As we've seen with the disco revival of the late '90s/early '00s, and the new wave revivial of the mid-to-late '00s, I imagine we're poised to soon start hearing '90s influence in pop music. But what will it be? Alternative rock/grunge has had a lasting influence, so a resurgence wouldn't really work. I'm curious whether pop music will embrace the sound of dance pop that was big at the time--House-influenced beats with drum machine working so hard they were surely smoking. This sound was huge in the US and the UK. You can hear it in Madonna, Snap!, C&C Music Factory, Cathy Dennis, Marky Mark, etc. Eighties rock was still big too, with Heart, Aerosmith and others scoring big hits. Rap, which had been steadily gaining in popularity during the late '80s, crossed over to top 40 with the first #1 hit at pop radio (MC Hammer's "U Can't Touch This") and the first rap #1 on the Hot 100 (Vanilla Ice's "Ice Ice Baby").
As I mentioned earlier, 1990 was the first year I made a weekly top 40 chart, which meant that for the first time I was really focused on what music was out and popular. My perspective was limited to just the US at that time though. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet, I can now also see what was popular in the UK at that time, so I'll write about that too.
3 comments:
I think you could argue we are already hearing the 90s with GaGa in "Alejandro", which sounds very Ace of Base-ish.
Yes. I forget to mention the Swedish influence.
In television, nostalgia also comes in 20-year waves, but TV tends to lag music and movies.
In the '80s, shows like "The Wonder Years" and "Tour of Duty" explored life in the '60s, but those shows didn't debut until late in the decade.
Similarly, "That '70s Show" didn't debut until 1998, when the '70s revival was already in full swing.
On the other hand, when TV does try to get in front of the 20-year trend, the shows tend to fail.
"Freaks and Geeks" -- set in 1980 -- debuted in 1999, when the '80s revival was due to begin. It lasted a half season. In 2002, "That '80s Show" was also a bust.
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