[robear]

How do you try to make a 90s music canon without grunge/alternative? There are a plethora of other genres that developed or emerged into relative popularity in the 90s that were hugely influential on music going forward.

Taking the most popular songs at the time is not a recipe for finding the best songs/songs that will be remembered in the future. A good percentage of the songs listed were crap then and not worth remembering now.

[jariel]

There are very deep limitations in a) chart toppers vs. otherwise popular and b) ethnicity i.e. White/African American/Latino have quite a different slot of pop culture references in the US, much less pronounced for example in UK or Canada.

The other 'big thing' to consider is that Gen Z are still quite young, and sometimes it takes time to pick up on a lot of music. We hear tracks in films, living in other conditions.

Also seems like Gen X has pretty good musical knowledge overall! But probably due to being the 'right age' for having been able to listen to a lot of stuff.

Finally, dismayed by the 90's top-charters. I couldn't fathom listening to most of that even back then.

[082349872349872]

> b) ethnicity i.e. White/African American/Latino have quite a different slot of pop culture references in the US, much less pronounced for example in UK or Canada.

I wonder if UK and canada might be more similar to europe, where disco (as a popular culture which belonged to all those ethnicities) never really died in the same way it did in the states, killed by spontaneous popular uprising?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disco_Demolition_Night

[anthk]

In Spain, specially in the East Coast, disco was replaced by techno/makina: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mákina

[082349872349872]

TIL about "X-Ta Si, X-Ta No". (and, in a cousin thread, that "mall pop" is a genre name. Does it mean music played in malls, or music performed in malls? Do malls even still exist?)

Maybe HN'ers with young children should try and convince them that the world really was low-rez back then and only achieved current resolution this century?

https://i.imgur.com/4rPGp.jpg

[anthk]

>. White/African American/Latino have quite a different slot of pop culture references in the US,

From a 80's born Spaniard all I can say the Spice Girls/Back Street Boys were like a plague here. Diito with Brit pop bands.

All of that with techno-trance dominating everything until the Reaggeton cr- music imported from Latam.

[usrusr]

> Also seems like Gen X has pretty good musical knowledge overall!

It's the generation defined by having watched MTV from the first broadcast to when it stopped showing music videos.

[082349872349872]

I once tried to figure out the soviet equivalent to Video Killed the Radio Star. At the time I thought it had a definite answer (involving people in golden lamé bouncing on trampolines?), but can't seem to re-search it now.

Taking "music video" to be an edited video with footage distinct from a studio performance, and not part of a larger work (to avoid musicals), I find

1984: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJApqjVuGb4

1983: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nXEPghBgTXA

Anyone have 1982 or earlier?

[aasasd]

Afaik Soviet ‘estrada’ had lots of videos filmed like they're concert performances but made specifically for TV. With characteristic mannequin stage presence of the artists, the ‘singing hand’, and backing ‘bands’ wriggling incoherently, hands flopping around on the instruments. And no audience shown.

The only thing this mess could kill is my will to listen to anything until Western electronic and grunge stuff finally became widely available.

[082349872349872]

Talk about staying power, a search on "Естрада музика" led me straight to Piekha:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYChcUNYy7U

Even better because I collect clips involving libraries, and so it goes on a very short list including:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G6QDNC4jPs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7N9C2JS9mWc

(singing hand? I'm getting some cool ionophone stuff, as well as a seductive western agent with wardrobe malfunction, but I doubt either of those were the reference... In other news, TIL the russian sign language for "officer" mimes epaulettes. I wonder how the plural is conveyed, maybe duplication?)

[aasasd]

Apparently the Piekha's video is part of a film called ‘Moscow In Sounds’, from '69: https://youtube.com/watch?v=XWqhJhvRpmw

So I guess it doesn't conform to the criteria for your previous search. But the film supplies material if you have similar collections for other architecture.

However, you can easily count e.g. this clip from '60, though the production value is probably not what you expect: https://youtube.com/watch?v=FeK62wesICk

The ‘singing hand’ is a term for how the microphone-free hand often was the most animated part of a Soviet singer, being waved around while the rest stays in place.

BTW, the Russian spelling is “эстрада” (you won't need “музыка” since that's the primary meaning). Unless you had some other Cyrillic spelling in mind. The videos in your previous search have “эстрада80” as a hashtag.

P.S. The real impressive part in ‘Marian the Librarian’ is whatever the hell is going on with everyone's hair.

[gt_grc]

> Also seems like Gen X has pretty good musical knowledge overall! But probably due to being the 'right age' for having been able to listen to a lot of stuff.

I came to this same conclusion. Growing up, I heard a little '40s music from my grandparents and a lot of '50s, '60s and '70s from my parents. Hip-hop, new wave, alternative and grunge all came along during my lifetime.

[trimbo]

It boggles my mind that "Smells like Teen Spirit" is missing here.

[amanaplanacanal]

I think I lived through a different 90’s than the article talks about. No nirvana, no soundgarden, no STP, no alice in chains. I did see a single Pearl Jam song listed though.

[oriolid]

I checked the first part linked at bottom, and apparently their version of 60s doesn't have The Beatles. They had The Doors, though, so it's not like they ignore all alternative-ish rock. Just almost all of it.

[caf]

On one of their other pages they have a note that The Beatles is a notable artist that isn't in Spotify (or wasn't, at the time), so that is probably why.

[chrisseaton]

Have you checked how popular these artists really were at the time outside your group of friends? None of them have ever had a top-five single in the US. Several of them have very barely had a top-hundred single!

[uxp100]

Nirvana was not just popular among the posters friends. Pop radio play is a narrow way to measure popularity.

[wink]

I don't know "STP" but Nirvana and Soundgarden got airplay in Germany on MTV, Viva (the other music TV channel) and most mainstream radio stations.

I suppose the whole thing is US-centric, but at least those 2 I'd have missed as well.

[alberto_ol]

Stone Temple Pilots?

[wil421]

Yes.

[secabeen]

It's just short of their qualifying requirement, which is top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Smells like Teen Spirit" reached a high of #6: https://www.billboard.com/music/nirvana

[ardy42]

> It's just short of their qualifying requirement, which is top 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. "Smells like Teen Spirit" reached a high of #6: https://www.billboard.com/music/nirvana

That seems like a pretty bad criteria for a list like this, because it's heavily biased towards "flashes in the pan" and exudes "steady fires."

They should have probably used a "total" metric or at least augmented the list based on it. I think something like total airplay or total sales in the 5 years after release would have caught many of the songs people thing they should have included.

[tenebrisalietum]

Popular music started to more or less "split" in the 90's. It was the beginning of the end of a single music as a shared cultural experience I think.

Hip-hop and alt-rock, for example, had massive trends that defined the 90's in their own way, but it's possible one wasn't really following both.

Then you had popular undercurrents in tandem - e.g. in the beginning of the 90's a bit of industrial, rave, and techno and at end electronica and nu-metal.

You did have the top-40 stuff that at least in Chicagoland would play the dance-oriented stuff and pop-R&B in the beginning of the decade.

Looking back it's hard to unify the 90's musically as one popular trend unless you're confining it to specific "super-genres" like rap/hip-hop, alt-rock, or top-40.

[globular-toast]

The article seems to suggest that hip-hop like "No Diggity" should be a defining song, while lots of people here are suggesting bands like Nirvana, or genres like dance/trance (e.g. Robert Miles). The thing is in the 90s all of this music was highly polarising. There were people who would simply not acknowledge any "rap" or "dance" as music at all. There were others who considered "guitar music" to be completely uncool. The most well-known songs in the article like Britney Spears, Spice Girls etc. were by far the most universally appealing songs at the time. Not everyone loved it, but not many people really hated it. It's no surprise that those are the songs that have stood the test of time.

[nl]

See their other article for this: https://pudding.cool/2017/03/timeless/index.html (linked in another comment)

[hoorayimhelping]

It's any music that wasn't played on pop stations. No mention of Wu Tang, Tupac, Biggie, Green Day, Radiohead or even less known but influential artists like Aphex Twin. Resounding meh.

[paganel]

> It's any music that wasn't played on pop stations

Not sure about the US but in the early to mid-1990s MTV Europe was playing groups like Nirvana or Soundgarden in heavy rotation, all day, it was glorious. I was telling my SO just yesterday how interesting those times were, when a 13-old kid like I was back then could have a video like "Black Hole Sun" playing in the background on television at 12 in the afternoon while doing homework, just before going to school (we were studying in the afternoon).

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mbBbFH9fAg

[function_seven]

For some reason I still remember vividly where I was when I first saw that video (with the melting Barbie doll on the barbecue). My family had just moved to a new house—quickly on account of an eviction—and it was a hot summer day. I had a grape Welch's soda and we had just got the cable hooked up.

Random story that's apropos of nothing, but to this day, when I hear that song, it still transports me to that time and place. I never really drank grape soda. Not before and not since. Not sure why I had it that day. But damn if I don't taste it when Black Hole sun is playing.

[cgriswald]

I was in a college dorm sitting in a smallish room with about a dozen chairs and a TV mounted in a corner near the ceiling. Our high school drum line was at the campus as a camp to practice for the upcoming marching season. It was a hot day and we were all tired and sweaty from practice. Like you, hearing the song always sparks that memory.

[aaronbrethorst]

The song’s namesake sculpture is located in a park a couple blocks from my home: https://goo.gl/maps/AbD9P8iQFRFhN5f86

Coincidentally, Bruce and Brandon Lee are buried in a cemetery next door to this park.

The Sound Garden is another sculpture in another Seattle park.

[ardy42]

>> It's any music that wasn't played on pop stations

> Not sure about the US but in the early to mid-1990s MTV Europe was playing groups like Nirvana or Soundgarden in heavy rotation, all day, it was glorious.

I was a bit too young and didn't have cable back then to see for myself, but my understanding was MTV in the US played a lot of alternative rock in that time period, too. Those bands even set the fashion trends for a time (e.g. flannel, and lots of it).

Where I grew up, there were basically three radio stations teenagers listened too: one "pop" station that played the stuff in this list, and two contemporary rock stations that played the rock and alternative music that was omitted from this list.

[Markoff]

I don't even remember if we had to wait until 10PM for uncensored version of Smack my bitch up in my non English speaking European country or if they didn't care and played it whenever

[vnce]

God I miss this. Thanks for reminding me :)

[kitteh]

Thing is the artists you specify did get play on MTV and the radio. Except for aphex twin, but out of all the artists here aphex twin had a bigger impact on my life.

[pfranz]

If you look at the bottom there are 3 or 4 Biggie songs graphed. I imagine none of them stood out enough to make the article.

[caf]

Biggie is in that list, as Notorious B.I.G.