Is there a name for that genre of turn-of-the-90s pop-rock with the positive vibes, huge guitar leads, and gated drums?

I like many Rod Stewart songs from this period ("Crazy About Her," "Downtown Train," "Lost in You") but "Forever Young" -- ick. And it hasn't gone away.

Never heard that before! Yeah, I buy it.

Euler made the "New Country" connection above and I think that whole area would be interesting to explore. In general (and I am out of my depth here) but it seems like country tries to avoid sounding like it was made by studio robots, as a rule - there's the faith/image that at some point there was a hard-playin', tight backing band that gets together and records. So something like Travis Tritt's "T.R.O.U.B.L.E." starts out sounding like it's going to totally be one of these songs; there's a huge thudding WHAMMMO drum like two seconds in - but then the rest of the band shows up and starts to boogie.

At the same time, I think traces of this whole thing may have survived longer in country than anywhere else - rock went through various phases of sludge and wash and guitars-in-the-red, but clean, bright, super-shiny sounds never entirely went away in country. And you have people like Mutt Lange doing their biggest records way later - "Man! I Feel Like A Woman" is totally the heir of this sound, to the point where they decided to do a Robert Palmer pastiche for the video even though it's not actually a "retro"-styled song.

(that's an xpost)

I love "Forever Young" - but in the way of a song I remember hearing a fair number of times as a kid and then never again until, like, last week. Where are you hearing it? I must go to different dentist's offices or something.

I hear it at least twice a week on A/C and oldie stations.

Oh yeah -- country is where rock's been at since at least the nineties

Wow, had no idea it had any shelf life at all. Crazy how much variety there still is in those things in the Clear Channel age.

I think Sheryl Crow's second album had a through-line from this stuff (though the percussion is more '90s americana).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=khrx-zrG460

Hmmm, not entirely hearing that one, but maybe someone more up on Mitchell Froom can piece together the arc there?

Mitchell Froom's trick is to create "unconventional" sounds in a pop context.

Belinda Carlisle's hits or Bryan Adams' Waking Up The Neighbours material to thread

Teenage Fanclub's "Star Sign" would fit this mold, rite?

Also, perhaps, Jellyfish - "That Is Why", maybe the La's "There She Goes". If it had arrived a few years later, I'd include XTC's "Mayor of Simpleton" (their biggest US hit, despite the lyric about not being able to write a big hit song). If it had arrived a few years earlier, Hootie's "Time".

I've always liked this microgenre, whatever it may be called.

Wow, right on about Bryan Adams. "Can't Stop This Thing We Started" and "All I Want Is You" are definitely right in there. Trending a little rootsier but yeah. Will have to dig into the other last couple things, not familiar with 'em.

Would this count?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sOjdusDUzE

Right on!

Richard Marx is one of those guys that was really popular and all over the radio for few years, yet I can't remember any of his songs

This was one of those things, no? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCy13kjj13M

Wow, never heard this before. I think it fits. Sounds like another one that started out as a different kind of band and found themselves sounding Post-Cold-War in the studio. Some overlap with the clean-sounding, poppier side of college/alt rock, e.g. Gin Blossoms.

It's nowhere near the "Joyride" / "Life Is A Highway" sound, but another entry in the "college bands ending up with a way boxier sound than you'd expect" category: The Pursuit of Happiness. "Cigarette Dangles," from 1993, sounds like a total throwback next to the general palette of grunge and "alternative" by that point, especially compared to the 1989 "I'm An Adult Now" and "Hard to Laugh" (as "produced" as those are). Sure, it gets a little less machinic once the bass shows up, and the solo feels "live" - but that whittled-down riff, that loud snare, the flanged backing vocals... weird, weird sound.

Obviously there are a million college/underground bands that got kind of unsympathetic recordings in the late 80s/early 90s, and I wouldn't lump them all in here (esp. as the "That Eighties Drum Sound" thread already gets into this a lot more). Was just listening to Pylon's Chain for example, which is what got me thinking about this again.

You know, there were two versions of "I'm an Adult Now"--(or does your specifying date mean you know that?)--& the first was a lot, well, rawer: at least my poseur 16-yr-old self strongly preferred it...

The mean streets of mid-80s Toronto; no doubt the authenticity-response was triggered in my still vulnerable, malleable brain...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J6zMtTQix28

https://youtu.be/J6zMtTQix28

One more try; yeah, I don't post here much...

<iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/J6zMtTQix28?rel=0"; frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Ha, yeah, I did read that there was an earlier version but foolishly didn't even bother to go look it up and listen to it.

it's not 90s, but quite possibly my least favorite song ever is Timbuk 3 - "gotta wear shades" or whatever it's called

so glad i didn't graduate high school in the late 80s

*from*

this is the best genre, are there contemporary bands reviving this sound yet?

does U2's "Mysterious Ways" fit this?

Redd Kross's brilliant album Third Eye meets the criteria perfectly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ad2HWkH7FDY

I don’t know who Bob Standard is, but good posts ITT. Also, tipsy mothra’s long post re: r&b crossover (“without pushing it too hard…”) is terrific.

Don’t think I saw the Cranberries mentioned, but their debut seems pretty obviously to fit the trend… as does R.E.M.’s Out of Time album.

(or maybe Buck’s leads aren’t huge enough?)

I guess those LPs I just mentioned were more of on the “alt” side of the spectrum, embracing the era’s bright production sounds and positive vibes but with a subtler approach and minus some of the Big Rock moves. They’re only a few degrees to the left of Spin Doctors and INXS, though.

hmmm! the guitar sound on "Mysterious Ways" definitely puts it in the ballpark, but overall the mix is maybe a little too moody and full of stuff to fully qualify. in my mind the drumming is also kind of too interesting, but i'll have to listen to it later and see if that holds up.

Out of Time has the positive vibes for sure, but is missing that loud boxy rhythm guitar sound... which i now feel is essentially descended from Boston?? "Cool the Engines" in particular seems to have a few of the pieces in place, especially the very clean, empty-feeling soundscape.

im enjoying this thread but it has to be stated that “cigarette dangles” is an incredibly terrible song with an even worse video

i wonder to what extent geggy tah slots in here. also making a connection between the rhythm guitar vibe here and the later 3eb-1975 energy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAina4g3xkU

Haha, that was just every big pop hit from 1990 to the spring of 1992, wasn't it? Minus ballads?

I'm certain that's the ad Dr C refers to in the OP. I only know most of these songs from the clips in that ad.

Been meaning to start a thread of huge hit songs that I only know short clips of from compilation CD commercials, there are lots

I do remember people talking about how this deal was going to be the sound of the 1990s before Nevermind really hit. Although you can count me as one of the people who thanks Nirvana, on balance, it was definitely an interesting moment.

xp o_O I think every one of those songs are permanently burned into my brain from middle school.

*is

Something always sounded uncomfortably contrived to me about a lot of these artists, even at the time. Like it was hard for me to imagine musicians organically getting together and being like "THIS. THIS IS THE MUSIC WE FEEL THE BURNING NEED TO MAKE."

lol. yeah, hard to entirely picture a band jamming around in a living room and coming up with most of these arrangements. goes back to my reading that a lot of these may be bands who walked in the door with an incompletely-formed sound, and ended up getting pressed through a very odd combination of individually industry-standard production decisions.

"Cigarette Dangles" is pretty catchy in a weird way, and kind of noteworthy as a BDSM anthem from the perspective of a submissive male (i think?). i also appreciate that the lead guy has approximately the cool-guy presence of the dude from the Encyclopedia Britannica commercials. the video, with the words flying every which way, is a SERIOUS artifact of its time, but not bad i think?

the "Living in the 90s" commercial IS a pretty good match for the mix of songs! there are a few i don't really associate with these kind of ads ("What's Up Doc?" especially). my guess for the one i was thinking of in the OP is maybe a one-disc version by the same company, or some other repackaging of the material, cause clearly it'd have to be under the same licensing deal to also have "Joyride," "Right Here Right Now," and "Unbelievable." hmmm.

oddly, while i could easily imagine a time-traveling Geggy Tah ending up on that same CD, or a viable mashup of "Whoever You Are" with the vocals from "Unbelievable," they still feel like a really different thing to me. maybe cause i owned Sacred Cow and tried valiantly to really like it. they definitely had one foot in the turn-of-the-90s, pre-grunge "college-rock" world, and some attempts at jazziness or jam-band moves.... but otherwise their sound owes a lot to the mainstream of 1996-era alt-rock and maybe Pavement. see the guitars on "Lotta Stuff" and the chorus of "Century Plant." pretty far from "Life is a Highway" i think. but Third Eye Blind is an amazing connection IMHO --- that opening guitar barrage on "Semi-Charmed Life," which I've always heard as a sort of a pop-punk or alterna-power-pop thing, is pretty clearly descended from this whole era! wow.

“Semi-Charmed Life” and “Two Princes” are basically the same groove.

yeah, i buy that. and two big ol' hits!

How about Savage Garden (“I Want You”) as another late-’90s example of this sound? I guess they’re basically Roxette…

Lol yeah I always get those two mixed up.

Xxp I can't believe 'Living in the 90's' isn't THE one!! It's an odd name for a comp that came out in 1995, like an in vain attempt to encapsulate the present. Most of my friends were listening to Bush and Smashing Pumpkins at the time. "Nirvanaless 90s rock history-that-might-have-been" was so OTM.

Like, whatever I thought "90's music" meant in 1995, it certainly wasn't that.

Ha, from the ad, I was assuming it was from 92, like a compilation of big recent radio hits for casual listeners.

I like the sight edge of irony in the otherwise straightforward ad, when they put on shades and say “…and timeless legends” (or something) for Vanilla Ice. That’s very ’90s!