1990: Was it really that bad of a year for music?

Never understood why people rate that Black Box single over any of their others from the same album.

It may partly be because it was pretty ubiquitous at the time, in a way the others weren't (at least in my corner of the world). I very strongly associate that particular moment with that song.

Surely Ride on Time is the most celebrated / overplayed Black Box single?

Yeah, the moment anyone mentions Black Box, I think "WHOOOOOOOA HO! WHOOOOOAAAA HO! WA WHOOOOOOA HO! WA WA WA WHOOOOOOOAAAA HO!"

The premise of this thread is pretty dumb, it's not like we're talking about 1975 or 1986 or 1998 or another one of those weird in-between years, 1990 had several huge and pivotal scenes absolutely booming, I don't think anyone seriously makes the case for it being a bad year.

x-post to dog latin

It may be a difference between UK and US. US chart for

Everybody Everybody:

UK Singles (The Official Charts Company)[10] 16
US Billboard Hot 100[11] 8
US Billboard R&B Singles [11] 2
US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play[11] 1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Everybody_Everybody_(song)#Charts

UK Singles (Official Charts Company)[5] 1
US Billboard Hot Dance Club Play[29] 39
US Billboard Hot Dance Music/Maxi-Singles Sales[29] 44

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ride_on_Time#Charts_and_certifications

I do like Everybody Everybody better though, for whatever reason.

(x-post)

Okay, then maybe instead of being snarky, you could come up with some theory as to why it remains one of the lesser talked about years? Even '75, '86 and '98 get talked about more. I can't actually think of a year more overlooked post 1962. If so many scenes were indeed booming, why isn't the year spoken about to the same degree as other years where the same thing was happening?

Personally, I cluster 1989-1991 together, when it comes to what I was listening to. It seems like trends shifted in 1992 (and at the very least my listening habits shifted). New music in 1989-1991 for me was mostly hip-hop, some R&B, the occasional house crossover hit in the US, and Psychic TV (and to some extent Coil).

xp transitional year. better known for singles than albums maybe? Do people think of 2000, 1980, 1970, 2010 as particularly remarkable years for music? Yes, blah blah, no such thing as a bad year etc, but is there a psychological effect at play where the first year of a decade feels like the closing of one door and the opening of another, therefore making that period harder to define as typically 'of its time'? Like you were saying, rather than feeling like the beginning of a new era, 1990 could be seen as more of a victory lap of the eighties. Sometimes it takes a few years into a decade to really get what it's all about and what defines it. Like the idea that there were 'two eighties' the one that spanned 1978-1985 and the one that lasted 1986-1992). This is all very conjectural and subjective of course, and buys into the idea that people are subliminally affected by the idea of years and decades..

Because unless it's the Summer of Love or coinciding with some huge moment in history, most people don't really talk about years when they talk about music? They talk about things that were happening at the time, and 1990 was hip-hop getting bigger and bigger, plus acid house and baggy and Pacific NW rock and a load of other stuff. Maybe because it's a plateau year rather than a pivotal year?

1987-94 is a bit of a mini-era in itself really.

I think Rudipherous and Matt are OTM; 1990 and 1991 feel like extensions of 1989 to me so whenever I wax nostalgic about '89, I'm really talking about a 3-year period of awesome music.

xp for dance music definitely.

1989-1992 ... about as good as it got for pop-house dance music

I think it's interesting, the distinction between musical years that you can say empirically were good or bad and years that you were either too young or not yet alive to appreciate.1990 was an exciting year for me musically but can I really say that 1975 was a good year or not?

For one, I was 3 years old and who knows if I would have bought Hissing Of Summer Lawns or Another Green World and nerded out on them if I had been old enough to.
But if I had done, it would have made my musical year for sure.

goes without saying that this all depends on your age, where you were living and what interests you kept. I have a real blind-spot for late-80s music because I came to pop right at the beginning of 1990, so from my POV it's a year zero in terms of developing a taste for music. To this day, music from the years prior feel like warming-up.

Yep, I was 11 in 1990. Everything sounded so good.

Well, hardly anyone seems to bring up 1990 as some sort of gold standard year for music, hence the thread, which isn't designed to criticise the year, but to discuss the music that came out that year.

Many people aren't saying that 1990 was some sort of gold standard year for music. That's what I'm not hearing. Sad! DO SOMETHING

yeah this 'a lot of people' thing...what exactly is she source for this?

Seems like it's just based on the dullest possible rock canon consensus of pre-Grunge myopia. Why dignify it? Worth it for reading the 1990 / Time For The Souffle linked upthread tho with the same immediate 'why this again?!' responses ha.

My favorite house track ever was released in 1990 - Earth People (aka Pal Joey) - "Dance"

also RON TRENT - ALTERED STATES

Joey Beltram - “Energy Flash”
Bobby Konders - “The Poem”
Eon - “Spice”
808 State - “Cubik” and U.S. LP ‘Utd. State 90’
49-ers “Touch Me” “Don’t You Love Me”
Double Dee feat. Dany - “found Love”
Psychotropic - Hypnosis
Technotronic - “Pump Up the Jam”

Touch Me and Pump Up The Jam were 1989 /pedant

Logic - "The Warning"
The Underground Solution (aka Roger Sanchez) - "Luv Dancin'"

xpost, my bad - I respect pedantry

UNIQUE 3 - THE THEME

Yes, sic, god forbid we talk about music on a music forum. If you don't like the discussion then don't participate. Simples.

Seems like it's just based on the dullest possible rock canon consensus of pre-Grunge myopia.

It actually isn't.

Touch Me and Pump Up The Jam were 1989 /pedant

This just proves that 1989-1991 is one big block of time.

I got a walkman for my 13th birthday in 1989 and the music I was most into at the time was house, mostly what was in the charts, especially hip-house and acid. And Queen, but I think it was some kind of rule that 13 year old boys had to be into Queen in 1989.

If you don't like the discussion then don't participate. Simples.

you should take your own advice sometimes

f you don't like the discussion then don't participate.
It actually isn't.

Criticism of the thread/question is part of the discussion. You didn't cite anything regarding the assertion of 1990 as a lesser time for critically acclaimed music or whatever. If you gave examples of where this was decided or who needs to be convinced otherwise it would create a better discussion.

I love the music that came out in 1990. That was a great year for music. So exciting for someone who loved UK indie and early house/techno and hip hop. Those genres blended together and hit the charts fairly often. Forgive me for not frequently coming out to wave the flag for that particular year. Nice job getting people to name their favorites though. I'm reminded of tons of great stuff. 1990 was my first year as a college radio DJ. No one has mentioned Every Beat of the Heart by Railway Children yet, so i'll add that to the pile of singles that were on heavy rotation. Also not ashamed to say I wore out my copy of the Lightning Seeds album that year (i'm from the US, so it was released in 1990 here - 89 in the UK).

Valuable contribution to the discussion from brimstead there!

Nashwan, the point is that it's a lesser spoken about year, not a lesser year, which would have been clear if you'd read the opening post instead of just the title. At least dog latin gets it.

And numerous others have managed to talk about it without a degree of snark, too. I mean, if you guys want this place to be more pleasant, then be pleasant - and I'm obviously including myself in that too.

the point is that it's a lesser spoken about year,

You've missed my point again which is asking for at least some evidence of these claims beyond Trump-style 'a lot of people reckon'.

"Many people" =/= "Hardly anyone", which, y'know, are the words I actually used.

Albums from 1990 that I liked then and still listen to:

Primus, Frizzle Fry
Prong, Beg to Differ
Robert Plant, Manic Nirvana
Depeche Mode, Violator
Nitzer Ebb, Showtime
Social Distortion, s/t
Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet
Celtic Frost, Vanity/Nemesis
A Tribe Called Quest, People's Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm
Dio, Lock Up the Wolves
Ice Cube, AmeriKKKa's Most Wanted
Deicide, s/t
Danzig, Lucifuge
Suicidal Tendencies, Lights...Camera...Revolution!
Pantera, Cowboys From Hell
Cannibal Corpse, Eaten Back to Life
Living Colour, Time's Up
Anthrax, Persistence of Time
Jane's Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual
Judas Priest, Painkiller
Ministry, In Case You Didn't Feel Like Showing Up
Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Ragged Glory
Obituary, Cause of Death
AC/DC, The Razors Edge
Megadeth, Rust in Peace
Testament, Souls of Black
Slayer, Seasons in the Abyss
Geto Boys, s/t
Dwight Yoakam, If There Was a Way
Kreator, Coma of Souls
Sisters of Mercy, Vision Thing
KMFDM, Naïve

Albums I liked at the time but haven't heard in years:

Brand Nubian, One for All
Soul II Soul, Vol. II - 1990: A New Decade
Beats International, Let Them Eat Bingo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VI3C6MROOvY

Turrican, it may help if you define and elaborate more on what research you did to make this claim "Looking at each individual year of the '90s". So what were your results? Did you track these in a spreadsheet? Would be interesting to hear about your research process. For example, how many mentions of 1990 vs. 1999 were there in your research? What was the sentiment on those posts mentioning 1990 vs. 1999? I'd be laughed out of my office if I made claims like you made without supporting with direct quotes and charts. Can we access the text of all ILX posts in a database? Were you using more than just ILX in your observations?

Yup, precisely!

Valuable contribution to the discussion from brimstead there!

Thanks! gracious of you to acknowledge your own hypocrisy

Ooh, I'm liking unperson's list, as it gives a nice little overview of what the year was like from a metal/alternative rock fans perspective - yes, I know there's a couple of hip-hop LP's in there too, but I can see others have covered that side of the year, too.

One of the things I like about checking out what people were into at the time, particularly during years when music fandom was more tribal, is seeing how everyone comes at the same thing from a different angle.

I also quite like the idea of looking at 1990 as part of a longer period of time e.g. 1989-1991, in the same way that 1979-1981 feels like part of the same period musically.

this is what the reading festival looked like in 1990:

https://www.readingfestival.com/sites/live.inviqa.readingfestival.com/files/images/history/poster/1990.jpg

i went but i think i must have been off my nut the whole weekend cos i don't really remember seeing any of those bands at all apart from the cramps and tackhead. was hugely into the young gods and loop but a field in the middle of the afternnon isn't really the time or the place

still dont know who the fuck an emotional fish are

There's a woman at the end of the street always talking about football records, I was having a flick through discogs and I found what she was talking about. The rap is pretty good but I'm not so keen on the music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1VXJd7b9bA

1990 singles

Lush - sweetness and light
my bloody valentine - soon/glider
the orb - little fluffy clouds
depeche mode - enjoy the silence
seal - crazy
sinead o connor - nothing compares 2 U

and the enigma album

was 6 in 1990, so yeah. favourite music was probably the tiny toons theme song tbh

Brotherlovesdub, if you've talked about music with a variety of people in a variety of places over a long enough time, as well as read up a lot about music via a variety of sources, then you begin to notice patterns and/or trends and some things become noticeably more discussed than other things, while other things recede into the background.

As for the spreadsheet stuff, I'll keep my thoughts to myself on that one.

Oh yeah, that first Trash Can Sinatras album is still so good. Another 1990 gem. https://www.discogs.com/The-Trash-Can-Sinatras-Cake/release/1803974

Thanks! gracious of you to acknowledge your own hypocrisy

― brimstead, Friday, November 3, 2017 6:00 PM (nineteen minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

You're welcome, and if you really want me to knock the snark on the head, I'd start by not being a provocative idiot.

Still jam this on the reg

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/516eno-vIWL.jpg

Whoa, the Reading '90 poster! Faith No More would have still been touring The Real Thing. It's easy to forget how popular the Inspiral Carpets were, they seem to be mostly discussed as a distant third to The Stone Roses and Happy Mondays, while the likes of The Charlatans and Blur moved on and eclipsed them.