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

Forgot about that weird Brits 1990 megamix single

I'd managed to completely forget about Jive Bunny

I still own a cassette of the Jive Bunny LP, I remember being disappointed that it didn't include their abysmal Christmas single.

"Here We Are" is among my favorite guilty pleasures from that era.

Ain't nothin' guilty about the pleasure of an Estefan ballad.

Seems like an early victim of 'must fill every available minute of time on this new CD format!' bloat.

The CD has half a bonus track over the LP; the cassette has four.

Orbital Top 20 singles artist. Oh yeah.

Again, for me - something I find common in this period - is the “indie” stuff stinks the chart up more than anything else (not a big Madchester/baggy person so there is that); the chart looks more interesting without it

Goddamn, I had thought 'This is Ponderous' (1991)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gYIbMwswKM

was some sort of unfortunate outlier from this era, but there are tracks exactly like it on the Was (Not Was) and Will to Power albums from '90. WTF was happening.

From a purely anecdotal standpoint, listening to albums from this particular year feels incredibly schizophrenic to me inasmuch as, between the summer of '90 and the fall of '91 (when singles from some of these albums were still charting), I lived in four different cities (we moved at the end of my seventh grade year, then again in the middle of eighth grade, and then again just before my freshman year). So I have an array of geographical associations with these songs, and then also the thing where a song hits big in one part of the country long before another catches up, etc. The fact that 'U Can't Touch This' and 'Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Move)' were released in the same year seems to strain all temporal credulity.

Defining the Poppy Bush Interzone.

Yes, I always forget but, upon remembering, greatly appreciate your coinage of the PBI. It is an extremely resonant era of pop for me.

Phenomenal year.

The slate from yesterday and this morning...

Was (Not Was) - Are You Okay?
Vanessa Williams - The Right Stuff
Will to Power - Journey Home
Wilson Phillips - s/t

...has been fine I guess, fair-to-middlin', not many album tracks exceeding the better singles that I already knew, occasionally real bad (about half of that WNW album...sheesh), mostly making me wonder how inclined I am to continue with this project.

But hey whattayaknow, listening to Salt-N-Pepa's Black's Magic rn and it's real effing good. Which may be news to precisely no one but me.

was some sort of unfortunate outlier from this era, but there are tracks exactly like it on the Was (Not Was) and Will to Power albums from '90. WTF was happening.

Bands just felt really compelled to do an updated 90s take on Eric Burdon and War's "Spill The Wine".

These songs are a much different animal (no pun intended). It makes me wonder if Joe Frank just started to blow up around then.

I heard punk broke, not sure if anybody fixed it.

A corporation did

I'm sorry to have to report that it died