Why has there been no widespread 90's revival?

I'm in my 30s and I wouldn't say my peers are massively influenced by the 90s in their tastes in fashion/music - I mean, obviously we have the stuff we grew up with, but it's not really about a retro aesthetic. Whereas a lot of the folk I know in their late teens and early 20s dress in a way that codes to me as almost a pastiche of the 90s.

The 80s revival always seemed fun to me when I was in my 20s cos I hadn't lived through it. I'm dreading the inevitable early 00s revival.

Mainstream music between say 1992 and 2015 - from Britpop to R&B soul covers to Strokes-era garage rock to talent show oldies covers to 80s funk homages - was so self-consciously backwards-looking that it seems impossible to revive on its own. Fortunately the last five years seem to have more of their own flavour.

y'all should move to Bushwick, the proliferation of bucket hats and miscellaneous 90s raver looks might surprise you. agreed though that there is not a "That 90s Show" level acceptance of a set of "90s" tropes or a proliferation of "90s theme parties" or whatever. and when big-budget pop culture has tried to go there it's generally come up pretty vague. see the Captain Marvel movie, which really struggles with this imo.

want to mention the many, many buzzfeed-style listicles of "you know you were a 90s kid if..." which contain nothing whatsoever I remember from the 90s, a time when was aged 10-20 (I really shouldn't waste my time hate-reading these things, I know I have a problem)

Feels like every youmng person I know is deep into eulogising nineties hip hop and dance music (especially jungle). It's not quite the shrill, obvious "EIGHTIES MUSIC IS THE BEST!!" style of revivalism which permeated the 2000s, but it's there as a nostalgic undertone.

For me, it's partly to do with fashion. I can tell you exactly what the archetypal fashion signifiers of the 70s and 80s were: flares, afro-wigs, disco-dancing in the seventies; big shoulder pads, hard make-up and hairspray in the eighties. This isn't what people actually wore in those decades but a fancy-dress caricaturisation of those times.

By the time I get to the 90s though, it's a bit more nuanced. Popstars started dressing more like everyday people, and a lot of the fahsion hasn't necessarily gone away. What am I supposed to say - ripped jeans, bumbags/fannypacks, tank-tops for the 90s; shutter-shades, trucker hats and skinny jeans for the 2000s? It's not so much to go on - it's less parody-able.

People above touched on it, but this is simple:

• 90s is when the mono-culture died and the eternal now began (i.e. the Internet).
• 90s is Gen-X-town, and no one gaf about Gen-X. Not our parents, not our kids.

Isn't there a big love/revival for the Friends era/looks from the kids ? Also for like Nirvana etc ? I know my niece (who's a teenager) loves all our old 90s clothes !

Where is this idea that Gen-X is ignored coming from though? I'm genuinely interested in this.

Friends just had a revival and people haven't STFU about it. Also there's a sort of internet cult around the Simpsons where graffiti and net artists mess around with the characters, often in a surrealist way

yeah I think there's quite a lot of 90s nostalgia and revivalism! particularly 90s house music. which, is like, okay i like 90s house music, but it never seems to go away.

I also disagree with the premise, I think 90s stuff is pretty big right now

I see kids dressed like the 90s all the time

I think the 80s revival has been a little more than everyone watching Family Ties for a week and remembering they liked Huey Lewis.

It is interesting, cf the Pink Floyd thread, that during the 90s there was huge revivalism for certain looks and sounds i.e Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were absolutely massive in my medium-sized Tennessee town - but those aspects of the 90s are utterly absent from any of today's 90s revivalism

I mean the other day I had to go get some stuff at my daughter's school and I saw older girls pretty much dressed like they were in The Craft

I don't have kids so I will defer to those who do on what "the kids" are into.

Just will point to the word "widespread" in the thread title.

Also, I'm 48 and it felt that the period when advertisers were pandering to 90s nostalgia lasted about 5 minutes.

xpost Tracer that's no different than the 90s in a way - our fascination with the 70s didn't extend to embracing the 50s nostalgia of the 70s

I think there’s another thread on it somewhere, but there’s a 90s palette of free-floating light day-glo colours that instantly signifies 90s in clothing and graphic design.

What are the big 90s songs that have been used in national commercials? Genuine question, I watch few commercials these days.

What I do see seems like it's still 80s or 80s-inspired new music.

I saw a commercial for Rick and Morty and used Sabotage by the Beasties last night

there's also a ton of 90s computer culture imagery, the post seapunk, Ecco the Dolphin look, Windows 95 vibe

Yeah, also kind of dispute the premise. My partner works at a school where the kids wear flares, Global Hypercolour, hoodies and flannel etc - to the point where, photo quality aside, it's genuinely hard to tell what era some school photos come from. They listen to Nirvana, Oasis, and rollerskate to Mariah. Nineties house piano is still everywhere. They're all obsessed with Friends. There was a period in the mid-2010s when Buzzfeed was basically the "...Remember the 90s" channel

I'm more surprised there hasn't been an aughts revival yet - I remember going to nineties dance nights as far back as 2007-8. I'm not sure what an aughts revival would look like, though.

I also disagree with the premise, I think 90s stuff is pretty big right now

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 9, 2021 7:45 AM bookmarkflaglink

I see kids dressed like the 90s all the time

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 9, 2021 7:47 AM bookmarkflaglink

agree. i just went to a local hangout/bar whose entire motif is 90s hip-hop, down to the art on the walls, and the music being played.

Sorry, it's not a 90s revival until they use Hunger Strike in a McDonald's commercial.

Ecco the motherfucking Dolphin. wow...that takes me back.

"You don't have to steal bread from the mouths of decadence, when you can get two for Sausage, Egg & Cheese McMuffins for $2."

And for instance, Billie Eilish'fashion choices are very 90s imo.

Ok, that I totally see.

not that I wanna keep focusing on just hip-hop, but Celph-Titled did a while 90s-themed album a decade ago using older beats from Buckwild called Nineteen Ninety Now, and in his interviews, he talked about how the zenith of hip-hop was the 90s.

Nickelodeon also crams as much Friends as it can into a several hour block.

and lol Eve 6 guy!

I partly disagree with the premise, in that I see quite a lot of 90s influence.

But more fundamentally, I think the reason it never became quite as big as 50s, 60s and 70s revivalism is that people have stopped thinking in decades as much, probably because since this century started, we've had two that didn't have very catchy names.

There may be a big 20s revival in the 2040s.

can't wait for 00s revivalism, which leads to sequels to Hitch, You, Me, and Dupree, and everybody forms a garage rock band

I remember some friends doing 80s revival as early as '98 - and there was Romo in '96.

think the problem is that we may still be in the long 90s.

Yeah, born in '85 I kinda feel like there's never not been an 80's revival, though I think GTA: Vice City and Electroclash revved things up.

Your second statement tho I cannot relate to at all: even by 2002, p much everything I associated with the 90's - from "end of history" politics through sub-Tarantino cinema and on to grunge, britpop, lilith fair - already seemed like complete ancient history.

It is interesting, cf the Pink Floyd thread, that during the 90s there was huge revivalism for certain looks and sounds i.e Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were absolutely massive in my medium-sized Tennessee town - but those aspects of the 90s are utterly absent from any of today's 90s revivalism

― Tracer Hand

This is not ringing any bells with me, Tracer.

If you were born in 85, Daniel, it's worth saying that 80s nostalgia started even longer ago than you might think – I remember a student disco night called Club Tropicana in 1992.

It's true that vaporwave took a lot of aesthetic cues from the 90's but strangely the music in general still could be from the 80's.

I think part of what I'm surprised about is that even in '99 older kids going on and on about Nirvana, Pearl Jam and such felt as or more oppresive to me than the boomer fixation w/ 60's music and I had expected that to increase in amplitude as the decades pass, but I don't think it did really.

00's revivalism - Nu Metal has been made respectable in a lot of circles in the same sort of narrative that bands like Journey underwent previously. There's also a ton of nostalgia for Myspace and the pre social media internet.

80s, 90s, 00s revivalism has been happening all at once for a while now idk where people get this 20/25 year rule stuff from but if it was ever true it's not now

Mainstream music between say 1992 and 2015 - from Britpop to R&B soul covers to Strokes-era garage rock to talent show oldies covers to 80s funk homages - was so self-consciously backwards-looking that it seems impossible to revive on its own.

Fo the early 00's, I might be having an excessively rosy view for my own youth, but: dubstep, Neptunes/Timbaland, crunk, hyphy and assorted hip-hop regional trends, plenty to revive there if ppl were so inclined.

For the 90's, Trip Hop, G Funk, Wu Tang?

What do you mean, Alba? That The Floyd and The Zep are big again?

I'm guessing he meant that Floyd and Zep weren't very huge to him in the 90's, which will be yr usual US/UK divide at work.

the whole Griselda/Mach Jimmy/produced by Alchemist/post Roc Marciano scene has gotten really big in the last few years basically just throwing back to Mobb Deep and Only Built 4 Cuban Linx

people have stopped thinking in decades as much, probably because since this century started, we've had two that didn't have very catchy names.

I love the idea this is mainly a branding issue!

xpost wasn't Benny the Butcher also kinda in that vibe, or am I misremembering

people have stopped thinking in decades as much, probably because since this century started, we've had two that didn't have very catchy names.

I love the idea this is mainly a branding issue!

I'll admit this tho: WWI aside, I don't have as tidy a distinction between the 1900's and 1910's as I do for every decade of the 20th century from thereon.

7, Gillett00's revivalism - Nu Metal has been made respectable in a lot of circles in the same sort of narrative that bands like Journey underwent previously. There's also a ton of nostalgia for Myspace and the pre social media internet.


but Nu Metal is late 90s not 00s, all those bands were 90s bands, 3 Dollar Bill Y'all was 97, Follow the Leader was 98... Woodstock 99....Devil Without a Cause is 98

Neanderthal -Benny is part of Griselda records - him, Westside Gunn, Conway the Machine

They are a late late 90's to early 00's crossover thing but believe me being in high school in the 00's Nu Metal was absolutely considered the music of the zeitgeist and something ppl only a couple of years older than us would scoff at.

I think part of the problem here is people's conception of "the 90s" ends in like 95

2000 is still essentially late 90s, except with a lot more people downloading music for free.
2001 felt like the tides starting to turn.

Because optimism is uncool

The 90s were optimistic?

yeah my pet generational divide theory is likewise based on whether or not you grew up watching reruns. I spent a decent chunk of my childhood absorbing the mass culture of the 50s-70s (leading to confusions like not realizing stuff like Happy Days was made later), which seems really different from now for better and worse

And hearing "oldies" on the radio. Some ppl age 35+ seem to not believe that younger folks haven't heard certain songs (everyone knows that one!) but if you've never had older music passively fed to you via the radio, it's very possible to miss a lot of "classics". Seems that the on-demand generations only know old music if it was on the Shrek soundtrack or whatever.

On yeah radio too; in fifth grade my bus driver played the oldies station (meaning 1950s/early 60s at that time) every morning so at 10 I knew all kinds of girl group and doo wop and early rock songs by heart. So on the one hand, I grew up on a retrospectively bizarre cultural diet suffused with other people's nostalgia, but on the other hand, I picked up a ton of tacit historical & cultural knowledge that I still find useful.

yeah my pet generational divide theory is likewise based on whether or not you grew up watching reruns. I spent a decent chunk of my childhood absorbing the mass culture of the 50s-70s (leading to confusions like not realizing stuff like Happy Days was made later), which seems really different from now for better and worse

I found this last month and it sent me into a fit of nostalgia for that precise reason.

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

Seems that the on-demand generations only know old music if it was on the Shrek Grand Theft Auto soundtrack or whatever.

― A True White Kid that can Jump (Granny Dainger), Wednesday, July 28, 2021 5:15 PM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't know if this is entirely true. I think a lot of kids are learning about things through Spotify recommendations and stuff.

Yeah or parents/relatives. I mainly based what I said off of YouTube reaction vids.

For movie knowledge/awareness it seems to often come from memes

https://cdn.imgchest.com/files/my2pc9xvv7j.jpeg

Was watching a guy reacting to Raiders of the Lost Ark yesterday (he's been to film school so obv a film lover. Does boggle my mind he's never seen any Indiana Jones!) and he kept losing his shit over how much stuff Uncharted video games took from it

I envy blatherskite's relation to smartphones - I also hate reading the tiny text, writing on the touchpad, etc. but do it nonetheless. I kinda compartimentalise my relation to the internet that way - desktop is where I stream movies, edit my podcast, talk on ILX. Phone is where I doomscroll and get into dumb arguments because I'm bored.

Re: youngster's tastes, the thing is I don't think it's about them getting less knowledge of the past so much as what they do get knowledge of being very random - like there was this young dude on youtube uploading City Pop mixes, and then some day out of nowhere he just posted a 50's Jump Blues mix.

Also at the Talking Pictures TV Podcast we've been doing these online quiz events and the audience of course tends towards older British ppl but there's this teen from Wisconsin who always joins. He has a collection of 40's British actrecesses' autorgraphs and a Carry On Camping mug.

Aware this is an outlier but would still struggle to imagine the kid developing these tastes pre-internet.

ime kids know way more about the pop culture of the past than i did because it’s accessible everywhere! Friends on Netflix ffs.

I wasn't really trying to say kids today are totally ignorant of past pop culture—the only kids I know well enough to anec-data about this are too young for it to apply to, though now that I'm thinking about it, they're not growing up watching Looney Tunes, Jetsons, Flintstones, Scooby Doo, etc. side by side with GI Joe and Transformers like I did.

I was mostly agreeing with this post:

Going from mostly "Tuning in" to mostly "On demand" changes a lot about what you're exposed to.

― silverfish, Wednesday, July 28, 2021 2:50 PM (three days ago)

I don't think Netflix having a handful of prominent older shows compares experientially to the bottomless well of rerun content on 80s basic cable. I could list lots of examples of old shows I saw as a kid that were relatively obscure—does Netflix have stuff like Wings, Caroline in the City, or Grace under Fire? Obviously if your media diet was different growing up this will all sound kind of nuts, but in my view there is far less content "accessible" and even then "accessible" is not the same as "omnipresent." I'm sure there are specialized streaming services that have, say, lots of old Hanna-Barbera cartoons but when I was watching Cartoon Express growing up I had no idea I was watching shows from multiple decades in a single afternoon.

Music I have much less idea about tbh and I think that ties more into the endless boomer nostalgia hangover that was the 80s (on that note, does Netflix have Wonder Years or China Beach? again, I'm not saying this is nec bad, just different)

kids not only have access to the entire recorded output of the 20th century they have access to reaction videos of people watching and listening to it. it’s way too much for anyone to completely take in so yes i think they would draw the line somewhere far in advance of lol china beach. keep in mind that professionally shot broadcast television is just one content type among many for them. the youtube algorithm exposes them to all kinds of things that they’re not intentionally seeking out.

that's a good point: a clear generational divide is I do not use YouTube the way young people do. I am somewhat incredulous that they're using it to watch That Girl, but I could be very wrong!

I'm not sure I ever saw more than a few minutes of lol China Beach, but good lord there was a lot of Vietnam War content growing up in the 80s

Yeah, rando old sitcoms you watch just because they're on seems low priority for the young'ns these days....

But if they want to, Caroline... is on Paramount+, Wings is on Paramount+ AND Hulu, and Grace... is on several services, most prominently Peacock.

Ah, sounds like being in Canada is making me misread the availability angle

I look back fondly on the melange of old and new TV that childhood broadcasting subjected me to, but if YouTube comments teach me anything it’s that people will look back fondly on any old shit so I don’t think I should worry too much about kids today being robbed of anything.

also like... many people still do have cable tv, and if my random channel surfing in hotel rooms is any indication, it's easy enough to find yourself at an episode of F Troop in 2021. inexplicable as that might seem in programming terms.

Yeah but I don’t think many kids are watching cable, are they?

they’re watching historical NBA games and full length t.i. concerts and mini-documentaries about the tallest people to have ever lived. if my house is any indication. it’s just a wealth of accumulated pop cult at their fingertips that would have blown my mind as a child.

kids not only have access to the entire recorded output of the 20th century

lol

why would kids watch bad TV that we only watched because it was the only thing on

It was bad because it was mind-numbing, but minds kind of like to be numb part of the time. And kids can't drink vodka.

XP They're watching Friends, aren't they?

In all seriousness, Rob's list makes me think about how some shows could coast into multiple seasons simply because they were on between Friends and Seinfeld, or Seinfeld and ER. Definitely a lost art of sorts.

Speaking of ER, are there <any> classic TV Dramas that Millennials Stan for? And by 'classic', I mean pre-Sopranos/prestige TV.

hmm. Twin Peaks for sure. and maybe more in the "genre" zone? ST:TNG and DS9, Buffy, etc....? a friend of mine got really into M*A*S*H a couple years ago.

but it's an interesting question. i'm struggling to even think of that many classic TV dramas to start with - they're not on the tip of my tongue like sitcoms. and especially ones with either ongoing storylines, or a manageable overall episode count... feels like those might be important prerequisites for reasons i can't quite spell out.

do mystery shows count as dramas? Murder She Wrote gets a lot of love out there. feel like i've encountered a few other Columbo lovers over the years....

west wing maybe but that’s proto-prestige

as far as dramas go

law and order?

Oh yeah, those mysteries are pretty big. I think Rockford has a growing following too.

And how could I forget the Star Treks and Buffy? Although genre fandom helps in those cases.

I was really thinking about something like ER, which was _HUGE_ in it's time, but seems like you never hear about anymore.

every six weeks another article runs about people discovering Columbo during lockdown #acabec

Writing a piece for NYT Sunday Styles on how people these days present on social media as Columbo (enigmatic, one step ahead, always nails the rich bastard) but live as Rockford (mobile home, broke, beaten up every week)

— 'Weird Alex' Pareene (@pareene) May 8, 2021

I think that people have easier access to all kinds of things and are exposed to more, thanks to the wonders of algorithmic recommendations and the preservation of everything that exists now. But they aren't forced to endure it the same way. If I leave YouTube to autoplay some music videos and something comes on I don't enjoy I simply skip to the next one. And if I don't like that either I can search for something I will enjoy. Whereas, when I was growing up, I only had The Chart Show and TOTP and occasional trips to someone's house where they had The Box. So if I wanted to see music videos I had to take them all as a bundle together - so I could see my then-favourites like Bjork and Garbage, but I also had to sit through dreck like Boyzone. So even though I don't like their music I had a familiarity with it and sense of them. Whereas now I can simply skip past an Ed Sheeran video and remain completely ignorant, beyond knowing I won't enjoy it.

this is very true.

I remember arguing with Ilxors way way back when Top of the Pops got cancelled, saying that TOTP was a communal after-tea experience where, for example, everyone from your Dad, your Nan, your baby brother, would all get a glimpse into what was happening in the current charts, and everyone would have an opinion on, say, Brian Molko whether they cared about the music or not, which I think ties in a bit with what boxedjoy is saying.

https://s3.amazonaws.com/djwp/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/19155915/web_bbdb_EH_DJ-Arts-Beabadoobee_091.jpg

beabadoobee is leading the ’90’s revival

Inspired by the sounds of the late ’80s and early ’90s, beabadoobee cites Elliot Smith, The Moldy Peaches, and The Cardigans as early influences.

https://www.documentjournal.com/2021/04/beabadoobee-is-leading-the-90s-revival/

Obviously there is no way a show like TOTP or The Pepsi Chart would have worked since the mid-00s. Why would you expect the whole family to gather round the TV and sit together when everyone has their own taste and their own device to explore it?

xp: lol.

beabadoobee is excellent and yes she sounds a bit 90's in the same way Wolf Alice sound a bit 90's .

Xp to boxedjoy - that's true but then you could make that case against all TV, not just TOTP

That said, the charts don't seem to mean half as much to people in general as they once did. Do people pay attention to who's number one any more?

the spotify charts are a lot of people’s default playlists

xp: lol.

― peace, man, Monday, August 2, 2021 7:07 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

beabadoobee is excellent and yes she sounds a bit 90's in the same way Wolf Alice sound a bit 90's .

― akm, Monday, August 2, 2021 7:22 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

My lol was more at describing "Elliot Smith, The Moldy Peaches, and The Cardigans" as " late ’80s and early ’90s". Nothing matters.