Why has there been no widespread 90's revival?

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?

can't think of which thread really unpacks the idea of a neither-fish-nor-fowl pop interzone circa 1998 to 2001... thought it was The song that represents the END of the 90s but casual control-Fing isn't delivering the goods.

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 !

I love the idea this is mainly a branding issue!

Exactly! I've been been banging this drum for at least 15 years, tbh. There was some attempt to make 'naughties' catch on in the UK, I see 'aughts' is bigger in the US, but really they don't get talked about nearly as much as decades did in the past, nor do the 10s, and that's had a knock-on effect in dampening nascent 90s nostalgia cause decades aren't what they were. It'd be interesting to see if a cultural historian could track the course of decade discourse. 'Roaring 20s' kicked it off, it feels like, though don't know when that phrase caught on.

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

― Tracer Hand, Wednesday, June 9, 2021 8:38 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

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.

― Daniel_Rf, Wednesday, June 9, 2021 8:39 AM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, what Daniel says. I'm teasing about your medium-sized town really. But you're right that decade revivalism does tend to be dumbly reductionist.

Roaring 20s' kicked it off, it feels like, though don't know when that phrase caught on.

What about the gay 1890's?

naughties is the worst kind of innocent smoothies bollocks i hate britain

You're quite right, Daniel!

Here's yr gay nineties and roaring 20s n-gram.

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=gay+nineties+%2Croaring+twenties&year_start=1800&year_end=2019&corpus=26&smoothing=3&case_insensitive=true

The 90s were optimistic?

― MarkoP, Wednesday, 9 June 2021 12:50 (seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

overwhelmingly so imo

Appropriately enough to my theory, the 'gay nineties' was coined just as the 20s made decades catchy again

The 90s were optimistic outside of, you know, Rwanda and the Balkans, until Tricky released his Pre-Millennial Tension album.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gi5j7jjhm4M

> naughties is the worst kind of innocent smoothies bollocks i hate britain

Haha. However you are all aware it’s noughties, as in the number?

I see Y2K parties all the time. at midnight people crash their cars into the house

Noughtsy-woughtsies xp

Haha. However you are all aware it’s noughties, as in the number?

It's cloying either way. The '-ies' is excusable with other decades because it's there in the number.

naughties or noughties, it's the same horrible tedious twee play on words

It's bad but so is "two thousand and..." instead of "twenty..." regarding any of the last eleven years which just won't stop happening.

grammatical awkwardness is inevitable, twee innocent smoothies bollocks is avoidable and must be avoided

The 90's rave revival appears to be in rude health here in Bristol. Recently a lot of the yoofs I see e-scootering past my house are wearing bucket hats and baggy jeans like it was 1991, no idea whether this is just a local thing though.

Breakbeat / hardcore / jungle (with actual chopped funk samples, not the lumpen 'nu skool' variety) are all back in vogue, which is a pretty 90's vibe to recreate. Also a lot of flyer / event poster / release art is heavily influenced by early 90's Dreamscape vibe atm.

The one thing that saddens me a bit is that a lot of the cheesy hands in the air breakdown stuff that worked so well in contrast to the rough breaks isn't being revived as much.

I feel like I constantly see references to Simpsons/Seinfeld/Friends online these days, so it sometimes feels like the 90s never ended.

see how the poison spreads

https://i.postimg.cc/rsYKFtRb/Screenshot-20210609-141437-Twitter.jpg

Simpsons memes are a particularly interesting one because it's obviously all the most memorable 90s quotes and images and younger adults have happily adopted them to the point where its original format as a TV show feels secondary to its newer life as evergreen reaction source, without acknowledging it still exists as the former except when to complain about how bad it is.

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.