Why has there been no widespread 90's revival?

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the naughty aughties

quietly one of the worst things about twitter is people saying derivative unfunny stuff and then other, apparently even less funny people, popping up to be like "gonna start using this now" or "omg, stealing this one for later." or more likely, posting a reaction gif from some TV show captioned "omg, stealing this one for later."

as far as the 90s, this is obvious but another cycle here is Gen Xers having kids, the kids grew up with 90s music playing in the car, they're now old enough for some of them to also claim it as their favorite stuff. same as the 70s-90s thing when Funky Days Were Back Again. or the tremendous number of people around my age (39) who grew up on Graceland and Billy Joel's Greatest Hits, and so forth. this is distinct from people actively unearthing things that were lesser-known or unpopular in their original heyday, but the thread Q seems to be more about a mainstream-accepted, pop-recognized kind of revival.

Wu-Tang definitely feels bigger than in a long time. i see the logo a lot.

can corroborate that bucket hats are very trendy w london kids, or at least were very recently

I've seen the Linda Lindas story posted all over, which is cool but also 100% riot grrl revival

while back it was the same with these School of Rock kids covering Fugazi

https://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/fugazi-twitter-trend-cleveland-school-of-rock-teenagers/

Linda Lindas link
https://variety-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/variety.com/2021/music/news/linda-lindas-racist-sexist-boy-lapl-1234978285/amp/?amp_js_v=a6&_gsa=1&usqp=mq331AQHKAFQArABIA%3D%3D#aoh=16232459270401&referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com&_tf=From%20%251%24s&share=https%3A%2F%2Fvariety.com%2F2021%2Fmusic%2Fnews%2Flinda-lindas-racist-sexist-boy-lapl-1234978285%2F

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

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, June 9, 2021 8:47 AM (fifty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This seems otm to me personally and on a broader level. Similar to how a lot of people's conception of the 80s seems focussed on like 84-87.

something i think about a lot is how old shows getting added to Netflix seems to be a new factor in this that wasnt at play in previous instances of decade revivalism, in terms of what things get plucked from the ether as the dominant signifiers of the era. i know more than one person who has gotten a Frasier-related tattoo in the last few years (im sorry to say). but if the streaming rights deal had broken a different way, i imagine it could just as easily have been Grace Under Fire or Spin City or something

95 is when the internet started becoming mainstream, right? Seems normal to split the decade in two based on that

Hip-hop and R&B still going strong. The way Soundscan revealed how undercounted their commercial strength was and the way radio yielded to them was the decade's most distinguishing characteristic in America, not grunge or whatever, whose impact on the Hot 100 was more minimal than on the bigger album chart.

So what "nineties" are some of y'all looking for?

This seems otm to me personally and on a broader level. Similar to how a lot of people's conception of the 80s seems focussed on like 84-87.

That's true in some contexts, but at the same time I sometimes see everything crunched down in ways that are hilarious to those who lived through it. I wish I'd taken a photo, but a few years ago I was in Edinburgh and there was a flyer from some student disco that used the Trainspotting poster with Morrissey, Shaun Ryder and god knows who else photoshopped in place of the actors.

I can't remember if it was billed as an 80s night, 90s night or both.

Maybe it was supposedly Madchester-themed, in fact.

its already been 10 years since that album of Win95 startup sounds was The Wire's album of the year

I really want a return to the Poppy Bush Interzone—acid and techno leaking to the mainstream, Metallica having a top 40 hit, etc.

Hip-hop and R&B still going strong. The way Soundscan revealed how undercounted their commercial strength was and the way radio yielded to them was the decade's most distinguishing characteristic in America, not grunge or whatever, whose impact on the Hot 100 was more minimal than on the bigger album chart.

If it's still going strong it can't be a revival, no? I don't think ppl think of Hip-Hop or R&B as particularly 90's genres, and I don't think most examples of those genres that you hear on the radio in 2021 sound more influenced by the 90's than the 80's or 00's.

That's fair. I just wonder whose '90s we mean and what "nineties" is shorthand for.

90s are those mythical pre-9/11, pre-fovever-war, pre-recession, pre-austerity, pre-trump, pre-brexit, pre-climate-worst-case-scenario, pre-pandemic times when everything was pretty much ok and everybody basically got along

we had it all, Arrested Development, Dr Dre, Eve 6, Limp Bizkit, Bob Dole, debit cards, grunge

I don't think ppl think of Hip-Hop or R&B as particularly 90's genres

Wait, what?

xp it was the "end of history" iirc

To an extent the show Portlandia was Gen Xers paying homage to the '90s, or "The Dream of the '90s" as they called it. I sense among my fellow Gen Xers that our nostalgia is focused on the '80s (i.e. high school) or still on the '70s - whether ironically (we were neglected and ignored latchkey kids) or genuinely (we were free-range kids, how great was that). I do think there was a vibe of optimism for a hot minute in the early '90s underneath the slacker cynicism and that is the moment and the zeitgeist I've been lately feeling some pangs of nostalgia for. I feel nothing whatsoever for the culture of the late '90s. But then there must be a maximum age a person can feel nostalgic for, and for me that is about 26.

My neighborhood is a sort of mass production factory for kids and I see them wearing Nirvana t-shirts all the time and have for years. It's funny though, it's really just Nirvana. You never see them wear a Throwing Muses or an L7 shirt.

I had a 90s revival party and I destroyed Wikipedia and infected everybody's computer with trojans, also added frames to every website

xp

yeah it's weird that lots of young people seem to listen to Nirvana but never Pearl Jam or Soundgarden (from my anecdotal viewpoint). Those bands were almost as huge as Nirvana back then.

Do young people today listen to Rage Against The Machine? I feel like that's a band made for teenagers that would probably hold up over time

I don't think ppl think of Hip-Hop or R&B as particularly 90's genres
Wait, what?

Those genres are way too huge to be associated with one decade imo. Subgenres like New Jack Swing or G-Funk are associated with the 90's, but saying that Hip-Hop or R&B in and of themselves are 90's genres would be like saying Rock is a "70's genre".

Like if "WAP" comes on the radio do you think "ah, a 90's throwback"?

Well no, but there's no genre as wide as Hip-Hop or R&B that you could really say is just 90s, is there?

No, nor for any other decade either. Which is why bringing them up as evidence of 90's revival didn't scan for me, don't really see why that's so confounding?

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

Waaay back upthread, but bars in my college town had "Timewarp Tuesday" nights that were all 80s music starting in 1994.

That's fair. I just wonder whose '90s we mean and what "nineties" is shorthand for.

This is a good point. I'll cop to having brought up grunge because it was huge in the white boy rock fan circles I had access to as a teen, and because I was pretty convinced it would become 60's boomer rock level monolithic at that time.

I am in a New Jack Swing Parties London group on FB but even before covid there wasn't much activity :(

that makes me wish I was in London

Seinfeld sample in this Wale and SZA song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U4wyY5pJ9r8

Wale has always been a Seinfeld stan; dropped The Mixtape About Nothing (w/ Seinfeld graphics) in 2008.

ahhhh

lotta 90s influences everywhere rn but pop culture will never work in that purportedly cyclical way again due to internet

That was my point above re: death of the monoculture.

Waaay back upthread, but bars in my college town had "Timewarp Tuesday" nights that were all 80s music starting in 1994.

I seem to remember a (moderately tongue-in-cheek but still OTM) 1980s revival story in Select Magazine in... 1993? It's somewhere here but I can't find the issue.

thinking about the popularity of sadboy bart among many younger digital natives, in the context of whatever the 90s means to these people (many of whom weren't born yet). it's not revivalism since it mixes it up with 00s emo and 10s cloudrap signifiers and post-vapor nostalgia filters which mine pathos from wanting to go back and knowing you can't. it's "i hate myself and i want to die" as a post-post-ironic shitpost-turned-aesthetic, deeply felt and flippant and corny and knowing all at once. this stuff is *everywhere* and someone should do some kind of study of it (closest i found was a p4k article on s i m p s o n w a v e which gets at some of this but is only part of it)

https://fsa.zobj.net/crop.php?r=Qm6gD1sdY0tHzEdN26bXhb2G4-iQEMOCF6NAJREpQbbw7vYiYR5_506xu9kThJgY_WSA_tp2LEba1dKn03AXg4gk4ogSlPelMO_oTdg-vo9Cx8qeF6iXJiX_9Yx5KFA8CqU_bCIUm5-Io-uq

Yeah, a lot of my friends in their 20s have been in bands that sound kinda like Swervedriver, I've been to dayglo parties where they play stuff like 'Castles in the Sky' and 'King of my Castle' (I'm sure there's another '90s house song I'm trying to think of here but my mind is only giving me tracks about castles). I don't really feel like there *hasn't* been a '90s revival.

I threw an 80s party in 1990!

(But of course as has been mentioned above, "80s" has come to mean just one segment of the 80s -- somebody earlier in thread said 1984-87 but I'd say 81-86? Like, "Walk Like an Egyptian" yes, "Hungry Eyes" no.)

Which is why bringing them up as evidence of 90's revival didn't scan for me, don't really see why that's so confounding?

Yeah, sorry, confusion over wording, is all. When you said "I don't think ppl think of Hip-Hop or R&B as particularly 90's genres" I read that as "Hip-hop and R&B weren't particularly big in the 90s", which isn't what you meant.

As for 90s nostalgia, I would have said that the fading of Nirvana has come as a huge surprise to me. As a college kid it just seemed clear they were going be like the Beatles, a permanent feature of the way we talked about culture. People upthread saying they see kids wearing Nirvana stuff, so I guess so? But my experience has been just the opposite, that talk about Nirvana has utterly vanished. My kids (teens) certainly don't know who they are or know any of their songs, and they know plenty of old stuff.

???

They're certainly the last band to make it into the "rock canon", for what that's worth.

kurt is lennonified at this point. plenty of kids my age didn't know beatles songs but plenty worshipped them, lots of let it be shirts, etc

nirvana were tained for a while for some by "not being as good as [less successful indie band]" and by the wave of post-grunge and nu-metal that cited them but no one cares about the former now and a loads of kids who grew up on the latter still worship nirvana/kurt and the whole mythology. i don't think many rock stars have been referenced more in rap

*tainted

My 9 year-old heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit" on the radio when we were driving somewhere, pronounced it his new favorite song, has added about seven of their songs to his rolling Spotify playlist and insisted on us buying him a T-shirt last time we were at Target, so, anecdotally at least, I don't think they are going anywhere.

At what age are you planning to have the "Scratch Acid were better" talk

Think 12 maybe?

His tastes are all over the place, and while I play music around the house constantly, I don't really try to force anything on him and see what sticks. His favorite artists in the last few years have been Marshmello, Imagine Dragons, Kiss (which, fair play, I though Kiss was the bee's knees when I was 9 too), Metallica and, now, Nirvana.

Millennials are old enough to have their own The Big Chill now but I haven't seen such a thing, nor would I want to

What was Gen X’s Big Chill?