By the end of the 1980s, the musical world was presiding over the dying days of hair metal (with the likes of Gun’s N’ Roses, Poison et al), new romantics (take a bow, Duran Duran, Flock of Seagulls and Culture Club) and varying fashion crimes which will passed over here in the spirit of merciful memory loss. Over the next ten years however, many aspects of what the ‘kids’ were listening to would change dramatically...

It's All Coming Back to Me Now

...but not all of them. There are plenty of artists who made it big before the 1990s who enjoyed continued influence and chart success throughout the decade.

While Bryan Adams had been releasing albums throughout the 1980s, his biggest hit would come with the song 'Everything I Do (I Do It For You)', an entry on the soundtrack to the film Robin Hood : Prince of Thieves. Celine Dion (who had become famous in her native Canada) would become a worldwide celebrity and would also score a soundtrack-related hit with 'My Heart Will Go On' from the film Titanic.

Michael Jackson also enjoyed further success with his albums Dangerous and History (the latter's sales were helped by it being boxed with a greatest hits collection). Another 1980s megastar reinvented herself for a new generation, scoring a huge hit with her album Ray of Light - and who could that be but Madonna?

And some artists just keep going: The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd and U2 continued their recorded output and massive live shows, and Elton John had the biggest-selling single of all time with 'Candle in the Wind 97'. released in the wake of the death of Princess Diana. Sir Cliff Richard achieved a UK Number One in five consecutive decades, giving longevity a good name. Even being dead didn't stop Elvis Presley from being one of the most prolific artists of the decade with 42 album re-releases.

Come As You Are

Late in the 1980s, bands like Boston’s Pixies and Seattle’s Soundgarden were doing interesting (and very loud) takes on punk rock. The Seattle scene in particular was buzzing with the likes of Mudhoney, Pearl Jam and Nirvana; when Soundgarden and later, Pearl Jam, Nirvana and Alice In Chains secured major label record deals, the scene was set for an explosion in the music that would come to be known across the world as grunge.

In an MTV-led assault on the charts in the USA, Nirvana’s second album Nevermind and Pearl Jam’s debut Ten sold millions of copies. Record companies scrambled over themselves to sign edgy grunge bands from Seattle and elsewhere; the UK’s rock-lovers were converted to the new sound; and the ascendance of grunge in the popular culture continued unabated until Nirvana frontman Kurt Cobain’s tragic death by suicide in 1994.

The grunge wave took American pop culture and, as record producer Gary Smith put it, 'shifted it a few feet to the left.' This opened the door for major label debuts from Chicago’s Smashing Pumpkins, as well as Californian punk bands such as Green Day, the Offspring and Pennywise – and, later, the so-called 'nu metal' rock-rap acts of Limp Bizkit and Linkin Park.

The cultural shift also meant that people didn’t want their angst solely in a male form: the explosion in female solo artists was undoubtedly popularised by the release of Alanis Morissette’s major label debut Jagged Little Pill. This opened the door for the recognition of those that had gone before, principally PJ Harvey and Liz Phair, as well as encouraged major labels to sign new acts such as Fiona Apple.

Movin’ On Up

But America wasn’t the only repository for guitar music in the 1990s. Partly as a reaction to grunge, the British artists of the early to mid 1990s became more parochial and looked toward their illustrious forebears. Starting with the so-called 'Madchester' bands encompassing the Stone Roses and the Happy Mondays, they mined the best bits from glam rock (notably Suede), the social commentary of The Kinks (that would be Blur), the melodies of the Fab Four (Oasis) and acid house (Primal Scream – although they also had a nod or two to the Rolling Stones). And, for a while, it seemed as though what was known as Britpop would take over the world, and its heyday in the mid 1990s included albums by the Charlatans, Pulp, and several critically acclaimed albums by Oxford band Radiohead.

Like all good rock stories, the relationship between bands wasn’t without its share of animosity. The strained relationship between the two biggest acts in 1995, Blur and Oasis, was blown up by the press into a major battle – one that was exacerbated by Blur moving its single ‘Country House’ so it would be released on the same day as Oasis’ ‘Roll With It.’ The resulting race to number one would eventually be won by Blur but arguably neither band would scale the same heights of sales again.

Stop Right Now, Thank You Very Much

While manufactured musical groups have always been a staple diet of the pop world, their popularity exploded during the 1990s. The 1980s ended with New Kids on the Block, but it was to be the decade of the girl bands – the Spice Girls, All Saints, B*Witched et al held a near-monopoly on the pop market in the latter part of the 1990s. The boybands did okay too – Take That formed, became famous, disbanded then spawned the solo career of one Robbie Williams; Boyzone and Westlife also had their run in the charts. Gender-balance was served by S Club 7 and The Venga Boys.

While these acts were predominantly British, 1999 saw the debut singles of a couple of Mickey Mouse Club alumni that would see them well into the new millennium… it was to be the time of Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera.

Let Me Ride

Hip-hop exploded in popularity throughout the 1990s. At the beginning of the decade, while it had made some inroads into mainstream musical culture it was still primarily a fringe genre; by the end, recordings by hip-hop artists made up the single highest-selling music genre in the Western world. With 1980s acts like Run DMC and Public Enemy being considered ‘old school,’ new acts such as the Dr Dre-sponsored Snoop Doggy Dogg, Jay-Z, Nas and the Wu-Tang Clan took hip-hop in a whole new direction.

The major musical movement in hip-hop during the 1990’s was the continuing rise of so-called ‘Gangsta rap;’ the stylistic and gang-related differences between artists from the East and West coasts of the United States contributed to verbal sparring and, tragically, the drive-by shootings of popular artists Notorious BIG (from the East) and Tupac Shakur (from the West coast).

Meanwhile, a downbeat variant of hip-hop was being percolated by UK acts such as Massive Attack, Tricky and Portishead, whose albums of sample-based, laid back hip-hop and soul produced the new genre called ‘Trip-Hop’.

The sounds of R n'B continued alongside hip-hop, with acts like Boyz II Men and Whitney Houston (particularly her soundtrack to the film The Bodyguard providing some light to go with the darkness of gangsta rap and trip-hop. Mariah Carey became the biggest-selling female artist of the 1990s on the back of several multi-million selling albums

Block-rocking Beats

The other major new genre that increased in popularity in the 1990s was that of dance music. At the beginning of the decade Detroit techno was king in the USA and acid house was big over the other side of the Atlantic (influencing such crossover acts as the Happy Mondays). However, record sales-wise, the decade belonged to a sample-heavy form of dance music that was later to be called ‘Big Beat.’ The mjor proponents of this style were probably the Chemical Brothers, technopunks Prodigy, Apollo 440 and a former member of the Housemartin’s, Norman Cook (performing under the moniker of Fat Boy Slim).

'If Only We Could Make You Understand...'

And what would the music world be without the novelty acts, the one-hit wonders that light up the sky like a flame (but inexplicably fail to live forever)?

They ranged from songs from cartoon characters (Bart Simpson's 'Do the Bartman', several by the Smurfs, and South Park's Chef with 'Chocolate Salty Balls'), to ones with annoying but compulsive dance moves ('The Macarena'). You could have a hit when you were fictional and made of rubber (Mr Blobby and the Teletubbies) or if you were Swedish but just pretended you were an American hillbilly (Rednex with 'Cotton Eye Joe'). You could have a hit by licensing your song in a Levi's commercial (most notably Babylon Zoo's 'Spaceman' and Mr Oizo's 'Flat Beat'), or by having your song given the Fat Boy Slim remix (Cornershop's 'Brimful of Asha').