h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Entry: What It Was Like in the 1990's: Music - A13654497
Author: DrMatt - U739774

Hi all,

This is in response to a challenge from Opti - I've just moved this from the writing workshop as I hardly ever get any comments there!

I was trying to do this in the style of A3769095 and A3768898, covering the most influential and popular bits without trying to be exhaustive. Even so, I'm sure I left out your favourite band (and some of mine!), so guidance wouls be appreciated.

Off you go!

Matt

Hi Matt. I wouldn't want to say this is not ready for PR, but you might want to be prepared for a rough ride: as you say, a lot of people will contribute now things that should have been contributed in PR.

My tuppence worth would be to make the 'Dance' section a whole lot bigger: the rave/acid house culture, which peaked around 1992-ish, is surely worthy of a bit more in-depth analysis. It seems a little bit harsh to relegate R'n'B to barely a sentence too. I would give a more in-depth detail of what individualised these genres, including some of the culture that surrounded them.

While I appreciate an Entry such as this cannot possibly be exhaustively thorough, I do think that you skim far too quickly over many points here.

A good basis, and I can understand why you took it out of WW early: don't give up on it please.

B

Oh, I agree - if there were still a collaborative writing workshop that everybody actually looked at, I'd post it there. It wasn't a fit of pique or anything, I just thought more people would see it here

I'm not claiming the thing is finished, not by any means - I just need a bit more guidance about various aspects of it, the dance and R n B sections being prime examples. So if you can add a few more specific places where I can do a bit more research, or give me some pointers on specific acts I've missed, I'll collect the various outraged posts and give the thing a good-going revision until we can all end up with something that we can live with and isn't too out of kilter with the previous 'decade overview' entries.

So please, everybody go for it!

under the brit guitar bits,

I think it would be worth a mention of the orginal Madchester bands -- Stone Roses / Happy Mondays / James


worth mentioning that Mariah Carey was (AFAIK) the biggest selling female artist of the 1990s


Madonna was sill selling loads of records in the 90s, as was Wacko Jacko. Talking of 1980s artists that were big in the 1990s, Guns and Roses launched the two Use You Illusions albums in 1991


In Britain at least there was the phase of songs that seemed to dominate the charts inthe mid 1990s

Bryan Adams - Everything I Do (Robin Hood, Prince of Theives theme)
Wet Wet Wet - Love is all Around (Troggs cover who's royalties funded crop circle reserch for years) - (4 weddings and a funeral theme)
Prince - Most Beautiful Girl in the World
Whitney Houston - I will always love you (Dolly Parton song / Bodyguard theme)

Also big in the UK towards the end of the decade ---

Elton John - Candle In the Wind '97
Sealion Dion - My Heart will go on - Titanic theme


As you mentioned Norm Cook, 2 other housemartins were in The Beautiful South , melodic pop that was very succesful in the 1990s, Carry On Up The Charts was apaprently in 1 in every 4 homes


Rock / Dance cross overs --- Apollo 440 and Prodigy


===

err, oldies that were still going ...

The Beatles Anthology
Both the Kinks and the Rolling stones were still releasing new material
Status Quo were obviously still rocking all over the world

The title will give Jimster a heart attack
What It Was Like in the 1990s: Music (no apostrophe)

Elton John A9083522 - biggest-selling single ever (Candle in the Wind '97 - Goodbye England's Rose) sang it live once only, at Princess Diana's (A596027) funeral.

Sir Cliff: A853012 achieved number ones in 5 consecutive decades - an unsurpassed achievement.

Elvis: A702839 the most successful deceased artist had number ones in the '90s (and 42 album releases/re-releases)

Motown was still going strong with artists like BoyzIIMen (you have listed them but the spelling of their name is incorrect)
The Stars of Motown A10508384 gives more information
and also ex-Motown stars like A9633693 Diana Ross still going strong! (don't faint when you load that page and ogle that BLOB!)
Link for Motown records: A10422046
Stevie Wonder still records for them: A3477954

As Jon_m said above: Michael Jackson: A537662

Dunno if you want to mention the whole Geldof/Yates/Hutchence triangle that went on in the 90s it's all here:
A6557097 / A5249063 / A5248938

oh, and talking of oldies still going strong:
In January 1994 Barbra Streisand A11814914 reportedly earned £13 million by giving two 90-minute concerts at MGM's Grand Hotel in Las Vegas.
You can quote that straight from my entry

These are just off the top of my head, I'll probably be back with more tomorrow

Hope this is useful
Well done DrMatt

Apostrophes duly removed - must have been a brain explosion, I'm usually pedantic about them as well!

Might get a chance to overhaul it a bit more later today. Keep 'em coming!

Matt

Entries about other decades follow the naming pattern:

A3768852 The 1960s - Radio and Music
A2450549 The 1960s - an Introduction
A3768960 The 1960s - Movies
A3768898 The 1970s - Music
A3770769 The 1970s - Fashion

etc. etc...

You know what I'm going to suggest, don't you?

..a title change?

Now, there's a thought

I did my first gig in 1999


Oh and I remember going to france on a french exchange, and we took with us a song that was popular in the UK earlier in the year, and even though a lot of the french students and parents didn't understand the lyrics it was a massive hit in a few small villages just north of Tours.

Yep, it was Mr Blobby !!!



also thinking back, those teenage discos with those two massive pop / dance hits with their irriating dances that I could never learn, that were massive. Wigfield's Saturday Night and Los Del Rio's Macarena

Good suggestions!

Okay, here's the updated one. It includes a representative sample of 'oldies' and a new section on one-hit wonders.

I still need to go through Motown and R n B, and some guidance on the dance section would be good too. I should probably squeeze RHCP and Metallica in as well, given their popularity.

I think most of Elvis' reissues were in the past few years - certainly the singles, and Wiki doesn't have a lot in the discography from the 90s. Feel free to correct me though - it would't take long to fix.

Matt

http://www.bbc.co.uk/cgi-perl/music/muze/index.pl?site=music&action=discography&artist_id=24154

I actually counted 42 separate album releases between 1990-99 before I gave you the info.



It's the singles that have been released from scratch in the 2000s

GB

You mention that 'Ten' was Pearl Jam's debut album... I thought is was 'Vs'

John Denver A700921 - the first recipient of the World Ecology Medal - his star was waning in the 90s but when he was killed in 1997 but his legacy as a leading environmentalist lives on: the University of Missouri-St Louis award a research scholarship annually in his memory.

'Boston’s Pixes' - Pixies?

Hi all,

Elvis - duly noted , and will be added.

Pearl Jam - nope, it was Ten. Vs was the second album.

Pixies - I'll make that clearer. Boston is where they come from, not part of the name obviously.

Next update may be a few days away - I'm on night shift, and it's a little busy!

Matt

Sir Cliff Richard achieved a UK Number One in his fifth consecutive decade, giving longevity a good name.
=
Sir Cliff Richard achieved a UK Number One in five consecutive decades, giving longevity a good name.

Actually, Matt, I was just pointing out that you'd misspelt 'Pixies'

You would think that would be difficult to misspell, wouldn't you?
Righto!

Matt

Hi Matt,

I've just come back from leave, so apologies for not getting back to this sooner.

We originally did the 'What it was like in the 1990s' Topic of the Week in 2004 and it didn't get that much of a response. So we've been a bit crafty and asked people in our office to contribute to a few pieces that we've been working on. The first one to be near completion is... The 1990s - Music.

Can I ask a favour? Hold off on this entry for now, and I'll try to collate everything we have here and incorporate your research with full credits - you've touched on a few areas that we haven't, but the material we have on 1990s dance culture is by an expert on the subject, and if we combine your entry with his it could make for a stunning collaborative entry.

We're still very keen to have additional coments on all aspects of life in the 1990s, so feel free to comment on the Topic page here: A3061856

Jims