what's your favourite cheesy 90s hit

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0bleak

Well-known member
0bleak said:
it's really impossible for me to pick just one
i went to a club every thursday in the early 90s for a couple of years and this is exactly the kind of stuff they would play
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I mean, I was also going other places, and also my own dj gig, but I was def there every thursday.
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
0bleak said:
it's really impossible for me to pick just one
i went to a club every thursday in the early 90s for a couple of years and this is exactly the kind of stuff they would play
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that's why I said 'don't think", just pick the first one that comes to mind

that's what I did when @Corpsey asked me, I just said the first tune I thought of
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
UK guitar music is pretty shit in the 00s. but in contrast to the listless depression in US guitar music at the same time the UK stuff is all about desperation. partly coz of the different circumstances in the two countries but also frankly the class composition of the audiences. the US stuff all sounds like the midwest or the suburbs and the UK stuff sounds like small towns. the US stuff all sounds like it's going to be alright in the end, once you graduate from college, once you've got a little baby. the UK stuff sounds like you're trapped forever and you've got to live with it. there's a difference in the stakes
 
woops

woops

is not like other people
shakahislop said:
some of the worst of the 00s, negativity and cynicism-wise:

this one is also responsible for some shit and now unavoidable vocabulary. this is what i mean brittle. it has that noise-music tactic of hitting you with sharp frequencies. and relationships as negative addictive affect.



same kind of thing, aren't they both timbaland beats? same kind of sharpness. music against the audience - hostile beats. you can start to hear the disembodied copy and paste voice, voices almost natural but being cut up and with a quick attack. there's a section in the middle of this one which is about four overlapping voices chopping in and out. you get the porn thing and the sexy/violence pairing which obviously is an old thing but this is where it rears up into the proper mainstream.



same kind of thing again. i like this tune but it's a sex tune that's about glorifying power. the drums are almost taking the piss out of you, has a childish thing going on. you start to get that bleak self-awareness of all this stuff in this one, you can hear it in vocals, the kind of sex/money/power/dissatisfaction combination which in the end drake and then the weeknd would end up crystallising



this is by the end of the decade and by this point the computer drums are totally standard. i liked this at the time coz eminem is basically only good when he's doing emotional honesty. it's a tangle though coz he's offering up the internal world of beating up your girlfriend and rihanna is justifying it as well. partly it's something honest but partly it's again that sex and violence thing



at the same time US indie rock becomes really wet. sopping wet. almost a yin and yang thing going on with the above. more the sound of giving up rather than cynicism. there is at least more ruffness to the 90s equivalent - as you get into the 00s it becomes very earnest. it's getting beaten up music. paved the way for arcade fire, pitchfork and the absolute comprehensive demise of anything good coming out of this kind of world. guitar distortion becomes part of the furniture rather than angsty or really conveying anything much except that his is an indie rock tune and it's just normal to use guitars, it's really tamed, it has none of the wavering string + electronics chaos that is the point of guitar distortion. you start to get that coldplay thick production on the vocals as well, the same thing that dido does



lots of the woke thing gives the impression that it's kicking back against ancient injustices and partly it is but a lot of it is responding directly to how cynical popular culture got in the 00s and 2010s i think. trying to reclaim some idea of earnestness, establish some more rules, some parameters of acceptability
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timbaland did the Justin stuff, not toxic though isn't that a Swedish bloke
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
woops said:
timbaland did the Justin stuff, not toxic though isn't that a Swedish bloke
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no idea. it sounds like the same kind of thing though. loading the drums up on Cubase or whatever and fiddling around with them until they sound unnatural. jerky
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
woops said:
timbaland did the Justin stuff, not toxic though isn't that a Swedish bloke
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TOXIC is my favourite Britney tune THAT I CAN NAME

she did an album with a trendy production crew that was pretty good - I think the one who had no talent on the mixing desk might be famous now for wearing hats at a jaunty angle

Britney is a better singer than Beyonce, Beyonce has a nasty nasal thing and sibilance going on, but Britney got bad press
 
woops

woops

is not like other people
william_kent said:
TOXIC is my favourite Britney tune THAT I CAN NAME

she did an album with a trendy production crew that was pretty good - I think the one who had no talent on the mixing desk might be famous now

Britney is a better singer than Beyonce, Beyonce has a nasty nasal thing and sibilance going on, but Britney got bad press
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have you heard the paris hilton album
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
woops said:
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oh, this sounds like the Britney album I like if you cut the mid range


that is how I heard the Pharrell and sidekick album, like you are next door

sub and bass and tops

I can probably replicate the effect now I have a reggae pre-amp
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member
kaiser chiefs were massive and now forgotten. but bleak to their core. a lot of resentment. wrapped up in something quite upbeat. a lot of this era has this sense of this is shit but we're going to make the best of it. which is a pretty appropriate UK sentiment. a load of the early arctic monkeys tunes have that as well. they wrap it up in something quite upbeat. musically pretty horrible i've got to say. as choppy as the timbaland things i was posting up above. in terms of desperation editors are the ultimate. i like the way the guitarist plays basically only tremolo, has this very on the edge quality. but its such sad music, sounds like an animal in a trap. or a man with a mortgage trying to make the best of things. fields of people at festivals showing up for this emotional catharsis.

one of the worst periods of uk music. but then TV was the same in the same period, the same resentment. something bursting out.

on editors, i walked past them so many times at festivals, i was at or was working at loads of them for a few years. i had an oxfam tabbard on at one glastonbury when they were on the main stage. a disabled woman in one of those electrical scooters and her ten year old daughter came up to me on the edge of the crowd for help. her wheels were clogged with mud, it was a properly wet year, they wanted to get back to the campsite. so i pushed her all the way through the mud for about half an hour, to the sound of editors on one of the stages. she had learning disabilities as well as not being able to walk. we got to some massive puddles and we were stuck so a load of drunk lads picked her up and carried her over. that was the period of glastonbury where there were a lot of pissed lads about. it was still a bit wilder and disorganized then.

i got her back to the disabled camping. i was talking to her daughter who didn't want to be there. but it was worse than that. clearly she was being neglected, both at the festival and probably in the rest of her life, clearly they shouldn't be there, clearly they had bitten off more than they could chew. at the campsite i let them go. there was something very wrong. but i didn't know what to do about it, i didn't know what i could do to help. probably not much.
 
shakahislop

shakahislop

Well-known member


same kind of thing. but with snow patrol there's a middle class perspective. you can hear the bed of comfort. the temporary nature of it, that everything was going to be more or less alright in the end. all these bands audiences divided along class lines i think as well despite being ostensibly similar - who can relate to what. coldplay line up with snow patrol but are way more optimistic, it's all very comforting, again despite being essentially the same kind of sound. idk there's something interesting about the way all this shit wasn't niche, people really bought into it, all these men going along to have this collective catharsis - or i suspect in most cases this attempt at collective catharsis, when it's probably better suited to crying in your car. so far as i can tell from overseas this whole genre is dead and buried now no. i suppose the need is served by something else - maybe all the resentment and depression is diverted into political beliefs. there's a big crossover between the people who liked this kind of thing and the FPBE people

in the US guitar indie of the same time they are a totally divergent thing, they are playing around by comparison. its good time music by comparison. the bands looked like fun cults.
 
william_kent

william_kent

Well-known member
I'd argue that the peak of guitar music was Spacemen 3 live in Switerland in 1989



Spacemen 3 - suicide - Live At The New Morning, Geneva, Switzerland, 18.05.1989

there was no need for guitars after this

but I'm tired and emotional and I got an angry face for liking the Kid's use of dots so I am off to bed
 
Corpsey

Corpsey

bandz ahoy
Dance music was what I remember listening to in my sentient childhood era, probably before oasis etc appeared the Smash Hits were mostly dance tunes, house , euro dance and rave-adjacent stuff.

I always find it magical in a sense that we provincial kids were dancing at school discos to music made for muddy fields full of pillheads

Talk about this quite a lot on here but the pre internet feeling of music being beamed down from somewhere far away, played into the romance of the rave scene which I had only the faintest inkling of. I do miss that sense of otherworldliness, belong to a world to aspire to, which obviously rave has those romantic e-fuelled aspirations towards itself
 
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