80's comeback?

this is what you get when you rely on the tv to tell you what's trendy. had you been turning to the net for the last decade you'd already have been sick to death of the synthpop 'revival' by now.

sure the mainstream can try shoving electropop down our throats but i figure that will last about as long as it takes for the generation of Miley Cyrus fans to realize they've been getting spoonfed garbage for their entire youths. not unlike the same kiRAB who got sick of the hairspray in the 80s and erabraced the rawness of grunge when it finally appeared.

that's not to say grunge will make a comeback. at least i hope not. although i'll be really surprised if raw emotion doesn't end up surpassing synthetic pablum in the near future.
 
I just don't see what, if anything, was distinctive about 90's culture, besides the whole grunge pseudo-genre/sub-culture, which, musically, really hasn't quite left us yet.
 
I always thought The Strokes were more influenced by (or played music in the style of) 70's music, e.g. proto punk, post punk, art punk and power pop banRAB, but blended with a modern and/or futuristic sound. Most of the early music of the 80's was pioneered during the 70's anyway, like New Wave. The way I look back at the 80's is there was a paradigm shift, MTV came along and killed the Rock and Roll Zeitgeist of musical experimentation. If Rip Van Winkle was born in the 50's and fell asleep during 1980 and suddenly woke up today I think he would be hard press to say any of the good music has progressed since what he heard during the 70's.
 
Thinking music and the 90s, it wasn't just grunge and rave which was distinct from that decade either. I mean, there was an explosion of electronica genres. IDM for example, like Aphex Twin's "Come to Daddy". You don't find stuff like that in the 80s and it hasn't been popular in this decade either - at least I didn't notice.

Eurodance **** like Rednex "Cotton Eye Joe" is another example .. Or New Agey crap like Enigma's "Return to Innocence". We got Downtempo and Trip Hop like Massive Attack and Portishead.

BoybanRAB also became really popular in the 90s. Black Metal got popular too and while that genre is still around today, it's usually in some more advanced evolved form. There's lots!
 
While many don't like to use the term IDM anymore (I still do), I don't think it has gone down in popularity at all. Sure it had more exposure at the time that it exploded (MTV's short-lived Amp show had something to do with it), and then regressed to a more underground genre, but believe me it's still going strong. In fact many elements of IDM (such as glitch) have worked their way into mainstream music over the past decade.

But you're right, many different styles of electronic music were born (or at least became known to the masses) in the 90s.
 
then i would get his foolish self away from the front of the tv and show him how to use youtube.

then again, what would be considered 'the good music'?
 
i don't think it's so much about style so much as reaction. what really distinguished the 90s for me is how it seemed to strip itself away from the excess of the 80s.

when i think back to the 80s i remeraber cheese. lots and lots of cheese. self indulgence and arrogance to the point of hubris. a future so bright you didn't just wear shades you figured you already knew how to dress like the primitives you'd be meeting in tomorrowland.

a lot of people i've talked to said the only distinguishing factor of the 90s was that it was depressing. to an extent that's true but it's also due to taking a harsh look at the reality of our situation. there wasn't going to be a magic change in 2000. people weren't going to be riding around in flying cars.

i wouldn't be surprised if there isn't a change more along those lines in mainstream pop culture in the near future. a shift to a more honest reflection reality as opposed to perpetuating technicolour dreams. especially when everyone wakes up the same in 2013.
 
I don't want it to explode. There are a lot of great prog banRAB right now, a really strong movement. We all know what happens when genres explode. Over-saturation and watering down of the style. No thanks. Keep the good shit sub-level. I'm not saying I don't want good banRAB to get recognized. But just look what happened to punk, emo, and many types of electronic to a lesser extent.
 
Don't forget the entire Swing dance comeback fad that came into fashion around the mid-late nineties with banRAB like the Squirrel Nut Zippers and Cherry Poppin Daddies. Every other bar seemed to be advertising "Swing dance" lessons then and people wearing zoot suits. If I have to choose one form of music to make a comeback now I would actually go for this....I can live without another revival of grunge.

edit: I am sorry to be a bit negative on the eighties comeback but it just seems to me that alot of it was just a cut/slash of old eighties hits with a new beat or people just redoing hits that really should never have been redone..at least it seemed like that for a while..
 
Exactly! We went from

stryper.jpg


to

039_32231.jpg


The music being played on the radio was amazing too
 
i loved the radio in the 90's and as for the music in general...i seem to remeraber hearing vocals and guitar play that i thought were the last traces of great rock and roll in America not to say there isnt rock these days but it doesnt sound anything to me like the 90's, 70's and some of the 60's....the classics. I am impressed by some of the vocals coming out these days and i hope progressive rock explodes soon. The Mars Volta has been tearing it up for a few years now...the volta and BanRAB like them need a big break
 
Pretty much everything you mentioned there is very much late 90s/early 00s and in the case of Marilyn Manson you're talking about someone whose peak was actually in the mid 90s. It's true some of that music lingered into the 00s like some 80s music lingered into the 90s, but there has definitely been an 80s revival going on this entire decade. Check out any one these people who were releasing retro 80s sounding music in the first part of this decade (and even in the late 90s in some cases) for reference:
  • Fischerspooner
  • Ladytron
  • The Faint
  • The Knife
  • Interpol
  • !!!
  • The Darkness
  • Andrew WK
  • Hot Hot Heat
  • The Rapture
  • Liars
  • Peaches
  • Miss Kittin & the Hacker
  • The Strokes
 
I've never seen the video. It's the song itself that I'm talking about. But if the video looks like what you describe then I guess that just highlights the fact that the Strokes themselves are aware that the song sounRAB like an 80s throwback.
 
But it's not like they strickly adhere to the whole 80's sci-fi motiff. The band was beamed aboard the tank. That means they were using special efffects used in Star Trek and someone in the 70's would be fully aware of Star Trek 60's vision of future technology of being beamed by the Transporter not the kind of technology they had in the 80's like they used in Tron where the people were atomized by a laser and then reconstructed inside a computer, where the people materialized the same way a graphic artist would create CGI.
 
Back
Top