The Year of Ear Vomit
Several months ago I downloaded the Billboard Top 100 songs for a few years, legally of course… don’t ask. Anyways, being that I’m home so much now, I’ve been listening to a lot of music on the computer. I recently finished listening to the top 100 songs for 1990 and thoroughly enjoyed it. I was only 12 when these songs were played on the radio but I remembered almost all of them and with a few exceptions (Mariah Carey, Michael Bolton), was pleased to hear them again.
Unfortunately I missed years 1991-1998 so the next year in queue was 1999. After struggling through several tracks, I can’t help but think, what a bunch of shit ass music came out that year. It seems like I’m skipping track after track waiting for something good to play. I remember being frustrated with music in the late 90s but I didn’t remember it being THIS bad.
Monica
Whitney Houston
Deborah Cox
Brandy
Celine Dion
Enrique Iglesias
Divine
Mariah Carey (again!) and Jay-Z
98 Degrees
Lauryn Hill
Lou Bega
Tim McGraw
… too many to name.
What happened to music during that decade? Wasn’t there a grunge/rock revolution in there somewhere? I’m definitely not a music connoisseur but damn, 1999 had some shitty music.
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June 13th, 2007 at 11:09 am
I was curious about the songs and found them here… http://longboredsurfer.com/charts.php
I think grunge was somewhere around 1993-1995, at least that’s when I listened to it… but it’s definitely not reflected on these charts… don’t think it was popular enough.
June 13th, 2007 at 11:24 am
Popular doesn’t equal good music, as we’ve learned time and time again
for 1999 my iTunes throws up Foo Fighters “There Is Nothing Left To Lose”, Eminems “Slim Shady LP”, Dr Dre’s “2001″, Moby’s “Play”, Macy Gray “On How Life Is”, Red Hot Chili Peppers “Californication” to name a few, all have aged well and still listenable, throw in the “good at the time but kinda suspect nowadays” mix of Limp Bizkit, Korn and Kid Rock and 1999 was actually not too bad
June 13th, 2007 at 11:37 am
Yeah, I was thinking the same as Rebekah, the grunge thing was in the early 90s, and pretty much “died” when Kurt Cobain did. The music changed, but it was never so mainstream anyway.
June 13th, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Greg, point made. Most of the music I listened to in ‘99 was played on 99X which would have played pretty much none of the songs that ended up in the top 100. Bleh…
hakeber/duane, yeah, I wasn’t saying that ‘99 was part of the grunge era, just that I remember a lot more rock coming out post-grunge… I guess it just wasn’t ‘popular’ enough to make the top of the charts.
June 18th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
When grunge died, there was a resurgence of lo-fi indie music acts: Pavement, Sebadoh, Liz Phair, etc. hit bigtime (and smaller acts gained notoriety). Those apparently led the way to more focus on rock acts signed with smaller, independent labels that we see today.
/music nerdishness