I remember '98-'99 really being the first time I felt compelled to look beyond modern rock radio to find music that spoke to me.
I think this is more of a personal maturation event than a result of any music that's being played on a given year. I felt the same way in 1993, and there's no way it was because '92-93 was worse than what came before that.
Radio is a distillation process, by which the easiest consumables rise to the top. If you love music, you eventually hit a point where it's just not going to give you what you want, because it's never really all that great.
cutuphalfdead wrote:You guys are forgetting things like Limp Bizkit, Korn, POD, etc, etc, etc.
Korn made shitloads of catchy-as-fuck songs in their prime.
This whole topic brings up something I've been thinking about lately: What happened to heavy rock music? Where did it go? God I miss it. Obviously, it was everywhere in the '90s, and even though it morphed into post-grunge and nu-metal of questionable quality in the early '00s, at least it still existed and could get attention. There was a market for it.
Now it seems like it has just disappeared. Yes, we have lots of nostalgic reunions and some of the old giants are carrying the torch, but where are the new groups? Where are the modern Helmets? Deftones? Rob Zombies? Rage Against the Machines? Downers? We've got plenty of metal and hardcore and plenty of indie and pop, but there seems to be no in-between anymore. I'm starving for some new artists.
Late 90's was terrible. So Terrible. You went from stuff like Liz Phair, Pavement, Blur, Meat Puppets, Primus, Dinasour JR, and Cracker dominating the ariwaves to
The harder edge of mainstream rock music in the late 90s turned into this awful caricature of misogynistic, homophobic, bro culture. It really is no wonder there was a staggering amount of sexual assaults at Woodstock 99.