At the time, did 1997 feel like a different era from 1996?
Posted by OverallEstate2@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 190 comments
Posted by OverallEstate2@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 190 comments
prstele01@reddit
Gin Blossoms and TEB sound different?
OverallEstate2@reddit (OP)
To me, the former had an autumnal early-mid 90s sound. The latter have a summery late 90s sound.
CraigGrade@reddit
Yes I remember noticing the shift. I was a huge radio listener and 96-97 was the year things really changed. Radio went from lots of what would now be called “indie rock” sounding (and what was then called “alt rock”) hits to either heavier nu metal/rap-metal stuff or bubblegum Hansen/Brittany Spears/boy band stuff.
Colors began changing too. Prior to 97, it was a lot more flannel, a lot more teal and purple and forest green and navy. In 97 I distinctly remember this shade of lighter orange getting big, as well as sort of “digital utopia” color schemes and the whole “N64 tropical water” look coming into focus. That and more whites and grays generally.
yoursmartfriend@reddit
Yes. This is the year the decade is split in my mind. 97-99 were transition years and not as "90s".
nochumplovesucka__@reddit
I fully agree with this. I graduated in 1995, that may have something to do with it, but the early 90s were the peak 90s experience in my opinion. After the deaths of Tupac and Biggie, hip hop changed. After the death of Kurt Cobain in 94, rock music changed. All that death set everything off on a different trajectory. Pop culture as a whole, really
Sirtriplenipple@reddit
Limp Bizkit was the catalyst of the downfall of civilization, I knew it.
texas-playdohs@reddit
No, no, no. Everyone knows it was the end of “Car Talk” with Click and Clack. The world is a darker, less wholesome place without it.
jezzete@reddit
You’ll be hearing from my lawyers Dewey, Cheetym & Howe
Hot_Frosty0807@reddit
I'll send my limo driver, Pikup Andropov, over to pick up the paperwork.
taradactyl904@reddit
THIS!! This was the beginning of the end. I LOVED that show!
nochumplovesucka__@reddit
As a fan of both hip hop (ATCQ, De La Soul, Snoop,etc.)and metal (Metallica, Pantera, Slayer, etc.) .... I couldn't stand nü metal
Both rock and hip hop got really bad in the late 90s.... just my opinion of course. Feel free to agree or disagree
keep_it_kayfabe@reddit
As a fellow 77'er, I agree! I was just watching "best of" music videos on YouTube the other day and I couldn't believe how bad the music was from about 1999-2003ish. I mean, it was outright awful. I just didn't remember at the time because I was so used to the garbage.
Obviously there were some great hits from that era, but they were very rare.
Nomadzord@reddit
Things started going to shit in 97 in my opinion. Limp Bizkit’s second album/Nü Metal and MTV/TRL/Boy Bands were the cliff the 90s fell off.
Prince_0llie@reddit
Nü Metal started before 97 though. 🤔
Dude_man79@reddit
Right, it started before 97, but "started" and "became mainstream" are different.
Prince_0llie@reddit
Fair point.
nochumplovesucka__@reddit
Sure. And hip hop started in the early 80s but wasn't household until the late 80s/early 90s.
Yeah, there was the Korn debut in 94, but it didn't really take off until Limp Bizkit came on the scene in 97
fos4545@reddit
1998 in hip hop was a legendarily fantastic year.
CIarkNova@reddit
No, and I mean this not as a joke- I really think it was ICP. and I used to be into them.
MetaPhalanges@reddit
I'm so happy I made it through my ICP phase without becoming a Juggalo.
CertifiedBA@reddit
You're giving them too much credit.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
_1JackMove@reddit
That time period for pop culture in the early 90s was unprecedented. We were spoiled by that. As a kid I just thought that's the way things always were. Until the late 90s/early 2000s hit and it was glaringly obvious that we experienced a heightened pop culture existence for about 5 solid years. Miss those times.
Prince_0llie@reddit
I honestly didn't realize it until much later but that was mostly because the nostalgia for me didn't hit until around 07-09 mostly because prior to that things were pretty alright with the world. Sure 9/11 and the dot com crash created a vacuum but things still seemed Iike they were going well through 05/06. The fog of was as it were.
Dan_Berg@reddit
I'm going to start calling nostalgia glasses the fog of was
Prince_0llie@reddit
Well, idk if I should ask for credit because autocorrect didn't do it's job since that's actually a real word or..? 😅
agentoutlier@reddit
1980 guy here and I moved around this time period so I can't tell if it was because of the region change or because of the time period.
I went from rap and Kurt Cobain, C&C music factory, Madonna to a metric fuck ton of Dave Matthews Band (all my new friends liked him) from 97-99 till I finally went to college.
Of course by that time we had Britney and Boy band come back but we also had MP3s / Napster ~99 and onward so you did not have to listen to that (I got into Massive Attack and various acid jazz). And of course Eminem came out. All of this was better for me than DMB on repeat from 97-99.
To this day and I can't stand Dave Matthews even though I acknowledge there are some well written songs by the band.
max_power1000@reddit
And if you were on the punk rock side of things, 97 was the year Blink-182 Dude Ranch came out, signifying the initial mainstreaming of pop-punk.
detourne@reddit
Dude Ranch didn't feel too much different from Lagwagon/Millencolin/NUFAN when it came out, but it quickly exploded in mainstream popularity like Green Day
jambr380@reddit
Yeah, I agree. Punk broke in 1994, but pop punk didn't break until Enema of the State in 1999. We had a good 5 years where punk felt cool, but not so cool that all the normies were also listening to it.
Yeah, Green Day, Offspring, and even Rancid were popular. But 90s pop punk was basically The Queers and Screeching Weasel - punk with a poppy sound. That later got renamed, Ramonescore, when all the pop punk bands broke on to the scene.
CantFindMyWallet@reddit
If not pop punk, then what is Dookie?
max_power1000@reddit
Dookie was more along the lines of skate punk. Pop-punk isn't just punk that's popular, it's a sub-genre with a specific sound. green Day's first album that fits that sound was Warning in 2000
CantFindMyWallet@reddit
I think this is a stretch. Dookie was very pop-forward.
Awkward-Initiative28@reddit
Nirvana were at least punk adjacent and a better and more interesting, atmospheric band than a lot of the '90s pop punk. Pop punk goes back to The Ramones, The Buzzcocks (who opened for Nirvana in the '90s), and the Undertones anyways.
jambr380@reddit
Nirvana's emergence absolutely led to punk being a thing. I wouldn't call them pop punk, but grunge had a lot in common with punk back then. Eddie Vedder sings a whole verse on Bad Religion's Watch It Die from 1993
Prince_0llie@reddit
I feel like grunge in a way embodies the spirit of being a xennial as it largely bridges the gap between metal of the 80s and punk from the 90s. Like a fresh sound that understands both genres and plays them well but doesn't fit into either alone.
Awkward-Initiative28@reddit
It kind of emerged from hardcore punk dying out w/ the breakup of Black Flag and DK. Plus generationally these guys were a bit younger at the time and grew up w/ Black Sabbath, Kiss, Aerosmith, and Led Zep and were tired of pretending they didn't like them. Plus a few '80s metal bands like Metallica and Motorhead. A bit of a mix of classic rock, metal, punk, and new wave.
Harinezumi@reddit
Green Day and Offspring were all over the airwaves for years before that, though.
max_power1000@reddit
Yeah, but if we're talking 1997, Nimrod was a miss of an album, and Offspring released Ixnay in 1996.
Loocha@reddit
Rancid as well had a couple hits in the mid 90s
Sumeriandawn@reddit
"Who's Green Day?"
max_power1000@reddit
I thought long and hard when I decided to leave them out. Without getting too deep into punk sub-genre minutia, Dookie and Insomniac were much more of a traditional skate punk in sound in the vein of NOFX, Bad Religion, and Pennywise. Blink had a different sound that opened the floodgates for the mainstreaming of the genre.
Dookie was also released in 1994. Green Day dropped Nimrod in '97, and if I'm being honest that album was kind of a dud. I don't think they had an album that really qualified as pop-punk sound-wise until they released Warning in 2000 either.
If anything qualifies better than Dude Ranch, I think Offspring's Ixnay on the Hombre does, but that was 96.
Sufficient_Brush9501@reddit
yeah, but funny enough, that's when I went backwards big time, and centered in UK 77, US 70s-80s punk and HC, stooges, MC5, all of that big time. A lot had to do, in my case, with the scandinavian punk-rock wave of those 3-4 years, in underground spain r'n'r scene, they were everywhere. I also remember comparing it to, dunno, the second or third Korn album, Creed and all that crap, and thinking "I'm into anything with "roll" in it, not only "rock"", big difference. Anyway, good times, music was everywhere, gigs everywhere, small and big.
BritOnTheRocks@reddit
_Be Here Now_ was released that summer to much hype, but it was widely panned and pretty much marked the end of the Britpop era. Diana died 10 days later and sent the country, if not the world, into mass mourning. Then I started university. beginning a new era of my life.
So yeah.
TurboSleepwalker@reddit
And Radiohead went from The Bends to Ok Computer and I felt like the only person that didn't like that change.
Dude_man79@reddit
Soundgarden went from Badmotorfinger in '91 to Superunknown in '94 to Down on the Upside in '96.
Harinezumi@reddit
That makes two of us!
Awkward-Initiative28@reddit
It wasn't really widely panned initially. I think it wasn't until the end of the year and people were assessing the albums that year that everyone was like "yeah Be Here Now isn't great, but damn that OK Computer sure is great"
letharus@reddit
The exact moment, for me, was when I first saw the Spice Girls performing Wannabe on UK TV. I assumed they were a joke band at the time, only to learn a few months later - to my absolute shock - that they were massive.
yoursmartfriend@reddit
The spice girls are a symbol for me too! I thought of them immediately.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Agreed. I see 90-91 as still the 80s, 92-96 as the 90s, and 97-01 as some fever dream decade
Plumeria9798@reddit
I feel like 89-92 was also a fever dream decade honestly. There was a distinct look and sound and fashion that was all 80s adjacent but not quite 80s or 90s.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
It was the 80s, but it looked more normal lol
peeinian@reddit
97-01 was the return of the boy band (backstreet Boys, Nsync) after NKOTB and the genre as a whole faded earlier in the decade.
-Midnight_Marauder-@reddit
I see it more as 97 was the start of the "technological" part of the 90s - gaming had shifted from 16 to 32 bit (64 in Nintendo's case) as well as cartridges to CDROM (again, except for Nintendo), the internet had just gone mainstream, MP3 was just starting to break through, more movies were computer animated.
97-99 are still very much 90s, but it was the part of the decade that is much more recognisable to how we live today than the early 90s was.
CrotalusHorridus@reddit
I dunno. I felt like the 90s existed from 1992 to September 11, 2001
Plane-Match1794@reddit
That also seems like a split for me, but it's also when I started high school and we moved to our new house, so definitely a new phase in life for me
three-sense@reddit
Every year of the 90s sounds distinct IMO
Shadrach77@reddit
Every year of the 90s was a different grade in school for us, so that makes sense.
Dan_Berg@reddit
I was only in any school for two years at a clip between 93-99 anyway; moved to a new elementary school for 3 and 4, they opened an upper elementary for 5 and 6, and middle school was 7 and 8. The more I think about it there definitely are pop culture/music boundaries for me, even if I didn't care about it, that went with each school.
Kinetic_Silverwolf@reddit
My dad was military, so I had similar experiences. Changing schools, cities, states, every few years really put bookends around some years.
protossaccount@reddit
It was also was more contained and easier to observe.
Unusual-Minimum9306@reddit
91-94 peak
2DegsBelow@reddit
One hundred percent
ScaresBums@reddit
91-96
t-g-l-h-@reddit
id say 93-96
Shuatheskeptic@reddit
I was 23 in 1997. If I could remember anything from this period I would tell you, but it's all a little fuzzy.
ProBlackMan1@reddit
No interchangeable especially late 1996-early 1997
NotXenos@reddit
Nah. Limp Bizkit is still around so people think of them as groundbreaking or something, but rap rock had been around forever. Those 3EB songs had been in the works for years. 2pac and Biggie died, but everyone still copied them
buttplug50@reddit
No
Tonrunner101@reddit
Good comparison and good point on something I’d never considered. I remember a shift in music/ style at the time. This helps to understand a bit better
dingus-mcdoodle@reddit
I remember a distinct change from listening to Metallica and pantera to listening to Korn. Or maybe the change from White Zombie to Rob Zombie.
Unusual_Compote4909@reddit
A few of my favorite albums from 97-
Radiohead - Ok Computer
Deftones - Around the Fur
Sleater Kinney - Dig Me Out
Wu Tang Clan - Forever
Yo La Tengo - I can Hear the Heart Beating as One
Chemical Brothers - Dig Your Own Hole
Pavement - Brighten the Corners
Modest Mouse - The Lonesome Crowded West
Atmosphere- Overcast
HeywoodJaBlessMe@reddit
Not for me.
DigitalMindShadow@reddit
From 1995 through the end of the millennium, I was pretty singlemindedly obsessed with Phish.
bassman314@reddit
1996 - senior in high school
1997 - college
Yeah it was different.
milky_nem@reddit
yes! when this av club article came out, it was the first time i actually felt heard. Did 1997 contain the worst two weeks in music history? https://www.avclub.com/did-1997-contain-the-worst-two-weeks-in-music-history-1798265017
Separate_Counter9427@reddit
In 1997, you have Puff Daddy but no Wu-Tang Forever?
Awkward-Initiative28@reddit
To be fair, the whole Bad Boys scene around that time (the posthumous Biggie album, Mase, Lil Kim, Diddy, Faith Evans) was way bigger than Wu Tang. I love Wu Tang way more than the Bad Boy crew, but they still felt underground in spirit (even if WTF was pretty huge) where all the Bad Boy peeps wanted to be glossy megastars in shiny suits.
Separate_Counter9427@reddit
Good point
VaguelyInteresting10@reddit
Not really
RelevantNothing4653@reddit
Yeah, after Biggie and Tupac were killed; the rap scene shifted away from gangsta.
And by 1997, the alternative scene was DOA: Soundgarden broke up, Alice in Chains went on hiatus, Lollapalooza had its last run.
But real change was the Y2K pop (98-01) run of pop princesses and boy bands
ki11a11hippies@reddit
Yeah in 98 TRL came out and everything was boy band and Britney/Christina after that.
Awkward-Initiative28@reddit
As much as I love it, grunge became cliche itself around the mid '90s. Just furrowed brow angst by some guy in a flannel. The economy and the country in general was in a real good space from 1996 to 9/11 2001 and I think people just wanted to vibe and party. There was a real positive atmosphere that we were heading into 2000 (aka THE FUTURE) and grunge didn't really reflect that.
max_power1000@reddit
At least we got the pop-punk explosion out of that era.
Zealousideal-Fly9531@reddit
Yeah it definitely was more techno
Fret_and_forget@reddit
For me, 1996 produced the final wisps of OG alternative culture that started around 1989, and 1997 was the start of a major push by established labels, studios and broadcasters to simplify and commodify the wave. Of course I was 16-17 at the time so probably had typical teenage ideas of what “real” and “fake” culture really was!
viking_linuxbrother@reddit
Posers and sellouts everywhere!
darkartbootleg@reddit
You’re not wrong, [the telecommunications act of 1996](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telecommunications_Act_of_1996) directly led to the Clear Channel (now Iheartradio) take over and near monopoly of radio that prioritized “safe” big name bands over playing newer or lesser known bands. There’s a lot of articles out there that go into more depth about how TCA96 ruined radio.
[35000watts](https://www.35000watts.com/the-telecommunications-act-of-1996-killed-local-radio/)
[hollywood reporter](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/business/business-news/96-act-killed-radios-star-146401/)
t-g-l-h-@reddit
that makes so much sense, especially since our local rock radio station still has the same playlist from 1996
superSaganzaPPa86@reddit
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin man
TheEarlNextDoor@reddit
Mine still uses that same playlist it seems...
DavidGrizzly@reddit
That act really did ruin so much.
WeenyDancer@reddit
I was going to reply about this and so glad to see its already up.
farttowel84@reddit
The change to music was rough. As those channels were being changed over due to the law switch in '96, they were also going online so you could listen to radio stations from all around the world via the internet. You could tune into stations from NYC, LA or Montreal and get niche music like techno, or alt. That just stopped.
You had to know what you were looking for at record stores and have access to the kinds of shops that had those titles and weren't your major chain with the common music selection. Sucked badly.
ScullyNess@reddit
1996 ended original alt grunge and 1997 started industrial metal.
KourtR@reddit
I'm a little older than you guys but yes, I believe definitely and my theory is 1996 was a shitty year for the US. I turned 27 that year.
So there was a terrible plane crash in Florida, then Flight 800 on Long Island which started a lot of conspiracies theories w/ the Boomers because people were convinced that was a terrorist act but was deemed otherwise.
The 96 Atlanta Summer Olympics were not well-run & then there was a bombing and everyone accused some poor weirdo who found it, Middle East conflicts and soldiers were dying, there were terrible weather events & it was like the beginning of the global warming arguments.
Tupac got shot and then got shot again and died. And Rupert Murdoch started Fox News because he hated Bill Clinton, who had just been reelected.
WeenyDancer@reddit
Thats when they decided to steal 2000.
thirdangletheory@reddit
I think it's mostly the latter point you made. We were all in high school or transitioning to adulthood during the latter half of the '90s, so the things we liked before just felt different.
sometimesxtc@reddit
Agree. Even as a teenager at this time, I felt like I was always listening to music from the early / mid 90s and the last few years felt pretty unremarkable.
cbincle@reddit
Yes! I graduated in 96 and the music of high school and the music of college was so different. Especially how in 97 when the pop explosion came. I spent my high school years listening to r&b, rap, and alternative. suddenly it was bubble gum pop everywhere!
bigdickpuncher@reddit
Yeah. Smash Mouth changed the world... forever.
viking_linuxbrother@reddit
90s was anti-cookiecutter-pop, it also had the rise of hiphop and the shift from hair metal to grunge and then nu metal. Every year was a grab bag of whatever the record companies could sell. They tended to be bands or acts that made and toured, vs single personalities building an empire around their name branding.
mhylas@reddit
Man...if it was not for middleschool being such a hellscape, I really did like 1997.
inthevelvetsea@reddit
Ok, this explains why I was listening to current rock in high school (93-97) and then turned into a hipster who couldn’t stand modern music in college.
selkus_sohailus@reddit
I feel like the pop scene in the 2000s was especially dogshit but rock was also feeling very overproduced and patronizing. Dipped out and sought truly strange music
Awkward-Initiative28@reddit
I just remember getting way into older bands in college (late '90s) like The Clash, The Police, and '80s era u2 and Metallica. The only '90s bands I kept up with were Pearl Jam, Hole, and Radiohead. I do remember blasting that second Korn album in my dorm room. Korn and Rob Zombie were pretty big at our dorm around 1999.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Same.
mattinglys-moustache@reddit
Yeah I think 97 was kind of a transitional year in 90’s culture where we moved from the mid-90’s vibe to the late 90’s/millennium era, whereas 96 was still firmly mid-90’s.
bmoody345@reddit
Yes. I used to work at a store where we played the radio in the background, usually the modern/classic rock station and 97 was the first year it was unbearable. 96 had those soundgarden and AIC albums so it had some coherence going back to the 91/92 grunge era but 97 was a mess.
sumthin_creative@reddit
Yes.
cellshock7@reddit
On the hip-hop front, EVERYTHING changed in 1997. Puff ushered in the shiny suit era, and hip-hop started mixing in all kinds of watered down R&B and pop collabs and it hasn't honestly been the same since.
DeuceOfDiamonds@reddit
Honestly, not as much as 1998 did from 97. As your example album pics show, there was still some of that hodge-podge esthetic in both 96-97, whereas 98 started that electric blue/chrome scheme that would lead us into 2000. Plus, the boy band craze was in full swing by 98, whereas it was just really getting going in 97.
In my head, like 1988-1992 are one thing, 93-95 another, 96 and 97 are kind of each their own thing, and 1998-2003 are a different era.
-Midnight_Marauder-@reddit
I agree to some extent; as a decade, "the 90s" was actually a mashup of those periods you mention (although to me, 96 can be lumped with 93-95 and 97 lumped with 98-2003). To me a lot of it is due to how technology made such large advancements in short periods of time, by 1999 we had way more computing power, mobile phones, DVD, internet had gone mainstream, even compared to a few years earlier in 1995.
DeuceOfDiamonds@reddit
Very true. In his Hardcore History podcasts, Dan Carlin refers to "historical estuaries" where different periods, including technology and culture, overlap. At the end of the 1980s, bag phones, VHS, and fax machines were pretty high-end tech. Within ten years, these were nearly obsolete, with most people having a phone in their pocket. Plus, of course, the rise of the internet and home computing to ubiquity in that same period.
It was a really interesting time in hindsight.
Angelas-Merkin@reddit
I don’t know that I noticed the change between 96 and 97 but between 98 and 99 I turned off the radio for the next 12-13 years because the music went to shit.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Very brave of you to turn it back on!
hamburgler26@reddit
Thank god I have a good college radio station here.
Seaweedminer@reddit
There was a flip. That is a wild difference tho.
JanieJane96@reddit
It did to me because I graduated high school in '96 and went away to college. Totally different era for me. lol
Consistent-Fig7484@reddit
A lot of us in the age range started high school during the 96-97 school year. That’s hard to overlook personally.
Regular-Table4242@reddit
No
One-Earth9294@reddit
Honestly it did to some degree. The end of the 90s felt waaaaay different from what I was getting into. Grunge basically vanished. Metal took a backseat to rap where it didn't just become nu-metal. Pop groups were back in vogue.
I cannot say I like where it went. Never gave up my grunge/metal roots for the 'spring break that never ends' vibe of the turn of the century.
Prince_0llie@reddit
This theory makes so much sense! Take a look at what pop culture was (MTV, radio, many of the films) and how all of that changed into the spring break vibe with Hawaiian shirts and flip flops, American Pie / Legally Blonde vibes, and TRL later that next year. Eventually leading to MTV being more reality based entertainment than music oriented.
We truly lived and enjoyed the peak of everything. Since then I can't say anything has gotten better than that small window of time.
One last thing. Can anyone say that the old school hip-hop WASN'T better than anything that came out post 97? I'm thinking Beastie Boys, RUN DMC, etc.
More-read-than-eddit@reddit
But around 2000 is when we started getting the seeds of electroclash and what is now termed indie sleaze, all coming from the last gasps of the 99s grindcore, no wave, and larger indie labels, which was a great thing to have in your early 20s.
Harinezumi@reddit
If I had to mark an end of the era, it would be when the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys took over the radio.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Well said
DavidGrizzly@reddit
I feel like 1996 was the last year that shit was really cool. Then 1997 happen and it just started to sour everything. I feel like 1997 was the start of the show death and down fall of MTV as well.
capthazelwoodsflask@reddit
Yeah, early 90's grunge was fading out and giving way to the new wave of punk and ska and nu metal was on the rise. Rap wise, the East coast/West coast thing was coming to a head and things were becoming less gangsta.
Basically, we were starting to shift to the Millennium more than being in the 90's.
BlamRob@reddit
I graduated in 96… so yeah, very different to me!
Azipcoder@reddit
‘97 felt fresh and exciting. A lot of those bands took a minute to catch on. That Third Eye Blind record sounded like nothing else on radio. Punkier, less polished. I saw them in a small beachside bar. No one was there. Good times!
card-board-board@reddit
I know exactly why this change happened.
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 deregulated the radio industry allowing for giant conglomerates to buy up radio stations and record labels and this really homogenized popular music. Regional sounds got pasted over.
Awkward-Initiative28@reddit
Playlists became a national, corporate thing. You may have had a discerning local DJ that passed over Matchbox 20 or whatever and preferred Built to Spill or Fountatins of Wayne, etc. but that time was over and it was like here's the corporate mandated playlist. I think that 1991 to 1996 era was better because bands were breaking because DJs genuinely liked those bands.
ironic-hat@reddit
I noticed that shift too. 1997 on was very corporate, committee selected, pop music that dominated airwaves.
Negative-Midnight681@reddit
I was 14/15 yo...... god i hit the mark pretty close for goated birth years....
Snarfly99@reddit
I feel like Limp Bizkit’s rise in popularity coincided with the rise of TRL two years later and then people went back and listened to the first album with the Faith cover
Grunblau@reddit
Graduated HS in 1996 and started college in 1997. So yeah…
greggerypeccary@reddit
OK Computer in ‘97 felt like a monumental shift
Inside-Bullfrog-7709@reddit
Around the same time (albeit different genre), the Spice Girls came out in late 1996. At least in the UK and Ireland, I remember mainstream music focus moving more towards pop/boybands after that. The Indie/Britpop thing had died down after its 95/96 heyday.
DrMcJedi@reddit
‘96 meant Entroducing, Odelay, Travelling without Moving, Illadeph Halflife, Emperor Tomato Ketchup, and Tidal for me
1997…
OK Computer, Homework, Homogenic, Whatever and Ever Amen, New Forms, Dig Your Own Hole, Dots and Loops, and Portishead…
I went from being a sophomore to a junior and guess 96-97 felt like a continuum for me versus a distinct break. 1998 into 1999 felt more like a different era for me with all the millenium stuff and Y2K/tech becoming a much bigger part of everyday life.
Awkward-Initiative28@reddit
Yes but you had actual taste. The rest of us were hopping on our couch to Kid Rock music videos.
CaptianBrasiliano@reddit
It's hard to draw a clear line but, I'll say this... 1998 was the least 90's year of the 90's and 1999 wasn't the 90's at all. Not in my eyes.
Looking back in 99' there was no more real 90's music. Instead or grunge and alt rock everything was this New Metal metal mixed with EDM sound and really bad white boy fake ass hip hop sounding lyrics. Super commercial and lacking substance.
Genre mixing can sometimes yeild interesting and innovative music. But sometimes when you try to make something everything what you really end up with is nothing. I mean 99' was the year that gave us Kid Rock. Need I say more?
Awkward-Initiative28@reddit
The first RATM album basically perfected rap metal. The platonic ideal of merging rap and metal. And that was in 1992.
foozebox@reddit
Diff is albums on the left are great, albums on the right complete 💩
Masterweedo@reddit
Plumeria9798@reddit
For me, yes, a little, but I’m wondering if that’s hindsight and not what I felt back then.
Single-ch@reddit
This is the effect of the signing of the Telecommunications Actt of 1996 that officially went into full effect by 1997. Also by 1997 the entire market, not just music was shifting towards the advertisement of the year 2000 (Y2K) so music and nearly all media was full force moving in a different direction. I’m also gonna add that auto tune was invented and started being used in 1997 in music.
DarksunDaFirst@reddit
Brad died ‘96. Nothing was the same since.
___cats___@reddit
Yeah I remember the change being very distinct. You could feel it. The 90s ended after 96, and alternate reality pop 90s started.
Jonestown_Juice@reddit
1997 is precisely when I stopped listening to the radio or watching MTV. They'd already replaced 120 Minutes with some lame-ass show "Superock" and stopped airing Headbanger's Ball. Music got so bad, I just retreated into my own little world.
Arcanisia@reddit
I can’t really speak for rock but as far as rap goes, there’s basically 2 sides of it. There’s underground and mainstream. I started listening to underground around 94 and was concurrently listening to mainstream as well. I used to think mainstream was pretty bad until college aged when I started to go to parties and clubs. Used to hate crunk until I went to the south and got indoctrinated 😆.
Now I listen to new stuff coming out and will add songs I like to my playlist but it’s mostly older music from the 90s and early 2000s.
Solid-Hedgehog9623@reddit
Not at the time. All the stuff shown from 96 was still pretty popular in 97.
BigDaddyUKW@reddit
Back then, singles off top albums were still dropping every couple of months or so, therefore an album that may have debuted in early 96 could still have been charting songs in 97.
While I'll agree with your point, 97 may have been the demarcation point for the "shiny suit" and "bling bling" era for hip hop, as well as the shift from grunge and metal to nu-metal.
HighScorsese@reddit
Yes, very much so. I’d say after summer 97 it felt very different. That’s when the y2k obsession, shiny suit proto bling hip hop, soft Matchbox 20 rock, boy bands, rap rock all kinda took over. Then add in internet starting to become much more common that year along with the more anti corporate attitude of the previous years giving way to the heavily corporate and conformity driven style and you’ve got a pretty stark dividing line. But hey, at least we got Goldeneye and Mario Kart for N64
amccune@reddit
I am class of 97. Stuff after that is “new” and I can’t be convinced otherwise.
BadassSasquatch@reddit
Every year of the 90s was so different. We knew we were eating good.
slleslie161@reddit
Yep. MMMBop's release was when it all when to shit.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
My brother grew his hair wrong at the wrong time. He never grew it back since. 💀
GivesYouGrief@reddit
No
babe_ruthless3@reddit
Right when I entered high school, music went to shit
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
Mr_SunnyBones@reddit
I remember 1997 , and I wasnt listening to any of them.
Admittedly it was the era when US and European musical tastes had diverged completely for a few years The pic below shows what was around where I lived , and it was mostly a continuation of where we'd been in 96 .. Ok Computer, Blur, The Fat of the land..some absolute fantastic albums released then.
Intelligent-Search88@reddit
Oh man - that album by the Verve in the pic is one of my all-time favorites and takes me right back to 1997 every time I put it on.
Twanlx2000@reddit
I spent my first semester in college wearing out that album and “Whatever and Ever Amen”
Mr_SunnyBones@reddit
Yes! I was listening to that and the first album back then , love BF5
Inca-Vacation@reddit
I'm an American and I was immersed in club/rave and britpop so this tracks for me at least.
Door_Number_Four@reddit
Beautiful Freak was a good album, but my god, Electro-Shock Blues was a masterpiece.
ItalianBeefCurtains@reddit
‘96 is when the (what I call) Orlando Pop scene started to emerge. All the highly fabricated boy bands and ex-Disney stars.
It’s not that corporate didn’t have its hands in music before - it always eventually got ahold and of everyone, but most started on their own and had at least a few authentic albums under them. In 96 it definitely felt like it shifted to the majority of acts spawning from corporate roots and to where it is now, which is damn near 100%.
nooks-n-crannies@reddit
1997 was the year I graduated high school, so it was definitely a different era for me
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
96 was still the nineties. 97 was a whole new world.
johnnycat75@reddit
I feel like the wave broke when rap rock and nü metal took off.
TrollingForFunsies@reddit
All I wanted was a Pepsi just one Pepsi
Sumeriandawn@reddit
Not really
TheJustBleedGod@reddit
it was the turning point for 1997 for sure. leaned HEAVY into edginess
Twanlx2000@reddit
I'm not sure what your timeline is like -- I graduated high school in '97, so there was a life-wide tonal shift that happened for me between these two years. I grew in confidence and was thrilled to be out of the house and away from my classmates. I was personally re-inventing, so the musical shift felt appropriate.
That said, I regularly listen to the first set of albums almost 30 years later. I loved Third Eye Blind when that was released, but the others not so much.
StillyMcDaniels@reddit
I’m a year older and it’s funny because I always equate that Third Eye Blind album with high school, but it wasn’t released until college for me.
That would align with first summer home from college, so it makes sense I would still be in that period where high school friends would be in my social circle. My girlfriend was also a ‘97 grad so that makes sense too that I was still around that circle even during the school year.
So yeah, this shift makes sense to me for the reasons you mentioned in addition to the societal changes others have mentioned.
hanggangshaming@reddit
Not as much as 94 from 93, or even 95 from 94, but the biggest was definitely 96 from 95
Crabcakefrosti@reddit
No because it was all happening together. You can’t select different styles of music and artists that clash and pretend those were the only options in that two year window of time.
PoolGuyUnfiltered@reddit
I do feel that 97 did turn that corner and become something all its own...but I also know I'm biased since I turned 16 in early 97. So much of what you felt was important to remember, absorb, and experience happened when you started to drive and make a lot of your first choices outside of the control of your patents😉
Primary-Strawberry-5@reddit
1997 was when I turned 21 and lost my virginity (that order, about a 2.5 week split). And it’s the year I picked up a near devastating taste for a certain powder known as The Bitch
TheBlackdragonSix@reddit
The 90s peaked hella early, and went through different phases. Unlike the 70s and 80s which more or less kinda stayed the same across the decades. The only that was different in the late 80s was urban music and Madonna which was already starting to sound like the early 90s a few years befor all the other 80s artists, especially the played out rock bands that was still stuck in 85 lol.
blantdebedre@reddit
Nü metal might gave taken off in '97 - but three years had passed since Korn's debut. I did not recognize any massive changes between these two years, really. 1996 was more of a gem for me.
Ned_Flandersss@reddit
I feel like a shift occurred around this time. I loved grunge. I realize that it was pretty dead by 1996, but two of the albums you posted were big ones for me. Down on the Upside and the MTV Unplugged AIC album spent some heavy time in my Sony disc changer while driving! The other big shift came with the deaths of Tupac and Biggie. Rap was a genre that I was interested in (as an ironically upper class suburban white kid/young adult). Moving from music made by these artists to a period of tribute and “found” tracks was definitely a big shift.
socialcommentary2000@reddit
96 was about the time I fell into EDM (in all its different forms) and never climbed back out for the most part. Missed the whole buttrock era (and am thankful for that). I did still listen to 311 consistently through the end of the decade though.
Cisru711@reddit
I started college in fall 96, and my roommate was into discovering new bands, so he exposed me to all sorts of different groups before they became popular. I've been slowly collecting those albums on my own.
ravage214@reddit
Fush yu mang is such and underrated banger
geese_moe_howard@reddit
97 was definitely the year that I completely lost interest in metal. For the next three years I just listened to punk.
detourne@reddit
97 was the perfect year to transition to more hardcore/punk with Snapcase's Progression Through Unlearning.
geese_moe_howard@reddit
My gateway drug from pop-punk to harder stuff was the Misfits tribute album 'Violent World'.
Oaken_beard@reddit
97 was when the 99’s as I knew it actually felt like it was beginning to end. Not just the decade, but the overall tone of media, especially music.