What Would Popular Music in the Early 90's Have Looked Like

[Orange]

if Nirvana and Grunge didn't blow up and take off like it did?

I just switched over to the Classic Rock station, and "Rocket" by Def Leppard was on; out of all of Def Leppard's work, "Rocket" may be the most 'arena metal' song I've ever heard from them. Just totally shameless and over the top.

It got me to thinking how glam metal really dominated the late 80's, and that in turn got me to thinking how it more or less completely died off when Grunge (and to a lesser extent Thrash Metal) hit and blew up.

However, let's rewrite history for a minute. Let's say that these guys never got together and wrote this song,



What would popular music have been like in the 90's? Would Hair Metal have continued to reign supreme, or was its downfall an inevitability? If it was, what could have taken Grunge's place as the nail in the coffin?

Personally, I have no clue what the popular music landscape would've looked like without Nirvana and Grunge. I mean, when you listen to a lot of early 90's pop, it's so similar to 80's pop that they're indistinguishable, so without Grunge and that whole cultural change I think it's a possibility that the 90's could have just been 'The 80's: Part 2'

What say you, FAN?

[error]

[searches databases for logical answer]

[searching.......]

if nirvana did not exist, courtney love would not be famous

equal trade

[StuntGranny®]

Feb 4, 2014 22:58:36 GMT -5 error said:

if nirvana did not exist, courtney love would not be famous

equal trade

And, assuming Courtney Love never meets Kurt Cobain, he'd probably still be alive.

[Deleted]

Hard to say. I'd book it (lol) so that Sonic Youth took the Nirvana role, as they were essentially an experimental Velvet Underground fit for the '90s. I'd also would've liked for these guys to have taken Nirvana's place as well:



which would've been fitting because Cobain was a hanger on of theirs for a bit before his own success.

[Deleted]

I would very, very much like to move to that alternate universe where grunge never existed, hair metal was still popular, and the '90s were just "the '80s part 2."

[Deleted]

Probably some hybrid of Guns n Roses and Black album era Metallica.

[Reflecto]

Judging from what was popular in 1990 (pre-Nirvana), it doesn't seem hard to think that it'd probably defer to more Freestyle R+B . As far as rock music, I think the fact that a lot of alternative from 1990 and pre-Nirvana 1991 and alternative from 1998-99 were more similar-sounding than you'd think makes it reasonable to assume that it would have kept going in that vein for the rest of the decade as well.

[chazraps]

Well, Nirvana were part of a scene that became a movement and ultimately its own genre, so I think another band would have probably swung for the fences and history continued as it were.

I think the big decade-changing moment in music would be what if 9/11 didn't happen? The summer of 2001 has they absolutely weirdest amalgamation of novelty hits, cross-genre collisions an just bizarre acts that really couldn't have existed with that kind of mainstream push in any other era of the music industry, but after the towers fell were never heard from again. How much weirder would things have gotten in a post- Little T and One Track Mike, Afroman, Bad Ronald world?

[Glitch]

Feb 4, 2014 23:32:48 GMT -5 @akeem said:

Probably some hybrid of Guns n Roses and Black album era Metallica.

Probably something like this. People forgot that between 92-94, actual metal still kept going. I wonder if death metal and such would have become the norm.

[Milkman Norm]

Hair metal was going to fade and die anyway. The bands that were good were to drugged out to be good anymore, GnR had become the bloated Axel project and the rest of them sucked.

Pop would have been the same thing with NKOTB slowly fading and the late 80's dance stuff like Paula Abdul going on.

The Alt Rock seen minus Nirvana would have been just as strong. REM was huge in the early 90's with two albums that got massive radio and MTV play (Out of Time and Automatic for the People) plus U2 Actung Baby came out in 1991 so it's not like all guitar based rock stuff that charted was hair metal until Nevermind came out. Besides even if there weren't a Nirvana that doesn't mean that there wouldn't be a Pearl Jam. Ten would be the seminal record of the genre, which some think it is anyway.

[CATCH_US IS the Conversation]

Hair metal would've instead been replaced by ska punk.

[Drillbit Taylor]

More stuff like this

[Lila]

House/New Jack Swing/Lounge music would have reign harder than it already did.

[DSR]

Feb 5, 2014 1:35:01 GMT -5 CATCH_US IS the Conversation said:

Hair metal would've instead been replaced by ska punk.

Hair metal was already partially out the door by the end of the 80s, and alternative metal (Living Colour, Faith No More) seemed to be gaining ground. Those bands still had success post-Nirvana, but were mostly shunted off to the side in favor of grunge (Red Hot Chili Peppers being an exception). Maybe without grunge, headbanging to funky basslines would've been a bigger part of the 90s?

[Dr. T is an alien]

If it wasn't Nirvana that killed hair metal it would have been someone else. Soundgarden and Pantera had already gotten started and some serious airplay on MTV before Smells Like Teen Spirit came on the scene. Metallica, Skid Row, and Megadeth were all getting ready to release serious rock albums around that time. Nine Inch Nails was already a hit. Queensryche was getting ready to release Empire. Hell, even a few hair metal staples wanted to be more serious. Cinderella had demonstrated that they wanted to be a blues rock band instead of a hair band (Long Cold Winter was an awesome album). Even the worst offenders of hair metal, Warrant, had wanted to be more than a pop rock band. Uncle Tom's Cabin was intended by the band (by that I mean Jani Lane) to be their defining song only to have the label focus their marketing on a song Lane farted out in fifteen minutes to get the label rep off of his back.

[MolotovMocktail]

Rap would have had an earlier, longer run. It was already starting with MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice, and by about 1994, had pretty much overtaken rock as the most popular music genre.

[Reflecto]

Feb 5, 2014 1:14:35 GMT -5 chazraps said:

Well, Nirvana were part of a scene that became a movement and ultimately its own genre, so I think another band would have probably swung for the fences and history continued as it were.

I think the big decade-changing moment in music would be what if 9/11 didn't happen? The summer of 2001 has they absolutely weirdest amalgamation of novelty hits, cross-genre collisions an just bizarre acts that really couldn't have existed with that kind of mainstream push in any other era of the music industry, but after the towers fell were never heard from again. How much weirder would things have gotten in a post- Little T and One Track Mike, Afroman, Bad Ronald world?

Being fair, I think the difference there was less for 9/11 as much as it was the rise of file-sharing sites. With file-sharing, it was more possible for acts to make more of a buzz on the basis of one novelty song that everyone had to send around and say "You've GOT to hear this". It was inevitable to happen, but at the same time, they were just the first wave of what's led to things like "Harlem Shake" or "What Does The Fox Say?" becoming big hits on the heels of going viral.

[Ben Wyatt]

I think Grunge still happens, but it probably would have been delayed a year or two

[Evilution E5150]

Florida Death Metal would rule the world

[willywonka666]

Rap and hip hop might have been even bigger even quicker. make no mistake, things were going to take a darker turn anyway