The nineties come alive again in the music of 2023

HE house stamp balearic resonates strongly (Going like) Nananafrom south korea Peggy Gou and 300 million play. English Charlie melting the universe Barbie with sound chip melody inside Speed ​​Driving – 200 million streams – wouldn’t have been out of place in any Spanish suburban club in the nineties. your country woman Elizabeth Rose A confessed homage to the dance music of that decade is marked as follows: BOTA (The Worst)300 million is in line with his projection for TikTok, one of this year’s hits. Olivia Rodrigo objection pop punk youth Flashing 182 or burst of power related to Weezer on some of the best tracks from their second album. Romy Madley-Croft He does the same with her. trance on his first solo album.

What’s going on? By removing commercial pop phenomenons of Latin origin (Rosalía, Peso Pluma, Bizarrap, Karol G or Myke Towers) from the list, almost all songs The most heard on any platform this year has its genesis and reason for existing in the ninetiesIn that decade, when the internet and social networks were a beast, the world lived reasonably anesthetized without major international conflicts, enjoyed relative economic prosperity, and thanks to television sensationalism, media nastiness was just beginning to emerge. We were all young, but some of the musicians we mentioned weren’t even born.

Reasons for revival

We see this from records and songs as well as from television series (Alcasser case, Pioneer, Route, American Crime Story: People versus OJ Simpson or temporary return Friends), movies (Veronica, Girls, year of discovery) and even enlightening books ninetiesby American cultural journalist Chuck Klosterman, article published in Spanish a few months ago. The important decade is back in fashion. Have we definitively buried the eighties as the time of eternity? revival? style festivals I love the 90s take over from those at bat I went to EGB. Nostalgia millennial threatens with surprise by generation

On a musical level, echoes european rhythmfirst indie rockHE drum and bassHE forestHE fast beatHE trance and any electronic pop that emerged after the collapse of the culture go crazy. Another symptom: I recently interviewed two veteran British musicians – producers Trevor Horn already mike barsonkeyboardist Madness – and they both tell me great things about the productions Dr. Dre Although in the last period of this decade hip hop That’s not exactly the type we would associate them with. Can we still talk about the cyclical effect of popular culture, which rescues languages ​​of expression that we believed were buried forever, approximately every twenty years?

“Just like many people in the nineties looked at the seventies and two thousand people looked at the eighties and beyond. post punkfor example – despite post punk Never gone: that’s another story – now There are a lot of people who focus on the nineties because that’s what they heard on the radio when they were kids.: HE european rhythm or some forgotten pop electronics,” says the music journalist Joan S. Luna (Barcelona, ​​1967), editor-in-chief of the publication MondosonoroWhen asked about the reasons for this resurgence.

There is a cyclical factor, which is certainly mitigated by the proliferation of filters offered by the internet and social networks, but there is also an underlying reason: “All this emerged at a time when we came from very different origins. The success music of recent years was not dance hits and need danceable songs with choruses, that was a big deal in the eighties and nineties” he elaborates. “After the pandemic and all the problems people went through there was a need for hedonism, many had forgotten that the song was supposed to make you dance: be careful if you compare the first arctic monkeys “There is a big difference between the later ones because the first ones were successful,” he explains.

He also gives an example Jessie Ware Ah Beyoncé: There was actually a lot of this in the album the North American diva released last year; danceable and direct hit recovery and house and even fashion (The subculture of the New York club scene) became so popular that madonna With his single in 1990… Meanwhile, another symptom: several Madonna albums recently allegedly Erotic (1992), whose rhythmic swaying trip skipping It has aged much better than we thought at the time. The championship course is one of the highlights of his final tour, as seen during his time at Barcelona’s Palau Sant Jordi.

Nostalgia for what never happened

Joan S. Luna introduced an important nuance: post punk This never left. The history of music progresses through action and reaction, but no movement, no matter how disruptive, completely buries everything that came before. He didn’t even do that punk. And if we talk about post punkThe situation of the young Valencian trio Broken Daisy This is paradigmatic, because it is precisely from these waters that they began to drink the dark guitar sound of the first half of the eighties, but recently they have made a change in their offerings that allows them to delve into the more typical sounds of the nineties and even two thousandths. : drum and bass – a style that Rojuu, La Plata, dani, Kae Tempest, Shygirl and even Rauw Alejandro and many more have been playing, if only in the corner of their eyes, lately – and even UK Garage or witch house.

Actually, what was their last album? tear gas (2022), took a bow childrenrelated to Robert MilesOne of the most played songs in Spanish clubs in the mid-nineties. And the members of Margarita Quebrada (Nacho López, Mikel Cabanes and Guillermo Juan Montesinos) are between 25 and 29 years old. The nineties are almost a memory of his childhood, but they are extremely powerful: “Electronic music of the 90s and 2000s ultimately evokes a certain nostalgia in us; not so much because we are consumers of it, but because it makes you remember a particular time in your life. , And ours music It aims to convey a certain melancholy and therefore makes some of our older viewers feel a real sense of nostalgia, rather than appearing to belong to a particular period most of the time.“, They argue.

In fact, the vehicles are different now. The ability of musicians to have instant access to any musical source of any era encourages the crossover of languages. “Using the internet as a creative tool to research and understand older movements allows you to visualize the horizon of possibilities as you create,” they say, and that’s why they believe it today.Is there a revival Updated from much of the music consumed in clubs and on the radio in the ninetiesboth in urban species mainstream As with more niche projects, it greatly opens up the range of resources: you can find an artist mainstream sing about something hit related to reggaeton then split into a piece drop related to drum and basseven playing in the same section with various genres belonging to the club,” they explain.

Joan S. Luna is also full of this heterogeneity, almost always referencing the nineties. He assures us that there has been a recovery in the sounds of the last decade in Spain; “especially the hardest electronic music and machineWith projects like car park anyone VVV [Trippin’you]” and even in songs Ralphie Choo like Valentinothis “no way” babbling (Hard and fast electronic genre born in the Netherlands) but not too far away.” He also acknowledges that these are transverse currents and that they do not stay in the same direction. underground but they penetrate large audiences: “In the EDM scene, hard style It’s been booming in Spain for a few years now, and what’s interesting is that it’s doing it as an alternative thing, because hard style at first it is mainstreamBut at the same time, there is also the most alternative and funny side, so to speak.”

The last decade of original styles?

if we ignore trap And reggaeton – which is too much to ignore, and these are styles that exploded in the 2000s but also have their roots in the 90s – which gives the impression that we’re talking about that decade as the last decade capable of producing crossover styles. Genres and fashions that (as we have seen) transcend the ages and are adopted by artists who were not yet born when they emerged. Was it really like this? Are the nineties the single-parent productive decade, perhaps due to the subsequent fragmentation caused by the internet? broad spectrum of musical stylesIs it something that can be practiced by musicians in any corner of the planet?

Margarita Quebrada considers that, in addition to being “the decade in which most of our current references were developed”, it was also “a period when the break with regulations managed to reach its highest level in many cases”. mainstream”. An example? “What does this Aphex Twin, “It continues to age incredibly well to this day,” they say. “In the nineties, there were projects at the electronic, guitar and project level. yield this can serve as a reference for today.”

Joan S. Luna also thinks the nineties were probably the last decade where a wide range of styles proliferated exponentially. trap And reggaeton Although it affects many languages ​​today, it is doubtful that both will have the same mutation capacity in the future. “In the nineties, many rhythms and styles emerged, which were very useful as subgenres were created by mixing them with other genres.as with drum and bassIt’s been confused with rock a lot but I can’t imagine reggaeton rhythm being confused with music Metal and make it work,” he says.

For now, the nineties will continue to be the sound template for many music that excites us, energizes us and makes us dance.