1990s music experts get in here

[pete6032]

I recently opened Amazon Music and played the 1990s Alternative station. To my surprise the station played the Goo Goo Dolls and Third Eye Blind. I thought these were 1990s pop bands?

 

[MrSquished]

Those were alternative rock bands that just happened to go pretty mainstream.

N'sync is a 90's pop band

 

[IronWing]

Third Eye Blind is touring this spring so I think of them as a 2020s band.

 

[pete6032]

Third Eye Blind is touring this spring so I think of them as a 2020s band.

Yes but are they playing in Congress AZ?

 

[IronWing]

Yes but are they playing in Congress AZ?

Rock bands that I consider "one of those new groups I should probably check out sometime" are now performing in Indian casinos.

Maybe…

TOUR | thirdeyeblind

www.thirdeyeblind.com

They're playing Pala, CA which is a bit smaller than Congress.

 

[bbhaag]

Those were alternative rock bands that just happened to go pretty mainstream.

N'sync is a 90's pop band

Agreed, to expand on this thought. IMO they were not alternative rock bands but just rock bands. It's crazy to me that rock bands in the '90s were labeled "Alternative Rock". Do we even hear that label anymore? No but somehow in the '90s rock bands were labeled like this.

The '90s were weird like that though. We put labels on a lot of things back then. Kinda like how every video game console was defined by how many bits it had. 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit ect. and the MORE bits the better! Do we even here about that now though?

 

[Zorba]

Agreed, to expand on this thought. IMO they were not alternative rock bands but just rock bands. It's crazy to me that rock bands in the '90s were labeled "Alternative Rock". Do we even hear that label anymore? No but somehow in the '90s rock bands were labeled like this.

The '90s were weird like that though. We put labels on a lot of things back then. Kinda like how every video game console was defined by how many bits it had. 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit ect. and the MORE bits the better! Do we even here about that now though?

Every modern rock station I ever list to still calls modern rock "Alternative Rock," unless it is indie. Billboard still has Rock and Alternative charts: https://www.billboard.com/charts/rock-songs/.

 

[pete6032]

I guess the fundamental question is what is "alternative" music? In my mind I think of "alternative" music as not as popular as pop music. But when I think of the Goo Goo Dolls and 3rd Eye Blind I think they are among some of the most popular bands of the 1990s. Certainly as popular as some top echelon pop bands were.

 

[pete6032]

Would you guys label Matchbox Twenty as pop, rock, or alternative?

 

[NutBucket]

Technically they are alternative IMHO. Alternative bands can be very popular. By definition indie bands cannot...think Dawes.

IMHO rock defines a very specific genre or "traditional" bands.

 

[Zorba]

I guess the fundamental question is what is "alternative" music? In my mind I think of "alternative" music as not as popular as pop music. But when I think of the Goo Goo Dolls and 3rd Eye Blind I think they are among some of the most popular bands of the 1990s. Certainly as popular as some top echelon pop bands were.

By this logic Nirvana and Greenway would also be pop bands. Pop music is music that would pretty much only be heard on a pop/top 40 radio station.

3rd Eye Blind at least is definitely a rock band that became popular. Goo Goo is bit more grey, IMHO.

 

[Zorba]

Technically they are alternative IMHO. Alternative bands can be very popular. By definition indie bands cannot...think Dawes.

IMHO rock defines a very specific genre or "traditional" bands.

Offspring was indie and very popular. I think the White Stripes were also indie. Indie has more to do with the label although it has kind of murphed into a gene as rock has become less popular.

 

[NutBucket]

Offspring was/are somewhere between punk & alternative. I agree White Stripes fall into indie though they were pretty popular for a while.

 

[Torn Mind]

Agreed, to expand on this thought. IMO they were not alternative rock bands but just rock bands. It's crazy to me that rock bands in the '90s were labeled "Alternative Rock". Do we even hear that label anymore? No but somehow in the '90s rock bands were labeled like this.

The '90s were weird like that though. We put labels on a lot of things back then. Kinda like how every video game console was defined by how many bits it had. 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit ect. and the MORE bits the better! Do we even here about that now though?

Rock fans and rock music guys can sometimes get rather snobby about their music(to some, Bon Jovi doesn’t make the cut). Perhaps it was deemed alternative because it wasn’t as “with force” as classic rock.

 

[nakedfrog]

I guess the fundamental question is what is "alternative" music? In my mind I think of "alternative" music as not as popular as pop music. But when I think of the Goo Goo Dolls and 3rd Eye Blind I think they are among some of the most popular bands of the 1990s. Certainly as popular as some top echelon pop bands were.

I would say it's more identified by differences from hard rock and the other styles of rock that generally dominated the radio from the 50s-80s.

 

[nakedfrog]

Rock fans and rock music guys can sometimes get rather snobby about their music(to some, Bon Jovi doesn’t make the cut). Perhaps it was deemed alternative because it wasn’t as “with force” as classic rock.

I can't see anyone legitimately excluding 80s (and even early 90s) Bon Jovi from the "rock" category altogether.

 

[Torn Mind]

I can't see anyone legitimately excluding 80s (and even early 90s) Bon Jovi from the "rock" category altogether.

He might be Rock but too “pop rock” to get a stamp of respect amongst some. He wasn’t inducted into the Rock and Roll HOF until many years have passed.
Even his profile on the rock and roll hall of fame mention him writing rock song “with a deliberate pop sheen”.

And one comment on one matter of composition. Bon Jovi can sure set up long notes for emotive effect real well, one of the underrated aspects of composition.

 

[nakedfrog]

He might be Rock but too “pop rock” to get a stamp of respect amongst some. He wasn’t inducted into the Rock and Roll HOF until many years have passed.
Even his profile on the rock and roll hall of fame mention him writing rock song “with a deliberate pop sheen”.

And one comment on one matter of composition. Bon Jovi can sure set up long notes for emotive effect real well, one of the underrated aspects of composition.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame isn't particularly relevant.

 

[manly]

The '90s were weird like that though. We put labels on a lot of things back then. Kinda like how every video game console was defined by how many bits it had. 16 bit, 32 bit, 64 bit ect. and the MORE bits the better! Do we even here about that now though?

Those transitions to longer bits per word were all meaningful, particularly going to 32 bit CPUs. Amongst other reasons, that unlocked a lot more addressable memory than before. The reason it's no longer important is that there aren't many compelling reasons to go past 64-bit CPU instruction sets. Modern CPUs have special instructions that can process longer (than 64-bit) data. AFAIK nobody is working on a 128-bit CPU architecture at this time and I don't expect one in our lifetime.

As for gaming consoles in particular, GPUs have long surpassed CPUs when it comes to graphics performance. Also, consoles have converged to similar x86-64 platforms so there is almost no room to say "my AMD APU is better than your AMD APU."

 

[sandorski]

You don't need to be an X Band to have a song played on an X Radio station/channel. Some artists get played on different genre broadcasts.

 

[Starbuck1975]

In the 90s, most rock bands on college radio were considered alternative, but then some of those bands found mainstream success. I missed the days of discovering bands on college radio or from their demo tapes at record stores. The Offspring, Green Day, most of the Seattle grunge bands, Veruca Salt, Liz Phair, etc. all started out that way until hair metal died and the major labels started signing alternative bands and MTv started putting their videos in rotation. Bands like Goo Goo Dolls became increasingly mainstream and commercialized.

 

[nakedfrog]

In the 90s, most rock bands on college radio were considered alternative, but then some of those bands found mainstream success. I missed the days of discovering bands on college radio or from their demo tapes at record stores. The Offspring, Green Day, most of the Seattle grunge bands, Veruca Salt, Liz Phair, etc. all started out that way until hair metal died and the major labels started signing alternative bands and MTv started putting their videos in rotation. Bands like Goo Goo Dolls became increasingly mainstream and commercialized.

The Goo Goo Dolls were kind of already on their way towards a more mainstream sound when they got big.

 

[Pohemi]

Those were alternative rock bands that just happened to go pretty mainstream.

N'sync is a 90's pop band

N'sync was 2000s, 90s would have been Color Me Bad (early 90s) or Backstreet Boys (late 90s).

I think a lot of 90s rock that would later be classified as 'Grunge' was being called alternative rock when it was new. I think as time passed, most rock from that era got lumped into that same descriptor, even if it wouldn't have been when it was newer.

 

[nakedfrog]

"Alternative" was a wider description that encapsulated "grunge", REM was alternative but not grunge, for example.

 

[Lost_in_the_HTTP]

Not sure how The Pretenders started out, but they seemed to end up mainstream Pop.