 Decade Overview
Featured Songs
Best of the Decade
Greatest Hits
Greatest Misses
Where are they now?
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The nineties set in with a stratified culture that only grew further apart as the decade wore on. Record labels and radio stations coalesced into huge corporate monoliths that provided the means by which we allowed ourselves to be segmented. America’s population was segregated into target demographic groups, which meant that diversity became a quaint anachronism. The overwhelming success of the compact disc made the distribution of music easier than ever, but it also meant that ‘top forty music’ grew anemic, since most ‘hit’ songs were no longer available on a viable singles format. ‘Grunge’ provided a temporary means for the so-called ‘Generation X’ to vent its frustration, but it died an ignominious death with the suicide of its reluctant figurehead, Kurt Cobain. Essentially, our culture became corporatized, resulting in the repression of originality and the rampant onset of music that was as predictable as it was popular.
As far as popular music was concerned, the nineties were the first decade since the onset of rock and roll to show little in the way of change. The nineties went out more or less as they came in, with corporate divas dominating a landscape littered with pop confections and rap artists.
Top Ten Artists of 1993
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Janet Jackson
SWV (Sisters With Voices)
Mariah Carey
Whitney Houston
Dr. Dre
Snow
Duran Duran
Silk
Michael Jackson
Jade
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Top Ten Artists of 1999
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Jay-Z
TLC
Ricky Martin
Faith Evans
R. Kelly
Mariah Carey
‘N Sync
Whitney Houston
Britney Spears
Santana
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