So here's a pet theory I have. One thing that's interesting in regards to this is how dance music's
* past has effectively been completely forgotten. Electronic music in general throughout the 90s (and also the 80s, of course) was the main source for "newness"; in fact I'd say right up to the turn of the century there were still developments in that area, unlike rock where things quickly stagnated around 1995. Electronic stuff was where the "feel" of the decade was forged for me, and if you look at the charts of the time the dance stuff tends to outnumber the grunge / britpop releases by a mile. (It's easy to forget that at the time things like Oasis getting the odd Number 1 were seen as some kind of triumph of rock over evil emotionless machines or whatever.) Now it's all been devolved into "EDM", and there are people about who genuinely don't realise that - for example - Daft Punk did not, in fact, create the genres they write and perform in.
See here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-tWqdEcGN4And here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJVrPBX2PL8There's even some people in that last video who don't realise that Daft Punk started in the 90s. Now, for a 90s revival to properly happen, I think there would need to be a better knowledge of the 90s itself, and of electronic music of both the final two decades of the last century, with specific emphasis on house, techno and drum and bass. As it is, there is now "80s music" (synth pop somewhere between 1981 and 1986 - which is great and that I personally love to bits, but it's not the whole story), and "90s music" which in mainstream media accounts at least has a weird focus on boy bands, ultra-commercial hip-hop, and a grudging acknowledgement of Nirvana thrown somewhere in there. "
Oh yeah, there was this thing called grunge... er, shoe what?"
** I can't really blame these kids for anything, as there's this slightly suspect rewriting of the past going on somehow.
Here's an example of this: given that despite the 90s having a couple of very specific and easily identifiable visual looks (grungy and "distressed" typography, or the more techno-inspired fonts / design you got elsewhere in music mags / club flyers of the time), there's a magazine currently available in the shops that purports to be a nostalgic look back onto the 90s, yet the cover looks like it's actually from 1987 only with the Teletubbies on it. (Can't find a picture of it, annoyingly, but go to your local WH Smith's and you'll most likely see it.) It's like the opening credits of
Beverly Hills Teens threw up all over some promo photos of the Friends cast.
I do wonder if all this may be the result of the way advertisers famously had such a hard time selling stuff to Generation X during that decade, and some people somewhere deciding to "correct" that. I hope I'm just being ridiculously paranoid, but it kind of fits.
* I know some take issue with the phrase "dance music", as there was plenty of music you could dance to before, of course - I'm using that as the potentially more useful term of Electronic Dance Music has been nicked by twats.
** I am very much aware of the shoegaze revival of the last five or so years, but that hasn't had much of an impact outside of circles such as our own.
