The discussion here breaks down along the atomization of markets since
the mid80s, so it makes sense to say that Gill, Dre, Malkmus (Pavement
does make sense as the key 90s indie band, though only because they
democratized Sonic Youth's late-80s innovations) and the Beasties
(who, for various sentimental-social reasons, I actually would love to
win the crown, but really can't) all rule different roosts.
And the one figure I think transcends that is Cobain: Nirvana's
breakthrough changed the music scene irrevocably by destroying the
previous loyal opposition and thus altering the basic lines of battle
that had stood since 1977, and pretty much everything that's happened
on pop charts since has been a chain reaction from Smells Like...
Cobain is also pretty much the sole zeitgeist-defining personality in
90s pop (I'm not sure there is a *single* such figure in hip-hop this
decade, though there are some contenders, and in country, well, that's
Garth - which is a whole other story).
As well, Nirvana combined quality and commercial success at an
incomparable level for the decade - if The Key had sold like a Garth
Brooks album, Jon W's assertion would hold up better, methinks. (AOTD
for the 80s by the way is, to my mind, unquestionably Prince.) A
thread tie-in I meant to throw into the mix yesterday: Smells Like
Teen Spirit is also, on a craft level, one of the few singles of the
decade that seems to me to stand up on every level to anything in the
afore-bandied-about Golden Age of Singles - throwing down a gauntlet
that pretty much all of Nirvana's imitators were far too chickenshit
to pick up.
By the way, I assume the Cobain-jeerers are willing to discount every
other overdose and/or suicide in rock history on the same knee-jerk
moralism, right? Janis, Jimi, Ian Curtis, etc. etc., all useless
whiners.
Carl W.
Terry Smith-esque P.S.: David C., altho you're basically right about
Madonna, it seems to me the ground had already been created for her to
stand on before she arrived - by Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde and
others. (If I had my druthers I'd give all credit to Patti but I don't
think we can get away with that...) Yep, Madonna would rank pretty
high on the influence scale, but she seems to me more a visionary
opportunist than a revolutionary. HOWEVER: Your question about whether
Aretha rather than Joni was the key gender-revolutionary in sixties
pop was already creeping into my head as I wrote that last post. I'd
certainly *prefer* to say it was Aretha - but I wonder if she had the
same women-can-be-auteurs impact? Perhaps, but this requires further
thinking and historicization; I've just realized that maybe before
deciding exactly whose gender-bar-breaking was the most definitive
(and I do think this is, as Music Trivia games go, an important one),
I should read one of those late-90s books about women-in-music that
I've been semi-avoiding. Any recommendations for the best one?
