Comment by muhfuhkuh | Hacker News Reader

Comment by muhfuhkuh | Hacker News Reader

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This actually supports my theory that the 90s were the greatest decade in popular culture history. It jibes so well with the (arguable) Golden Age of Rap/Hip-Hop music as well as the Seattle Grunge and Hard Rock renaissance.

Rap in the 90s had Biggie, Tupac, Wu-Tang, NWA, Nas, Outkast, De La Soul, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z and a Tribe Called Quest.

Rock in the 90s had Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Radiohead, the Smashing Pumpkins, Oasis, Weezer, Green Day, Nine Inch Nails, and Rage Against the Machine.

It also had some of the greatest movies of all time in the 90s as well: Goodfellas, Terminator 2, Trainspotting, Fight Club, the Matrix, Shawshank Redemption, Fargo, the Big Lebowski, Boogie Nights, Schindler's List, Rushmore, and Pulp Fiction.

Now, I may be looking through with rose-tinted glasses (and having my adolescence back then, how could I not?), but let's just make it official, and not only with just cartoons. It's almost empirical that the 90s were the greatest decade of American Popular Culture.

My Dad grew up in the 1960s and he thinks the 60s were the best decade ever. My Nan thinks that everything went wrong after the 1930s.

Your Dad and Nan kinda have a point.

After the 1960s came the stagflation of the 1970s.

The late 1930s saw World War 2.

I suspect that my generation will look on the 90s as a benign time, and we would be right.

The Cold War was over, the War on Terror was yet to come, the Internet was taking off and economic growth in most countries was uninterrupted for almost the whole decade.

Just to give a counter-anecdote: Live in East Germany sucked in the 90s, after the euphoria of reunification wore off.

I agree with all of those great things except grunge. While fun then and even now, to my ear it lent little to later music - a dead end. It's easy to find Radiohead, rap, and Rage's influence through eras, but which post-grunge groups of note were influenced by Nirvana?

Grunge led to Foo Fighters, Live, Collective Soul, Silverchair, Bush, even Alanis Morissette. That led to Creed, Matchbox Twenty, Puddle of Mudd, Staind, Audioslave, Incubus, Nickelback. The next wave included Shinedown, Seether, and The Vines, as well as mainstream pop incorporation such as with Avril Lavigne. After that I lost track because millennials don't seem to know how to rock out.

True

Too bad it seems to get worse (or maybe more bland) with every generation.

Thankfully the Foo Fighters showed everybody how to do it (again) last year with Wasting Light

After that I lost track because millennials don't seem to know how to rock out.

They just don't understand, man.

But seriously, millennials are all about 'the party'. They were really young during the roaring late 90's and weren't burdened by the issues of the 00's. If pop music is the a good measure of a generation's status, you wouldn't know of bad times from all the Katy Perry, Kesha, Taylor Swift, Bruno Mars, Justin Bieber, Pitbull, and Maroon 5. Every one of those except Katy Perry currently has a top 20 hit.

Or maybe it's just escapism. Tough call.

You can say that for just about any time in human history. there was a lot of shoddy entertainment in the 90s too, and there were lots of great stuff from the 80s and 00s.

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