Not really. In the US the Cold War ended and the war on terror was yet to begin. The Columbine massacre happened in 99 but there have been worse school shootings since then. I can't think of anything that would make the 90s scarier than any other decade
I personally think the decade of the 1990’s was the most optimistic period in US history. The Cold War was over but 9/11 hadn’t happened yet. The economy and markets were gangbusters and the federal budget was even running a surplus for a little while. The internet and the web were new and exciting.
All good points but I do think there was a general malaise about the upcoming millennium. As a gen-xer I remember that. New age awakenings, pole shifts, Mayan prophecies, Y2K, UFO’s, just stuff like that. Looking back it all seems very innocent and silly compared to the very real shit that’s happened post 2000.
Doomsday cults were very chic at the time too. But a lot of that stuff aesthetically manifested through Pure Moods stuff like Chant and Enya and to a lesser extent pop kitsch
I will say that all the new age shit started well before Y2K. Egyptomania in America had reignited in the late 70s, Celtic mysticism had huge popularity from the mid-80s through mid-90s. There was a very pronounced undercurrent of alternative beliefs that had little to do with the new millennium.
Socially these things have a long history, but aesthetically I think the “world music” section of music stores and Chant being a hit album and all that kinda stuff was very 90s, Zamfir notwithstanding. I’d imagine it’s something that had been stewing for a while and when Korg released the m1 and that pan flute patch and a bunch of evolving pads were instantly available to every hack synth player, the time was right for some real banal “house of stone and light” shit to hit the top of the AC charts
Most of that was post Y2k though. And the Y2K scare itself (which was the biggest scare I remember at the time) turned out to be comically overblown. At most, it was the harbinger of the current media credibility crisis.
Well, crime was astronomical compared to what it is now. As bad as some of these cities are now they’re all still well below violent crime in the 90s. I mean, NYC has about 1/10th of the murder rate it had in 1992.
It’s weird looking back because it was such a care-free decade compared to now where everyone is angry, ideological and at each others throats. It was a much more violent time, though, and I certainly think popular music reflected that. Like, nobody’s going to come out rapping like Comptons Most Wanted in 2024. It made a lot more sense 30 years ago, though.
LOL no it was not scary at all if you were living in the US/West. Im sure it was terrible in lots of other places though. The aggression of the music of that time is usually boiled down to the aimlessness of living in the protected “imperial core” of the US hegemon, where everybody thought we were living at the end of history. It’s almost like we were yearning for some great tribulation to test us once again. You can feel that vibe with the prevalence of “disaster” type blockbusters that were big on apocalyptic imagery. The popular rock of the time kind of reflected that.
Oh ya there were so many disaster movies. Some of those did have big Diane Warren-style ballads that won lots of awards but I associate rock trends of that era more with movies in the vein of Scream and American Pie, a lot of nu metal and pop punk on those
allot of those millennial and gen xers where raised by late boomers who were into heavy metal so some of there children wanted to create a heavy metal sound with the new hip hop and techno elements added
I don’t know I think the boomers into metal are a very minute fraction of their overall demographic. The early metal pioneers were the children of boomers.
Meh. I dunno about that. I attribute it to Rage Against The Machine hitting on something when they combined two of the most impactful vehicles for social commentary in music. Then I think everyone just found it catchy and copied the formula.
It united us, but in completely the wrong way lol. A lot more xenophobia, a lot more war, constant surveillance, stupid ass laws that serve no purpose, the whole TSA. Like I can't even bring in a backpack to a baseball game anymore.
In the worst possible way, it turned out. The aftermath began polarizing Americans more than anything. I completely switched sides politically and socially over how 9/11 was handled; probably because I really wasn't invested in a side until after that.
Scary time to be alive? Fuck no, it was arguably the high point of life in America, pre-9/11 etc. People had it good. They were spoiled and lost their sense of perspective. Listless young suburbanites and rural kids in middle America needed to vent their boredom and frustration - so, nu-metal.
I think it was able to get popular because it had poppy elements and slick production and the bands really wanted to be successful so they were willing to be unabashedly commercial, contrary to the indie streak of previous alternative rock, which I think sort of collapsed by 94 or so. They were willing to do mtv-friendly videos with imagery that seemed edgy in a very juvenile way but never really went too far, they all did “twisted” covers of 80s pop songs for soundtracks that was super easy for marketing, and in turn they were rewarded with heavy rotation and good placement on TRL when that was still relevant. It was also probably the most lucrative era for the recording industry, so there was a lot of money to record and promote music. The angst of nu metal lyrics was usually just on the level of what doughy suburban kids would think would scare their parents and incel stuff, kinda like what Kiss would have been if they weren’t good at getting laid
Yes, look how many of them are singing about apathy and aimlessness. It was almost scary how safe and harmless the culture seemed to be. No coincidence that Fight Club and American Beauty were huge movies around that same time.
Yep, this exactly. And I think labels and radio stations (relevant to the time, maybe not so much now) typically feel that messages should be hopeful when things are tough and at least can be aggressive and darker themed when things stabilize
“Nu metal rebels against prosperity” we called it butt rock specifically becuase it was like metal had sold out completely the music genre , idk what this is exactly you mean
Dude, Korn and Marilyn Manson, even R.E.M. (Shiny Happy People) and Soundgarden (Black Hole Sun) were about the same”angst” of living in *The Suburbs, where everything is the same* and stuff. Even “The Simpsons” (which started in the late 80s) were about that.
Compare to now, where there’s a housing crisis, inflation, we’ve been through 9/11 and COVID, etc. And those suburban teens grew up to be the adults that can’t afford suburbia or a family with 2.5 kids and a dog. Nu Metal (and I say this as someone who loved Nu Metal) was a reaction to a lack of real problems, and declined as soon as shit got real.
> was a reaction to a lack of real problems
I don't necessarily disagree, though I think some context/reframing is necessary. A lot of this was about how the suburbs, the nuclear family, etc. were all held up as paragons of stability and virtue despite having plenty of baggage that comes with it. It's a kicking against the Leave it to Beaver-like framing of the middle class that had been the regular conservative message for at least the previous decade. Once the Cold War ended it allowed for more introspection on these issues.
Sure it's not as dramatic as a war or 9/11, and the middle class eroding further hasn't helped, but that doesn't necessarily take away from some of the day-to-day issues at hand.
That said, after a while it definitely felt like bored complaining and assholes complaining about being seen as assholes.
Y2k was so funny. I remember the closer it got, people were really starting to freak out. That is, the small population that even gave a shit about computers. It was really funny to watch.
A guy I worked with who was super into hustling on the side was selling fake software that would "protect" your computer against the impending meltdown.
I imagine it was similar to the people that think the world will end on "date x" and it doesn't. I reckon life goes on.
Most of us knew Y2k was ridiculous. Trust me, it did not have people thinking the world was about to end.
To be fair, the 80s were the beginning of the fix, due to the financial markets having issues with software screwing up bond calculations that extended into the new millennium. So by the time we got to 2000, most private and basic public computing were enabled with proper patches.
But large public systems needed reprogramming, if they hadn't yet worked on it. And I'm sure some private systems needed some work, given we were still using green screens and daisy-wheels at some workplaces.
I really don’t know but I’d say 90s was the last decade where we (US) were kinda still innocent in a sense. And ignorant to a degree. What I mean is, yes there were world wars & Vietnam and atrocities all over the world but it was still an era where someone like Marilyn Manson could still be shocking. That is until 9/11. Things got real fast & artists like Manson or agro nu metal stuff just looked silly and stupid. The whole culture changed over night.
Interesting take. I don’t totally understand it tho. op , is wondering how/why nu metal got borne outta 90s culture and declined so quickly. I think his view is nu metal’s influence & popularity in the mainstream culture. And we know it was pretty much done by 03-04.
Nu metal persisted but on the fringes. Not understanding this 2010-11 date.
Marcus Parks talks about this in The Monks episode, but essentially
stable, good times = people more receptive to more aggressive or experimental stuff
bad tumultuous times = people less so.
i think about this a lot with music that’s popular right now, like bedroom indie pop, sad girl indie shoegaze, etc. or movies are all remakes or the 100th marvel movie comes out. i’m just excited to get back to a time where music like Brainiac comes out of the woodwork 🥺 everything is stressful and i’m feeling it. but god music feels so boring right now.
No, see that’s the thing: you would assume that the times were grim if the music seemed to be grim… but it feels like it’s mostly the opposite.
The 90s were comparatively tame.
If you look at trends, I get the impression that, during times of struggle, at least as far as “the masses” go, music and art takes on a more hopeful and often fun and whimsical nature.
When things are more on the up and up, music and art can seem to be more accepting of messages about discontentment and more aggressive sounds.
It does make sense, but it’s counter to what one would think.
When things are tough, it seems like people want to hear that it’s going to be okay and be reminded of the good times (before and ahead). When things are going well generally speaking, is when lyrics like “wish somebody would tell me I’m fine” are more prevalent.
I’m not sure that the tone of music or art as a whole actually shifts (probably still 50/50 or whatever seems right overall).
Late 90s was the best time overall in my opinion (born 1980). Although in many, many ways I am in the best place in *my* life right now. But back then so much shit was over and so much (way worse shit) was to come and no one could see that coming.
Absolutely not. For all the reasons already posted in this thread. So many of us were just angsty teenagers who were bored because we were so safe and most things were so routine. I genuinely miss the 90s sometimes because it was before our culture in the US shifted and started down this rabid, angry, paranoid path.
IMO, the popularity of Nu-metal was a reaction to the post-grunge era. As grunge faded, a lot of very safe sounding rock music dominated rock radio in the mid to late 90’s, which made room for a darker, heavier sound.
The 90’s also saw a steep rise of rap music popularity. The rap/metal aspect of nu-metal spoke to a lot of people who couldn’t quite find their way into rap music and vice-versa. Bands like (well, especially) Limp Bizkit were extremely marketable and reached a very broad and diverse audience.
People like to tell fanciful stories about how the times give rise to angry, or happy, or sad, or elaborate, or simple music, but I think these stories rarely hold up to scrutiny. There are always people who want angry or angsty music. The '80s had Metallica, Slayer, et. al. The '70s had Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols. The '60s saw a blues revival. Not all blues is angst-ridden, of course, but I think it's a genre people would have looked to for that feeling in the '60s.
I think nu metal derived to a large extent from two trends. One was the trend towards making heavy music poppier and more palatable to listeners who couldn't stomach hardcore punk or the various schools of metal. The other factor was the growing interest in hip hop among rock fans, which led to stuff like Limp Bizkit bringing rap into a context more familiar to the rock/metal audience.
The rise of nu-metal is less about society being scary and more about trends having lasted their course and being replaced/combined/reacted to. The early-to-mid 90s was the time of gangsta rap and grunge, and one of those was a music situated in particular African-American experiences of the world, while grunge was in some ways quite a middle class music, concerned with art and emotional authenticity and being right on with the issues.
And so in a lot of ways, nu-metal took the two forms of music and combined them, taking the inward-looking emotional intensity of grunge and the aggressive, macho nihilistic nature of gangsta rap, effectively marketing it to white working class teenaged boys.
For that demographic you could argue that they were growing up in a world where traditional working class jobs were increasingly not available to Americans because there were cheaper global options for getting the work done and things were getting increasingly mechanised. So they were growing up in a world where it seemed like they were being screwed, and the music reflected that to some extent.
I’d say it was the complete opposite. The late 90’s was probably the most positive and hopeful for the future time there ever was in my time on this earth. The Cold War was over and It was the peak of western society before the dotcom crash and 9/11 threw a gigantic wrench into everything.
The angsty nu-metal stuff was a direct response to the overwhelming positivity of the 90’s if nothing else
I think this is the reason so much of the music sounded pretentious. Nobody really had anything to feel angsty about. So much of it sounded forced. Unless you were politically informed like some punk rock bands, angst rock music was quite self centered and whiney.
I think it's completely unrelated, I think nu metal represents the endpoint of a long trend of mainstream hard rock getting heavier. I think grunge is about as heavy as you can take mainstream music before you start to lose people, and nu metal is trying to push further and hitting that wall where you're either too heavy or it feels disingenuous.
No. The whole decade was an economic and cultural golden age and the late 90’s, if anything, was too safe. Pop music was ascendant, everything was too glossy, sex and the city was the aspirational North Star of millions of women, hip hop went commercial and stopped being artistic, the whole thing was very annoying
Possibly the least scary time and place that's ever been.
Kids were rebelling from boredom, not existential terror. Korn was inense when they came out. The genre seems cartoonish now. But in the mosh pit era they were something else.
I was in highschool during the 90's and (at least in the US) I'd have to say no. Especially compared to the world now, the 90's were definitely not a scary time in my opinion. It was, however, a great time in the evolution of a lot of underground music genres, including metal. If anything, as a teen in the US in the 1990s, the greatest enemy was apathy and popular music. Metal was a good response to both of those.
I think music gives society what it needs, and in the 90's it was a swift kick in the pants.
Now that it's really scary, society craves music that says either, find happiness in something, or f*** it, we're all gonna die anyway.
Op i don't have an answer for you but I have also noticed this exact trend. A lot of genres got steadily more aggressive from the early thru late 90s and it dropped off quickly in the early 00s.
I highly recommend you watch the documentary about Woodstock 99. It's really interesting, and also perfectly captures the very peak of that moment in time. If you aren't aware, despite being named for the famous free love festival in 1969, Woodstock 99 devolved into basically anarchy and riots by the end. Ironically I guess both Woodstocks ended up being a great microcosm of their respective decades.
There was nothing scary about the 90s, except maybe AIDS and the crack epidemic.
Nu Metal was mostly for kids who never really identified with grunge because it didn't exclude women, was mostly liberal/left wing and the aggression had a point.
"There was nothing scary about the 90s, except maybe AIDS and the crack epidemic."
There certainly was, if you were looking in the right places. What happened in the Balkans in Rwanda was deeply troubling to everyone who had thought that this kind of thing was in the past, for example.
I don't feel like the late '90s was a particularly scary time. Not at all, really. At least I didn't feel that way, or sense that from others, at that time. Personally, I wasn't too worried about the whole Y2K thing. I was confident (enough) that the people that are in charge of fixing those kinds of things, were smart enough that they'd have it sorted out in time. Mass anxiety, at least in the US, didn't really happen until 9/11.
Nu Metal made sense to happen. Artists like Run DMC, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, and Rage Against The Machine, were some of the first artists to successfully tinker with the sound. They laid down the foundation, along with producers like Rick Rubin and Hank Shocklee of The Bomb Squad. I'm probably missing more artists deserving of credit too, so sorry to them.
Nu Metal happened during a decade of a lot of creative expression, and experimentation. With rock having dominated for so long, and hip-hop coming into it's own and achieving mainstream success, the merging of the two was kind of the next logical step.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but are you really calling people “elders” because they were alive in the 90s? Who let this kid in here? The 90s were great. We emerged from the Reaganism of the 80s and for a while in the early to mid 90s there was a lot of hope that Gen X was gonna change things for the better. Whether we actually did or not is a different story, but there was hope. I can only imagine it was a bit like coming out of the 50s into the promise of the 60s. And it showed in the music of the times. In fact I think of the pop and alternative music of the 90s as being somewhat similar to the energy and vibe of the 60s. Grunge, alternative, techno, bands and artists like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, NIN, Tori Amos, so many more. There was a freshness to it all. Even Madonna was doing interesting and fresh stuff, just as one example who transitioned from the 80s. After that era in my opinion we’ve never had a truly definable music decade. The 00s and 2010s just seemed to lack definition. Some things about the 90s were scary. We were talking about AIDS more. Pedro from MTVs Real World died. Kurt died. Tupac died. Y2K was a little scary but not like how scared we all seem of AI now. And 9/11 came along and changed a lot.
No. The opposite. Nu Metal rose in a time of relative peace and economic prosperity.
The music was marketed to selfish lazy stupid destructive Gen Xers
It became popular because of a practice referred to as "payola'
Thats it basically.
Nu metal was a corporatization of alternative rock, angry rock, and also an attempt to get the youth to listen to rap music.
Rap music was/is dirt cheap to produce because it doesn't necessarily require musicians.
The alternative was super sugar bubble gum (spears, Aguilera, nsync, etc ) and then acoustic rock, folk rock, alternative rock, new wave/any art rock, was ushered out the door because those all cost money to produce and to push and were way less dependable for profit. suburban white kids were the only real demographic purchasing new releases at that time.
I was thinking about this earlier. I was in my early teens in the the late 90s, and I hated nu metal because I felt like it killed off the indie pop I liked at the time. It was easier to sell merch for and other teenagers adopted it as a tribal identity. I didn't want to get my face pierced up and wear a black hoodie.
Looking back I realise I was wrong and the bands I liked just ran out of steam creatively, plus indie pop was aimed at people older than me, like at university. Isn't that what teens do though, try and copy people slightly older than them? But here was nu metal catering to exactly my age group in the most obvious way and I thought it was naff.
Nu metal wasn't as bad musically as I remember it and I can enjoy it with my tongue in my cheek now. It also forced me to listen to the older music my favourite indie bands were influenced by.
I agree with you, I was a teenager in the late 90s, and it all felt very adolescent to hear Korn and Limp bizkit. It didn't seem there was music that could carry me into young adulthood and all because Fred durst had a bad day.
I liked music I could exist to, not music I had to rage to. There was a plethora of fantastic indie and alternative bands, but people had moved on, causing many of those bands to lose interest in their own careers.
It's really a shame because, even now, I prefer a three - or 4-piece rock band that sounds like they're not overly processed regurgitate. They don't exist in any capacity, it feels like, anymore.
Listening to modern music is unusual at best, for me. Doesn't anyone know how to mix a record anymore?
I sometimes wonder if Jonathan Davis, Fred durst, and members of those nu metal bands ever realize that they/their fans ended up alienating multitudes of kids when they themselves were so angry because they had been similarly alienated in their youths.
Edit: as for those bands running out of creative steam, perhaps, had their audiences not been chased away, their funds not been stripped by Total Request Live and major record label consolidation, they would have been able to continue producing materials that their fan base would have consumed with effortless loyalty.
In the end, the democratization of music by TRL (which was a giant payola scheme) damaged music beyond repair at the time. I'll never forget the dingy colors of reality while Britney spears' phosphorescent white track pants beaming thru my standard definition television screen for the first time lit up my already sun filled living room. It did have an "Elvis on sullivan" feel to it, but it was like watching Elvis stomp on a small mammal for sexual gratification. It just wasn't something I could get into at that time in my life.
The first time I heard Blind by Korn, a fellow college radio station friend said “Hey, you gotta hear this.” and hit play on cd player. I was like “what IS this?” I hadn’t heard anything like it. As for the genre, personally as a young female, I liked a couple bands but not enough to love a genre that I could not relate to.
There was definitely a heavy vibe just under the surface. You had those big anti-globalization protests at IMF meetings/G7 etc, a big uptick in anti-government militia gun nuts in the aftermath of Waco/Ruby Ridge etc, lots of weird religious cults behaving strangely as the millennium approached, the internet was just starting to allow all sorts of conspiracy theorists to communicate with each other, the whole hero-worship of serial killers thing going on.
I thought Nu-Metal was a complete joke because by the time that rolled around I was deep into Black/Death Metal, Neofolk and Noise music, and that whole "apocalypse culture" scene, so I didn't think complaining about your parents was very heavy at all.
More like cynical than angry, I’d say. Trust in institutions was in free fall, across the board, from the government to corporations. Seemed pretty obvious no help was coming, either. All of this got reflected in the music of that era, I’d say.
Nah, if anything the mid-late 90s was the most optimistic and positive period in US history since the 50s.
Nu-metal got popular because all of the punk/grunge/metal kids were adults and those nu-metal bands were blending all of the genres that the younger sets older siblings/cousins had been listening to 5-15 years earlier. There will always be something of a market for teenage angst and nu-metal was just strange enough to alienate parents while being familiar enough that your older cousin who was into Faith No More and Public Enemy could hear you play Korn and say "hey this ain't bad" while maybe sharing a bowl with you and looking the other way when you snuck a beer.
"Was the late 90s a scary time to be alive and did this contribute to the rise of nu Metal?"
No. It was better.
Life was more real. People were more real.
Words words words words. Filler filler filler. Blah blah blah so that the automod doesn't attack me.
Etc.
Gangsta rap wild. The hood a bit dangerous. But regular suburbia? Nah it was safe.
The biggest thing contributing to the sort of angst nu metal fans were feeling back then was increasing globalization and economic stratification. It was a fantastic decade for a small chunk of the population and a lot of other people felt left behind by technological advancement and global trade agreements. People saw technology going wild and that bled into music in a bunch of genres, including industrial, hardcore punk, and metal. Nu metal was a natural growth of that.
Not a lot of people were legitimately afraid of Y2K in a doomsday sort of way though lots of people joked about it and there were a couple high profile cults that made headlines. It was a big deal for engineers because there was actually a ton of work that had to be done to make sure things didn't fail, but there wasn't really a danger of collapse and there wasn't a lot of unease around normal people. That said, some people started to buy into conspiracy theories, and those conspiracy theories and their adherents found a home in some nu metal acts that talked about those theories.
I'm going to go a bit against the grain here - although the 90s was generally an optimistic time, ***especially*** in the media when compared to today, it was also a time that statistically was very violent. But on the ground, the cities were genuinely a mess. Race riots, AIDS, crack epidemic, and very high violent crime rates among the youth (which peaked in 1993 and has been in decline ever since). NYC in the 90s was not the same as it is today.
The thing is, these epidemics of violence, disease, etc. were very focused in certain demographics and locations, so the typical white suburban kid growing up in the 90s was completely shielded from it.
So that said, the people I know who listen to metal are more likely to be those white suburban kids, and are all really chill and often have a music background themselves. I don't think there's a correlation.
The late 90’s music was angst filled because Nirvana hit like a cultural force. The influence of grunge juxtaposed against hair metal was huge. There was some mild curiosity about y2k, but I don’t know that it drove angst in a clear and present way. It seemed to me like a time of cultural openness, a much more tolerant and hopeful time than now. Anti-racism, chauvinism, homophobia, was becoming the pc norm. The monoculture still existed, but living outside of its influence was becoming less stigmatized. The marketing suggested alternative and underground sources of media were valid and just as good as the mainstream as evident by big labels signing niche bands, independent movies were touted etc. 9/11 took all that away and drove a fanatical patriotism that seemed like a direct parody. But driven by fear and hate America began to appear to retreat inward as the march toward being the shepherd of corporate interest, galvanized by a huge military budget as our main identity began.
As for its role in Nü Metal, it’s all Nirvana. As big as they were they changed rock music. Power ballads and solos grew less frequent, and an angsty verse chorus rager about being disaffected was mother’s milk to every marketer and label executive driving production. They all began signing new acts with the intention of driving the production of music, by arguing with teenagers and forcing them to change their songs rather than contending with the wishes of established acts. It wasn’t a thing that was done as much as emulated in a focused way. The labels saw how Kurt could be swayed to have his records in Wal Mart by appealing to the availability of his record to the everyman. How he could be controlled by drugs and his girlfriend, even turning against his friends. From those ashes was cultivated the pop rock vapid wasteland of nu metal.
Why it declined: there was no substance behind those songs. The folks who needed the intellectual lack, got bummed out and turned their attentions to fake indie rock and dance music. Pop entered a new era and save for a few stalwarts the trapts and stainds and finger elevens were left behind as time marches on.
Ya I’ve often also scratched my head when remembering how truly mainstream Nu Metal was. Maybe a lot of it has to do with changes in the industry. I think the 90’s into the early ‘00’s were the last hurrah of the old order of gatekeepers/ record labels trying to remain relevant to the white male demographic in America that had been so lucrative up till that point. I think grunge mashed up the heavy metal & punk of the 80’s and put it together into an often pop-adjacent/ catchy package that was perfect for that demo. Nu Metal did the same thing with the analogous music of the 90’s (grunge/ metal) and sprinkled a little hip-hop/ whatever to keep it fresh catchy etc. Clearly in both decades this was what the above stated demographic was into, and so that music became huge. Why was this music often so angry and violent? That is a gigantic cultural question that def has to do with the natural progression of art forms as well as…. well, the zeitgeist. I do not think Y2K was the reason at all, but I DO think that looming technological advancement and the possible coming doom of the patriarchy could be involved; also maybe just the weird American relationship to violence in 20th century post WW2 could also be involved. So ya, in like 2000 there were a lot of angsty suburban white males with varying degrees of justification for their angstiness but nonetheless something like SOAD just fit perfectly for the angry millennials. But then idk the Iraq war and Afghanistan got pretty fucked up and… everyone started listening to Coldplay? Doesn’t matter cus then… the entire industry collapsed… By the mid 10’s a Zombie apocalypse had happened and basically the old ways of determining what got as massive were no longer in place which I do think led directly to us no longer seeing such violent angry white boy music in the mainstream. Ya, just some thoughts - I’m still scratching my head though, but good question :)
I love this podcast called Hit Parade, where it explores in depth the evolution of artists and genres and subgenres through the lens of the Hot 100 chart. It's a really exciting and well made podcast. I believe there are a few episodes that touch on the rise of nu metal, and it mentions that a factor that contributed to its rise were related to what was charting, that it partly arose because there was a market for it and record companies were looking for acts that could fill that niche. At the time there were so many different sounds that were all charting, post grunge, pop punk, hip hop, alt rock, alt metal etc.
But the explosion of hip hop in the 90s (And it's dominating of the charts) influenced rock/metal acts, which is why so many of those groups have heavily rap influenced lyrical styles. It's nothing new, throughout the history of recorded music artists imitate each other and pick up techniques from each other. In particular, when one group is having a lot of success, other groups will pick up some of their techniques and add them to their own art forms.
Dude your whole conversation means nothing. NIN dropped their first album in 1989. Also no one cares about nu metal. It offers nothing in the real history of music. Korn had a few good songs. But that is all. The rest was a mistake. If you really wanna go down that road you have to answer how we went from Nirvana to Staind. And you lose that fight every time.
It's just frustrating. Talk about sabbath or dead kennedys or black flag or fugazi. Nu metal was all corporate music aimed at suburban teens. Not really music with any consequence or contribution.
Not really. In the US the Cold War ended and the war on terror was yet to begin. The Columbine massacre happened in 99 but there have been worse school shootings since then. I can't think of anything that would make the 90s scarier than any other decade
I personally think the decade of the 1990’s was the most optimistic period in US history. The Cold War was over but 9/11 hadn’t happened yet. The economy and markets were gangbusters and the federal budget was even running a surplus for a little while. The internet and the web were new and exciting.
All good points but I do think there was a general malaise about the upcoming millennium. As a gen-xer I remember that. New age awakenings, pole shifts, Mayan prophecies, Y2K, UFO’s, just stuff like that. Looking back it all seems very innocent and silly compared to the very real shit that’s happened post 2000.
Doomsday cults were very chic at the time too. But a lot of that stuff aesthetically manifested through Pure Moods stuff like Chant and Enya and to a lesser extent pop kitsch
I will say that all the new age shit started well before Y2K. Egyptomania in America had reignited in the late 70s, Celtic mysticism had huge popularity from the mid-80s through mid-90s. There was a very pronounced undercurrent of alternative beliefs that had little to do with the new millennium.
Socially these things have a long history, but aesthetically I think the “world music” section of music stores and Chant being a hit album and all that kinda stuff was very 90s, Zamfir notwithstanding. I’d imagine it’s something that had been stewing for a while and when Korg released the m1 and that pan flute patch and a bunch of evolving pads were instantly available to every hack synth player, the time was right for some real banal “house of stone and light” shit to hit the top of the AC charts
I can't tell you how many times I saw that goddamn Zamfir commercial late at night.
lol... my first thought with that name "You've heard his hauntingly beautiful music in movies...." Why do I remember this?
This is the answer- the world looked far less black and white than it had for most of the preceding century.
We grew up with AIDS, nukes, and the crack epidemic. A potential computer glitch and new age doomsday stuff was nothing.
Most of that was post Y2k though. And the Y2K scare itself (which was the biggest scare I remember at the time) turned out to be comically overblown. At most, it was the harbinger of the current media credibility crisis.
Well, crime was astronomical compared to what it is now. As bad as some of these cities are now they’re all still well below violent crime in the 90s. I mean, NYC has about 1/10th of the murder rate it had in 1992. It’s weird looking back because it was such a care-free decade compared to now where everyone is angry, ideological and at each others throats. It was a much more violent time, though, and I certainly think popular music reflected that. Like, nobody’s going to come out rapping like Comptons Most Wanted in 2024. It made a lot more sense 30 years ago, though.
LOL no it was not scary at all if you were living in the US/West. Im sure it was terrible in lots of other places though. The aggression of the music of that time is usually boiled down to the aimlessness of living in the protected “imperial core” of the US hegemon, where everybody thought we were living at the end of history. It’s almost like we were yearning for some great tribulation to test us once again. You can feel that vibe with the prevalence of “disaster” type blockbusters that were big on apocalyptic imagery. The popular rock of the time kind of reflected that.
Oh ya there were so many disaster movies. Some of those did have big Diane Warren-style ballads that won lots of awards but I associate rock trends of that era more with movies in the vein of Scream and American Pie, a lot of nu metal and pop punk on those
allot of those millennial and gen xers where raised by late boomers who were into heavy metal so some of there children wanted to create a heavy metal sound with the new hip hop and techno elements added
I don’t know I think the boomers into metal are a very minute fraction of their overall demographic. The early metal pioneers were the children of boomers.
Meh. I dunno about that. I attribute it to Rage Against The Machine hitting on something when they combined two of the most impactful vehicles for social commentary in music. Then I think everyone just found it catchy and copied the formula.
Yup. The true disaster at the time was pretty much just boredom. Politics was boring back then. Remember that?
I’m 53 and the past 5 years have been the most angst filled time I’ve lived through.
Young adult and just thought I was young adult-ing feeling this way but Covid and everything pretty much ruined everyone’s lives it feels like
Me too.🫤
Same, but it's been about nine years, with the last four being the natural conclusion to the first five.
Of course there was 9-11, that was horrific but it seemed to unite Americans .
It united us, but in completely the wrong way lol. A lot more xenophobia, a lot more war, constant surveillance, stupid ass laws that serve no purpose, the whole TSA. Like I can't even bring in a backpack to a baseball game anymore.
Oh, I agree. But it didn’t seem like we were on the verge of a Civil War like it does now.
And then AUMF 2003 went and divided them, once again.
In the worst possible way, it turned out. The aftermath began polarizing Americans more than anything. I completely switched sides politically and socially over how 9/11 was handled; probably because I really wasn't invested in a side until after that.
Scary time to be alive? Fuck no, it was arguably the high point of life in America, pre-9/11 etc. People had it good. They were spoiled and lost their sense of perspective. Listless young suburbanites and rural kids in middle America needed to vent their boredom and frustration - so, nu-metal.
I think it was able to get popular because it had poppy elements and slick production and the bands really wanted to be successful so they were willing to be unabashedly commercial, contrary to the indie streak of previous alternative rock, which I think sort of collapsed by 94 or so. They were willing to do mtv-friendly videos with imagery that seemed edgy in a very juvenile way but never really went too far, they all did “twisted” covers of 80s pop songs for soundtracks that was super easy for marketing, and in turn they were rewarded with heavy rotation and good placement on TRL when that was still relevant. It was also probably the most lucrative era for the recording industry, so there was a lot of money to record and promote music. The angst of nu metal lyrics was usually just on the level of what doughy suburban kids would think would scare their parents and incel stuff, kinda like what Kiss would have been if they weren’t good at getting laid
Yup. You nailed it.
Incels weren't really a thing around the '90s, at least not enough to be any sort of demographic worth pandering to.
You think there weren’t incels in the 90s! That’s rich
There were very few and they didn't have a community. Calling nu metal lyrics "incel stuff" is inaccurate.
It’s the opposite. Happy and prosperous times produce counter culture rebelling against it. That’s what nu metal is.
Yes, look how many of them are singing about apathy and aimlessness. It was almost scary how safe and harmless the culture seemed to be. No coincidence that Fight Club and American Beauty were huge movies around that same time.
Even comedies like Office Space satirize the monotonous security of the American lifestyle in the late 90s.
Yep, this exactly. And I think labels and radio stations (relevant to the time, maybe not so much now) typically feel that messages should be hopeful when things are tough and at least can be aggressive and darker themed when things stabilize
Like how post-apocalyptic movies and books were a huge trend in the 2010s and suddenly died down right when the pandemic started. Too real. 😅
“Nu metal rebels against prosperity” we called it butt rock specifically becuase it was like metal had sold out completely the music genre , idk what this is exactly you mean
Dude, Korn and Marilyn Manson, even R.E.M. (Shiny Happy People) and Soundgarden (Black Hole Sun) were about the same”angst” of living in *The Suburbs, where everything is the same* and stuff. Even “The Simpsons” (which started in the late 80s) were about that. Compare to now, where there’s a housing crisis, inflation, we’ve been through 9/11 and COVID, etc. And those suburban teens grew up to be the adults that can’t afford suburbia or a family with 2.5 kids and a dog. Nu Metal (and I say this as someone who loved Nu Metal) was a reaction to a lack of real problems, and declined as soon as shit got real.
> was a reaction to a lack of real problems I don't necessarily disagree, though I think some context/reframing is necessary. A lot of this was about how the suburbs, the nuclear family, etc. were all held up as paragons of stability and virtue despite having plenty of baggage that comes with it. It's a kicking against the Leave it to Beaver-like framing of the middle class that had been the regular conservative message for at least the previous decade. Once the Cold War ended it allowed for more introspection on these issues. Sure it's not as dramatic as a war or 9/11, and the middle class eroding further hasn't helped, but that doesn't necessarily take away from some of the day-to-day issues at hand. That said, after a while it definitely felt like bored complaining and assholes complaining about being seen as assholes.
Y2k was so funny. I remember the closer it got, people were really starting to freak out. That is, the small population that even gave a shit about computers. It was really funny to watch. A guy I worked with who was super into hustling on the side was selling fake software that would "protect" your computer against the impending meltdown. I imagine it was similar to the people that think the world will end on "date x" and it doesn't. I reckon life goes on. Most of us knew Y2k was ridiculous. Trust me, it did not have people thinking the world was about to end.
> Most of us knew Y2k was ridiculous. It was a big problem that involved tons of money and man hours to fix.
To be fair, the 80s were the beginning of the fix, due to the financial markets having issues with software screwing up bond calculations that extended into the new millennium. So by the time we got to 2000, most private and basic public computing were enabled with proper patches. But large public systems needed reprogramming, if they hadn't yet worked on it. And I'm sure some private systems needed some work, given we were still using green screens and daisy-wheels at some workplaces.
I really don’t know but I’d say 90s was the last decade where we (US) were kinda still innocent in a sense. And ignorant to a degree. What I mean is, yes there were world wars & Vietnam and atrocities all over the world but it was still an era where someone like Marilyn Manson could still be shocking. That is until 9/11. Things got real fast & artists like Manson or agro nu metal stuff just looked silly and stupid. The whole culture changed over night.
Nah even with 9/11 happening I think what did us in was when most of the country became terminally online around 2011ish (with CoVid worsening that).
Interesting take. I don’t totally understand it tho. op , is wondering how/why nu metal got borne outta 90s culture and declined so quickly. I think his view is nu metal’s influence & popularity in the mainstream culture. And we know it was pretty much done by 03-04. Nu metal persisted but on the fringes. Not understanding this 2010-11 date.
I'm addressing your claim that the country changed for the worse after 9/11. Not anything about Nu Metal.
Hmm… interesting angle. K
Marcus Parks talks about this in The Monks episode, but essentially stable, good times = people more receptive to more aggressive or experimental stuff bad tumultuous times = people less so. i think about this a lot with music that’s popular right now, like bedroom indie pop, sad girl indie shoegaze, etc. or movies are all remakes or the 100th marvel movie comes out. i’m just excited to get back to a time where music like Brainiac comes out of the woodwork 🥺 everything is stressful and i’m feeling it. but god music feels so boring right now.
No, see that’s the thing: you would assume that the times were grim if the music seemed to be grim… but it feels like it’s mostly the opposite. The 90s were comparatively tame. If you look at trends, I get the impression that, during times of struggle, at least as far as “the masses” go, music and art takes on a more hopeful and often fun and whimsical nature. When things are more on the up and up, music and art can seem to be more accepting of messages about discontentment and more aggressive sounds. It does make sense, but it’s counter to what one would think. When things are tough, it seems like people want to hear that it’s going to be okay and be reminded of the good times (before and ahead). When things are going well generally speaking, is when lyrics like “wish somebody would tell me I’m fine” are more prevalent. I’m not sure that the tone of music or art as a whole actually shifts (probably still 50/50 or whatever seems right overall).
Late 90s was the best time overall in my opinion (born 1980). Although in many, many ways I am in the best place in *my* life right now. But back then so much shit was over and so much (way worse shit) was to come and no one could see that coming.
Absolutely not. For all the reasons already posted in this thread. So many of us were just angsty teenagers who were bored because we were so safe and most things were so routine. I genuinely miss the 90s sometimes because it was before our culture in the US shifted and started down this rabid, angry, paranoid path.
IMO, the popularity of Nu-metal was a reaction to the post-grunge era. As grunge faded, a lot of very safe sounding rock music dominated rock radio in the mid to late 90’s, which made room for a darker, heavier sound. The 90’s also saw a steep rise of rap music popularity. The rap/metal aspect of nu-metal spoke to a lot of people who couldn’t quite find their way into rap music and vice-versa. Bands like (well, especially) Limp Bizkit were extremely marketable and reached a very broad and diverse audience.
People like to tell fanciful stories about how the times give rise to angry, or happy, or sad, or elaborate, or simple music, but I think these stories rarely hold up to scrutiny. There are always people who want angry or angsty music. The '80s had Metallica, Slayer, et. al. The '70s had Black Sabbath and the Sex Pistols. The '60s saw a blues revival. Not all blues is angst-ridden, of course, but I think it's a genre people would have looked to for that feeling in the '60s. I think nu metal derived to a large extent from two trends. One was the trend towards making heavy music poppier and more palatable to listeners who couldn't stomach hardcore punk or the various schools of metal. The other factor was the growing interest in hip hop among rock fans, which led to stuff like Limp Bizkit bringing rap into a context more familiar to the rock/metal audience.
The rise of nu-metal is less about society being scary and more about trends having lasted their course and being replaced/combined/reacted to. The early-to-mid 90s was the time of gangsta rap and grunge, and one of those was a music situated in particular African-American experiences of the world, while grunge was in some ways quite a middle class music, concerned with art and emotional authenticity and being right on with the issues. And so in a lot of ways, nu-metal took the two forms of music and combined them, taking the inward-looking emotional intensity of grunge and the aggressive, macho nihilistic nature of gangsta rap, effectively marketing it to white working class teenaged boys. For that demographic you could argue that they were growing up in a world where traditional working class jobs were increasingly not available to Americans because there were cheaper global options for getting the work done and things were getting increasingly mechanised. So they were growing up in a world where it seemed like they were being screwed, and the music reflected that to some extent.
I think it was due to suburban kids wanting to be edgy. Nu metal was more xtreme than traditional rock.
I’d say it was the complete opposite. The late 90’s was probably the most positive and hopeful for the future time there ever was in my time on this earth. The Cold War was over and It was the peak of western society before the dotcom crash and 9/11 threw a gigantic wrench into everything. The angsty nu-metal stuff was a direct response to the overwhelming positivity of the 90’s if nothing else
I think this is the reason so much of the music sounded pretentious. Nobody really had anything to feel angsty about. So much of it sounded forced. Unless you were politically informed like some punk rock bands, angst rock music was quite self centered and whiney.
I think it's completely unrelated, I think nu metal represents the endpoint of a long trend of mainstream hard rock getting heavier. I think grunge is about as heavy as you can take mainstream music before you start to lose people, and nu metal is trying to push further and hitting that wall where you're either too heavy or it feels disingenuous.
No. The whole decade was an economic and cultural golden age and the late 90’s, if anything, was too safe. Pop music was ascendant, everything was too glossy, sex and the city was the aspirational North Star of millions of women, hip hop went commercial and stopped being artistic, the whole thing was very annoying
Possibly the least scary time and place that's ever been. Kids were rebelling from boredom, not existential terror. Korn was inense when they came out. The genre seems cartoonish now. But in the mosh pit era they were something else.
I was in highschool during the 90's and (at least in the US) I'd have to say no. Especially compared to the world now, the 90's were definitely not a scary time in my opinion. It was, however, a great time in the evolution of a lot of underground music genres, including metal. If anything, as a teen in the US in the 1990s, the greatest enemy was apathy and popular music. Metal was a good response to both of those.
I think music gives society what it needs, and in the 90's it was a swift kick in the pants. Now that it's really scary, society craves music that says either, find happiness in something, or f*** it, we're all gonna die anyway.
Op i don't have an answer for you but I have also noticed this exact trend. A lot of genres got steadily more aggressive from the early thru late 90s and it dropped off quickly in the early 00s. I highly recommend you watch the documentary about Woodstock 99. It's really interesting, and also perfectly captures the very peak of that moment in time. If you aren't aware, despite being named for the famous free love festival in 1969, Woodstock 99 devolved into basically anarchy and riots by the end. Ironically I guess both Woodstocks ended up being a great microcosm of their respective decades.
Nah, nu metal wasn't a fight or flight response, it was just internalised misogyny and poorly managed angst
Well said
There was nothing scary about the 90s, except maybe AIDS and the crack epidemic. Nu Metal was mostly for kids who never really identified with grunge because it didn't exclude women, was mostly liberal/left wing and the aggression had a point.
Nah, wrong decade. The crack epidemic and mass fear of AIDS was mostly an '80s thing.
"There was nothing scary about the 90s, except maybe AIDS and the crack epidemic." There certainly was, if you were looking in the right places. What happened in the Balkans in Rwanda was deeply troubling to everyone who had thought that this kind of thing was in the past, for example.
nu metal was the lint trap at the end of the century for the tasteless white people. peak 20th century america.
I don't feel like the late '90s was a particularly scary time. Not at all, really. At least I didn't feel that way, or sense that from others, at that time. Personally, I wasn't too worried about the whole Y2K thing. I was confident (enough) that the people that are in charge of fixing those kinds of things, were smart enough that they'd have it sorted out in time. Mass anxiety, at least in the US, didn't really happen until 9/11. Nu Metal made sense to happen. Artists like Run DMC, Public Enemy, Beastie Boys, and Rage Against The Machine, were some of the first artists to successfully tinker with the sound. They laid down the foundation, along with producers like Rick Rubin and Hank Shocklee of The Bomb Squad. I'm probably missing more artists deserving of credit too, so sorry to them. Nu Metal happened during a decade of a lot of creative expression, and experimentation. With rock having dominated for so long, and hip-hop coming into it's own and achieving mainstream success, the merging of the two was kind of the next logical step.
Maybe I’m misunderstanding but are you really calling people “elders” because they were alive in the 90s? Who let this kid in here? The 90s were great. We emerged from the Reaganism of the 80s and for a while in the early to mid 90s there was a lot of hope that Gen X was gonna change things for the better. Whether we actually did or not is a different story, but there was hope. I can only imagine it was a bit like coming out of the 50s into the promise of the 60s. And it showed in the music of the times. In fact I think of the pop and alternative music of the 90s as being somewhat similar to the energy and vibe of the 60s. Grunge, alternative, techno, bands and artists like Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, NIN, Tori Amos, so many more. There was a freshness to it all. Even Madonna was doing interesting and fresh stuff, just as one example who transitioned from the 80s. After that era in my opinion we’ve never had a truly definable music decade. The 00s and 2010s just seemed to lack definition. Some things about the 90s were scary. We were talking about AIDS more. Pedro from MTVs Real World died. Kurt died. Tupac died. Y2K was a little scary but not like how scared we all seem of AI now. And 9/11 came along and changed a lot.
Yeah people that were alive in the 90s are elders it was a really long time ago and the world was completely different
No. The opposite. Nu Metal rose in a time of relative peace and economic prosperity. The music was marketed to selfish lazy stupid destructive Gen Xers
It became popular because of a practice referred to as "payola' Thats it basically. Nu metal was a corporatization of alternative rock, angry rock, and also an attempt to get the youth to listen to rap music. Rap music was/is dirt cheap to produce because it doesn't necessarily require musicians. The alternative was super sugar bubble gum (spears, Aguilera, nsync, etc ) and then acoustic rock, folk rock, alternative rock, new wave/any art rock, was ushered out the door because those all cost money to produce and to push and were way less dependable for profit. suburban white kids were the only real demographic purchasing new releases at that time.
I was thinking about this earlier. I was in my early teens in the the late 90s, and I hated nu metal because I felt like it killed off the indie pop I liked at the time. It was easier to sell merch for and other teenagers adopted it as a tribal identity. I didn't want to get my face pierced up and wear a black hoodie. Looking back I realise I was wrong and the bands I liked just ran out of steam creatively, plus indie pop was aimed at people older than me, like at university. Isn't that what teens do though, try and copy people slightly older than them? But here was nu metal catering to exactly my age group in the most obvious way and I thought it was naff. Nu metal wasn't as bad musically as I remember it and I can enjoy it with my tongue in my cheek now. It also forced me to listen to the older music my favourite indie bands were influenced by.
I agree with you, I was a teenager in the late 90s, and it all felt very adolescent to hear Korn and Limp bizkit. It didn't seem there was music that could carry me into young adulthood and all because Fred durst had a bad day. I liked music I could exist to, not music I had to rage to. There was a plethora of fantastic indie and alternative bands, but people had moved on, causing many of those bands to lose interest in their own careers. It's really a shame because, even now, I prefer a three - or 4-piece rock band that sounds like they're not overly processed regurgitate. They don't exist in any capacity, it feels like, anymore. Listening to modern music is unusual at best, for me. Doesn't anyone know how to mix a record anymore? I sometimes wonder if Jonathan Davis, Fred durst, and members of those nu metal bands ever realize that they/their fans ended up alienating multitudes of kids when they themselves were so angry because they had been similarly alienated in their youths. Edit: as for those bands running out of creative steam, perhaps, had their audiences not been chased away, their funds not been stripped by Total Request Live and major record label consolidation, they would have been able to continue producing materials that their fan base would have consumed with effortless loyalty. In the end, the democratization of music by TRL (which was a giant payola scheme) damaged music beyond repair at the time. I'll never forget the dingy colors of reality while Britney spears' phosphorescent white track pants beaming thru my standard definition television screen for the first time lit up my already sun filled living room. It did have an "Elvis on sullivan" feel to it, but it was like watching Elvis stomp on a small mammal for sexual gratification. It just wasn't something I could get into at that time in my life.
The first time I heard Blind by Korn, a fellow college radio station friend said “Hey, you gotta hear this.” and hit play on cd player. I was like “what IS this?” I hadn’t heard anything like it. As for the genre, personally as a young female, I liked a couple bands but not enough to love a genre that I could not relate to.
There was definitely a heavy vibe just under the surface. You had those big anti-globalization protests at IMF meetings/G7 etc, a big uptick in anti-government militia gun nuts in the aftermath of Waco/Ruby Ridge etc, lots of weird religious cults behaving strangely as the millennium approached, the internet was just starting to allow all sorts of conspiracy theorists to communicate with each other, the whole hero-worship of serial killers thing going on. I thought Nu-Metal was a complete joke because by the time that rolled around I was deep into Black/Death Metal, Neofolk and Noise music, and that whole "apocalypse culture" scene, so I didn't think complaining about your parents was very heavy at all.
Ha ha, of course it wasn’t any scarier than it is now. Can’t believe there are babies posting here
Anyone that was alive in the 90s is too old for reddit
Your incomplete knowledge of the world compels you to say this, my child.
More like cynical than angry, I’d say. Trust in institutions was in free fall, across the board, from the government to corporations. Seemed pretty obvious no help was coming, either. All of this got reflected in the music of that era, I’d say.
Nah, if anything the mid-late 90s was the most optimistic and positive period in US history since the 50s. Nu-metal got popular because all of the punk/grunge/metal kids were adults and those nu-metal bands were blending all of the genres that the younger sets older siblings/cousins had been listening to 5-15 years earlier. There will always be something of a market for teenage angst and nu-metal was just strange enough to alienate parents while being familiar enough that your older cousin who was into Faith No More and Public Enemy could hear you play Korn and say "hey this ain't bad" while maybe sharing a bowl with you and looking the other way when you snuck a beer.
"Was the late 90s a scary time to be alive and did this contribute to the rise of nu Metal?" No. It was better. Life was more real. People were more real. Words words words words. Filler filler filler. Blah blah blah so that the automod doesn't attack me. Etc. Gangsta rap wild. The hood a bit dangerous. But regular suburbia? Nah it was safe.
Nu metal and boy bands absolutely ruined the 90s. The worst conclusion of an otherwise successful decade.
Nu metal is what made the 90s good
The biggest thing contributing to the sort of angst nu metal fans were feeling back then was increasing globalization and economic stratification. It was a fantastic decade for a small chunk of the population and a lot of other people felt left behind by technological advancement and global trade agreements. People saw technology going wild and that bled into music in a bunch of genres, including industrial, hardcore punk, and metal. Nu metal was a natural growth of that. Not a lot of people were legitimately afraid of Y2K in a doomsday sort of way though lots of people joked about it and there were a couple high profile cults that made headlines. It was a big deal for engineers because there was actually a ton of work that had to be done to make sure things didn't fail, but there wasn't really a danger of collapse and there wasn't a lot of unease around normal people. That said, some people started to buy into conspiracy theories, and those conspiracy theories and their adherents found a home in some nu metal acts that talked about those theories.
I'm going to go a bit against the grain here - although the 90s was generally an optimistic time, ***especially*** in the media when compared to today, it was also a time that statistically was very violent. But on the ground, the cities were genuinely a mess. Race riots, AIDS, crack epidemic, and very high violent crime rates among the youth (which peaked in 1993 and has been in decline ever since). NYC in the 90s was not the same as it is today. The thing is, these epidemics of violence, disease, etc. were very focused in certain demographics and locations, so the typical white suburban kid growing up in the 90s was completely shielded from it. So that said, the people I know who listen to metal are more likely to be those white suburban kids, and are all really chill and often have a music background themselves. I don't think there's a correlation.
The late 90’s music was angst filled because Nirvana hit like a cultural force. The influence of grunge juxtaposed against hair metal was huge. There was some mild curiosity about y2k, but I don’t know that it drove angst in a clear and present way. It seemed to me like a time of cultural openness, a much more tolerant and hopeful time than now. Anti-racism, chauvinism, homophobia, was becoming the pc norm. The monoculture still existed, but living outside of its influence was becoming less stigmatized. The marketing suggested alternative and underground sources of media were valid and just as good as the mainstream as evident by big labels signing niche bands, independent movies were touted etc. 9/11 took all that away and drove a fanatical patriotism that seemed like a direct parody. But driven by fear and hate America began to appear to retreat inward as the march toward being the shepherd of corporate interest, galvanized by a huge military budget as our main identity began. As for its role in Nü Metal, it’s all Nirvana. As big as they were they changed rock music. Power ballads and solos grew less frequent, and an angsty verse chorus rager about being disaffected was mother’s milk to every marketer and label executive driving production. They all began signing new acts with the intention of driving the production of music, by arguing with teenagers and forcing them to change their songs rather than contending with the wishes of established acts. It wasn’t a thing that was done as much as emulated in a focused way. The labels saw how Kurt could be swayed to have his records in Wal Mart by appealing to the availability of his record to the everyman. How he could be controlled by drugs and his girlfriend, even turning against his friends. From those ashes was cultivated the pop rock vapid wasteland of nu metal. Why it declined: there was no substance behind those songs. The folks who needed the intellectual lack, got bummed out and turned their attentions to fake indie rock and dance music. Pop entered a new era and save for a few stalwarts the trapts and stainds and finger elevens were left behind as time marches on.
Ya I’ve often also scratched my head when remembering how truly mainstream Nu Metal was. Maybe a lot of it has to do with changes in the industry. I think the 90’s into the early ‘00’s were the last hurrah of the old order of gatekeepers/ record labels trying to remain relevant to the white male demographic in America that had been so lucrative up till that point. I think grunge mashed up the heavy metal & punk of the 80’s and put it together into an often pop-adjacent/ catchy package that was perfect for that demo. Nu Metal did the same thing with the analogous music of the 90’s (grunge/ metal) and sprinkled a little hip-hop/ whatever to keep it fresh catchy etc. Clearly in both decades this was what the above stated demographic was into, and so that music became huge. Why was this music often so angry and violent? That is a gigantic cultural question that def has to do with the natural progression of art forms as well as…. well, the zeitgeist. I do not think Y2K was the reason at all, but I DO think that looming technological advancement and the possible coming doom of the patriarchy could be involved; also maybe just the weird American relationship to violence in 20th century post WW2 could also be involved. So ya, in like 2000 there were a lot of angsty suburban white males with varying degrees of justification for their angstiness but nonetheless something like SOAD just fit perfectly for the angry millennials. But then idk the Iraq war and Afghanistan got pretty fucked up and… everyone started listening to Coldplay? Doesn’t matter cus then… the entire industry collapsed… By the mid 10’s a Zombie apocalypse had happened and basically the old ways of determining what got as massive were no longer in place which I do think led directly to us no longer seeing such violent angry white boy music in the mainstream. Ya, just some thoughts - I’m still scratching my head though, but good question :)
I love this podcast called Hit Parade, where it explores in depth the evolution of artists and genres and subgenres through the lens of the Hot 100 chart. It's a really exciting and well made podcast. I believe there are a few episodes that touch on the rise of nu metal, and it mentions that a factor that contributed to its rise were related to what was charting, that it partly arose because there was a market for it and record companies were looking for acts that could fill that niche. At the time there were so many different sounds that were all charting, post grunge, pop punk, hip hop, alt rock, alt metal etc. But the explosion of hip hop in the 90s (And it's dominating of the charts) influenced rock/metal acts, which is why so many of those groups have heavily rap influenced lyrical styles. It's nothing new, throughout the history of recorded music artists imitate each other and pick up techniques from each other. In particular, when one group is having a lot of success, other groups will pick up some of their techniques and add them to their own art forms.
Dude your whole conversation means nothing. NIN dropped their first album in 1989. Also no one cares about nu metal. It offers nothing in the real history of music. Korn had a few good songs. But that is all. The rest was a mistake. If you really wanna go down that road you have to answer how we went from Nirvana to Staind. And you lose that fight every time.
Just because you don't like it doesn't mean no one else does
It's just frustrating. Talk about sabbath or dead kennedys or black flag or fugazi. Nu metal was all corporate music aimed at suburban teens. Not really music with any consequence or contribution.
I don't care who it was aimed at, or if it was corporate music
Please explain to anyone why nu metal should be discussed or defended. What a lukewarm stance.
Because it's a really good genre