1996 in music

August 8, 2016 9:34 AM

It's 1996 week over at the AV Club, and they're taking a look at the year alternative rock died. In non-AV Club news @bestalbum95 has rolled over a year and has started polling for Best Album of 1996 - the first face-off being Belle and Sebastian verus John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey.
posted by Artw (114 comments total)

I had a dreadful commute to work that summer. I spent the hours scanning through the FM wasteland. I recall a DJ breathlessly hyping 'Macarena', declaring it the biggest hit OF. ALL. TIME. in that hip FM DJ voice.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 9:44 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, well, I'm still traumatized by my college neighbors that summer, my final summer before graduating from Ohio University... they... they... THEY HAD A NUDIST MACARENA PARTY YOU GUYS. *shudder*
posted by bitter-girl.com at 9:54 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, that's about the year I stopped paying attention to or buying new music, except for Beck and *cough* I used to tour with Phish right around then, too. I don't know how much of that was just that I was growing out of the age where music is like omg super important to your identity (jam bands notwithstanding) and how much was just music suddenly sucking in a way it hadn't in a while. All of the music I feel really nostalgic for now as a bitter old Gen Xer is pre-grunge-explosion for the most part.
posted by soren_lorensen at 10:06 AM on August 8, 2016

Woo, damn I'm old.
posted by humboldt32 at 10:09 AM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

1996 was the year I went from high school to college and was just starting to really find my tastes after a lifetime of being sheltered, so it's a little bit of a punch in the gut to read

On the radio, Goo Goo Dolls’ “Name” bled into Tonic’s “If You Could Only See” into Dishwalla’s “Counting Blue Cars” into The Verve Pipe’s “The Freshmen” into Matchbox Twenty’s “Push” in a watery bouillabaisse of quiet-loud-quiet song structures and sad-bro earnestness.

...and think, "Hey, I liked all those songs!" (Except maybe "Name." Even the milquetoast have standards.)

That's also the year I discovered Versus though, and at least I can enjoy the smug satisfaction of being a fan of a punkish band that never received enough mainstream attention to even be namechecked here.
posted by psoas at 10:10 AM on August 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

No, music really did suddenly suck. I was 11 and felt like I'd missed everything. I remember a lot of songs from 1996 and remember thinking even at the time that they were thin gruel compared to Nirvana. Within a couple years I had completely given up on the radio.
posted by town of cats at 10:14 AM on August 8, 2016

The signs were there before 1996, but this was truly the year that popular rock music became an unlovable shit pile. It is entirely Kurt Cobain's fault for killing himself and turning music trends into sewage. Sorry, Kurt; you were a selfish fucking asshole. Atrocities like Linkin Park, Kid Rock and Shit Bizkit never had to happen. It was years before anything good was played on rock radio again. Years. A lot of years. Like eight.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 10:16 AM on August 8, 2016

Also I know the A.V. Club has been online for 20 years now(!) and only has so much nostalgia to mine, but this feels like kind of a retread of the Whatever Happened to Alternative Nation? series from... holy shit, six years ago.
posted by psoas at 10:17 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

It was a few years after 1996 that CD sales started to fall, and the industry blamed Napster, but I think a lot of that was the rise of the DVD. Consumers do not have unlimited entertainment budget, and $20 for a full movie with extra scenes, director's commentary, etc, vs. 45 minute CD of some morose tenor longhair braying away over a Pro-tooled-together bar band performance, seemed like no contest to many.
posted by thelonius at 10:25 AM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

When I started high school, Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" was everywhere.
When I started university, The Cardigan's "Lovefool" was everywhere.

That about sums it up.
posted by Kabanos at 10:28 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Atrocities like Linkin Park, Kid Rock and Shit Bizkit never had to happen.

Sighs, resets counter
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 10:28 AM on August 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

Belle and Sebastian verus John Parish and Polly Jean Harvey.

TWEE UBER ALLES.
posted by Going To Maine at 10:30 AM on August 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Atrocities like Linkin Park, Kid Rock and Shit Bizkit never had to happen.

No, they did. It was inevitable. Nirvana and the grunge/alt wave was so huge it was unavoidable that they would inspire shittier and shittier imitators, just like the British Invasion did in the 60s.

With those bands in particular, it was only a matter of time before rising mainstream popularity of rap fused with the alt explosion.
posted by Sangermaine at 10:31 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

How quickly everyone forgets that 1996 was the year Philip Glass finished his opera tryptic based on the films of Jean Cocteau.
posted by beerperson at 10:33 AM on August 8, 2016 [14 favorites]

Nu Metal is gone now, right? We finally killed it?
posted by Artw at 10:34 AM on August 8, 2016

How quickly everyone forgets that 1996 was the year Philip Glass finished his opera tryptic based on the films of Jean Cocteau.

Not as cool as 1995 when he did a really spooky remix of an Aphex Twin song.
posted by Artw at 10:35 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I don't know how much of that was just that I was growing out of the age where music is like omg super important to your identity (jam bands notwithstanding) and how much was just music suddenly sucking in a way it hadn't in a while.

I've had this conversation with so many people. When I was younger we used to mock the older people who couldn't appreciate newer music and feel bad for them, so this was confusing. But I've never stopped discovering new music (and in fact was getting into electronic music more than rock in the early 90's) it just seemed like pop/rock gave up the ghost and starting becoming all revival acts around this time.

Of course electronic music hasn't changed that much in years either. What has?
posted by bongo_x at 10:49 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

How is it that, in an article about music from 1996, the only time hip-hop gets mentioned is with respect to rock bands like RATM and Korn?

Pull up the wiki for 1996 and look at those albums. All Eyez on Me. The Score. Reasonable Doubt. ATLiens. Illadelph Halflife. Stakes Is High. Beats, Rhymes, and Life. Hard Core. Hell on Earth.

You have all-time stone cold classics. You have stunning debuts. Seriously. 20 years later and we still can't give rap it's credit as the next big thing that became the biggest ever thing.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 10:49 AM on August 8, 2016 [41 favorites]

Well ok, alternative music was 'dying' or whatever, but there was a Tribe Called Quest album released in 96.

On preview: what SRD said.

Also Pinkerton, if you're into that kind of thing.
posted by Huck500 at 10:52 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I never thought I'd say this about anything, but this is just too cranky and cynical for me. Yeah, some stuff sucked, but some stuff always sucks. The majority, even. But this makes it sound like the good albums only came to be in spite of everything around them, like they had to smuggle themselves out of music prison (feel free to use that analogy in your own writing).

Also, it's kind of weird to be complaining about how terrible 1996 was for music and bring up Pinkerton, not because it's bad, but because, what, Rivers Cuomo wasn't excited about it at the time? It's like any good album still somehow sucked because there was something wrong with the attitude or the marketing or the fact that it was successful or not successful or had some ugly 90s computer graphics on the CD case.

Man, whatever, I liked a bunch of that stuff even if it wasn't that exciting. I looked up Sponge recently, and man that does not age well, but hey, I thought it was cool at the time. Shit, even Spacehog isn't exactly good, but it's fun in kind of a nostalgic "I remember that summer" kind of way."

But maybe I was just too young for my opinions to count anyway.

Although Live really is awful.
posted by teponaztli at 10:54 AM on August 8, 2016 [8 favorites]

Also in 1996: Soundtracks for the Blind by Swans was released. Which is still mind blowing and would be ahead of its time if it was released today.

Oh and the Wrens released Secaucus, also in 1996.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 10:56 AM on August 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Also, Belle and Sebastian, hands down.
posted by teponaztli at 11:01 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I mean, I take their point about how a lot of what was on the radio/MTV was diminishing returns, but it really does come off as the insufferable stereotype of the jaded record store employee who will sell you those albums, but outwardly disdain you for it. Yes, yes, I know, you are much cooler than me because you listen to bands I wouldn't have heard of, though if you weren't an ass about it and suggest stuff I might like, then perhaps things might suck less?
posted by Kitteh at 11:02 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I think it's less 1996 sucked for music so much as 1996 marking a shift in what kinds of music were in ascendancy.

Then again Liquid Swords won 1995 when @bestalbum95 did it, against some pretty tough competition, so obviously the year after is going to look like a bit of a lull.
posted by Artw at 11:02 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Looking through my playlist for 1996.... some phenomenal albums:

Cibo Matto - Viva! La Woman
Tori Amos - Boys For Pele
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Underworld - Second Toughest in the Infants
Sleater-Kinney - Call the Doctor
Superdrag - Regretfully Yours
Cocteau Twins - Milk & Kisses
Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Jesus Lizard - Shot
Modest Mouse - This Is a Long Drive For Someone with Nothing to Think About
Orbital - In Sides
Everything But the Girl - Walking Wounded
Belle & Sebastian - Tigermilk / If You're Feeling Sinister
Beck - Odelay
Soul Coughing - Irresistible Bliss
Ween - 12 Golden Country Greats
Fiona Apple - Tidal
The Cardigans - First Band on the Moon
Failure - Fantastic Planet
Outkast - ATLiens
REM - New Adventures in Hi-Fi
Weezer - Pinkerton
Fountains of Wayne - s/t
Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar
Wilco - Being There
Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album
Tricky - Pre-Millenium Tension
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
posted by naju at 11:03 AM on August 8, 2016 [27 favorites]

Although Live really is awful.

A real window into my high school years is that I had a good friend whose married boyfriend's band would play "I Alone" at shows and she understood it to be a secret message of his love for her.

Naturally, I cannot judge any of this music in any kind of sensible way.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 11:03 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

huh, I always looked back at this time as my formative shift thanks to Odelay, Endtroducing and AEnima, with Disco Volante and OK Computer just on either side of the year.Funny
posted by mannequito at 11:03 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I have a real soft spot for half of 1996's dying grunge music, that was my junior/senior year of high school and I spent so much of my life listening to music (but mostly music that was released in the handful of years prior to '96). 1996 wasn't all bad if you went deeper, though- Sleater-Kinney's Call the Doctor, Neutral Milk Hotel's On Avery Island, Ani DiFranco's Dilate, Low's The Curtain Hits the Cast, Sebadoh's Harmacy, Cat Power's What Would the Community Think, Tricky's Pre-Millennium Tension. Arguably, though, the only people listening to those albums in 1996 had access to a great college radio station or a indie record store.

Belle & Sebastian's If You're Feeling Sinister felt like such a secret handshake album. That was the soundtrack to a few months of my life, though it was 1997 or 1998 by the time I caught wind of it, and that was through an international indie pop email list. And to even get a copy of Tigermilk I had to mail a check to someone from the email list who burned me a copy-of-a-copy cd. Did anyone in the US actually listen to Belle & Sebastian in 1996?
posted by banjo_and_the_pork at 11:07 AM on August 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Superdrag were so underrated. Their second album--the one that subsequently got them dropped by Elektra when it was clear that John Davis did not want to write any hits--Head Trip in Every Key is a glorious bombastic delight. I saw them live at tiny club in Spartanburg, SC after that album came out. It turned out a high school friend of mine was in a side project with Tom Pappas, the bassist with an great head of hair.
posted by Kitteh at 11:07 AM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Also, it's kind of weird to be complaining about how terrible 1996 was for music and bring up Pinkerton,

I don't think 1996 was terrible for music at all, and I love Pinkerton, for the record. I guess my post wasn't really clear, sorry.
posted by Huck500 at 11:08 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

96 was a great year for music. My best friend and I followed Crash Worship around for some absolutely amazing wine-drenched shows. Starting with the warehouse show in Austin and ending with a fiery bacchanal on an abandoned bridge in Kansas City's then-dead downtown. Saw the Swans that year too. Completely agree with MisantropicPainforest's assessment of Soundtracks for the Blind.

My personal favorite album of the year, which still sounds great 20 years later, was Entroducing. Felt like something completely new and quite old at the same time. Pity DJ Shadow barely gets a mention by the AV Club when his work alone was far more interesting than all the old grunge and neo-grunge combined.
posted by honestcoyote at 11:13 AM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

In conclusion: the media consensus of what’s “popular” remains a terrible measure of what’s actually good or interesting, even if it makes for an interesting, controversial, and broken image of what the “culture” thinks about the music scene.

tl;dr Bandcamp is great!
posted by Going To Maine at 11:15 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, I have a soft spot for Spacehog's debut album. It was fun, in an utterly glammy way. 1996 was the year that the Refreshments released Fizzy, Fuzzy, Big & Buzzy and I will fucking fight any man Jack about it because goddamn, was that a solid album (as well as my soundtrack for that summer).
posted by Kitteh at 11:16 AM on August 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

I think the author has mixed up alternative rock as a genre and the much smaller scenes of grunge/ LA - left coast alternative. Grunge died because of, well a lot of the main people literally died or were so addicted the music stopped. The LA Perry Farrell/ Sublime scene will never truly die, it just comes and goes in the wider consciousness. But bands like Radiohead, Wilco, Garbage, PJ Harvey etc carried on making alternative rock happily after 1996.

Fwiw, saying Sublime was a part of some old scene and No Doubt was new is an error. A lot of these bands coexisted for years and years and they were hardly riding any coattails by the time they made it big. No Doubt and Sublime were contemporaries from the same scene. The Goo Goo Dolls were around forever before they cut their hair and got famous, same with Soul Asylum etc.

I'm also annoyed by him dismissing all female artists as "pop singers, not Madonna".
posted by fshgrl at 11:17 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I spent the summer of 1996 working as a temp for the records department of Tenzer, Greenblatt, Fallon & Kaplan. 23rd floor of the Chrysler building. The windows opened, amazingly, so I wrote my address on a paper airplane and sent it on its way.

If I remember correctly, the ska revival had peaked and was fading fast. Really interesting stuff was happening in electronic music, which was finally gaining credibility thanks to the work of Aphex Twin, DJ Spooky and the various and sundry DJs and promoters keeping the rave scene alive. Rock was getting weird again off the beaten path.

It was a good time.
posted by grumpybear69 at 11:20 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I've been thinking about this, largely thanks to the great Fluxblog summation of Eighties music that was posted recently. Like soren_lorensen, I couldn't help but wonder if I'd simply left that age where passion, music, and identity intersect around mid Nineties; music just didn't seem as interesting as it had been during my adolescent Eighties.

Then again, I find myself getting pulled back into music again thanks to YouTube. It's been a joy to discover musicians broadcasting on their own channels without any record labels. Turns out, the kids are all right.
posted by Eikonaut at 11:21 AM on August 8, 2016

It really was a remarkably bad year for (rock) music. I was 16 in 1996 and I remember even then hating what was happening to rock music. Sixteen is too young to already be nostalgic for the days when music was better.
posted by 256 at 11:23 AM on August 8, 2016

Then again, Face to Face released their self-titled album in 1996. Probably, every year is redeemable.
posted by 256 at 11:26 AM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't think 1996 was terrible for music at all, and I love Pinkerton, for the record. I guess my post wasn't really clear, sorry.

Oh, my comment came after yours, but I wasn't responding to it and I didn't think you were putting down Pinkerton at all. Just a weird quirk of comment timing. No, I brought it up because it's discussed in the Avclub article in kind of weird terms.
posted by teponaztli at 11:32 AM on August 8, 2016

1996 was my last year of school and also the summer I completely uprooted myself and moved cross country to Southern California. I still think of Odelay as a sort of Rosetta stone album that bridged college and real world for me, because I spent all of that summer listening to it constantly as my college apartment lease ran down, and then I spent all of that fall listening to it constantly while driving around SoCal. I remember being well aware by 1996 that there were a lot bandwagon sound-alike acts on the radio, but I didn't begrudge their existence because I liked that basic guitar rock formula; I grew up on 70's hard rock, hated most 1980s hair metal and loved the grunge/alternative sound When Nirvana, Soundgarden et al began getting airplay.

As a result of being away from my music-loving circle of friends and general life upheaval I sort of stopped keeping track of new music by the end of '96. By mid-1997 I had a job in a shop where the radio was always tuned to a generic "alternative" station, and it really did seem like it was suddenly all Wallflowers and Cardigans, all the time; it's kind of nice to have confirmation that it wasn't just me lamenting good old days.

That AV club piece is pretty off-putting, though, it's pretty much "Alternative music started sucking in 1996 but actually it also sucked before 1996, and by the way here's an ad hominem dig at anyone who was popular at the time."
posted by usonian at 11:35 AM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Cake, whose wry, nerdy-cool “The Distance” and “I Will Survive” cover brought it international fame, massive TV exposure, and a fiercely loyal fanbase of computer programmers

Is this a real thing or did the writer just make this up?
posted by Space Coyote at 11:35 AM on August 8, 2016

I don't think it's that music was worse. My own belief is that radio stations got worse around that time. Instead of seeking out genuinely new and interesting sounds, they moved towards "safer" sounds - such as Nickelback or Silverchair or whatever - that would draw in the 18-to-25 demographic and enable the stations to acquire more lucrative ads (usually for beer or coolers). My local alternative station went from calling itself "alternative" to "alternative rock" to "new rock" to including bands such as Metallica on its playlist in the space of about two years. It was very saddening, and I still miss the old-time radio stations. (You can find such things on the Internet now, of course, but you often have to self-curate, and it's not useful if your workplace doesn't have enough bandwidth to allow you to listen to them.)
posted by tallmiddleagedgeek at 11:40 AM on August 8, 2016 [7 favorites]

While it's fun to shit all over some of these one hit wonders I've always blamed Howard Stern for the death of rock radio around this time period. His show was carried on rock stations and this was around the time he was being rolled out onto stations like WBCN in Boston (Stern was switched from night to morning on WBCN in 1996). The easy money of just running Stern and a bunch of copy cat DJs switched the focus from rock music to talk and drove people who didn't want to listen to Stern running from the stations.
posted by inthe80s at 11:43 AM on August 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

I'm enjoying people refuting to the article "the year alternative rock died" by listing music they liked from 1996 that is in no way alternative rock.
posted by bongo_x at 11:53 AM on August 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

The signs were there before 1996, but this was truly the year that popular rock music became an unlovable shit pile. It is entirely Kurt Cobain's fault for killing himself and turning music trends into sewage. Sorry, Kurt; you were a selfish fucking asshole. Atrocities like Linkin Park, Kid Rock and Shit Bizkit never had to happen. It was years before anything good was played on rock radio again. Years. A lot of years. Like eight.

This theory is dumber than Limp Bizkit's music, which is a real achievement.
posted by invitapriore at 11:53 AM on August 8, 2016

Yeah, I mean, I want to say specifically that the mid-'90s was when popular alternative hard rock/metal/punk died and was replaced with a shit/turkey-cyborg called Kid Limpickelback. Rap is great and metal is great, but when you cross the streams you tend to get some trash like RHCP at best. It's usually more like...well...nu metal. Nu metal succeeded grunge and it was the musical equivalent of Donald Trump succeeding Barack Obama as president. It was the end of everything. However, electronic music and hip-hop continued to be great, and I even have an abiding fondness for "Lovefool." It's not that all music was terrible. But all popular hard rock/metal music was at an all-time low.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:57 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Anyone using The Cardigans as a self-evident example of how bad things were needs to give their albums a serious listen, imo. They were one of the best bands around. (Also "Lovefool" was ironic!)
posted by naju at 11:59 AM on August 8, 2016 [13 favorites]

Pearl Jam released their introspective tone poem No Code in 1996, and Cake put out Fashion Nugget (my favorite of their albums) and Sheryl Crow sent out her second album Sheryl Crow, a true masterpiece.

I mean, three truly great albums in a year is a pretty good thing.

Plus Orbital's In Sides, which expanded my musical world in ways that still resonate in my life today.

I guess maybe alternative rock died, but my musical world was continuing on just fine, and was even growing larger that year.
posted by hippybear at 11:59 AM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

This theory is dumber than Limp Bizkit's music, which is a real achievement.

Don't get me mad, because I might, like, break some stuff
posted by kittens for breakfast at 11:59 AM on August 8, 2016

I just perused the release list for '96 at Wikipedia, and noted the ones I remember most strongly from the time. There are other things from that year I picked up on later, but these are the ones I remember more strongly from that year. I boldfaced the ones that have stayed in the rotation:

Tori Amos / Boys for Pele
Nick Cave / Murder Ballads
Cowboy Junkies / Lay It Down
Steve Earle / I Feel Alright
Los Lobos / Colossal Head
Robert Earl Keen / No. 2 Live Dinner
Beastie Boys / The In Sound from Way Out!
Dave Matthews Band / Crash
The Wallflowers / Bringing Down the Horse
Ani DiFranco / Dilate
Metallica / Load
Squirrel Nut Zippers / Hot
Keb Mo / Just Like You
Lyle Lovett / The Road to Ensenada
Prince / Chaos and Disorder
Fiona Apple / Tidal
Hooverphonic / A New Stereophonic Sound Spectacular
K's Choice / Paradise in Me (<-- obligatory one-hit wonder; I really, really love the Parks & Rec tie-in)
Pearl Jam / No Code
REM / New Adventures in Hi-Fi
Cake / Fashion Nugget
posted by uberchet at 12:01 PM on August 8, 2016

Kittens for Breakfast: Your comment just made me go watch the Break Stuff music video. Eminem? Snoop? Dre? Flea? The guy from Korn?

It's a little shocking to think that, at the time, all these people thought this video was a good use of their personae.
posted by 256 at 12:04 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

(Also Pauly Shore, though that is more understandable.)
posted by 256 at 12:05 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

This theory is dumber than Limp Bizkit's music, which is a real achievement.

Don't get me mad, because I might, like, break some stuff

How else will I express my desire for the nookie?
posted by Going To Maine at 12:08 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Pffft, everyone knows music peaked in October of 1995, it's a scientific fact.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:12 PM on August 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Well, this is a weird way to learn that I have been the victim of a home invasion. For some reason Alvy's link is marked as already visited.
posted by 256 at 12:15 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Through Silver in Blood was also released in 1996.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 12:19 PM on August 8, 2016

Well, this is a weird way to learn that I have been the victim of a home invasion. For some reason Alvy's link is marked as already visited.

Sorry, I like to sneak into people's houses and listen to the song. It's... something I'm trying to deal with.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 12:24 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Anyone using The Cardigans as a self-evident example of how bad things were needs to give their albums a serious listen, imo. They were one of the best bands around.

i have yelled at a pub quiz host before when they called the cardigans a one-hit wonder

which i guess isn't really WRONG per se, at least in the US, but i get very defensive about the cardigans
posted by burgerrr at 12:31 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

RE: The Cardigans, yeah - I should have qualified my statement, as it did get muddled with the "year the music died" context. The Cardigans are good! And I actually like the Wallflowers' One Headlight a lot even if the rest of that album never really grabbed me. But at the time (and admittedly even now) really gravitated mostly towards hard guitar rock, and there was a lot of it up through '96... then suddenly it seemed like there wasn't.
posted by usonian at 12:43 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, I mean, I want to say specifically that the mid-'90s was when popular alternative hard rock/metal/punk died and was replaced with a shit/turkey-cyborg called Kid Limpickelback. Rap is great and metal is great, but when you cross the streams you tend to get some trash like RHCP at best.

IMHO that crossing of the streams peaked a couple of years before '96 in the form of 1993's Judgement Night Soundtrack:

Helmet and House of Pain
Teenage Fanclub and De La Soul
Living Colour and Run DMC
Biohazard and Onyx
Slayer and Ice-T
Faith No More and Boo-Yaa T.R.I.B.E.
Sonic Youth and Cypress Hill
Mudhoney and Sir Mix-A-Lot
Dinosaur Jr. and Del the Funky Homosapien
Therapy? and Fatal
Pearl Jam and Cypress Hill
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 12:44 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Other good to great 1996 releases not mentioned in the article or discussion:

• Gillian Welch, Revival
• The Old 97's, Wreck Your Life
• Johnny Cash, Unchained
• Earth, Pentastar: In the Style of Demons
• Golden Smog, Down By the Old Mainstream

posted by entropicamericana at 12:45 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

"And I actually like the Wallflowers' One Headlight a lot even if the rest of that album never really grabbed me. "

I recently hauled the CD out and ripped it, so it's gotten a little play, and I was surprised to find I still dig that track, too. It's good work, and there's a couple other solid tracks on the record, too.
posted by uberchet at 12:46 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I refuse to believe some of those amazing albums in naju's list were 1996 and FACTS WILL NOT SWAY ME.

I... suppose '96 might have been pretty OK.

/puts In Sides on again
posted by comealongpole at 12:59 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

1996 is apparently the year Alternative music died. And then in 97 came Radiohead's OK Computer and Portishead by Portishead.

In other news, top-40 crap is crap whatever sub-genre it is.
posted by tclark at 12:59 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Biohazard and Onyx

On my first date with my ladyfriend six-ish years ago, I found out that the jukebox would play Judgement Night and I made that happen because I love that song. Somehow, said ladyfriend did not just end the date immediately like a sane person, and so I have spent the following several years slowly convincing her that it is 'our song'. Special moments and anniversaries are now commemorated with Onyx and Biohazard, and she cannot escape it. It is such a good song for all times and occasions.
posted by FatherDagon at 1:05 PM on August 8, 2016 [11 favorites]

IMHO that crossing of the streams peaked a couple of years before '96 in the form of 1993's Judgement Night Soundtrack:

Or with "Bring the Noize," or "Walk this Way," or probably other things that, like the Judgment Night ST*, are mostly** good. Nu metal was...not this. I think maybe the difference was you once had excellent metal bands and excellent rap groups bringing out the best in each other, whereas with nu metal you had single bands that were equally terrible at metal and rap, and somehow sounded even worse than they would have otherwise when they tried to combine the styles.

*I cannot speak for the movie, which no one I know has seen, and which I am not sure is real.

**What even was Therapy? and how the hell did they get a record contract
posted by kittens for breakfast at 1:25 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

What even was Therapy? and how the hell did they get a record contract

I acquired probably 95% of music used back in the day, and I would even take the time to flip through the $0.99 "we can't get rid of this drek" bins, and there were always multiple Therapy? CDs there. I always asked myself the same question.
posted by usonian at 1:31 PM on August 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

1996, the year alternative rock died while britpop was on life support thanks to the terrible battle the year before.
posted by betweenthebars at 1:33 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

1996 was about when the CD that came with my copies of CMJ New Music Monthly began to morph into turgid messes filled with eighth-grade Pearl Jam knockoffs, so yeah.

Judgement Night: Freak Momma has always been and will always remain a guilty pleasure of mine.
posted by The Card Cheat at 1:39 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I haven't heard the whole OST, only the Helmet/House Of Pain single and the Biohazard/Onyx combo. Maybe the Therapy? collab was shitballs.

That said, Therapy? were an amazing rocky/alt/punky NI band with a penchant for punny song titles, catchy riffs and choruses and oh God please listen to Troublegum if you haven't. Some albums feature an electric cello. I am super-OK with this.

I saw perform live them the day that Dermot Morgan (Father Ted) died. "Please don't dedicate your song Die Laughing to him," I thought before the gig, "that would be cringingly terrible!". The fact that they did and I still respect and admire them ... well, it says a lot about either me or them.
posted by comealongpole at 1:53 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

1996, the year alternative rock died while britpop was on life support thanks to the terrible battle the year before.

And then goddamn swing music stepped in.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 1:55 PM on August 8, 2016

Well those cherries weren't going to pop themselves.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 1:59 PM on August 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

That was the impression that I got.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:01 PM on August 8, 2016 [9 favorites]

Big hit: Screamager or Nowhere depending on who you ask. I will stop talking about pre-'96 music in a 1996 music thread now, sorry.
posted by comealongpole at 2:03 PM on August 8, 2016

I know there was a lot of good music that came out in 1996, but for some reason my only auditory memory is a ceaseless loop of Kula Shaker
posted by prize bull octorok at 2:05 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I am having a minor crisis. I was going to make a joke about how the Romeo + Juliet (1996) soundtrack was the peak of music. I have such strong memories of seeing that around the freshman dorms at college. But wikipedia says it came out in late '96 and I was long gone from those dorms. I know for a fact I had many Important Secret Feelings listening to that Stina Nordenstam song while lying in that dorm bed. Was it all a lie?!
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 2:12 PM on August 8, 2016

Regarding the Cardigans...commercial radio had a streak of picking the worst tracks from otherwise great albums. They were steered into one-hit-wonderdom.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 2:13 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

1996? Watch me access the brain stem of roughly everyone my age
posted by The Whelk at 2:23 PM on August 8, 2016 [12 favorites]

I cannot speak for the [Judgement Night] movie, which no one I know has seen, and which I am not sure is real.

It's real, I've seen it, I remember very little about it, but it has at least one line I liked. Paraphrased:

Some Guy: "That money has blood on it, man!"
Denis Leary: "Did you ever see any that didn't?"

('Fallin' might be the best rap song about falling off ever written.)
posted by box at 2:32 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

Also:
Ghostface: Ironman
Nas: It Was Written
Ras Kass: Soul On Ice
DJ Shadow: Endtroducing
XZibit: At the Speed of Life
Keith/QBert/Automator: The Octogynocologist

It also had Eminem's debut, Infinite, which is fun if only for "It's OK" where he talks about wanting to be happily married and how his christianity helps him in hard times.
posted by lkc at 2:43 PM on August 8, 2016

1996? Watch me access the brain stem of roughly everyone my age

Touché. Right through the old bio-port.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 3:17 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm enjoying people refuting to the article "the year alternative rock died" by listing music they liked from 1996 that is in no way alternative rock.
posted by bongo_x

It's very possible that we're reading the article differently. My understanding is that this is the "year in music" article for 1996 Week. When you read it that way, the author's focus on shitty rock'n'roll minutiae is inexplicable given how fantastic a year it was for rap & hip-hop.
posted by The Notorious SRD at 3:32 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Given the article title, "In 1996, alternative rock died a messy, forgettable death", I wasn't expecting to see a whole lotta hip-hop
posted by Bugbread at 3:44 PM on August 8, 2016 [4 favorites]

Commercial radio rock music has sucked for a long time. However, 1996 is a good time to cite as when the radio consolidation that started in 1992 with Congress loosening restrictions on companies owning many radio stations really kicked in, which led to the rise of Clear Channel and the like. The corporate overlords firing expensive DJs with personality and ircreasingly relying on computer generated playlists that were common across markets were a big reason commercial music got worse around then.

That said, there was a ton of good music coming out around then and the rise of the internet made finding and buying it easier.

It was a few years after 1996 that CD sales started to fall, and the industry blamed Napster, but I think a lot of that was the rise of the DVD.

That didn't really matter. At the point that the cost of music effectively became zero, competition from other media didn't really matter. Music sales were going to be gutted, no matter what.
posted by Candleman at 3:51 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

The peak of hip-hop rock was Sabotage. Clearly. Which came out in 1994 and was widely regarded as a comeback record for that old 80s group, the Beastie Boys. I throw that in there in case anyone wanted to feel really old.
posted by fshgrl at 4:00 PM on August 8, 2016 [3 favorites]

I throw that in there in case anyone wanted to feel really old.

Between that and the mention in the AV Club article that the Simpsons episode featuring Hullabalooza is over 20 years old, mission accomplished.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 4:09 PM on August 8, 2016 [5 favorites]

Reading AV Club writing makes me feel so old. I remember once liking that sneering posturing, but, ugh, now it seems so very late nineties. Thanks for the video links, tho!

In all honesty, this is a flimsily put together piece. Drop in mention of Squirrel Nut Zippers as a faddish take on gunge, then no mention of Andrew Bird today? Dave Matthews written off by association with the "cargo-shorts-clad crowd"? We get it, you can link to songs and videos on YouTube now, and that's a great structure. But, man, this whole thing could be summed up as some video links and "Electronic music was catching on in 1996."
posted by late afternoon dreaming hotel at 4:26 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

I loved 1996. Spacehog... Dishwalla... hell, I even liked the Black Crowes album. A lot. And holy shit, Meshell Ndegeocello's Peace Beyond Passion came out back then and I still listen to it to this day. I'm still stuck in 1996.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 5:31 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

A point (a strong one in my opinion) for '96 being "The End Year":
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282 open for Live on one leg of their tour and basically stop being a band anymore after the experience.
posted by Golem XIV at 5:57 PM on August 8, 2016

As I understand it hip hop sucks in 96, per DJ Shadow, breakout hip hop star of 1996.
posted by Artw at 6:03 PM on August 8, 2016

I like Shadow too, but I think the breakout hip-hop star of '96 was 'Reasonable Doubt' Jay-Z.
posted by box at 6:11 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

So 1996 is the year mallternative rock was born?
posted by morspin at 7:52 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Seems so
posted by morspin at 7:53 PM on August 8, 2016

Alvy Ampersand is correct. Spacehog's In the Meantime is fucking righteous. Summer of '96, I was 14, spent the summer at my friend's family cabin on Bear Lake (the Idaho side) and I must have played that song on my Walkman a thousand times.

And I still love it
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:35 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Also damn your eyes The Whelk

Orinoco Flow will forever be my purest mood
posted by Doleful Creature at 8:40 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

My 1996 seems to have had (amongst loads of iconic compilations and EPs) :

Dirty Three - Horse Stories
Autechre - Tri Repetae
FSOL - Dead Cities
Fugees - The Score
Fatboy Slim - Better Living Through Chemistry
Faithless - Reverence
Einstürzende Neubauten - Ende Neu
Eels - Beautiful Freak
Dr Octagon - Dr. Octagonecologyst
DMX Krew - Sound of the Street
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
Descendents - Everything Sucks
De La Soul - Stakes is High!
Current 93 - All The Pretty Horses
Coldcut - Journeys By DJ: 70 Minutes of Madness
Built to Spill - The Normal Years
Burzum - Filosofem
2Pac - All Eyez On Me
Underworld - Second Toughest In The Infants
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die...
Super Furry Animals - Fuzzy Logic
Sneaker Pimps - Becoming X
Sepultura - Roots
Photek - The Hidden Camera
The Paradise Motel - Still Life
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds - Murder Ballads
Mike & Rich - Expert Knob Twiddlers
Meat Beat Manifesto - Subliminal Sandwich
Juno Reactor - Beyond The Infinite
Jedi Knights - New School Science
Jamiroquai - Travelling Without Moving
Godflesh - Songs of Love and Hate
Ash - 1977

There's some crossover with lists given above, but by all that's holy, a year in which 'Murder Ballads', 'Ende Neu', 'Fuzzy Logic', 'The Score', 'Millions Now Living', 'Endtroducing' etc come out... That's not a bad year. You can argue with a load of the others, but still.
posted by prismatic7 at 11:14 PM on August 8, 2016 [2 favorites]

Actually Tri Repetae was 1995.

Sorry, sorry, don't know what came over me.

Murder Ballads would probably place pretty highly in any list of all time favorites of mine, so that's not bad there.
posted by Artw at 11:22 PM on August 8, 2016

The Expert Knob Twiddlers cover always makes me happy.
posted by Artw at 11:24 PM on August 8, 2016 [1 favorite]

Actually Tri Repetae was 1995.

You're right. In my defence, it came out in November 1995, and a lot of import stuff didn't hit Australia until a bit later. Still. Sodding great album (especially the 2-disc version...)
posted by prismatic7 at 1:17 AM on August 9, 2016

It was an excellent year. 1977 by Ash, Odelay by Beck, Expecting to Fly by the Bluetones, Homework by Daft Punk, Dandys Rule OK by the Dandy Warhols, Casanova by the Divine Comedy, Fountains of Wayne by Fountains of Wayne, The Score by the Fugees, Everything Must Go by the Manic Street Preachers, Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite by Maxwell, Emancipation by Prince, New Adventures in Hi-Fi by R.E.M., Spiders by Space, Spice by the Spice Girls, Coming Up by Suede, Change or Die by Sunscreem, She's the One by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Rushall Station by the Underground Lovers, and Hourly, Daily by You Am I were all great, and some of them are still considered classics. On the pop singles side, in the UK at least many consider it the best year of the decade for number ones, with breakthrough tracks by the Prodigy, the Chemical Brothers and of course the Spice Girls.
posted by rory at 2:41 AM on August 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

1996 also saw the release of Bob Mould's eponymous album (AKA "The hubcap album") which was a bit of a rejection of the whole alternative rock scene after burning out with Sugar. (c.f. track 2, "I Hate Alternative Rock")

The Egøverride EP is also worth hunting down, particularly for Eternally Fried.
posted by usonian at 7:52 AM on August 9, 2016 [1 favorite]

Funny little plate of shrimp: Waay back in 2006 I was excited when a work friend let me copy his Belle & Sebastian collection. (And it was still pretty cool at the time how easy and possible it was to do such a thing, but I digress.) Finally! A chance to give them a proper listen to see what the fuss was about!

Last night, one of those songs came up on shuffle and I realized, sadly, that after ten years of trying they were never going to be more than acceptable and inoffensive.

So, yeah, Team Dance Hall At Louse Point.
posted by whuppy at 8:10 AM on August 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Also, 1996 is best remembered as the lull between The Dirt of Luck and The Magic City.
posted by whuppy at 8:14 AM on August 9, 2016

1996 was also the year Brain Candy was released, and aside from being an eminently quotable movie, the soundtrack featured several who-whoses of indie rock at the time: Pavement, Guided By Voices, Yo La Tengo, Stereolab, Liz Phair, Matthew Sweet, TMBG, Cibbo Matto, Pizzicato Five and others. It was practically a Matador Records sampler.
posted by cottoncandybeard at 8:34 AM on August 9, 2016 [5 favorites]

1996 was also the year Brain Candy was released

I am of the opinion that Brian Candy is one of the best movies ever made. You don't notice it on first viewing, but by the 5th or 6th time through, you realize how truly brilliant it is.
posted by hippybear at 8:48 AM on August 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

I am coming around to Bongos theory and metafilter does not know what "rock" is
posted by fshgrl at 8:56 PM on August 9, 2016 [2 favorites]

Triple J's Hottest 100 for 1996 doesn't seem so bad. I just can't listen to commercial radio, it's always shit and it's always playing the shittiest of the shit. I mean yeah, there's some crap in JJJ's list but really, compare it to the top 50 charting songs in Australia in 1996 according to ARIA that were continuously played on all the commercial stations I refused to listen to at the time (and still do). Big difference, I think.
posted by h00py at 5:58 AM on August 10, 2016

From the best album polling:

#4 seed IF YOU'RE FEELING SINISTER defeats #125 seed DANCE HALL AT LOUSE POINT, 94 to 22. Belle & Sebastian's first entry moves to Round 2.

Round 1 - Match #2
#47 They Might Be Giants, FACTORY SHOWROOM
vs
#82 Luscious Jackson, FEVER IN FEVER OUT

Best Album of 1996 - R1 Match #3
#31 Ween, 12 GOLDEN COUNTRY HITS
vs
#98 Aaliyah, ONE IN A MILLION
posted by Artw at 7:09 AM on August 10, 2016

1996 box and 2016 box agree: Luscious Jackson and Aaliyah, or else piss up a rope.
posted by box at 10:51 AM on August 10, 2016 [2 favorites]

I thought O'Neal made some good points and I've really liked some of his previous writing, but man did he go for some peculiar phrasing in this thing:

But as much fun as it would be to lasso the corpse to Ed Kowalczyk’s dumb ponytail braid, the truth is it was making its guttural death rattle for many months before Live’s album of melodramatic, faux-introspective anthems for the arena of one’s own ass.

Wow. That's an exhausting paragraph.

How is it that, in an article about music from 1996, the only time hip-hop gets mentioned is with respect to rock bands like RATM and Korn?

In discussions about the death of rock music hip-hop fans sometimes remind me of the guy in the Monty Python sketch about spam. "I don't know what you're complaining about! I love this place! All the spam you can eat!" Well, enjoy your spam then, but some of us just don't like bleedin' spam.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 5:03 PM on August 10, 2016 [1 favorite]

The best people!
posted by Yowser at 9:37 PM on August 10, 2016

I like some Belle and Sebastien, but I find it difficult to call them rock. Also, yeah, alt rock was dying and 96 was a dim year for that genre but I though Hole's Celebrity Skin, a couple years later, was a respectable album. Although maybe symbolizing the death of grunge as it was more produced and radio friendly.

But I don't weep too much for the death of grunge/alt rock because some of it was pretty annoying. Pearl Jam was just annoying, despite Vedder being a good guy. And the knockoffs were horrible. My favorite review from Roctober zine of Hayden, a Nirvana knock off: "Hayded it".
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 10:13 PM on August 10, 2016

Against all odds, I have both Aaliyah and Luscious Jackson on my ipod classic. I have no idea where either came from yet I listen to both semi-regularly. That is the path that Odelay, Endtroducing, AEnima, Disco Volante and OK Computer steered me onto.

Winner, 2016!
(of the 5, I still have End & OK - the rest are simmering somewhere under the surface)
posted by mannequito at 2:05 AM on August 11, 2016

box, I see what you did there.
posted by whuppy at 6:38 AM on August 11, 2016 [1 favorite]