The Affair

11 Apr 2013

The 90s Jukebox

Ant & Dec are on the UK charts for the first time in decades, and actually, I must say, it’s a weird experience for me to watch, because Let’s Get Ready to Rhumble is a song I know very well, but have never seen performed.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjXZmtg7GwI?rel=0&w=560&h=315]

For teenagers in 90s America, dance pop music pretty much was non-existent. There was grunge, there was country, and there was gangsta rap, and the occasional Madonna album, and that was that.

Like most of my peers, I jumped into grunge-land, although I can’t say my heart wasn’t fully into it.

Then, like an oasis in the desert, I discovered that dance pop music was apparently thriving in Europe, particularly in the UK.

This was just around the time that the internet was beginning to catch on and download speeds were significantly slower than they are now, and I felt lucky to just hear music that wasn’t grunge.

Things are different now and courtesy of the march of technology, I’ve been able to finally see some of the music videos and live performances of songs that I used to secretly sing to myself while pretending to hum along to Soundgarden:

911 – Love Sensation

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rttwVPfWGX0?rel=0&w=420&h=315]

Take That managed to break through the US charts (albeit only one time) with Back for Good, so it was with much surprise that I found out that their back catalogue was much more upbeat such as Everything Changes

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzHIxigdlgQ?rel=0&w=420&h=315]

Closing this out, I have to include the enigmatically named Kavana.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G44q3la628?rel=0&w=420&h=315]

Strange how despite the same language and many shared aspects, what was considered popular music in the US and what the UK considered popular differed so wildly during the 90s. Mind you, there’s a trope for this.