i'd like to really disagree with you and steven wilson here. i believe a quote about the majority of great music being already written only works in the context of rock! and even then it's debatable. to give you an example. you believe 90s to be the time when creativity started dying out due to nostalgia or and being damaged by the corporate machine because you really dislike sound of contemporary pop and rock at the time but let's look at bigger picture. we had golden age of hip-hop as well as renaissance of electronic music both edm and idm. thnaks to them trip-hop was born and we have masive attack and portishead. contemporary r&b was in full swing and soul was reborn in the form of neo soul by the incredible erykah badu, d'angelo and lauryn hill. post rock was became genre thanks to tortoise and slint. shoegaze was an interesting thing that happened you have to admit that my bloody valentine is tour de force. the band earth was vert important for the development of drone music and basically created the first drone metal album ever. and death and what they were doing with death metal. then of course, there were separate experimental artists who were screwing around with many genres that deserve a shout out like bjork, beck, stereolab and your favorite radiohead. and it's just music i can remember i know there's more! i understand how from the perspective of a rock fan that decade can come across as frustrating and beginning of the end but i believe it deserves to be given another chance. i just can't serious say that music will never be as great as it used to be when so many great things happened and continue happening no matter how evil capitalism gets. though album covers are ugly
Oh I'm mostly whiny about 90s pop-rock and soft rock production and what's happened to my faves in that decade lol. My poor Phil Collins was shredded to pieces. Metal was mostly dead and I still believe it's the start of rock being pushed out of mainstream, so it's like the slow death of mainstream rock music. Also, I'm sad about the loss of clarity in production and mixing and music getting louder bc that ushered in the loudness war, which is why I think the early 2000s is one of the worst sounding decade in music. Also, CD era motivated artists to put more songs on the albums (and my faves who were getting older which also meant they pointlessly wrote longer songs...) and the soft rock artists had these washed out production sound, glossy and chimey and I don't like that sound. I don't know, Vangelis rip off sound or how should I call it. So a big part of my "dislike" is more technical in this case.
Also, I'm actually agree with you objectively, which is why I think I wrote somewhere - but if I'm not, I'm adding it here - that I'm still overwhelmingly a rock fan so hip-hop being popular is just not that big news for me. I just find it kind of boring, bc I don't like either talking or close to talking stuff or too much lyrics focus without melody. But I think the rock sound specifically was exhausted by that point so I - unlike maybe some other metalheads - don't believe it was necessiarily a bad thing, that hip hop took over. (At least anymore shh. 🤫 I grew out of it lol.) Something else had to take rock's place and lot of people love it, so good for them. My brother, for example, looooves it, and loves to bully me with it. 😅
But yeah, I think metal or rock overwhelmingly (!) never really recovered from it. (The only ones that I love are Death, Opeth, Tool, Steven Wilson and Thy Catafalque. Tho there were some other that I listened to 10 years ago). I never liked nu metal - I just don't like how it sounds - and these djent, math metal and very technical metal makes me bored. Emo, I never cared for tbh. And most band under the prog rock label now - which is after, something of a favourite of mine - is mostly "retro" rock for me, trying to repeat 70s cliches which destroys the whole point of being "progressive" for me.
Shoegaze was never my favourite, maybe I will try later...
And yeah it's good that you bring up trip-hop and Portishead bc that's something that I'm actually trying to get into! I love the PJ Harvey album that uses some trip-hop elements. Radiohead is also a great example bc it's a pretty recent favourite of mine - for yeaaars I could not get into them. So I'm getting interested in the 90s overall - but it's pretty recent and slowgoing. One day I will try Björk and other electronics stuff but I'm not ready yet haha. Let's not forget that I spent my teens as a metalhead who most of the time even hated synthesizers! I'm slowly changing and adopting but I can't love everything all at once. 😅 But I already showed some interest towards jazz fusion so you know, who knows, one day maybe I will love hip-hop too! But the best thing I can do currently is that I loved Hamilton ghdhdh
Despite my bitchy style, I also believe good art is always being made - but one really has to work for it to find it now. And ofc every time I leave my house I will be forced to tolerate the "mainstream" music and that doesn't cheer me up lot of times, let's just say that. 😭 So ofc I will always have focus on what is mainstream music like when they badgering me with it... (Also, I think it's more like music lost great variations/polar opposites in "mainstream" but maybe that's coming back - who knows!)
God the album covers were ugly. I think the ugly computer generated album covers then - and some trainhopping into AI stuff now and some months ago - really can show how trying to incorporate new technologies into art unthinkingly can be a mistake. Tho AI is more dangerous and there is a bigger pushback overall - but until we don't have proper regulations I'm not calm!
PS.: I'm pretty sure that Steven quote is not as bad as it may come off in the context of the interviews. I think he actually warmed up to a lot of music he maybe didn't like before - especially since he had kids. Listen to a loooot of music. He is one of the most open minded rock artist that I know of. The other say much worse things lol.
