Many things happened in the year 1995, as they do every year. O.J. Simpson was acquitted for the murders of his wife Nicole Brown and her alleged lover Ronald Goldman. Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabi was assassinated at a Tel Aviv peace rally after his controversial negotiations with the Palestine Liberation Organisation. Toy Story became the first completely computer-animated feature film. The internet is in its infancy and DVDs are invented, marking the increased digitalisation of our society.
In the world of popular music, the mid 90s is something of a turning point. It was the year following the death of Kurt Cobain and the alternative rock world was still reeling from the aftershock. The Wu Tang Clan continued to build on their brand with a number of ‘solo’ releases and techno and electronica started to take its first tentative steps into the mainstream with Chemical Brothers, Moby, and Bjork. Trip-hop would prove to be the highly influential genre that no one saw coming and there was also the little matter of Britpop. For better or worse, 1995 was a year when the idea of a mass culture in pop music was beginning to change, splintering off into so many different genres and sub-genres those not in the know would be at a loss for where to even begin.
Following the death of Kurt Cobain in April the previous year, alternative rock was stuck in a miasma that appeared to affect every promising band in the mid-90s. While Pearl Jam and R.E.M backed away from mainstream exposure with ’94’s Vitalogy and Monster, respectively, and Pavement stubbornly refused to build on the relative success of last year’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain with the disjointed Wowee Zowee, many bands, like Silverchair and Bush, seemed content to ride on the coattails of Nirvana’s success.
Of the few acts that were making any substantial mainstream waves in ’95, the Foo Fighters self-titled debut announced Dave Grohl’s career post-Nirvana with spirited intent but still sounded to some critics like something of an identity crisis for the former drummer. True, ‘I’ll Stick Around’ and ‘Alone + Easy Target’ to this day give familiar echoes of the loud-quiet-loud dynamic that Nirvana took from the Pixies but for an album that wasn’t even mean to be a serious release on Grohl’s part (more a time wasting piece of studio tinkering - he played all the instruments) it has held up surprisingly well.
“Punk confrontation was largely gone from the indie world; in its place was a suffocating insularity… a distinct sense of tactical retreat.”
Michael Azerrad, ‘Our Band Could Be Your Life’
Meanwhile, Green Day and Smashing Pumpkins continued to make their presence felt with Insomniac and Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, respectively. While both bands have always left me a bit cold if I spend any amount of time looking beyond their singles, I can appreciate the determination of the former and the ambition of latter. Insomniac doesn’t expand much on Green Day’s pop/punk sound from their previous efforts - still, for the most part, the same 4-chord Stiff Little Fingers style riffing and Billy Armstrong’s lyrical themes of loserdom - but there is a commitment to honing their songwriting (especially on the great double-header ‘Brain Stew/Jaded’) even if it does come at the expense of the humour in ‘Basket Case’ or ‘When I Come Around’.
The Pumpkins, meanwhile - then just slowly starting to ease out from under the notorious dictatorship of Billy Corgan - aimed for nothing less than rock immortality, which they achieved (sort of) with their double album. The band’s magnum opus for sure but, that being said, I’ve only ever really listened to singles ‘Tonight, Tonight’ and ‘1979’ more than once and I still prefer the wistful dream-pop of ‘93’s Siamese Dream to the piles of attention-wandering riffing on offer in Mellon Collie's two-hour plus runtime.
But if there’s someone who epitomised the chasm between alternative rock’s underground roots and its ‘sellout’ future, it was Canadian refugee and singer/songwriter Alanis Morissette, whose (American) debut Jagged Little Pill became a global sensation when it was released in June. Picking up where Hole’s Live Though This left off, it was angry-girl rock brought to the masses in its most palatable form yet (though Meredith Brooks was just around the corner). Indeed, all anyone could seem to talk about was how angry Morissette was, due largely to the album’s first single ‘You Oughta Know,’ the notorious kiss-off to an ex-boyfriend that pricked the ears of alternative types and mainstream music-buyers alike.
Not everyone was impressed though. For starters Morissette had already released two albums in her native Canada - teen dance-pop records Debbie Gibson wouldn’t have been ashamed to call her own - and the accusation of being nothing more than a producer’s puppet for one Glen Ballard, who had previously worked with Michael Jackson and Paula Abdul. As far as the college rock crowd were concerned this was already two strikes against her credibility. A Rolling Stone cover at the time bore the vaguely contemptuous headline ‘Angry White Female’ in a piece the magazine itself recently described as “resting their praise on a bed of scepticism and condescension.” Apparently so, as Spin described Morissette’s rise thusly: “… this is a great symbolic victory or… uninspiring proof that mainstream pop now includes manufactured alternative divas with suitable qualities of manufactured anger and profanity.”
By all means Alanis Morissette was ‘pop’ in the sense that she took alternative rock and gave it a more mainstream sheen but the idea of her credibility being called into question is - as it frankly always has been - a dubious one. After all, is Morissette’s evolution from dance-pop to something more introspective and confessional any different from what the millions of the teenage girls who bought Jagged experienced? And while anger defined songs like ‘Right Through You’ and ‘Forgiven,’ the more diverse lyrical themes of ‘You Learn,’ ‘Hand in My Pocket,’ and ‘Ironic’ communicate a universal angst so common that, 28 years later, it still resonates no less now than it did upon its release.
“The key measure of the indie rock movement is not so much the talent it has thrown up as the unprecedented contribution it has made to the bewildering splintering of popular music”
David Hepworth, ‘Nothing is Real’
If the jury was out on Alanis Morissette in ’95, the critics couldn’t climb over each other fast enough to heap praise on Dorset born singer/songwriter Polly Jean Harvey’s first proper solo record (after the break up of the PJ Harvey trio) To Bring You My Love. Harvey had already been a darling with the indie rock crowd with her band’s previous two outings Dry and Rid of Me but TBYML truly set her apart. More theatrical in presentation - the album cover depicts Harvey in a red satin dress, drowning amongst the lily pads; an image recreated in the video for ‘Down by the Water’ - but no less lyrically or musically intense for the personas she adopts throughout it. Whether it be the woman telling ‘Billy’ its time “you met your only son” in ‘C’mon Billy,’ the role-reversal ‘cock-rock’ stomp of ‘Long Snake Moan,’ or the infanticide themed ‘Down by the Water,’ Harvey inhabits each song with total conviction, finding an emotional truth at the heart that resonates beyond its theatrics.
PJ Harvey didn’t much like being compared to other female artists at the start of her career but the 90s makes that particular landmine difficult to avoid. From Bikini Kill and Babes in Toyland, to Hole and L7; from the Breeders and Liz Phair to Elastica and Sleeper, alternative/indie rock in the early-to-mid 90s, if it achieved nothing else, gave us the greatest proliferation of women in rock that has ever been seen. Riot Grrrl really started off as a manifesto created by a group of feminist college students in Olympia, Washington - including Bikini Kill front woman Kathleen Hanna - and soon became an entire DIY subculture that included music, zines, art project and political activism.
Soon, as with many underground movements that have something unique about them, it wasn’t long before the mainstream took notice and wanted a piece of the action. Once it did, the fact that many of the women in the various aforementioned bands had little do with each other, and decreed the “press myth” hyping up a “movement,” didn’t stop the endless comparisons; especially baffling since the various sounds and genres of each act varied wildly. With TBYML, PJ Harvey, beyond any doubt, distinguished herself from any other artist - male or female.
But if the US was determined to ghettoise female artists in rock, in the UK they were practically ignored altogether. Because in the UK, the domination of that mid-90s relic Britpop was in full swing. Blur arrived in America the day after Nirvana released Nevermind in ’91 and British bands were considered a novelty if not completely irrelevant as legions of plaid shirt, torn jeans long-hairs swamped the music scene. Tired of the US invasion, Blur released Parklife in ’94, whose title hit was a wry look at the mundanity of British life. Even the celebrity cameo in its video was Quadrophenia’s Phil Daniels, whose sleazy salesman described a suburban milieu that would have been utterly unfathomable to the average US listener. The playful, knowing wink of UK pop music - something that had been roundly missing for the best part of a decade - was thereafter wholly embraced by a deluge of bands whose stars the music press gleefully lapped up, slapping their images across covers and spreads to hammer the point home: British rock is where it’s at.
If Blur’s cheerful pop was a reaction to the prevalent American nihilism of the grunge scene, then a group of Northern scallywags were determined to offer up a real rock n’ roll alternative. Definitely Maybe brought Oasis immediate icon status in the UK music scene and Liam and Noel Gallagher wasted no time in declaring themselves the greatest thing to happen to popular music since the Beatles - no real surprise considering how much of their stuff was owed to the Beatles. The minute it was announced that the Manc lads were releasing their single ‘Roll With It’ on the same day as Blur’s ‘Country House,’ the press wasted no time in setting up a north vs south, working class vs middle class rivalry between the two bands.
Looking back, it’s hilarious just how seriously the Gallagher brothers in particular took the whole fiasco. Crazier still is how, beyond even the music press, the nation’s tabloids and television news managed to get in on the action. The war-of-words between both bands reached truly childish levels and the one-upmanship of who could be the most hard-drinking, partying, shagging group of idiots - in a cheap effort to appeal to the prevailing ‘lad culture’ of the time - leaves a bad taste in the mouth even now. Coupled with the fact that neither ‘Country House’ nor ‘Roll With It’ was either band’s best song, it becomes clear just how much of a press phenomenon rather than a music one Britpop was.
“… L7 are women, a rare thing among rock musicians, and feminists, a rarer thing. Both categories make them special whether they like it or not.”
Robert Christgau, ‘Grown Up All Wrong’
Britpop would effectively end in ’97 once New Labour had milked Noel Gallagher’s endorsement for all it was worth, Oasis released their bloated third album Be Here Now, and many of the scenes leading lights had effectively disbanded in ’98-’99. Blur won the chart battle but Oasis, ultimately, won the war, going on to greater commercial success on both sides of the pond. For those who were alienated by ‘lad culture’ and the ratings war between boys with guitars, there was the emerging electronica movement, spearheaded by the likes of Prodigy and Moby, whose Everything is Wrong, released this year, outlined his values as both a Christian and a vegan and his greater concern for a world increasingly not at peace with itself: the album’s liner notes included ‘essays’ that spoke about his views on animal rights and environmentalism. While ’95 also saw the Chemical Brothers tearing up the rule book with their debut Exit Planet Dust, and Goldie mixed up breakbeats, Jungle and Drum and Bass for his debut Timeless, it was Bjork’s sophomore effort Post that really grabbed critics attention.
Bjork’s Debut, released in ’93, had brought her a ton of critical acclaim, and everyone from film composer David Arnold to Madonna clamouring to work with her. While I think Debut has some undeniable moments - ‘Human Behaviour’ and ‘Big Time Sensuality’ chief among them - and I pretty much stopped listening to Bjork after 2001’s Vespertine, finding her just too experimental, Post is perfect. Its cuts blending techno, trance, and trip-hop beats with everything from jazz (‘I Miss You’) and big band music (‘It’s Oh So Quiet’) to industrial (‘Army of Me’), it is a kaleidoscopic panorama that somehow manages to take the most cutting-edge innovations in techno at the time and make it accessible to a pop audience.
Along with Tricky’s Maxinquaye - also released this year - Post helped push the British music scene out of its post-Britpop mire and influenced indie bands like Radiohead, Spiritualised, and even Blur to experiment with electronic sounds in their work. Tricky, who had once briefly been apart of an early incarnation of Massive Attack (then known as The Wild Bunch), continued to blaze his own unique path with Maxinquaye, a haunting, laid-back but entirely individualistic take on trip-hop (through he hated the term) that, through the voice of his muse and friend Martina Topley-Bird, created a groundbreaking piece of work that communicated Tricky’s own experiences with drugs and dysfunctional relationships. Like Massive Attack, it was a particularly British take on rap music that voiced the oppressed, bleak outlook of a society that Tricky felt was very much in decline.
“As radio fragmented and rock was pushed into its own morose silo… and indie rock was given its own playground in which to polish its illusions, the mainstream became largely about dancing.”
David Hepworth, ‘Uncommon People’
US hip-hop, by contrast, was going through one of its most volatile stages during the early-to-mid 90s. Gangsta rap may have lost much of its sociopolitical edge after the controversies surrounding N.W.A. and Ice T’s metal/rap hybrid Body Count and their infamous song ‘Cop Killer,’ but its brazen attitude and exploitative depictions of life in the ‘hood lived on in 2Pac, and Notorious B.I.G. While 2Pac was, arguably, taking his persecution (and messiah) complex a little too seriously with Me Against the World, it was, strangely enough, the more mainstream likes of Coolio - a former crack addict and jailbird - who offered up a more realistic, measured portrayal of “that motherfucker” (as he called the ghetto) in Gangstas Paradise. Often written off as a one-hit wonder, Coolio’s Paradise holds up surprisingly well after all these years. Its account of street life as a Kafka-esque nightmare where neither cops, gangstas, or drug addicts can win has aged better than 2Pac’s frankly overrated testament to being a born-to-die soldier of the streets.
Meanwhile, the ‘solo’ projects of the Wu Tang Clan were one of the few offerings of anything new or innovative happening in hip-hop this year. Raekwon’s over-the-top mafioso fantasy Only Built 4 Cuban Linx, GZA’s dark and downbeat Liquid Swords (which flirted with trip-hop), and Ol’ Dirty Bastard’s Return to the 36 Chambers were released to pretty much universal acclaim. While ODB enjoyed the most commercial success, Raekwon and GZA’s albums - along with Ghostface Killah’s ’96 release Ironman - helped achieve a critical success that established Wu Tang as not just a decent rap outfit but an all-conquering creative force that made an indelible impact on US urban music and the mainstream pop world…
1995 was the year of Mariah Carey. Queen of Pop Madonna was trying to kick-start her career again following the backlash to her Sex book with the ballad collection Something to Remember; King of Pop Michael Jackson’s HIStory album was a stylistic misstep and greater commercial flop than initial sales suggested; and her true rival Whitney Houston was otherwise engaged with acting. The scene was set, then, for her domination. She had been a highly successful, though critically derided, adult contemporary singer - an aesthetic more to do with her then husband and president of Colombia Records Tommy Mottola - but was desperate to lean toward the hip-hop flavoured R&B she loved. After the single ‘Dreamlover’ hinted at the direction she was heading, Daydream brought it to fruition.
However, it was the single ‘Fantasy’ and, specifically, its remix featuring one Ol’ Dirty Bastard that really put her over the top. Before this hook-up, the idea of hardcore rappers guesting on mainstream pop songs was too ridiculous to entertain but, at Carey’s insistence (being a huge fan of Wu Tang’s work), she pressured her record company into letting ODB guest on the remix while still releasing it in its traditional pop format. After the success of this song, pop music would never be the same again. Acts like TLC, Boyz II Men and Brandy had enjoyed some crossover success but after ‘Fantasy’ everyone from Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, to Backstreet Boys and NSYNC would be hijacking the sound and style of hip-hop and R&B music to flavour their songs.
Carey had, somewhat unwittingly, set the blueprint for the next decade of pop music, which would be dominated by pop princesses and boy bands, both stateside with the aforementioned Ms Spears and co., and in the UK with the multi-media invasion of the Spice Girls. The drive-by homicides of both Notorious B.I.G. and 2Pac prefaced a ‘cooling off’ period where pop-rap acts like Will Smith and the ‘Bling Era’ of hip-hop - with its focus on material success rather than street-level violence - ruled the charts. The aimlessness of alternative rock and its shrinking back from the mainstream made room for rap and metal to join forces and create Nu-metal, a much maligned genre that ran with grunge’s nihilism but had none of its wit or self-awareness.
It was 1995, and, for better or worse, it gave the popular music world a veritable smorgasbord of influential genres that would imprint on the next two decades.