My mom says she loves my music taste. I’ve always sent music to my mom, and it has been a big deal for me. It’s always been something we’ve bonded upon and is a huge part of our relationship. Sending her music from the current era, while she will occasionally send something from her own high school times, is a connection of the decades. But something I’ve been noticing more and more is the amount of music sent from her, will be something I’ve already been listening to. Something that’s recently had a massive come-up.
Bands like the Cocteau Twins, The Cure and The Smiths have now returned to the spotlight, due to numerous TikTok trends.
TikTok can mobilize followers to listen to artists kicked under the bed. Their sound feature allows you to add audio to a short video or photo gallery, allowing for creativity and expression. Ironically, TikTok pushes out older music in the algorithm than newer artists. For example, trends such as the song “Sea Swallow Me,” by the Cocteau Twins featuring Harold Budd, being mixed with a clip from the movie “Moonrise Kingdom,” created by Wes Anderson. This brings the two decades together using a social media platform popularized during quarantine.
Formally broken-up bands from the 90s have also seen a comeback. From British rock icons Oasis, American summertime classic Sublime and shoegaze legends Slowdive. Groups that followers thought were lost to issues within have suddenly become one again. It has almost felt like a trend the past couple of years.
Within another music subculture, hip-hop and rap, songs from the 90’s have started to get sampled, meaning either the vocals are getting chopped up and spliced, creating a whole new instrumental. “Take Me For a Little While,” made by Royal Jesters, was sampled by Kanye West in the 2018 hit “Ghost Town,” “Like That” by Metro Boomin, Future, and Kendrick Lamar, samples “Eazy-Duz-It” by Eazy-E, and “Hyaena” by Travis Scott sampled “Maggot Brain” by Funkadelic. 90’s hip-hop samples are everywhere in today’s music, as it may have been the most influential era in music. Current stars are raised on this type of music, which circles back to the question: Are the 90’s back?
Fashion right now is something that has been seen before. The counterculture of jeans 10 sizes too big or the shirts with graphics your grandma would make a fuss about at Thanksgiving Dinner: the designs are sometimes vulgar, it’s straight out of 1996. The counterculture era is back, with the baggy jean epidemic being something even I take part in, corporate America hoping on trends mass producing “fake” vintage of shirts from the 90s, band tees in particular, and skulls being popularized again on clothing with the look completed by shoes that are chunky to have the jeans lay nicely on them.
Personally, I am a huge fan of this trend. I collect vintage tees, rock baggy jeans and find the coolest shoes I can. I love the idea of wearing something worn by someone 30+ years ago, and I think many others would agree. It’s almost like wearing a piece of history and something influential to someone many years ago.
Another place you can see the 90s style is brands bringing back a 90s collection or something that they created back then and making a copy of the piece. It’s a corporate attempt to appeal to this trend of 90s style being the present.
Going into past decades and taking parts of it for the current is something that isn’t rare. It happened in the 90s with the 70s, and in the 2000s with the 80s. It seems almost a 20-year buffer period for every decade. Maybe in 2040, teens will be copying our style, which is just a copy of the 90s.
