“
I get sentimental over the music of the ’90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I’m concerned the ’90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
“
One of Renee's friends asked her, "Does your boyfriend wear glasses?" She said, "No, he wears a Walkman.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
“
I have a good friend in the East, who comes to my shows and says, you sing a lot about the past, you can't live in the past, you know. I say to him, I can go outside and pick up a rock that's older than the oldest song you know,
and bring it back in here and drop it on your foot. Now the past didn't go anywhere, did it? It's right here, right now.
I always thought that anybody who told me I couldn't live in the past was trying to get me to forget something that if I remembered it it would get them serious trouble. No, that 50s, 60s, 70s, 90s stuff, that whole idea of decade packaging, things don't happen that way. The Vietnam War heated up in 1965 and ended in 1975-- what's that got to do with decades? No, that packaging of time is a journalist convenience that they use to trivialize and to dismiss important events and important ideas. I defy that.
”
”
Utah Phillips
“
I get sentimental over the music of the '90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I'm concerned, the '90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps. Every note from those years is charged with life for me now. For instance, I hated Pearl Jam at the time. I thought they were pompous blowhards. Now, whenever a Pearl Jam song comes on the car radio, I find myself pounding my fist on the dashboard, screaming "Pearl JAM! Pearl JAM! Now this is rock and roll!
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
“
There is no true, clean, definitive way to separate the art from the artist. Art fully separated from the artist ceases, in a fundamental way, to be art at all. The artist gives the art meaning.
”
”
Rob Harvilla (60 Songs That Explain the '90s)
“
I wrote about everything I didn’t write on The Fame. While traveling the world for two years, I’ve encountered several monsters, each represented by a different song on the new record: my ‘Fear of Sex Monster,’ my ‘Fear of Alcohol Monster,’ my ‘Fear of Love Monster,’ my ‘Fear of Death Monster,’ my ‘Fear of Loneliness Monster,’ etc. I spent a lot of nights in Eastern Europe, and this album is a pop experimentation with industrial/Goth beats, 90’s dance melodies, an obsession with the lyrical genius of 80’s melancholic pop, and the runway. I wrote while watching muted fashion shows and I am compelled to say my music was scored for them.
”
”
Lady Gaga (Lady Gaga - The Fame Monster Piano, Vocal and Guitar Chords)
“
[H]e asked Renee, “What does rock and roll have today that it didn’t have in the sixties?” Renee said, “Tits,” which in retrospect strikes me as not a bad one-word off-the-dome answer at all. The nineties fad for indie rock overlapped precisely with the nineties fad for feminism. The idea of a pop culture that was pro-girl, or even just not anti-girl -- that was a 1990s mainstream dream, rather than a 1980s or 2000s one, and it was real for a while. Music was not just part of it but leading the way -- hard to believe, hard even to remember. But some of us do.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love Is a Mix Tape: Life and Loss, One Song at a Time)
“
Did you ever notice that new music, now, is nowhere near as great as the music you loved as a teenager? And you know what? You’re right. Whether you were a teenager in the 60s, the 90s, or the 2010s, you’re right. The music you loved as a teenager is the sweetest music you’ll ever hear; that music will be, in all likelihood, the greatest, wildest, purest love affair of your whole life.
”
”
Rob Harvilla (60 Songs That Explain the '90s)
“
Was it as scary for you as it is for me? Falling for Sawyer?”
“Not really, no.” She shakes her head. “I’m sure I had some of the same worries, everyone does. But I’m a leaper. You’re a thinker. We process things differently.”
“You didn’t have a panic attack and run away?” I ask sarcastically.
“No,” she muses. “Not even that time he refused to have sex with me.”
“That was your first date, Everly. And you did have sex,” I remind her. I know, because I heard about it for a week.
“Whew.” She blows out a breath. “It was a tough few hours though. How is Boyd’s POD by the way? Can we talk about that?” She leans forward on the couch, looking at me expectantly.
“Um, no. I don’t think so.”
She shrugs good-naturedly then changes the subject back to me. “Chloe, why didn’t you tell me you were struggling with your anxiety? You know I’m never too busy for you, no matter how many husbands or children I have.”
“You have one husband, babe,” Sawyer says, walking into the room at that moment.
“You’re still the one, baby.”
“We’ve been married for three months, Everly. I sure as hell better still be the one.”
“Sawyer,” she sighs. “I was trying to have a moment, okay? Work with me.”
“Next time, try waiting more than a day after downloading Shania Twain’s greatest hits to your iPod. You do realize the receipts come to my email, don’t you?”
“Um.” Everly looks away and scrunches her nose. “No?”
“You’ve been on quite the 90’s love ballads kick this week. Which is weird, because you’re not old enough to have owned the CD’s those songs were originally released on.” He looks at her with amused interest.
“What’s a CD?” She blinks at Sawyer dramatically.
“Cute. Keep it up.”
“Nineties music is all the rage with the millennials,” she tells him with a shrug. “I saw a blog post about it.”
“Don’t worry, sweets. We’ll beat the odds together.” He winks and she scowls. “You’re still the only one I dream of,” he calls as he walks into the kitchen and grabs a bottle of water.
“See! I don’t even care that you lifted that from a song. It still gave me all the feels!
”
”
Jana Aston (Trust (Cafe, #3))
“
1. Close Friend, someone who got yo back, yo "main nigga."
2. Rooted in blackness and the Black experience. From a middle-aged social worker: "That Brotha ain like dem ol e-lights, he real, he a shonuff nigga"
3. Generic, neutral refrence to African Americans. From a 30 something college educated Sista: "The party was live, it was wall to wall niggaz there"
4. A sista's man/lover/partner. from the beauty shop. "Guess we ain gon be seein too much of girlfriend no mo since she got herself a new nigga" From Hip Hop artist Foxy brown, "Ain no nigga like the on I got."
5. Rebellious, fearless unconventional, in-yo-face Black man. From former NBA superstar Charles Barkley, "Nineties niggas... The DailyNews, The Inquirer has been on my back... They want their Black Athletes to be Uncle Tom. I told you white boys you've never heard of a 90s nigga. We do what we want to do" quoted in The Source, December 1992).
6. Vulgar, disrespectful Black Person, antisocial, conforming to negative sterotype of African Americans. From former Hip Hop group Arrested Development, in their best-selling song, "People Everyday" 1992: A black man actin like a nigga... got stomped by an African"
7. A cool, down person, rooted in Hip Hop and black culture, regardless of race, used today by non-blacks to refer to other non-Blacks.
8. Anyone engaged in inappropriate, negative behavior; in this sense, Blacks may even apply the term to White folk. According to African American scholar Clarence Major's From Juba to Jive, Queen Latifah was quoted in Newsweek as criticizing the US government with these words. "Those niggers don't know what the fuck they doing
”
”
H. Samy Alim
“
I get sentimental over the music of the ’90s. Deplorable, really. But I love it all. As far as I’m concerned, the ’90s was the best era for music ever, even the stuff that I loathed at the time, even the stuff that gave me stomach cramps. Every note from those years is charged with life for me now. For instance, I hated Pearl Jam at the time. I thought they were pompous blowhards. Now, whenever a Pearl Jam song comes on the car radio, I find myself pounding my fist on the dashboard, screaming, “Pearl JAM! Pearl JAM! Now this is rock and roll! Jeremy’s SPO-ken! But he’s still al-LIIIIIIVE!” I don’t recall making the decision to love Pearl Jam. Hating them was a lot more fun.
”
”
Rob Sheffield (Love is a Mix Tape)
“
Okay, I have unfrozen the humans and adjusted their memories.'
Beezlebub pouted. 'Buzzkill--I was just giving the people what they wanted.'
Thor's look-a-like rolled his eyes. 'I do not believe singing along to a '90s rap song should have been construed as an invitation to turn them to ice.
”
”
Ashlee Nicole Bye (Out of the Shadows (Shadowlands #1))
“
You know that one Jessica Simpson song?” “Don’t you dare bring 90’s pop into this,” I demanded. Again, I was absolutely not smiling. “Am I irresistible to you, Sanchez?
”
”
Kyra Parsi (A Deal with the Bossy Devil (Bad Billionaire Bosses, #1))
“
[Brynn] Arens met Rick Nielsen when Flipp played the Minneapolis club First Avenue in the mid-90's. "Rick got up - when he was not in the best of shape, he was drinking a lot - and jammed with us," Arens says. "We did our version of 'Let It Be,' and when we got done, he came back to our dressing room and said, 'What song did we play together?'"
"Well," Arens told him, "we were playing 'Let It Be,' but I think you might have been playing 'Get Back.
”
”
Doug Brod (They Just Seem a Little Weird: How KISS, Cheap Trick, Aerosmith, and Starz Remade Rock and Roll)
“
Laidback Luke mentioned that he had his own record label, Mixmash Records, and if Tim continued to evolve at this pace, it was not impossible that he would one day release a song by Avici. Now attention was coming from England as well. The DJ and radio host Pete Tong had played the hottest house music on his BBC radio show since the early 90s and in April 2008 he announced a competition for young producers. Tim sent his song ‘Manman’, which to his great surprise was voted the winner by the listeners.
”
”
Måns Mosesson (Tim – The Official Biography of Avicii: the subject of new Netflix documentary 'Avicii – I’m Tim')
“
Personally, I will never understand the critical association between “serious” music and “quality” music. In the ‘90s, however, one thing was spectacularly clear—if you played good-time, fun, party-songs, you were a joke; if you sang about hard times and depressing topics, you were legitimate.
”
”
Christopher P. Hilton (The Rise, Fall and Rebirth of Hair Metal)
“
She hung with hoodlums. So-called ‘rappers’ who really only write barely coherent poems about violence and debauchery.”… Hypocrite hovered over my tongue. Poems about violence and debauchery? Like he didn’t grow up in the ‘80s and ‘90s singing along to rhythmic revolutionaries, proud gangsters, and player presidents. Those songs only told what people were really going through. They were journalism, not instructions.
”
”
Lamar Giles (Spin)
“
Rolling Stone named “MMMBop” the sixth-worst song of the ’90s.
”
”
Gael Fashingbauer Cooper (The Totally Sweet 90s: From Clear Cola to Furby, and Grunge to "Whatever", the Toys, Tastes, and Trends That Defined a Decade)
“
I’m more likely to get drunk and dance in someone’s yard, singing old 90s songs. In my bikini.
”
”
Stacy Claflin (Lost Wolf (Curse of the Moon, #1))
“
Driving home, we blasted a radio station playing pop songs from the decade we'd been teenagers. There was no pleasure in the world more precisely molded to the contours of my psyche than driving on moonlit roads with a friend, listening to '90s pop and fumbling for the shape of our feelings in the dark. Kyle had given me this holiday without my daughter as an experience of presence rather than just absence. All this time, our friendship had been teaching me about ongoingness—how intimacy holds friction alongside sustenance, how pain and proximity emerge from the same honesty.
”
”
Leslie Jamison (Splinters)