We Survived the Apocalypse: 1996-1998, the Years that Nearly Destroyed Music

If you had visited Britain in the year 560, you would have noticed that the world was divided into, speaking roughly, two types of structures. Old stone buildings, built by the Romans, but falling into disrepair and decay, and buildings of wood, with roves of thatched wattles and clay like something out of a Yeats poem. When the Romans were forced to abandon their holdings in Britain in 410, the native peoples of that island: Celtcs, Welsh, Scots, and the British lacked the infrastructural and engineering knowledge necessary to continue in the kinds of massive public building that the Romans had excelled at. It took a long time for their knowledge and skill to catch up with what had been lost.

While you may not have noticed, either by being young or by being caught up in the swell, the end of the last century saw a similar kind of divestment of knowledge, skill, talent, and artistry. There were high and lasting structures of white marble, glittering in the sun, breezy and cool, but we didn't live there anymore. Instead we had all, by some silent compact agreed to encamp ourselves in makeshift tents of untanned skins, and live and work and die in our own stink. I am speaking, of course, of the years 1996-1998, the years that nearly destroyed popular music, and whose reverberations and repercussions are still felt today as the industry tries to reshape itself.

"Surely," you all say, "it couldn't have been that bad. We seem to have come out of it, there is great music today!" Well, hold your doubts for a moment in your hand and after you've thought for a minute about the story I am about to tell you, decide for yourself.

Like a volcano, priming itself for a great eruption, there were some tremors in 1995. Coolio had, on the strength of samples from Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise," inexplicably risen to the top of the charts.And maybe we had some concerns about Shaggy's "Boombastic," but the top singles of that year also included songs by Michael Jackson and U2. A few rumbles were nothing to worry about. We were safe.

The eruption came in 1996, when "Wannabe" by the Spice Girls, and "Macarena" by Los Del Rio (the spiritual godfather to "Gangnam Style" but longer lived and more annoying) absolutely dominated the charts. Where a year before there had been shadows mixing with light, now there were only a few flecks of light (The Fugees and a young Lauryn Hill) in amongst the murk and gloom.

If 1996 was the eruption, 1997 was the volcanic ash settling in the atmosphere blocking out light, pre-empting the photosynthesis that allows for the formation of cellulose, and thereby forms the foundation of all life. Fueled by the death of a princess and a king, "Candle in the Wind" was the highest selling single of the year, despite being saccharine and awful, and Puff Daddy's homage to the fallen Biggie Smalls "I'll Be Missing You" was reviled by all of us even as we gobbled it up. And even these interior offerings were all that separated us from a world where Aqua's "Barbie Girl" (the filthiest song ever to get substantial radio play--seriously, we listened to this song in shop class on the little radio that Mr. Linder kept turned up to a volume that was audible over the sounds of the drill press), or Hanson's "MMMBop" were the biggest hits of the year.


If 1997 saw the death of plant life, 1998 saw the deprivation trickle up the foodchain. Apex predators like Celine Dion "My Heart Will Go On," and Aerosmith "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" were being carried by the movies their songs featured in (Titanic and Armageddon respectively--you remember the Aerosmith song in Armageddon, don't you? It's in that scene where Ben Affleck uses animal crackers to foreplay Liv Tyler like she's a three year old who doesn't want to eat her snack). Even Cher, once the mightiest, proudest, most beautifulest beast in all the world was felled, giving us the first song ever to use Auto-Tune, the technological voice modification system whose algorithms are based, and I am not even joking, on a phase vocoder algorithm designed to locate oil underground. I love Cher more than many of my friends (and no, I don't mean that I love Cher more than they love Cher, I mean that I love Cher more than I love them), but even I have to admit that "Believe" is, at best, only okay.

For years in the aftermath we stumbled along, our ears caked in ash. Recovery came in stops and starts. We got a Britney Spears, but then along came Lou Bega with "Mambo No. 5." Alicia Keys rose from the deep, but Enya followed on her heels. By 2000 we were so happy to see Madonna, U2, and Bon Jovi topping the charts that we went collectively mad. They say that in the wake of the Black Death, a depopulated Europe allowed the survivors to feast, because there was more of everything to go around. The result was an orgy of acquisitiveness that lasted for nearly a generation. That's how we were in the early 2000s. We turned Indie Rockers and Punk bands of inferior quality into household names. We lauded mediocrity in all its forms. We embraced Ska. We were so riotous to consume that we created an actual commodity bubble in music whose rupture, just before 2010 devastated the record industry.

We're cool now. New technology has made music more democratic and open. We have access to more new voices and sounds than ever before. Our popular music machine has given us Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Beyonce, and other titans who have tasked themselves with rebuilding the lost cultural consensus that was swept away in the rising tide of Aqua. One could write 1,000 words about how hip-hop saved popular music during this period, with Jay-Z serving as the Lord Protector during the interregnum that ran from the deaths of Tupac and Biggie through to the rise of Kanye. But that doesn't mean we should take any of what we have for granted. Not so long ago music of that kind was endangered, and the eco-system has just begun to stabilize.