From Grunge to G-funk: The Gear, Genres & Artists that Made the ’90s

In the fickle world of popular music, being “cool” is but a fleeting fad. Trends end as soon as they begin, and all but the biggest names in music are subject to speedy replacement by more youthful up-and-comers. It’s a rough game, and the only constant you can be sure of is that whatever is cool now will almost certainly not be cool in short order.

However, the funny thing about style is that it moves in cycles. Whether it’s a new generation rediscovering a far-removed generation’s fads or nostalgia’s ever-alluring draw, discarded cultural relics tend to re-emerge from stylistic hibernation stronger than ever. For instance, few forward-thinking musicians of the 1970s would have wanted anything to do with the passé jangle pop of the 1960s, but how many subsequent generations have returned to draw inspiration from that seemingly never-ending well?

And so it is with the 1990s — more than 30 years after Nirvana’s Nevermind signaled the death knell of 1980s hard-rock extravagance, aging Gen Xers, millennials, and even Zoomers have unabashedly re-embraced the music that made the ’90s — along with the gear used to make the music!

GrungeBritpopG-funkPop-punkIndustrial Rock/MetalNeo SoulCountry Pop

Grunge

Loud guitars, angsty lyrics, and more flannel than a Canadian lumberjack conference: no genre encapsulates the rebellious spirit of the ’90s better than grunge. It was perhaps the last culture-defining gasp of American rock music, softening the sharp edges of ’80s underground rock and punk with sophisticated songwriting chops inspired by the classic rock greats. Often hailed as the genre that killed hair metal, grunge flat-out rejected the technical virtuosity and over-the-top imagery of 1980s hard rock, with bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains, Soundgarden, and many other Seattle-centered artists taking a much leaner, more emotionally direct approach to songwriting.

In the early days of grunge, the gear was driven primarily by necessity — guitars like Kurt Cobain’s Fender Jaguars and Mustangs and Kim Thayil’s Guild Polara were plentiful, reliable, and (most importantly) cheap. Players favored Fender offsets and oddball instruments of all sorts, not only for their relative costs but also because they offered a clear visual contrast to the conventional rockers that grunge wanted to distance itself from. Early-era grunge rigs tended to be simple and efficient and often comprised little more than a (weird) guitar, a few BOSS and Electro-Harmonix pedals, and a loud tube amp — a far cry from the ultra-complex rack rigs of the 1980s!

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Britpop

The UK’s bittersweet rejection of grunge, British-born shoegaze, and alternative Britpop represented a tidal wave transformation of British music culture. The movement’s so-called “big four” (Oasis, Blur, Pulp, and Suede) met contemporary alternative music’s unfiltered rage and countercultural attitude with a catchier, poppier sound and a somewhat less dour disposition. At its core, Britpop was both a celebration and critique of everything British, ranging from the British Invasion revivalism of Oasis to the class-centered satire of Pulp to the soaring glam-rock-inspired theatrics of Suede. Of all the Britpop bands, Blur was perhaps the most influenced by American underground music, but even they filtered their admiration through a thoroughly British lens.

Like the music itself, the gear of Britpop was inspired by the legendary British bands of yore, focusing on the swinging ’60s: Vox amps, hollowbody guitars, Rickenbackers, etc. As the movement progressed, several Britpop bands (most notably Blur) began experimenting with electronic elements — a clear portent of Damon Albarn’s second act in the 2000s leading Gorillaz. Finally, for the genre’s supposed rejection of grunge and shoegaze, plenty of Britpoppers shared quite a bit in common with their alternative contemporaries when it came to gear, with all the Fender offsets, Pro Co Rat pedals, and BOSS dirtboxes that influence implies.

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G-funk

’90s hip-hop is all about regionality — do you prefer the hard-edged aggression of the East Coast or the laid-back, smoke-addled groove of the West Coast? Those in the latter camp are likely already die-hard devotees of G-funk (gangsta funk), a genre pioneered by all-time hip-hop legends like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Ice Cube, and 2Pac. The flow is relaxed, the synth-heavy beats are funky, and the production is heavily influenced by funk gods Parliament-Funkadelic — after all, the “G-funk” name itself is a play on P-Funk, the oft-used nickname for Parliament-Funkadelic!

California Love! Re-creating ’90s West Coast Hip-hop Beats in the Home…

But what about the gear? The utterly iconic “whistle” synth lead lines that glide above so many G-funk tracks were typically provided by a good old Moog minimoog, though you can achieve a very similar (if not identical) sound using most analog synths or Moog-style plug-ins. Akai Professional MPC samplers were heavily featured (particularly the MPC60 and MPC3000), and the G-funk era was pivotal in establishing the Sony C-800G as one of hip-hop’s premier mics. Finally, G-funk was noteworthy for its use of non-sampled production, particularly Dr. Dre favoring live instrumentation blended with hip-hop standard sampling.

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Pop-punk

Punk rock’s sugar-addicted younger sibling, pop-punk, came hot on the heels of grunge’s mid-’90s demise, offering listeners a much-needed respite from the self-serious doom and gloom of the Seattle sound. Early pop-punk stalwarts, such as Green Day and the Offspring, dulled punk’s jagged edges with bubblegum-pop songwriting skills and catchy, irreverent, and often humorous lyrics, leading the way for bands like Blink-182 to utterly dominate the charts in the latter half of the decade. At its core, pop-punk relied on the standard punk-rock-approved essentials — rudimentary power-chord riffs, root-note bass lines, and hard-hitting drumming — but washed away punk’s high-minded ethos and dissonance in favor of, well, fun.

Unsurprisingly, pop-punk’s most iconic bands generally favored simple, straightforward, and reliable rigs. It was common to see a pop-punk guitarist slinging a 6-string with a single pickup (often a high-output humbucker). At the same time, bassists generally stuck to tried-and-true Fender-style 4-string designs, usually played with picks instead of fingers. As a product of the ’90s, Mesa/Boogie rectifiers were all but ubiquitous in the pop-punk scene — but you’ll just as often see pop-punk legends playing through British-style amplifiers, like the good old Marshall JCM900.

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It’s Not a Phase, Mom: Pop-punk’s (Not So) Surprising Resurgence

Industrial Rock/Metal

Abrasive, angry, and rarely concerned with commercial prospects, industrial’s mainstream rebirth in the mid-to-late 1990s is perhaps one of the decade’s strangest musical phenomena. Admittedly, industrial music’s umbrella is vast and ill-defined, encompassing bands as disparate as Nine Inch Nails, Ministry, Skinny Puppy, White Zombie, and Rammstein. Still, there’s a rough, mechanical, and pulsing sonic thread winding through these bands that resonated with listeners disenchanted with the same old rock and metal music.

Gear-wise, 1990s industrial music combined traditional guitar/bass/drums instrumentation with more esoteric electronic elements. Drum machines and samplers were utilized to provide metronomic, assembly-line grooves twisted and tweaked until they transformed into scattered blasts of cathartic white noise. Rigs range from the ultra-complex and the electronics-heavy (e.g., Nine Inch Nails) to marching metal with a few synths and keyboards (e.g., White Zombie and Rammstein) thrown into the usual metal-approved stew of pointy Ibanez, Schecter, and ESP guitars.

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Neo Soul

As a more experimental, elegant, and conscious take on the classic soul and R&B of the past, neo soul emerged into the musical mainstream with D’Angelo’s 1995 album Brown Sugar. Neo-soul (literally, “new soul”) pioneers, such as Erykah Badu, Lauren Hill, and the cycling cast of “the Soulquarians” (including Questlove, J Dilla, Common, and Talib Kweli, among many others), merged the organic subtlety of classic soul music with elements of modern hip-hop production and more cerebral lyrics.

While taking plenty of influence from ’90s hip-hop, neo soul is a genre that heavily relies on live instrumentation. You’ll see plenty of Roland TR-808s and samplers, but you’re just as likely to see a Hammond organ or a Fender Rhodes. Of particular note is Welsh studio bassist Pino Palladino, who, having met D’Angelo in the late 1990s via B.B. King, would go on to become the Soulquarians’ in-house bassist, putting his Fender Precision Bass to good use on every subsequent D’Angelo album and countless other Soulquarian-related albums.

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Country Pop

Stadium country, arena country, country pop — whatever you want to call it, the pop-drenched country movement of the 1990s represented a watershed moment in the genre’s history. Country music was coming off some pitiful record sales in the late 1980s, and, in a move eerily similar to the “Nashville Sound” trend of the mid-1950s, a slew of country stars all but revived the genre by merging traditional twang with the hyper-commercial production of modern pop. Before this time, country and pop music tended to be heavily segregated on radio airplay, but the 1990s saw crossover country-pop hits from Faith Hill, Shania Twain, and Garth Brooks dominate the traditional pop charts, paving the way for later hybrid country/pop superstars, like Taylor Swift.

Regarding gear, these artists generally fell well within traditional country confines: Telecasters, clean American-style amps, acoustic guitars, and so on. 1990s country pop also saw a rock-style reimagining of country music, where many of the genre’s more rustic elements — lap steel guitars, fiddles, and folk instruments — were turned down or phased out entirely for the rock-standard guitar/bass/drums/vocals formula that would be more familiar to pop listeners. But for all its radio-ready sheen, 1990s country pop’s success rested on the rock-solid musical foundation of Nashville’s masterful studio musicians, including legendary guitarist Brent Mason.

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Long Live the ’90s

Frankly, there’s never been a better time to be a fan of the 1990s — besides the actual 1990s. Whether you’re looking to bash away at a few of your favorite grunge riffs or buzz through a couple of pop-punk tunes, make sure to call your Sweetwater Sales Engineer at (800) 222-4700 for expert-level advice on buying your next guitar, bass, synth, or any other piece of musical equipment!
The post From Grunge to G-funk: The Gear, Genres & Artists that Made the ’90s appeared first on inSync.