![]() The second volume is widely considered to be superior, its tracklist a bit leaner and its singles-including the cynical, politically charged “Civil War”-more challenging (the nearly nine-and-a-half-minute “Estranged” doesn’t even have a traditional chorus). Rock n’ roll is littered with epic-length opuses, but Guns N’ Roses’s sprawling, 30-track Use Your Illusion I and II truly challenged the old adage that less is more. ![]() Guitar-wielding rabble-rousers like Phoebe Bridgers give reason for hope, but it’s hard not to look back at the ’90s as not just the genre’s creative and commercial zenith, but its last great stand. In hindsight, it wasn’t rock or electronica, but hip-hop that won the long game, as it continues to dominate pop music while rock-though it evolved and expanded throughout the first decade of the new millennium-has all but evaporated from the mainstream. One-hit wonders weren’t in short supply in the ’90s, but many, like Donelly’s band Belly, were far from disposable.Ĭountless rock acts of the era displayed an impressive ability to adapt, even as the industry swiftly reverted to the status quo by the turn of the century: self-proclaimed “loser” Beck evolved from slacker punk to pop-music hero R.E.M., a band for which the tag “alternative” was practically invented, released at least two of the best pop-rock albums of all time and Radiohead, who started the ’90s as a bunch of post-grunge creeps, successfully harnessed the then-burgeoning electronica movement in ways others failed to. ![]() “Good music was popular by mistake,” alt-rock pioneer Tanya Donelly famously said of the early 1990s, when grunge, the bastard stepchild of punk and metal, gave rise to multi-platinum superstars like Nirvana and Pearl Jam.
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