3 Classic Rock Artists That Personify the 1990s

The decade of the 1990s was perhaps the most eclectic musical decade we’ve ever had. Sure, any artist can make a track on their laptop today, but if you walked into a record store in the 90s, you were privy to any number of genres with any number of excellent bands participating in them. There was rap, electronic, pop, and yes, even classic rock.

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We wanted to explore three bands that fall into the latter category. These bands are a trio of acts that supplied the type of rollicking guitar-based songs that buzzed and soared and maybe even broke a few amplifiers. Indeed, these are three classic rock artists who personify the 1990s.

Nirvana

Along with the hard, street-smart rap music from Southern California, grunge music was the biggest musical movement of the early 1990s. Not only did it inform the first half of the decade, thanks to bands like Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Nirvana, but it also informed the latter half of the decade and even the beginning of the 2000s.

After all the darkness and death grunge music provided, the end of the 1990s was all about boy bands and pop princesses. But before his death in the middle of the decade, Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain was the king of music. Grunge took over the world. And Nirvana was at the center of the storm.

Dave Matthews Band

While grunge was taking over on the West Coast and the Pacific Northwest, jam bands were all the rage in places like New York City and New England. Trading electric guitars for acoustics, jam groups like Dave Matthews Band, Phish, and others brought together thousands of fans to dip, dive, and twirl to improvised songs during live music festivals.

At the top of the list of prominent jam bands was the Dave Matthews Band and their brand of sweet songs like “Crash Into Me” and “#41”. But the group could also rock. For evidence of that, see “Ants Marching”.

The Smashing Pumpkins

If you put on classic rock or alt-rock radio in the 1990s, you probably heard The Smashing Pumpkins. The group was ever-present on the airwaves thanks to songs like “1979”, “Tonight, Tonight”, and “Today”.

With lead singer Billy Corgan’s signature raspy voice, the band brought an edge to rock in the decade. Part grunge, part something else entirely, the Pumpkins sounded like an acid rain cloud, streaming their stuff onto the cars and buildings below. Their songs melted and burned and stayed in memory banks forever.

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