Topic: Funhouse Debate Club #2: Were the 90s the decade of "viral music"?

[King of Twitch]

A spinoff of this thread to avoid clogging it up with posts about bad songs. And oh, were they bad. There were LOTS of silly songs back then (a whole 15 years and 4 months ago) that probably shouldn't have been popular, but somehow were. Was it because of music videos giving certain artists an edge over others? The growth of the Compact Disc (aka, CD)? Shortening attention spans? A general prosperity and relative peace during that era?

How do you explain songs like U Can't Touch This, the Macarana, Livin La Vida Loca, and other nonsense songs exploding into the collective conscious? There have always been one-hit wonders, but the 90s seem different in retrospect. Agree or disagree?

[NWR_insanolord]

There were plenty of awful songs before that. I don't know that the '90s were especially bad about it compared to previous decades.

[King of Twitch]

Of course. I was wondering if the viral aspect of music in that decade was especially pronounced, or if it it's just a fixture of the rapid expansion of media in general.

[NWR_insanolord]

I think it's probably the latter. There was just more music in general, with more ways to be exposed to it.

[King of Twitch]

Thanks, you can lock this now.

[Khushrenada]

It wasn't the 90's. At least not until the end of the decade like 98, 99 when the internet was becoming more common place and napster and file sharing were beginning.

At that point, if you then wanted to show your friends a "viral" type song, it was a lot easier to spread the word. Before that, U Can't Touch This, Macarana, Livin La Vida Loca were just popular by being played and requested a lot by people. Frankly, sometimes it's just nice to revel in a silly song.

By the end of the 90's start of 2000's, you had stuff like The Hamster Dance, Blue from Eiffel 65 and Who Let the Dogs Out taking off in part, I think because of the internet making the music more accessible. This then led to other phenomon like Rebecca Black's Friday and Gangnam Style by PSY taking off as the internet became more prolific and sites like YouTube further made it easier to find and spread these types of songs. Of course, you could have someone like William Hung become a viral sensation just from people seeing him on TV audition so it's not like the internet is the only cause of it. Sometimes, you just like to laugh along with something and then the joke dies and you move on.

[marvel_moviefan_2012]

I wrote a paper about this for one of my English classes about how MEMES spread before the internet and used Techno Syndrome by the Immortals as the basis of the paper. I am pretty sure I have a copy of it somewhere if anyone is interested in seeing proof that I could get an A in an English class.



Okay, I dug it out, not a terrible paper, did get me an A but it was English 101 so not really shocked there. Anyways I thought I talked more about music but it turns out I barely mention a couple of songs. I will still post the text if anyone is interested in it.