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Everything is so immediate nowadays that a scene is dead before it starts.

so just being massive was easier to achieve. now everyone's trying to be cool all the time when people probably didn't care as much back then. that being said, the success of coldplay has made it ok for everyone to just pee themselves all the time.

maybe there's less big stuff here now as well because there's a more established career path for people to fuck off to the states. dunno

when the toilet's overflowing with shit, your unlikely to sit down and add your contribution.

that dragged us back years and we're still trying to get over it.

"No one has really stepped up to replace these chaps over the nearly 20 years"

Yeah, thank fucking God.

Adele
Mumford and Sons
One Direction
The Wanted
Ed Sheeran
Jessie J

Huge interantional music impact...

boom has to follow bust. The media help to intensify the post-bust boom by sugar-coating everything, and simply mid-recession Britain has been nowhere near as depressing as mid-Thatcher Britain. Most of the bands, film, fashion, other entertainment of the 90s were pretty unremarkable and predictable, but they were just around at th right time; a time when the media didn't really have a domestic political target and when the rising party of that time based their schtick on being young, fresh and very British. People bought into the dream; they had more disposible income and so culture became a thing again.

Now we've gone completely the other way. People have too much 'culture', too easily, too instantly, and irrespective of what they earn or what the general political mood of the country might be. Unless it gets really depressing again, you might not see that sort of manufactured, blitz spirit culture boom.

Right, that's my non-Football Thread shit-talking done for the day. Off to make a massive sarnie.

where there were potential/short term replacements. Fashion-wise you have the likes of Alice Dellal, Agyness Deyn (Models) who influenced global trends for a while, Christopher Bailey (Burberry), Matthew Williamson (though he was around in the late 90s), Stella McCartney (Again more late 90s), who each in their own right represented certain trends through out the 00s. But as people have said, I think the difference is because of technology and the increase in global accessibility, the western trends etc... are merging, which makes it difficult to have a truly 'british' or other influence as it was in the 90s.

Everything in the 90s was about what was allowed to be successful by people who were obsessed with the 70s. I'm not even really sure how that all happened because the 80s seems really different, culturally speaking, had a lot more originality (even though I hated it mainly).

I think we're back to that melting pot that we had in the 80s where there is lots of different stuff going on. Maybe it's because the 90s was the decade of BIG business: we only had 5 big record labels pretty much owning everything and so many independent things started to disappear in favour of huge business.

You're calling Oasis and Blur massively influential, but I bet my mum can't name any songs from either of them - maybe Wonderwall at most.

'Cool Britannia' was whipped up by the media in the mid-90s for a number of self-involved reasons, but the talents on display were probably no greater or worse than those which preceded it and followed it. You were obviously just at the right age to be influenced by it.

In summation: rose-tinted glasses.

Amy Winehouse (bear with me on this...)

She spawned a whole host of similar female (and male) solo artists. When I say that she did it, what I mean is that the industry recognised that MoR acts who play radio-friendly, catchy songs could shift a whole heap of units. The big change, it seems to me, is that the units aren't bought by 'the kids' these days: older folk (30s / 40s / 50s) who listen to Radio 2 and have a good level of disposable income are a major (THE major) music consumers.

I think it started with Winehouse and has continued with the likes of Adele, Ed Sheeran etc

Perspective is a pretty big thing. As a youth in the 90s then everything was new and exciting compared to now. Nestor started a hilarious thread the other day about how the early-00s were some hotbed of incredible music, the likes of which the world had never witnessed. That's not to say that the 90s were necessarily unremarkable, just that a lot of it is distorted by perception.

For what it's worth I think the mid-90s were unique and probably kind of exciting to be caught up in. There was a genuine feeling of change afoot and post-acid alternative culture coalescing rather than fragmenting, which you can see as leading to big, ultimately disappointing, popular crossovers like er, Oasis and New Labour.

There's a lot of interesting stuff in Luke Haines' memoirs about how many of the early 90s superstars came out of the 80s dole culture. There were a lot of talented people (in music, art etc, but with a lot of overlap) just stewing around in the 80s who were completely shut out of mainstream culture but sustained themselves on the dole, and when the chance came in the 90s they all bundled through into the mainstream. What the trigger was for the crossover I don't really know. Nirvana maybe?

and the rivers of relatively high quality narcotics that had been brought into the UK via the rave scene making its way into the UK mainstream (in London & other cities at least)

If there is one thing that all your examples have in common then it is cocaine