What happened to the Lilith Fair-style 90s female alt genre? -

[robobobo]

I was listening to some random 90s music playlist the other day, and it occurred to me somewhat abruptly that the whole genre with Tori Amos, Natalie Merchant, etc with a female vocalist over fairly minimal instrumentals appeared, peaked, and disappeared wholly within that one decade. I couldn't think of anything in the 2000s or beyond that really seemed to still follow that pattern. There was a fuckton of it floating around back in the day and like all pop music genres the majority of it was crap, but I was fond of some of it.

In fact, thinking more, alt rock in general seems to've died out after 2000, not just the variety with women solos. The hell happened to it? I imagine the musicians didn't just all up and quit en masse, but I just stopped hearing it anywhere.

 

[Chaos Theorist]

Rap Music happened

 

[Elwood P. Dowd]

Isn't Agnes Obel that kind of music? Damned if I can think of anyone else, though.

edit: Maybe white wamen just learned to check their privilege and have collectively decided to fall silent and let the long suffering PoC speak?

 

[Kroster]

I think a lot migrated over to country, didn't it? Popular music styles are all fads. They last about a half decade, disappear for 20 years, and then reappear on the soundtrack at the supermarket.

 

[Malodorous Merkin]

I recently did a music cruise thing out of New Orleans and one of the acts was Lisa Loeb. ‘member her?

 

[Graffiti canvas]

The cis-patriarchy establishment is what happened. Fucking wake up.

 

[Lipitor]

Honest answer? Even though it seemed like a natural counter-culture movement, it was actually a funded sound made by corporate music to try to keep selling music to women in their 20s and 30s whose music taste had matured a bit more than what it was in their teens. They also used to have bigger vehicles to spam ad this contet. You may not believe this but VH1 used to be a music channel, not an IV of watered down reality-drama shows that are clearly staged, but yet your gf can't stop watching. Stood for Video Hits 1. They tended to cater towards the age demographic that had just matured out of what was hot on MTV. So all of their music was pretty much just soft rock rebranded as "adult contemporary alternative". So it was pretty much an edgeless, radio friendly music zone... you had your matchbox 20s, your Michelle Branches, your tortured, yet attractive female solo artists who sang about how something was missing from their life... and this tampon rock you speak of.

Vh1 was always more popular with women than it was with men, so they catered to music their audience preferred. This is why they mainly feature reality based content today. It's what their audience wants, catty drag queens, models making fools of themselves and shows about grown middle aged women who act like they're in middle school. This means the steady stream of adult contemporary music for 20/30s women no longer had a home, and I suppose that's why it largely died out.

 

[MG 620]

I recently did a music cruise thing out of New Orleans and one of the acts was Lisa Loeb. ‘member her?

I do.

 

[The Shadow]

It died a pretty natural death when people realized it sucked?

 

[Dolphin Lundgren]

Tori Amos and Sarah McLachlan were good tbh. I still listen to both of them from time to time.

 

[Malodorous Merkin]

I do.

I see what you did there.

 

[RichardMongler]

Does Riot Grrrl fall under this? I'm glad that's dead.

 

[Garfieldchu]

Plenty of this in indie rock.

 

[Gordon Cole]

Plenty of this in indie rock.

Was about to say people like Cat Power, Joanna Newsom and Feist kick everyone else's asses by comparison.