Ah, the 1990s. The end of communism and the triumph of "capitalism", Zippergate, the succession of THREE generations of video game consoles, but most importantly a decade with excellent music. I can divide it in three main era.

The "oldies" (to take from my Youtube playlist) extend until about 1995. It was the epitome of dance music, usually referred to as Eurodance since most of it was indeed from Europe (Germany, mostly). Characterized by a main female vocalist, a deep-voiced male back vocal (who was usually black), joyful rhythms and positive/self-confidence/love lyrics. Think about Doctor Alban's "It's my life" ("Stop telling people how to do their business"), Fun Factory's "Close to You" ("Come on take my hand and make me understand I wanna be so close to you") or Snap's "Rythmn is a Dancer" which is probably the best representative of the genre. I don't know if it could be included in the bunch but Céline Dion's Unison (the music video version) had the deep-voiced back vocal and was quite joyful.

Dion also did quite a few songs in French. Even today, I still love "Dion chante Plamondon" (Plamondon being one of the most widely-known French song writes). "Des mots qui sonnent" still "sounds" very good and "J'ai besoin d'un homme" sounds funny. "Ziggy" - I realized much later - was actually about a gay boy ("C'est un garçon pas comme les autres"). I wonder how it was received... Other excellent French-speaking artists included Vilain Pingouin (rock), Mylène Farmer (pop-rock with violent/suggestive music videos), Niagara (a French rock group; "Peut-être la vie est-elle encore belle" features women in underwear that would probably be considered overweight today!), Nathalie Simard (she was, sadly, abused by her manager during all her youth. Nevertheless, her songs were good), les BB (a boys trio singing love songs) and various hip-hop artists from France (the only kind of rap I can still tolerate today).

During high school, the only artist I really liked was Shania Twain. She's one of the 3 only artists in Canada to have sold a diamond album (1M copies) and it's easy to know why. While her style is classified "country", she incorporates enough pop - especially with Come on Over - to reach a broader audience. To this day she's still the only artist I saw in an arena show. During that same period my only other musical interest was video game music. For the longest time I had the music on cassette tapes; I would use this old red recorder and put it next to the TV and record the tracks. It was rather imperfect (especially when my siblings made noise in the background), but it was the best I could get until my father got a high-performance computer so I could start listening to tracks over the Internet. Finally, that time didn't have much to offer in French for my taste. Les Colocs had a few good songs, but that was it.

Finally, the final era of the decade was characterized by my loneliness becoming too much to bear - I did wrote a few very dark poems and did wonder whether I could simply cross a causeway once or twice. During a field trip, people would just put rap music which I never really liked in the first place. During that trip it went from dislike to downright hostile hatred. To channel this anger/clam it down, I turned to punk music by borrowing my sister's Smash album. To this day it's still one of the best album I've listened to. "Not the one" ("I'm innocent, but the weight of the world is on my shoulder") is the only song I rated 100 on Launch when it existed. I also liked Millencollin's Penguins and Polar Bears, which was rocky enough but smoother than The Offspring. My favorite song was The Ballad ("You'll be someone they will look up to"). Once again that time didn't have much to offer in French, except maybe Noir Désir, whose singer served jail time for punching his girlfriend to death.

How were the 1990s for you? What songs did you like? If you're not from a "Western" country, how did the music differ?

I'm not really much of a fan of music from the 90's but of course that's because I wasnt really around back then, though there are a few that I like to listen to from back then. I like some of the older Backstreet Boys and New Kids on the Block SOngs. I only like the ones from the 90's, none else, but I havent discovered them until maybe about 7 years ago.

I think during the 1990's the only music I was listening to were cartoon/ Muppet movie soundtracks. So Disney, Don Bluth, Muppet Treasure Island, The Muppet Christmas Carol, that sort of thing. Also a few musicals like Annie. 

I had "Toxic Love" from Fern Gully memorized and would drive my parents crazy with it. Same with "Somewhere Out There" from An American Tail: Fieval Goes West... and  "Roll Back the Rock" from We're Back! A Dinosaur's Story. 

I could say the same of every single song from Rockadoodle and the two muppet movies I mentioned above. Oliver and Company, Cats Don't Dance, and Mary Poppins were the other three, and between all those movie tunes, I know I had to drive my poor parents nuts because they heard the same ones every day for weeks at a time.  Some of these songs I just kind of facepalm at now because they are so WEIRD, but I still love them.

Yunimori : I remember "Fraggle Rock", but that was back in the 1980s for me. And the Disney movies were like the 1950s-60s

Their modern movies, while interesting, don't have the same musical appeal as before, I believe. 

janus :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_zsz_MlVvI

Brigand : Thanks, but that's not *exactly* the theme as I watched the show in French. Plus, before going in "the hole" there was this old man suing a screwdriver. But thanks, it's still the same music

janus :

It was in Finnish when I heard it as a kid. But  the melody is the same, aint it?. And close enough. And yeah, I remember that guy! Ha ha!

janus : I am aware, but they came to VHS in the 1990's, so for many people, that was the first exposure they had to them unless they were alive in the 1950's/1960s. So it's relevant. 

ANd besides, not all of them were from that era. There were QUITE a few musical Disney movies actually made in the '90s, not just released on VHS. Beauty and the Beast, the Lion King, The Rescuers Down Under, Hercules, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Tarzan, etc. 

The 90's were my jam!  I had cd's of Ace of Base, Real McCoy, Aqua, Green Day, Chumbawumba, Savage Garden, Garbage, Toy Box, and so many more~!  I remember all the good dance music that was around~  My brother and I would take a tape recorder to the radio and make our own tape mixes before cd burners.  Then we would download all our music when the internet came around.  Haha yeah we were so poor that we resulted in getting our music the pirate way.  We did get CD's when it was our birthday or christmas but between we had to find our music fix other ways lol!

LCRain : Some of that music was "so good" that someone (I suspect my brother) even recorded some of it over some other tapes. It was deliberate because you could only record on those pre-recorded tapes by putting tape...

I'm curious: where are you from? Because in Quebec Chumbawumba was only a one-hit wonder - they even "translated" their song to French! The accent was heavy but it was still nice.

Ace of Base and Aqua were also nice... for their time. In retrospect I wonder why I liked them

janus : In the 90's I lived in Connecticut.  Chumbawumba was popular here.  I burnt out the tape I had of their music lol!
I still have music of Ace of Base and Aqua on my mp3 players along with Garbage and Savage Garden.  Got to get me some Chumbawumba on there.

The 90s were so good. Too bad I was too young to enjoy them as much as I wanted, specially in music.

One of the reasons I don't like to go out overnight is because of the music. I don't like how the music has evolved. Trance in the 90s and early 2000s was the best, in my opinion. Milk Inc, Lasgo, 2 Unlimited, Aqua... The list is incredibly big. 

Early hardcore was also very nice. 3 Steps Ahead was a demigod in his time, while Neophyte, Paul Elstak, Rob Gee, Stunned Guys and MC Rage, just to name a few, were starting their business to become living legends. The Prophet was also a nice hardcore producer until the style started evolving and he decided to stay in the "unevolved" hardstyle.

I just wish I could go back in time. The nights I have enjoyed would have been absolutely legendary with the 90s music.

One of my defining moments in music in the nineties I guess was when I stood up all night watching the Beavis and BuTthead marathon on MTV. I cant remember how old I was, but you yankees would say in middle school. It was the first time I was awake five in the morning and then this song came on:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bcpj-q0Snc

Then I figured. "Point taken. Time for bed." I guess I never woke up really.

N'SYNC, spice girls and aqua were my favourite bands of the 90s. always danced to cartoon heroes.  

There are so many bands to list from the 90's that were great, it's hard for me to list them all. Especially considering all the Genres of great artists from that time.

Here's some of the top of my head that really came into their own in the 90's that I really enjoyed and were very influential in the music scene for future generations.

Pearl Jam

Nirvana

Green Day

2pac

NWA

Biggie Smalls

Stone Temple Pilots

Radiohead

Rage Against the Machine

The Smashing Pumpkins

Red Hot Chili Peppers

Tool

No Doubt

Alice In Chains

Wu-Tang Clan

zanderlex : FYI, you need to listen to some more 90's music if the best "bands" you can come up with from that era are Nsync and Backstreet boys ;-) lol

Jordanv78 : I never even said Nsync :p I probably would look up some more but I'm too lazy to download stuff since I cant use Youtube to much.

Fair enough. You are right. Although I think New Kids is worse than Nsync although they are equally as cruddy ;-)

N'Sync is certainly less bad than NKOB. If you listen to the latter's first album, all their songs sound the same: Hanging Tough, the Right Stuff, Cover Girl...