I’m pretty sure that every decade has its own guidelines to growing up. Being a teenager in the 80’s must have been very different to being a teenager in the 90’s. But what about it was different, was it just the clothes and music? Or is every teen the same no matter what the decade.
I don’t know but i was a teenager in the 90’s. In 1990 I turned 12 and developed an obsession with Twin Peaks. It was a weird start to my teen life but it shaped me in ways I couldn’t see at the time. I was able to embrace my love of the weird. David Lynch and his strange camera angles and beautiful 50’s femme fatales were pure poetry to me and still are to this day. However its fair to say that accepting the weirdness of yourself does not signal an easy start to teenage life.
The 90’s was all about good music to me, the early 90’s was the birth of grunge and suddenly there was something in between death metal and bon jovi. I loved Pearl jam, Alice in Chains, Screaming Trees and all those other amazing bands that burst out of Seattle. I can recall coming home from school, shutting my bedroom door and playing Smells like Teen Spirit very loud whilst jumping up and down around my bedroom. It was the biggest release of tension I got all day.
Some other great bands came into the limelight in the 90’s also, the Britpop explosion happened and dark but lovely alternative bands like Echobelly, Garbage, Smashing Pumpkins, The Cranberries, Manic Street Preachers,Grant Lee Buffalo, Belly, 10,000 Maniacs, Pixies and so many more filled the airwaves with lively but sad songs. REM had a resurgence with the release of ‘Out of Time’ and suddenly all the people who hadn’t ever heard of them were out at HMV buying their back catalogue.
The 90’s grunge era that i fell into was kind to my parents pockets aswell because i only ever wanted clothes from charity shops and dressed mostly like a boy. Needless to say i didn’t actually draw much male attention until i was 16. My wardrobe consisted of one knee length tie died tassle skirt, jeans with turn ups, camouflage trousers, a pair of cherry red DM’s, a pair of Purple converse my sister gave me and an array of band t-shirts for pearl jam, the Doors, The Smiths the Velvet underground and Neil Young. I also owned a levi’s lumberjack shirt and several pairs of stripey tights. I wore clothes so baggy that I was able to share most of my wardrobe with my big brother. Seems like these days its more about how tight your jeans can be.
There was a group of girls at school who liked the same stuff as me and we all ended up at the same pubs and bars, totally underage but so excited that we could dance to Primal Scream and The Stone Roses instead of the latest pop chart music that was on offer at the other mainstream clubs. Most of the people who went to the pubs and clubs we went to were much older but we all co-existed somehow. It was funny how by the time I was 20 I was shocked to see 15 year old’s drinking at the same pub i had been drinking at since I was that age. I always had a word with myself to remind me they were no different to me. But I understood how adults must have viewed us gangs of teenage girls in DM boots wearing black cherry lipstick and counting out pennies for our pints of cider clutching fake ID’s.
I recently watched the pilot episode of 1994 TV series ‘My So Called Life’ which at the time was my favourite show, and even now i can see why i liked it so much. The lead character Angela Chase is in pursuit of something, fun, love, freedom, she is envious of the freedom Ann Frank found through her incarceration and she longs for the day she no longer has to conform and go to school. To express herself she ends up alienating her oldest friends and family. The whole angst revolving around how people just don’t understand.
I think alot of us teenage girls were like her, some of us did dye our hair mahogany red while others chose to stifle their real urges and conform to the norm by wearing trainers and belcher chains.
But it doesn’t matter if its belcher chains or blackberry’s, today’s teenagers must face the same horrors we did. The agony of whether to give in and like Justin Beiber, or whether to say no and go buy the new Foo Fighters CD. What a difference it will make to their lives to decide not to choose to just fit in.
There has been an ‘alternative’ since the 60’s, every era had its dark side of music, what was once protest songs by intelligent hippies, is now something else entirely.
I guess the 90’s indie/grunge thing made me feel like I fit somewhere, there we were, all us teenagers full of questions unanswered and wanting to express ourselves but no knowing how. And along came people like Frank Black and Kurt Cobain and reminded us it was ok not to fit.
The 90’s playlist is endless and so may bands being listened to came from other era’s but here is a mixtape of some of what I was listening to.
Alive – Pearl Jam
Heaven Beside You– Alice in Chains
Dark Therapy – Echobelly
Motorcycle Emptiness – Manic Street Preachers
Stupid Girl – Garbage
Feed the Tree – Belly
Campfire Song – 10,000 Maniacs
Fuzzy – Grant Lee Buffalo
Monkey Gone to Heaven-The Pixies
Disarm – Smashing Pumpkins
Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden
Linger – The Cranberries
To The End – Blur
Nearly Lost You – Screaming Trees
Plush – Stone Temple Pilots
Heart Shaped Box – Nirvana
Crown of Thorns – Mother Love Bone
Hunger Strike – Temple of The Dog
Live Forever – Oasis
Anne-Marie Ormsby 