What made 90s music so much darker and edgier than the 80s or 2000s...

thanks Anon Babblemusic

Ywnbaw freak

70s

It was a once in the life of a culture miracle. Rock captured the zeitgeist in the 60's and became more serious and artsy culminating in prog, and the major labels were all in on it because they knew how to make it work business-wise at the time. Looking at the music landscape now it's unthinkable that something like Close to the Edge was major label popular music.

Gen Xers who were kids in the late 60s and 70s, and teens in the 80s. They were growing up with women's lib, televangelism, Reagan and Thatcher, hippies becoming Wall Street types, fratty hair metal, the rise of punk, a popular dilution of punk into New Wave, etc. You can consider any other social trends relevant: divorce rates and single parent households, increasing use of heroin and coke, the plethora of serial killers, satanic panic, etc.

Every generation has their equivalents, but figure that generation started off with Scooby Doo and Charlie & the Chocolate Factory and ended up coming up with terms like McJob and developing Beavis & Butthead. Lots of envelopes being pushed fast and hard while wondering if their boomer parents' way of life was even viable for them, let alone desireable with everyone just getting divorced anyway.

80s Pixies, Replacements, and REM shit all over Nirvana. 80s was when college rock peaked. 90s was when it went mainstream and died.

Cool, this thread is still up after the vacation

Linkin Park

edgy

70s and 80s not as edgy as 90s

Throbbing Gristle

Whitehouse

Swans

Swans are 90s and 2010s

Introverted shit took over. That was most bubbling in the underground with punks and alt guys going on about their feelings. 80s mainstream rock enjoyed life and just wanted to party.
It was cool for awhile when Kurt, but got old when every nu-metal was also whining about shit.