Six Great 90s Artists Still Going Strong and making great music

30 years on!

Feb 22, 2025

Many people in their forties will swear blind that the 90s was the greatest decade for music. They are, of course, correct.

Many people in their fifties are convinced that the 80s was the greatest decade for music. They are, of course, also correct.

Many people now in their sixties… you get the idea.

We are never going to get any sort of any objective consensus on the “best decade for music” so I for one am not going to try.

All I know is, in every decade there are records, bands and artists that I love, and music being what it is, a fair few of them keep going well into later life.

I mean, what else would you do with your life if you could get paid for making music?

And there’s a common thread between a lot of the various musics that came up in that decade, whether grunge, hip-hop, trip-hop, Britpop and the “new wave of the new grave” - all had a lumpen, blokeish, take-no-prisoners swagger. Including the Spice Girls, attitude-wise (remember this is the decade that launched the word “ladette”)

Here are six bands who rose up during that decade and who have lasted to this day.

There are some obvious omissions. You know who they are. I have nothing against those bands, but if you want to read about about the Burnage Brothers or the Good Mixer or the Sheffield Scene or that album with the baby in the swimming pool then you’ll find plenty of it elsewhere.

The artists featured here are a personal selection from the music I loved at the time, and since. Not “liked”, , not merely “respected”, but “loved”.

All these acts are close to my heart, all of whom were quite successful and all of whom are still going strong thirty years later, although I will admit that in some cases the phrase “taking a break” is doing some heavy lifting. I drew the line at the La’s, mind you. Although if the Stone Roses, Dexys and Steely Dan can come back after 20-plus year breaks between albums then who knows?

The 90s. A great bunch of lads, as Father Ted said in 1998 about the Chinese. Enjoy.

Ash’s first album came out in 1996. I thought they had named it because it was in the spirit of punk, 1977 being the year the Sex Pistols had their hits, But in fact it was named 1977 because that was the year all three members of the band were born. I think that might have been the first time I felt old, and that was almost 30 years ago, so…

They’d been around since 1994 and certainly some of their tunes, notably The Girl From Mars and Angel Interceptor were regarded as Britpop classics. But they were really an old-fashioned power trio of guitar, bass and drums, but with proper pop songs underneath and a lack of mile-long guitar solos. If they’d come to prominence twenty years earlier, they could have been lumpen boogie merchants, but in the Time Of Britpop their tunes were punchy and melodic and, yeah, poppy, at a time when that was not a barrier to being cool.

Listen to …

Although they continue to put out decent records, it’s hard to look beyond the first two albums as a starting point, the aforementioned debut 1977 and the follow-up Nu-Clear Sounds from 1998.

After this they got a lot more rocky, but then so did Public Image Limited before them, and the “stadium years” of both those bands turned out just fine, although Ash are about to play several gigs as support to The Darkness, which does not sit well with me at all.

Also worth a listen at the appropriate time of year is the Christmas album made by frontman Tim Wheeler with Emmy The Great. Jesus The Reindeer and Mrs. Christmas are festive classics that should really be played as often as Slade, Wizzard and Boney M.

dEUS

I worked in Antwerp for a while in 2010. I can confidently state that Belgian beer is the best I have tasted by some distance (sorry to any Germans reading this, your beer is lovely too). It’s also deceptively strong. You can buy a thick dark syrup that tastes like Dr. Pepper would if Jesus worked his wedding at Cana magic on it and turned it into the most delicious soft drink imaginable, full of flavour and depth, yet seemingly non-alcholic.

And then it hits you. Maybe not immediately, maybe an hour or two later when you bid goodnight to your friends and step out into the night after three or four small glasses, and it hits you with the power of a train that you have been drinking a brew twice as strong as Special Brew without noticing.

dEUS are from Antwerp. Their music has a similar effect.

I first encountered them live in 1997 supporting Placebo, who I loved around that time, but dEUS absolutely blew them off the stage.

I always found it hard to describe their sound. There’s a bit of the loud bit / quiet bit song structure beloved of the grunge bands, but dEUS’s quiet bits are wonderfully weird, featuring a violin and approaching jazz at times (in a good way). There’s a lot of the spirit of Captain Beefheart and Frank Zappa about them.

Listen to…

The whole of the first album Worst Case Scenario (1994) is essential listening, Suds And Soda in particular. Little Arithmetics and Instant Street with its extended freak-outro both charted in 1997 and 1999 respectively.

Kelis

Where else could you find a saucier / singer?

You couldn’t avoid Kelis in 1999/2000. Everybody knew her R&B hit Caught Out There even if they don’t know the title, they know the line “I hate you so much right now… UUURGH!”, spat out in disgust and carrying an undertone of actual physical violence should she catch up with the bastard.

You couldn’t avoid Kelis in 2003 either, even more so. Everybody who had a radio or teenage kids knew the entire rapped chorus of her R&B hit Milkshake in the style of a children’s skipping rhyme, a meme before there were even memes.

Always more popular in the UK and Europe than the USA, more hits and albums followed, and she also split her time with culinary training, studying part-time at Le Cordon Bleu before graduating as a saucier in 2010.

This was also the year she changed her musical style somewhat and released the less successful, dancier album Flesh Tone.

However, 2014’s album Food was arguably her best so far. Opening with Kelis’s four-year-old son saying “Hey, are you guys hungry? My mom made FOOD!”, and lyrically combining her love of music with her love of food and musically marking a return to R&B but with a grittier sound incorporating soul both old-style and nu-, some great funky beats and even the odd wailing guitar. Standout track for me is Friday Fish Fry.

There’s a new album coming out soon, although to be fair it’s been expected for two or three years. I’ll be in the queue with all the other boys. Yes, in her yard, if necessary.

Listen to…

The hits, obviously, but go for the whole albums Kaleidoscope, Tasty and Food.

Of Montreal

1999’s “The Gay Parade”. Their album covers got a lot more intricate.

Some bands become brands. Some have a brand thrust upon them. A few bands are brands from the get-go, and if the result is the unbroken run of great music achieved by of Montreal since 1996 then it’s obviously a good tactic.

Which is why it was a good move for Kevin Barnes to form a band with, initially, only one member, and give it a weird name, apparently after a failed romance between Barnes and a girl “of Montreal”, but to be honest, I’m finding that one less and less believable as the years go by…

I know this. There are more people will buy a record if it is by “of Montreal” than there are who would buy the identical record, packaged identically, if it were credited to the frankly boring-sounding Kevin Barnes.

And the frankly much-more-interesting-than-they-sound Kevin Barnes clearly agrees.

Their records are not boring-sounding.

of Montreal sound like the sixties would sound if they had have been happening (or will have been going to have happened, this playing about with tenses is not as easy as it seems) after the seventies, eighties and nineties, but retaining the innocence and the playfulness. And better produced.

People in the late 90s weren’t supposed to be capable of making anything late 60s-influenced that actually moves that whole psych sound along rather than sounding like an echo, while retaining the charming yet disturbing childlike quality associated with the likes of Blossom Toes and Les Fleur de Lys.

Idiosyncratic lyrics, freaky concepts, combinations of instruments and labyrinthine album covers that fold out to make origami works of art. These are all far easier to achieve when it’s the vision of one - just one - person.

I mean, you couldn’t make nineteen albums, ten EPs and 28 singles (and counting) in a 28-year career if you kept on having to argue with your bandmates about whether the next album cover should be primarily red or blue.

Listen to…

Hissing Fauna (Are You The Destroyer? (2007) is a very good introduction to the b(r)and.

Three tracks to dip your toe into the water would be maybe Disconnect The Dots, The Past Is A Grotesque Animal and Coquet Coquette, but they’re very much a band whereby if you like one track, you’ll probably like ‘em all.

Spiritualized

The album cover was designed to look like a prescription drug, cardboard container and blister-packing around the CD. The reason it looks so authentic is that the band got Boots the Chemist’s to produce the packaging.

I fell asleep at a Spiritualized gig in 1997, at Bristol Anson Rooms.

I wasn’t pissed.

In my defence, it was a cold evening, so the windows were all shut, and this was still ten years before the UK banned smoking in public places, so the room was full of sweet smelling smoke swirling around the atmosphere. I’d never got into any drug harder than beer, so I was not used to it.

I may not have been pissed but I think I was a little high...

So I just closed my eyes while sitting next to one of the big speakers and basically drifted into oblivion for twenty minutes. When I came to, they were still playing the same song, I swear it.

Actually, come to think of it, I WAS pissed.

Spiritualized’s music envelops you completely, even on record. As a live experience it was completely immersive.

The band’s pharmaceutically-inspired choice of album design was something of a giveaway as to what to expect, to be fair.

And the music was such a delicious wall of sound. I guess this was as close as I could ever get to the 24-hour “happenings” at Alexandra Palais in the late 60s, usually involving the Pink Floyd.

Man, I wish I was ten years older… Seriously, people born in the late forties / early fifties had it all. And look at them now, the miserable gammons.

Listen to…

Come Together and Think I’m In Love and the title track from Ladies And Gentlemen, but you should really set aside the time to hear the album as a whole.

The most recent release Music From “Stranded In Canton” is wonderful and disturbing - came out in 2024 but dates from 2015. I understand the film is great, too, one day I’ll get round to it, but there’s a big ol’ waiting list.

Supergrass / Gaz Coombes

Supergrass in a 1995 video for Alright, their most famous tune.

Steven Spielberg approached Supergrass to see if they were interested in starring in a 90s version of The Monkees TV show.

I was gutted when they turned him down. I think about how epic it would have been a lot.

They have had a pretty good career in any case, but surely they could have spared two years to make a fortune and become world-famous in Hollywood? And they could have done everything they wanted anyway, including Gaz Coombes’ psychedelic solo albums.

Ah well. At least Spielberg didn’t approach the Artists Formerly Known As Rain, they’d have jumped on it and been shite.

Listen to…

There’s many music fans who only really know Alright, and it’s a fine tune for sure, but the band never put a foot wrong - they got better and better with each album.

Since the band called it a day in 2010, frontman Gaz Coombes has released three excellent solo albums which can be regarded as a dreamier, more laid back take on the Supergrass sound (check out Matador in particular).

Spotify Playlist, 3 tracks by each artist in this article

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