To Think the 90's Were The Best Decade We've Had?

[A4710Rider]

Certainly from a personal point of view;

Real music with guitars and drums and everything.

The emergence of dance music.

Mobile phones hit the market place (it made it so much easier to meet people you met previously - instead of having to ring their house number and speak to their Dad)

We were even allowed to choose our own email address. [email protected]!

TV was great, as were the Films

The 80's were just depressing and the 00's were a non event.

Loved the 90s! I was at uni from 93 to 97. I remember dancing to D-Ream in my mates room necking mad dog or pints of gin 😄 before hitting the campus bars. And smoking inside! And yes, no mobiles so all of the silly mistakes dont follow you around.

I too listen to absolute radio 90s in the car 😁

The scone we are exactly the same age and were doing the same things in the same places in the 90s. I'll bet our paths crossed 😁

Another absolute radio 90s fan here. It did seem sunnier! Music definitely better. I was a teenager so the music brings back tons of memories of going out/good times. Mobiles around for keeping in touch but social media not massive. I suspect 90s were enjoyed even more by people a few years older and able to enjoy the rave scene.

ugh no, I hated the 90s, the loathing grows more as time goes on, I much prefer life now. Things did seem to improve when I 'came of age' in the noughties but I still prefer now. It was maybe because I grew up poor in a northern town but all I remember was no internet, no mobiles (having to speak to friends' parents on the landline, the horror!)...some decent music, terrible, dull fashion, shit food and endless boredom.

YADNBU!! The 90s were absolutely amazing from start to finish. I turned 16 early in 1990 so did all my growing up in this decade - started it as a young, innocent girl who had never gone out / drank / kissed a boy and by New year's Eve 1999 I was 6 months pregnant with my first child 😊
Some high points have already been mentioned, others not, but in no particular order this decade means to me:
Clubs, I was clubbing mad and was a regular at nights in Liverpool, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester and London depending on who I was with 😁
Dance music, the music particularly from 1990-93 was just fantastic, I can still while away a nostalgic hour or two on Spotify or YouTube remembering how great it was
Drugs, I discovered E's in late 1990, spent most of the decade off my head and had some of the best nights with them!
Hot and sunny summers, I think most years we had great weather which meant barbecues, drinks in the park, or just sunbathing in the garden to the backdrop of the dance music mentioned above!
Festivals, gigs, going out 5 nights a week, I went to a couple of original raves in early 90s, would go to gigs regularly in town including Oasis early gig in a venue that held about 300 people, I also went to Knebworth and the first V festival in 1996, and clubs were so cheap that you could afford to go several times a week.
Being young and slim, i was a tiny skinny little thing and pretty much lived in hotpants for the first half of the decade.
Finishing my A levels in summer 91 and going to university, although I didn't love my time at uni I guess it was an experience.
Euro 96, Oasis/Blur rivalry, the 1997 election, all a great time to be young.
I met my DH in 1992 when I was 18 and he was 25 so we have pretty much grown up and had all the above experience together. We bought our house that we still live in now in 1997 for £40k!! Houses in our road now go for upwards of £200k - don't know how the first time buyers manage these days!
Got married in 98 and pregnant with first child in 99, still special times when I look back but obviously less full-on fun and more grown up stuff!
I'm now 44 with 3 kids and I feel like those wonderful, heady days of the 1990s were another life. I would give anything for a time machine to take a trip back there, and relive a few choice times!!!

Tell you what though, I'm eternally grateful that there was no such thing as social media in "my day" - I have a few embarrassing photos from my youth, but at least I didn't have my every move documented on Instagram! I'm glad that we could just be ourselves, didn't have to look perfect or take 100 duck faced pouty selfies every night, no constant intrusion from technology. Definitely happier times!

The Crystal Maze! "Will you start the fans, please!"

Also the bright green Junk (Melvin Burgess) posters. My school library auctioned some for charity...

I remember the optimism... new labour winning the election, Katrina and the Waves winning Eurovision, Euro 96 and everyone getting into the spirit. It felt as though things were getting better

It is just me but was England just an amazing place in be during Euro 96 - it felt like the country was on a month long party in the Sun? and the wold cup in 98'...Me and me Mum and me Dad and me Gran And a bucket of Vindaloo. I'm not sure I've enjoyed a world cup as much since.

The optimism. Cool Cymru.

London had an alternative scene and specialist shops like the Banana bookshop in Covent Garden, Cargo Homeshops and The Pier to name but a few.

Things were more affordable.

Times were simpler. People actually spoke to each other in person. No social media. Much less pretentious stuff like paying £5 for an orange. Good sitcoms. Indie films. Oh the music.

Times were simpler. People actually spoke to each other in person.

Yeah, but if you went out to meet someone and they got held up or couldn’t come you’d have to wait for aaaaggges to find out...

We also didn't have camera phones so drunken fun wasn't snapped for the world instantly see.

This with bells on. The shit I used to get up to and no one to film it. Memories were made without any evidence. Shock horror.

The 90s were awesome. I would go back in a heartbeat if I could.

I often think that from an objective perspective the 80s were a truly excellent decade to have been a child and the 90s were the best to be a teenager/young adult in. In the 80s you had a wonderful mix of the beginnings of kids pop-culture, Star Wars, Ghostbusters, Transformers, She-Ra, etc big Christmas and so many more toys than any previous generation could have imagined. While also still having the freedom to just go out and spend all day playing with your friends and having great adventures. We were the first generation to have that kind of toy/media fun while also being the last to have real freedom.

Then as teenagers many of the advantages of modern technology and absolutely none of the disadvantages. We were the first to be able to email and text each other and the last not to have every stupid thing we did recorded for posterity. We really did get to have the best of both worlds in both decades of our formative years. We were, so, so unbelievably lucky.

marmite I was a student in the 90s, and a proper indie kid, but my best friend was a clubber and played me that N-Trance track, possibly ironically. He bought me it on CD single, and we used to play it incessantly. He was killed in an accident a few years later, and that song brings back a world of memories. A couple of years ago DH and I put a load of CDs to Music Magpie as we’d had a lot of duplicates when we moved in together, and of the thousands of pounds worth we got about 45p for, that was the one CD I kept. (God, I am weeping now!)

OP "I have to say, London during the 90's was just exquisite."

THIS! Now it's a pedestrianised pram park in the day and quite scary at night

(Just j home from night out)

I'm guessing that the decades where the wheel and fire were invented were probably pretty cool, but yes, another 90's lover here.

It was all great clubs, great music, great drugs (that weren't laced with the shit they put in them nowadays), snogging, sex, lots of white furniture and wood floors, the beginning of the cell phone for everyone instead of just rich people, dial up (!) and just people bumbling along together. I remember Labour getting elected (I was heavily pg with an unexpected DC1) and getting up and watching the Blairs enter no 10 at some ungodly hour and being filled with optimism. And I didn't even vote for them.

I think the 90's truly died on 9/11. And then everything went to shit a little.

I am actually hopeful that the 2020s could also be great. I think we drifted into the internet/social media without realising the dangers and bad points, but now people are, and are starting to do something about it.

My children were born in 2010 and 2012 and all the parents I know are so careful with internet access, encouraging kids to play outside (like our own childhood) and schools etc are so hot on what’s wrong with social media. Maybe there will be a pull away from it, and this can only be good for the generation born in the early 10s who will be teens in the 20s.

Fingers crossed because I would love that for my kids.

I’m not in the UK though (moved to Australia 10 years ago) so obviously I have no experience of bringing up children there.

Is it my imagination or ...

Did people take drugs to get happy or mellow in the 90s

But now they take them wanting to get aggressive and start fights?

I loved the 90s. There were some low points too but I feel we were all a bit more carefree then. The music was great, people experimented with clothes and style and there was high employment so Saturday jobs etc were easy to come by. People just seemed to get on with things without overanalysing everything that seems to go on now.
The world has definitely changed.

Roobarb and custards

Loved my friends at school / university but the thing I really miss now is the optimism of the 90s and even the early 00s - the idea that the world could become a better place. Now with Brexit, Trump and climate change the future looks pretty bleak. I listen to 90s music as escapism!

90s teenager here too. Nirvana, Dr Martens, Britpop -- heaven.