In recent years, music from the 90s and early 2000s has made a comeback. More students are listening to bands like Green Day, Nirvana, Radiohead, and Stone Temple Pilots. There are several reasons for this.

“I feel like there’s more emotion to it. It shows real talent and makes you feel a certain way that other music doesn’t,” junior Stein Embley said. 

Mainstream music has been largely led by pop music, hip-hop, and EDM. There are breakdowns explaining how music today sounds flat, lifeless, and is exhausting to listen to.  Most songs nowadays feature repetitive, easily digestible structures, often produced for maximum fame and commercial gain. 

“I don’t really like modern music because everything is trying to be trendy. There isn’t any uniqueness to it. Everything kind of sounds the same nowadays,” senior Isaac Waldron said.

The “Loudness War,”  a trend in the late 90s allowed for a higher dynamic range as CDs advanced. Being able to produce louder music through a CD meant that you had to compress it significantly, compared to vinyl. This, in turn, brought louder and more impactful music that made the listener more excited. 

“CDs were nice when they came out, they were compact. They would scratch but then they came out with cases to put them into. I liked the convenience,” Rachel Hixson, a teacher at Farmington High School, said.

Producers wanted their music to stand out, so they permitted maximum, consistent amplitude through CDs. As everybody turned things up to stand out, the average volume went up too, with heavier compression following. Stack that up over time, and you get louder, more compressed music than ever before. 

Millennial nostalgia is also a huge factor. Much of this music came out while millennials were in high school and is tied closely to many personal experiences. This connection offers that generation a sense of comfort and identity.

It is without a doubt that by discovering old music through social media, Gen Z has been exposed to retro aesthetics and older music in more widespread, shareable formats. 

“I had heard a lot of songs on things like Instagram and stuff and it sounded cool so I started listening to more of it. Being exposed to that kind of music definitely brought me more into that kind of music,” senior Isaac Waldron said. 

This “90’s revival” also goes hand in hand with fashion. Trends such as baggy jeans and grunge styling are also super popular today. As this nostalgia cycles every 20-30 years, these trends are expected to continue for a few more years.