Why Your Shitty Boy Band Wouldn’t Have Made It in the ‘90s 

It’s 92 degrees out in Austin’s famous Mohawk venue on Wednesday, March 12. A band called The Molotovs runs around the stage with guitars from the ‘70s and style from the early 2000s singing music that’s also…not from this time. The crowd roars, swaying in waves of excitement. With several levels to this outside stage, those less enthusiastic watch from the balcony. 

Here in the heat some Dad sighs and looks to his fellow beer-bellied buddy, “ugh, these shows were so much better in the ‘90s.”

Well, who asked? 

Where the music industry has completely flipped on itself since the days of Nirvana and Pearl Jam, there’s still a market for success using the American-dream ideology. The key aid is presence on social media. 

In the ‘90s bands found their audience by playing live gigs and selling records. This afforded them the opportunity to get larger show offers and open for bands that would expand their audience. In 2025, record sales mean nothing for bands, and social media presence is everything. When a band books a venue today, that venue asks them to promote on every network possible. That means a constant parade of Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Youtube posts in hopes to catch the right algorithms and bring in the listeners. Even though this method seems much less cool and punk to the fifty-something complaining about how the past was better, it comes from the same spirit of what once was. 

Bands still make handmade posters and tape them around their towns. Bands still leave stickers in skeletons of each place they’ve played. This soul of rock 'n' roll’ n’ roll attitude exists, but to market that in any meaningful way means adapting to what works. In doing so, bands reach outside their local community much quicker than in the past. 

“You can’t just rely on the local scene like you used to be able to,” says Parker Huff, the singer of the Boulder band, Chicken Head. 

Huff explains that these days bands can use Instagram to reach audiences in other states and even book shows outside their towns. He feels that using the local scene isn’t enough for most bands, especially if they hope to monetize their art. 

“You’re not selling records like you did in the ‘90s,” Huff says. “So to make a living it was easier in the ‘90s.” However, Huff believes that social media makes finding larger audiences easier than ever before. 

Nostalgia plays a large role in this wistful longing for the ‘90s. Dr. Tim Byrons from the School of Psychology at UOW believes that music has always taken influence from the past. With streaming platforms like Spotify democratizing music, people have access to much more than they ever did in the days one had to buy physical mediums. 

“Young people may still get peer-pressured into listening to what their friends want them to listen to, but the other stuff is also easy to find, ” Byron explains. “In the '90s, original music was harder to find and harder to purchase, and a lot of the time those sold in music stores were covers. Now it's originals on streaming services, not covers."

Similarly, according to Dr. David B Feldman’s article in Psychology Today, nostalgia can be a way of coping with negative emotions. Feldman explained through his research that nostalgia is escapism from the stresses of the present time. In this age of increasing prices, political conservativism, and climate change, Gen Z is looking fondly at the decades that proceeded them for inspiration and hope. 

With that, it makes sense that bands sound like a hodgepodge of their idols… so why is that bad? And why do those who actually lived in the 90s feel the need to constantly belittle the music of today? 

I am sick and tired of this rhetoric, which largely comes from washed up men discontent that their band never went farther. Many like to shout that music is oversaturated and there’s too much that sounds the same, but I think this has always been the case. The ‘90s just didn’t have the internet to spread these similar songs farther. In this age, one needs to fight harder to be heard over all the chatter. This means playing live shows, touring, posting videos of one’s music on the internet, and remaining relevant. However, the beauty of this chaos is that unlike the ‘90s, a band doesn’t need to be signed to reach a level of stardom that builds them a following. With current technology, bands can record and produce their own albums in the comfort of their bedroom. They can even release music on streaming platforms for very cheap. 

 In addition “The culture is much less misogynistic than it was in the ‘90s” says Jacob Masson of the Austin band, Farmer’s Wife. 

This rings true in many facets of music, as back in the day… music was completely dominated by straight white men. 

All of this to say, I think music needs a revamp, but not from the people making it. I think the tired old critics need to go home and pay their mortgages. I think the bands wasting time complaining about what they dont have are in it for the wrong reasons. And, I think music needs to embrace its retro style, because that’s what makes people happy. 

To the people who like to stand on the sidelines and complain: I don’t think your shitty boy band would have made it in the ‘90s anyway…