Hi everyone, I was born in 1991, and so the music I was exposed to in high school (late 2000s) was mainly from the “Emo”, “Hard Rock” and “Hardcore” genres, and I thought they were rather angry and depressing, dealing with themes of violence and break ups, etc (for example, the violent lyrics in Disturbed’s “The Sickness”). However, the magic of streaming apps have introduced me to a whole sway of bands from the 1990s that are, in my opinion, even more angry, songs about violence, suicide and death, for example the band Filter’s song “Hey Man Nice Shot” which is extremely angry and is about the 1989 public suicide of a US politician. Another example is the Alice in Chains song “Man in the Box” which has anti- religious lyrics and where the singer compares himself to a beaten dog. A quick search reveals to me that most of these songs/albums came out between 1989 and 1996. Why are they so angry? What sort of social events may have occurred to make them so? It is my general opinion that, although the 1990s were a decade in transition, they were relatively happy times.
Thank you for your time in reading or answering my post.
In terms of 1990s music, there's a definite distinction between the 'mainstream' and the 'alternative' in a way which is a little hard to understand today. Today, more or less, streaming services and the internet's easy availability of information, etc, means that this distinction of the 1990s has fundamentally broken down - there no longer is one mainstream to compare to the alternative, but instead a set of niches of varying popularity (including one focused on things that are radio-friendly which might be a bit mainstream-y but which wouldn't include, for example, 'WAP', which would struggle to be considered radio-friendly on many 'pop' radio stations despite being a very popular single).
In contrast, in America in the 1990s, before on-demand streaming services and so forth, it made more sense to divide pop music in terms of 'culture' and 'counterculture', or between 'mainstream' and 'alternative' (note that this distinction is implicitly about some pretty white music, and the situation for R&B/hip-hop was similar in some ways, but a different thing - and note also that the British music industry also had different things going on to the American).
In this context, there seemed, to people interested in music, to be something of a monoculture of popular music as represented by the 'corporate rock' that was pushed by magazines like Rolling Stone, the cable channel MTV (back when its format was simply to play music videos), and radio. The 1980s represented a time within the music industry of increasing consolidation, when record companies stopped being owned by record companies focused on music (or at least entertainment more generally), and started to be owned by enormous global corporations (e.g., CBS Records was acquired by Sony in 1988, while in 1986, RCA Records was sold to General Electric, which then sold it to Bertelsmann). If musicians wanted to be heard by large amounts of people in the late 1980s, it was expected, basically, that they needed to be making music that an enormous global corporation would see as being worth their investment, which would be radio-friendly, MTV-friendly, and appeal across demographic boundaries.
This led to, in many eyes, the popularity of a type of music which had a limited emotional range, and very little depth (i.e., corporate rock): and a kind of music which didn't value individuality and self-expression in the way that rock music (as many people understood it) should. Bon Jovi, here, are probably the paradigmatic example (as evidenced by Metallica's James Hetfield putting a 'Kill Bon Jovi' sticker on his guitar - Metallica being the kind of band who refused to do videos until 'One', because they felt it was selling out) of corporate rock - catchy, not much depth, within an acceptable radio-friendly emotional range.
In the 1980s, the mainstream was contrasted with a variety of music, usually on independent labels (part out of necessity due to major label lack of interest, part of which was a belief that record labels owned by global corporations were erasing the self-expression that should be inherent in the music) that was variously called 'alternative' or 'indie', which in the US was represented by groups like R.E.M., Sonic Youth, or the Pixies, amongst others (and in the UK represented by the likes of The Smiths). This music was resolutely full of the things that seemed out of place in 'corporate rock'. It was usually anti-shiny-surfaces, instead attempting to sound truer to what a band actually sounded like in a rehearsal room. It was usually idiosyncratic, following the whims and obscure tastes of the bands (e.g., R.E.M.'s love of the obscure 1970s band Big Star), rather than making music for the masses. It was also willing to countenance an emotional range that went beyond the relatively safe emotions in 'corporate rock', towards harsher or more uncomfortable emotional stances.
What happened by 1989 was that major record labels perceived that there was a market for music of this nature due to the prominence of some of this music culturally despite its lack of major label support. An infrastructure developed which served people interested in such music, including 'college rock' radio stations, and a late night show on MTV called 120 Minutes which was broadcast from 1986. Additionally, the bigger bands of this nature were becoming increasingly frustrated by the independent record labels they were on, which often underpaid or underdelivered in various ways. As a result, bands like Sonic Youth or R.E.M. signed to what were in effect major label record companies, with R.E.M. signing to Warner Bros in 1988, and Sonic Youth releasing Daydream Nation on a record label distributed by and partially owned by Capitol/EMI before signing to Geffen for their 1990 album Goo.
This all set the stage for the massive - and quite unexpected - success of Nirvana's album Nevermind which firmly set a certain sound within 'alternative'/'indie' music into a mainstream sound by displacing Michael Jackson from #1 on the album charts. In the wake of Nirvana, broadly similar records by Seattle bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and Alice In Chains began to find a more 'mainstream' audience in the wake of Nirvana's success (leading to a song like "Man In The Box" receiving commercial airplay. In the US, MTV pivoted away from 'corporate rock' towards 'alternative' to some extent, and some commercial rock radio stations pivoted towards a format that relied on records in the 'alternative' genre (in turn leading to an explosion of 'soundalike' bands like Silverchair, Better Than Ezra, etc.)
As to why people in the 1990s wanted to hear angry music - well, the beliefs in the counterculture about corporate rock I've explained above, and the rise of an infrastructure for that music to be heard is part of the story. Another part of the story is generational angst: the rise of Nirvana is indicative of a new generation who wanted something new that belonged to them (and it's easier for music to belong to you as a generation if it scares your parents), and which - importantly - resonated with teenagers going through the ups and downs of hormones through puberty. From 1989 to 1991, the unemployment rate in the US rose from 5.4% to 7.3%, and this rise was accentuated amongst younger people, and led to gloomier beliefs about future prospects for teenagers. Another part of the story is an increase in how acceptable it was for men to express strong emotions in US culture during the 1980s. And, to some extent, there's not really agreement on the relative importance of these kinds of things - it's a complicated stew!