20 Landmark Songs Of The 90s

16. My Bloody Valentine €“ Soon

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4-5gHR3_Kg The musical movement with the worst name ever, €˜Shoegaze€™ emerged at the start of the 90€™s, getting its nom de plume from the fact that the band members preferred to look at their shoes rather than the audience. It was all about anti-stardom, the music did the talking and said music was frequently very magical indeed, bands like Ride, Lush and Slowdive all made records that were huge swathes of guitar drone and noise, with ethereal, heavily reverb'd vocals floating on the top. But shoegaze would never have existed without My Bloody Valentine, whose €˜Isn€™t anything€™ album of the late 80s wrote the handbook. They then had a three year hiatus to pen its follow up, the resultant album €˜Loveless€™ which would legendarily nearly bankrupt their record label Creation. In their absence, as would happen to The Stone Roses, a clutch of bands would emerge to try and take their crown as the masters of blissout guitar pop, with varying degrees of success. However, on their return with €˜Soon€™, My Bloody Valentine showed who was the real king of the playground, and like the lion giving his cub a gentle slap to show him who€™s boss, €˜Soon€™ would put their followers in their rightful place. It retained their trademark floaty vocals and Kevin Shield€™s sledgehammer guitar, but here they tapped into the dance music influences that guitar bands were embracing. But unlike opportunists such as The Soup Dragons, who quickly twigged that putting a funky drummer beat on a song would guarantee a hit single, €˜Soon€™ used off-beats to create something that was truly mind-bending, head music that was also brilliantly suitable for the dance floor - space rock was reinvented with this song and would never be the same.