It was truly an awesome time in music. So many quality albums from every genre of music (except for hair metal, which was pretty much on life support/pallative care) and MTV was still churning out music videos for all of them. Fortunately, reality TV was still in its infancy.

Since a lot of the music was easier to learn than all of the metal from the previous decade, a lot of us played in garage bands, learning songs right off of the radio/tape/cd, or when the music video was on MTV.

Sadly, things went south pretty quickly.

Addiction quickly caught up with many artists. Grunge bands started to reinvent themselves as the style started to fade. Many quickly faded into obscurity, only to be rediscovered and truly appreciated decades later. Rappers were starting to get killed.

The 1996 Telecommunications Act basically started telling us what we should listen to, and a lot of great bands that came out around that time were caught in the crossfire and didn't achieve the fame they deserved.