We are in 1992 or just a little later. We are in college, quietou talking about the Radiohead’s first hit maybe. And buddy Stéphane arrives with a new sound: that of RATM, or Rage Against the Machine. For months, it’s the tube Killing in The Name which will run flat out in CD players. For decades, it’s this daunting sound that will end our high school evenings, our Bordeaux student Thursdays, our weekends in Haute-Savoie to see Stéphane and the gang again. It’s also the one that will shake the walls of the older sister’s room, which was already making our ears bleed with Metallica.
The same year, we will howl on born dead heading for our first Eurockéennes de Belfort. the tube of Body Count will end up making us opt for skull and crossbones t-shirts. ” Rage against the Machine, it’s the album that made me switch to hard rock, it’s the one that made me put away my Elsa K7s, ”says 34-year-old Virginie. The thirty year old 20 minutes went to look for her in the streets of Paris (hello la igne 4), in order to offer a female voice to this synthesis of a call for testimonies. Because Killing in the Name at 30, the editorial staff asked you what were your cult albums, those that marked your youth. And, bam, only guys. Tastes are sure, we even share them. But apparently, music (rock) is a matter of guys.
We continue with Virginie: “ Killing in the name, it’s like a Proust madeleine: as soon as I hear it I’m 18 years old. I knew it long after its release in the United States and I heard my big brother listen to it on repeat. Then I appropriated it and replaced my posters of series actors with those of Gun’s n Rose, Korn or Linkin Park. »
” Smack my Bich up caused me to sprain my ankle”
Virginie will then quote The school of micro money of IAM, as his second “monster album”. And our other readers, Mezzanine of Portishead, south of heaven of Slayer, “the stainless” nevermind of Nirvana or, like Mathieu, The Fat of the Land from The Prodigy. “I listened to it on repeat. The flagship title Smack my Bich up I even sprained my ankle jumping off the sofa. A work stoppage difficult to justify”, remembers the young quadra who “loved the group so much” that he bleached his hair.
“It’s the very first CD I had as a teenager and there’s not a bad song on it. Every time I hear it, I have lots of images of my adolescence that come back to me,” says Thomas, talking to us about What’s the story (Monring glory) of Oasis. And if our 38-year-old reader also quotes highway to hell of AC/DC, it is rather Showbiz of Muse and OKComputer of Radiohead which succeed Oasis on the charts of the albums which definitively “marked” him: “I listened to them on repeat while reading The Lord of the Rings. I can’t hear a title without having an image of the Battle of Khazad-Dûm, a Rohirrim Charge, or Helm’s Deep in my head. »
“The 1990s will never be equaled! »
We, listening Ok Computer, we cry. So. And if there is one who would be on the verge of shedding a tear by testifying, it is Yannick, 43 years old. “The 1990s will never be equaled! There will be no better. Auto-tune did not exist, digital was in its infancy. An almost perfect decade for the world of music”, slice the follower of “it was better before”.
And there is the big plunge into nostalgia. From that of when we “got our records in mail order with Club Dial, like we got books with France Loisirs”. “The big slap when this RATM came home. This CD has been listened to more than reason,” adds Yannick. The quadra goes on to quote the double album of the Smashing Pumpkins (Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness) where the American Idiot of Green Day.
American Idiot“the last great rock album”
Green Day, however, is Ian who talks about it best. At 31, he left us a review-worthy comment in The Inrocks. The group led by Billie Joe Armstrong is, according to him, “the greatest group of the last twenty years” and American Idiot, “certainly the last great rock album”. “Green Day signed an opera-rock album just like Queen had done before”, continues Ian, before delivering a parallel between the politics of the Bush administration of the 2000s and “the iconic album with the heart of pomegranate which shows that politics can devastate everything in its path”. An anti-Trump plea will follow, knowing that, “inscribed in time, American Idiot resonates even louder today”, according to our melancholy. American Idiot “remains musically and ideologically always so right”.
“Your readers can say whatever they want but no album will ever match The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. The ax fell this weekend in Montrouge (Hauts-de-Seine): Stéphanie spoke. “This album is about hours spent in my room pretending to be her. I dressed like her, I wanted to be her. I was 14 and my parents couldn’t take it anymore, ”recalls the one who still lives in Bagneux (Hauts-de-Seine). “I think that since then we haven’t done better, that a woman will never do better”, simply slices Stéphanie who quotes all the same The Writing’s on the Wall of Destiny’s Child and “his unforgettable hit Say my name who made (him) dance for a whole summer”: “As soon as I hear this song, I scream. »
“Roll a shovel over Under the Bridge »
As for Mathieu, 47, he quotes dirt. Alice In Chains’ album is, according to him, “a true monument of grunge, carried away by the single Would which breaks everything”. “He accompanied a pair of hangovers with my holey jeans. It is timeless, I take it to the grave”, he concludes while, lower down, Alain, 50, remembers “the 1990s, with the Tiag’, the skinny jeans and the metalhead t-shirt”. For Alain, it was the time of “packs of beer in the parking lot before the concert”. And that of Noor and “big pogos during their concerts”: “I was ejected three meters away, I had pain in my buttocks for three days. When I think back on it, I was a diehard. »
Hoang, he stayed at the time of Blood Sugar Sex Magik Red Hot Chili Peppers. “It came out in 91, I was in 5th grade and the older brother of a classmate had bought it. My buddy recorded it for me on cassette: it was THE slap. A new world has opened up. » Blood Sugar Sex Magik “helped” Hoang “through the years, with its ups and downs”. And he is “trying” today to “pass it on” to his daughters: “for the moment, it’s a waste of time, but I don’t despair”. Give them time, Hoang, as friend Caroline, 41, says, everyone ends up “rolling a shovel on Under the Bridge “.