Nitetime Nineties

It was the decade whose musical influence was so broad as to bring us everything from The Verve to The Spice Girls, The Prodigy to Take That.

The Nineties saw the rise and rise of the boyband - Westlife, East 17 and Take That all rose to fame. Meanwhile the girls truly showed up and Girl Power began. The Spice Girls were the ground breakers for sure, but Alisha's Attic, Tasmin Archer and Des'ree were all doing their thing and making their mark.

Britpop became a 'thing' - and the Oasis and Blur chart battles became something of a ritual as each band strove to outdo the other, attracting hordes of music fans along the way. Grunge came and went - and perhaps it was the loss of Kurt Cobain, whose band Nirvana push grunge into the limelight, that ultimately saw it fade out. But rock, in all its flavours was alive and well. Bands like Blink 182, No Doubt and Green Day showed that rock, and alt-rock, came in many colourful shades.

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the decade was the mainstreaming of hip-hop and R&B. Mary J Blige, Janet Jackson, Usher and Toni Braxton went head to head with rappers like Ice Cube, Dre, Eminem, Snoop Dogg and Diddy.

An incredible decade with more variety and change in music tastes than we'd seen previously. If 70s was all about Motown, 80s was all about the New Romantic movement, then the 90s was all about culture and its influence on music.

Nitetime Nineties winds the clock back to that decade, to give you a taste of the songs that defined the era.

When to listen

Saturday and Sunday morning at 0100 GMT