The '90s Are Back

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

• fashionable
• reunion
• comeback
• a shame

• baggy
• flannel
• top of the charts
• decade

• rehashing
• looking back

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

Is there still a pair of baggy jeans in your closet? If so, you must be excited that Radiohead, Smashing Pumpkins and The Verve all have new albums out. Why? Because each of those bands achieved fame in the ‘90s, back when the more material went into your pants and the less you washed them, the cooler you were.

But now that those pants and flannels are long gone, what does music from ‘90s artists mean? Listen to Devan and Jason wonder what it means for our decade that so many of the top artists right now first became popular more than 10 years ago.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

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2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

Devan

Jason

Devan:  So the other day I bought a Rolling Stone Magazine. I was looking at the back page. I was reading the names of the artists that are the top 50 selling artists right now. It was like, it could just as easily have been 1996 as now because it was the same artists. Isn’t that crazy that over at least a 10-year period, the same artists are still topping the charts?

Jason:  I feel like our decade really has no music personality. Looking back, what are people going to say about this decade?

Devan:  Do you think that just maybe because of downloading stuff that new artists are being downloaded, they’re not really selling records?

Jason:  Oh that’s a good question. Those people’s fans are just people who are still buy records. There could be that. I think it’s just that, for some reason, it became fashionable in this decade to do a comeback tour and a reunion tour and a comeback album, you know? And I don’t know why that never happened before. Do you?

Devan:  No. I don’t know. It seems…I guess maybe comebacks are happening sooner now too because in the ‘90s the bands doing comeback tours were bands from the ‘60s that do comeback tours 30 years later, but now it’s 10 years later you do a comeback tour.

Jason:  I know. It’s kind of a shame. We’re just still rehashing all that stuff, I think.

Devan:  Yeah.

Quizzes

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Lesson MP3

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