While I agree that 1991 was a time of a big shift in popular rock music, I don't know that it was really a better year than any of the years immediately before it. The Chili Peppers released what, at the time, was their worst album and it became immensely popular for reasons I've never understood. Metallica took the first step down in their career. G'n'R released one great album and one ok album and their career was effectively over, though nobody knew it yet. And of course, most significantly, this was the beginning of the great watering down and popularizing of the "alternative" music that had been more interesting up to that point.
With regards to your comments about the late 90s, I've never understood why people associate pop garbage only with the late 90s but not the early 90s. If you actually look at the charts for the early 90s, they were filled with the likes of Color Me Bad, Mariah Carey and Boy II Men, all of whom were just as bad as their late 90s equivalents. I also generally think the late 90s gets kind of an unfair bad rap. Not only did it see electronica rising to previously unimagined heights, but it was a time of experimentation for a lot of bands, with people blending styles together like never before.
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