![]() Vanilla Ice parlayed his number one hit “Ice Ice Baby” into his film debut Cool As Ice, and the world replied in one unified voice: “No, thank you.” Digital Underground gave us “The Humpty Dance,” and then gave a great track called “Same Song” to a troubled Dan Aykroyd movie called Nothing But Trouble. MC Hammer followed Please Hammer Don’t Hurt ‘Em with 2 Legit 2 Quit, whose title track was accompanied by one of the most-expensive music videos to date, starring Jim Belushi, Jose Canseco, and Tony Danza. Hip-hop went ultra-mainstream in 1990, but by 1991, three of the artists with the biggest hits on the pop chart flamed out in fascinating ways. >Listen to the author's official Diet Slice playlist on Spotify. Big’s “To Be With You,” Slaughter’s “Fly To The Angels,” Extreme’s “More Than Words,” which for a song with “words” in the title is a grammatical disaster), and power ballads from freestyle artists (Timmy T’s “One More Try,” Expose’s “When I Looked At Him,” Sweet Sensation’s “If Wishes Came True.”) Even Guns N’ Roses softened their sound for a moment with “Patience,” which predicted the era of MTV Unplugged and is infinitely preferable to “November Rain.” The Diet Slice was a golden age of power ballads from bands better known for party songs (Warrant’s “Heaven,” Poison’s “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” Tesla’s “Love Song”), power ballads from bands who showed up too late to sell their party songs (Mr. ![]() Hair metal was limping by at this point, so the bands whose bravado had dominated the mid-‘80s fell back on the tried and true: the slow dance. Breathe, who heard the band name “Bread” and said "let’s call ourselves something like that, but less threatening." (Breathe was ballad-heavy, but released a track called “Don’t Tell Me Lies” that counts as a banger in the Diet Slice.) Will To Power, a studio band that wanted to make dance music but only broke through with an easy-listening medley of “Freebird” and “Baby I Love Your Way” that went to number one despite nobody ever listening to it on purpose. There were Michael Moraleses aplenty in the Diet Slice: Glenn Medeiros, a teenager who sounded like an adult-contemporary artist, then teamed with Bobby Brown for “She Ain’t Worth It,” which had the mystifying effect of making Bobby Brown sound like an adult-contemporary artist. So is the song, a legitimate top 20 hit that you can listen to and forget at the exact same time. The hair? The white shirt under the black suit? The name in a utilitarian font with a Hi-Liter-green crayon squiggle across it, just because? This is prime Diet Slice. ![]() hit “King of Wishful Thinking.” Wilson Phillips held on, and then released us, and then we released them. Go West dialed its synth-funk down and its middle-of-the-road tendencies up, and gave us its only real U.S. Have fun.” The Billboard number one single from 1989 was “Look Away” by a post-Peter Cetera Chicago. If the music of the MTV ‘80s and the Nirvana ‘90s were separate and high-Richter youthquakes, the Diet Slice looked America’s teenagers in the eyes and said: “Here is Michael Bolton, Cher, and Anita Baker. The defining characteristic of the Diet Slice is that it is the one time in pop music history when the ideal demographic seems to have been middle-aged. ![]() Like the music of the time, you would consume it if it were there, but you are never thirsty for it. The Diet Slice gets its name from the low-calorie version of Slice, a popular soft drink of the time which set itself apart from its shelf-mates by claiming to be somewhat natural its can crowed “with 10% real juice,” later downgraded to “contains real juice,” and although I eventually stopped paying attention, I bet toward the end it was more like “is technically a liquid.” As a beverage, it was refreshing and indistinct. You can actually buy this vintage can of Diet Slice here. ![]()
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