I remember 94-95 being excellent years for music. Mid-late 96 that it started to get a bit sour as all the Casts and Ocean Colour Scenes began to dominate (no wonder Spice Girls were so huge - we needed some COLOUR) but the combination of "Be Here Now" being shite and Radiohead making OK Computer pretty much swept it all away in '97.
My mate basically said this post WORD-for-WORD last night at the pub