Uranus's impact and influence was easily discernable during these years. Music was democratized by more affordable technology, allowing budding maestros the ability to build music home studios the equivalent of professionals. The resulting "D.I.Y" or "Do It Yourself" ethic of the time allowed an unconventional, bold, and highly creative sound to infiltrate almost all genres of music via alternative labels. Sampling and synthesis—Uranian technologies par excellence—allowed the entire history of recorded music to become one's instrument and turned musical hobbyists into twentieth century Mozarts.

The independent character that seemed to have left popular music in the more commercial decades of the 1970's and 1980's returned with a vengeance with alternative rock. Bands like Jane's Addiction, Pearl Jam, Red Hot Chili Pepper's, and the Pixies defined the punk, lo-fi grunge aesthetic of the times. With alternative rock, substance was placed over production and style, quirkiness and originality held precedence over formula, and thoughtful, anti-establishment sentiments overcame more prosaic lyrical content. Perhaps the truest expression of Uranus found its mouthpiece in the powerful female artists that emerged in the late 1980's and 1990's. Angry, edgy, and extraordinarily creative, artists such as Tori Amos, Liz Phair, Alanis Morissette, and Sinead O'Connor produced some of the greatest recordings of the era—if not the century—allowing a reflective yet piercing catharsis for female oppression.

As the higher octave of Venus, Neptune's inspired sensitivity and beauty subtly yet pervasively infiltrated all music of the times to create a new belle epoque. In rock, the resurgence of the Grateful Dead and the rise of "jam" bands, such as Phish and Blues Traveler, with their endless solos and free-flowing improvisations, allowed their devoted groupies to enter into egoless abandon and reverie. The usually aggressive and gritty genres of rap and hip hop were softened by Neptunian tranquility. Known for their explicit and violent content, rap and hip hop were beginning to manufacture popular song titles like "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss" and "Escapism (getting' free)"—only in era with Neptune dominant in the collective could this happen.

Neptune also washed in ambient, new age, and world music onto our musical shores. The ethereal, amorphous sound of new age and ambient, populated by pieces without rhythm but only layers of sound, allowed listeners to space or chill out and to enter into wholly different musical universes. Artists such as Peter Gabriel and Paul Simon were popular music's Marco Polo and Ferdinand Magellan, appropriating song structures and rhythms from distant lands and bringing the bounty back to eager ears. Nowhere could the disintegrating boundaries of the world become so visible (or audible, rather) than in the emergence of world music and the fusion of musical styles from different continents.

No musical era would be complete with Neptune featured without its tragic messiah, and Kurt Cobain was the chosen sacrificial lamb. Without the opportunity to develop proper ego strength to handle his band Nirvana's overnight success, Cobain self-medicated with heroin and morphine. As the pressures of fame and success mounted, Cobain found himself drowning in a sea of Neptunian drug addiction. In 1994, Cobain finally shot himself to release himself from his world of pain. Millions of music fans worldwide mourned. The allusions to Cobain as a musical Christ figure were everywhere, from posters featuring Cobain with a crown of thorns to shirts displaying the B.C. acronym plastered over Cobain's face.