Singled out
The 90 best songs of the '90s
Kurt Cobain
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Recently, someone asked me whether I thought the '90s had been a better decade
than the '80s. My first instinct was to reply, "Better for who?", since I was
taught long ago to answer a tough question with a smart-ass question. But it
got me thinking, and I realized that in a lot of ways the '90s were a better
time than the '80s. We got economic prosperity instead of trickle-down theories
(an economic model that Bill Maher once pointed out conjures images of the rich
pissing on the poor), a political scandal involving blow jobs in the White
House instead of Iran-contra arms deals. And for technological advancements
it's hard to beat e-mail and the Internet. As for music, well, the '90s seemed
like a time of unprecedented variety and even freedom as the introduction of
SoundScan, perhaps one of the decade's most important behind-the-scenes
developments, made it easier to gauge album sales, setting the stage for
everything from Garth Brooks's first breakthrough to the explosion that was
Nirvana to the sudden dominance of a hip-hop upstart like Master P. For a time
it really seemed that anything might be possible. The dada-punk Boredoms with a
major-label US deal? Why not? Maybe they'll even get some airplay. Then
again . . .
Of course, freedom and prosperity can take their toll. And I'd be lying if I
said I'm not occasionally nostalgic for the bad old '80s, when an indie band
were an indie band, a pop star was a pop star, and never the twain did meet,
certainly not on the Academy Awards show. I mean, in the '80s you didn't have
to worry about someone like Elliott Smith rubbing shoulders with a star like
Celine Dion and then getting popular enough to sell out the big club in town so
you'd end up having to watch him from the back of the room. On the other hand,
the first couple of Lollapaloozas really were pretty damn cool, and there's
something to be said for knocking down the walls that separate the underground
from the mainstream, even if it does mean sharing some of the music you're
passionate about with the masses.
With that in mind, we set out to bid a fond farewell to the '90s with a list of
the decade's 90 best songs. There's no way to be objective here: favorite songs
are as personal as a favorite color. And there's no way to quantify or be
rational about such things, especially when you're dealing with a decade that
saw everything from punk to metal to rap to techno to country hit the charts
and the airwaves. I mean, can you apply the same criteria to a hip-hop song and
a country tune? An ambient techno composition and a grunge anthem?
Probably not, but you can give it a shot. And so, nominations were collected
from more than a dozen critics associated with the Phoenix, song titles
were batted around, arguments ensued, feelings were hurt, and eventually 90
songs emerged in the form of an alphabetized list that represents some version
of the '90s as we heard it. There are obvious picks like "Smells like Teen
Spirit," but perhaps there'll be a few pleasant surprises, too. It's almost
inevitable that some of your favorite songs didn't make it onto a list that
could have easily run two, three, four, or five times as long. If nothing else,
though, we're hoping that "90 Songs for the '90s" causes as many arguments
among you and your friends as it did among the critics who contributed.
-- Matt Ashare, Music Editor
"All Apologies," Nirvana (DGC, 1993). Did you not notice he was
saying goodbye? Were you not paying attention? This is Kurt Cobain's
final recessional: breaking down his mighty chords into a skeletal pattern
beneath first simple confessions (whose power couldn't be dimmed even by
Christian-rock nitwits DC Talk's changing "everyone is gay" to "Jesus is the
way"), then sneering accusations, self-laceration, and compressed poetic
surrealism. You can hear him crawling up the umbilical noose, from an
underwater baby to a fetus in utero to nothingness, nonexistence, nirvana.
-- Douglas Wolk
"The Beast in Me," Johnny Cash (American Recordings, 1994). It never
occurred to me that anyone other than the Man in Black could've written this
until the song showed up on an episode of The Sopranos in a version by
its author, Nick Lowe. Because on American Recordings Cash doesn't sing
the song so much as wear it like skin, wrinkles and all, tracing its creases
and scars with that humble and frightening baritone, as one whose flesh is but
a vessel for his own worst enemy.
-- Carly Carioli
"Bitter Sweet Symphony," the Verve (Virgin, 1997). Breaking up a
half-dozen times or so didn't stop these British shoegazers from making a
brilliant third album, Urban Hymns, and accomplishing what countless
other UK boys with great cheekbones had tried and failed to do during the '90's
by scoring a smash single on these shores. Liberally sampling an obscure,
mostly forgotten recording (forgotten, that is, until "Bitter Sweet Symphony"
began climbing the charts) of the Andrew Oldham Orchestra's symphonic treatment
of the Rolling Stones' "The Last Time," the Verve assembled one of the most
grandly majestic pop songs of the decade. Atop a billowy bed of strings, singer
Richard Ashcroft's fitful desire to "hear some sounds that recognize the pain
in me" is ennui at its most glamorous. Those cheekbones didn't exactly hurt
either.
-- Jonathan Perry
"Black Ice," Goodie Mob (La Face/Arista, 1998). Innovators by design,
Southern by the grace of God, the Mob (aided by Outkast's Dre and Big Boi)
"circulate like a Sunday paper" and tap a vein of lysergically damaged black
spirituality that harks back to "Stones in My Passway" and Bootsy Collins's
"Munchies for Your Love." The mix of fear and awe in the chorus -- "Touched
what I never touched before, seen what I never seen before/Woke up and seen the
sun, sky high" -- makes this hip-hop's most haunting bull session with the
Almighty.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Block Rockin' Beats," The Chemical Brothers (Astralwerks, 1997). What
the Chemical Brothers picked up from DJing was the art of moving the crowd, no
matter how many times you have to repeat the groove to get it over. What they
picked up from the rock and roll they grew up on was the recipe for stuffing
every track with monster hooks, real live instruments, and enough details to
make it work even off the dance floor. What they picked up from hip-hop was how
to make the beat go boom and how to dig their own holy racket -- and the
Schoolly D pronouncement that powers this battering jam.
-- Douglas Wolk
"Blue Flowers," Dr. Octagon (Bulk/DreamWorks, 1996). Former
Ultramagnetic MC "Kool Keith" Thornton's collaboration with Dan "The Automator"
Nakamura and DJ Q-Bert was already an underground hit when DreamWorks
re-released Dr. Octagon; and as the bad doctor, Keith provided the
perfect antidote to the dreary "real-ness" of gangsta and the everyday
perversions of playas. Keith described Dr. Octagon as a "psycho
black-and-white-TV doctor from 1965 visiting the future, which is now," and
creating surgical and sexual mayhem. Or as he says over the slow beats and
Transylvanian string arrangement of "Blue Flowers": "Dr. Octagon: paramedic
fetus of the east with priests from the church of the operating room."
-- Jon Garelick
"Born Slippy," Underworld (Wax Trax/TVT, 1996). Opening with a bouncy
synth flourish worthy of Eddie Van Halen and pushing upstairs in the same, uh,
vein for nearly 10 minutes, this soundtrack smash (from Trainspotting)
finds Underworld graciously ditching their Pink Floyd pretensions in favor of
distorted punk sneering and bassless drum catharsis. There's enough shouting
about boys and lager to do Oasis proud, yet "Born Slippy" avoids the fate that
befell many of its transatlantic successors -- it's no mere computerized rock
song.
-- Sean Richardson
"Brimful of Asha," Cornershop (Luaka Bop/Warner Bros., 1997). Most great
songs about songs affirm the listener's world as the center of the universe. As
bold as "Dancing in the Street" and breezy as "Do You Believe in Magic," this
irresistible rock-pop testament locates the magic in an Indian performer you'll
probably never hear (one Asha Bosley). Yet after the fall of alterna-rock, in a
moment of fragmentation that feels permanent, its happy, Velvety celebration of
a decentered universe is as liberating as any brand new beat from home.
-- Franklin Soults
"C.R.E.A.M.," Wu-Tang Clan (Loud/RCA, 1993). "Wu-Tang Clan Ain't Nothin'
To Fuck Wit" introduced so many masked men working under so many names, the
single should have come with a scorecard and a golf pencil. It wasn't until
"C.R.E.A.M.," the Clan's Shaolin greenback mantra ("C.R.E.A.M." is slang for
"money," and short for Cash Rules Everything Around Me), that we got to know
them for something besides their trail of dead. A shimmering organ loops and
loops, as Inspectah Deck and Raekwon take turns scaring their listeners
straight.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Cannonball," Breeders (Elektra, 1993). Alterna-rock's own "Takin' Care
of Business," overthrowing sense for total glee: an opening incantation
borrowed from The Wizard of Oz, a riff you can play after your first
guitar lesson (or, rather, that Kelley Deal could), a genius beat, Josephine
Wiggs defining one-finger bass playing for the decade, Kim Deal purring sexy
but nonsensical words, and a structure that beelines for the bit where you get
to jump up and down. It screams, "Summer of '93."
-- Douglas Wolk
"Check the Rhime," A Tribe Called Quest (Jive, 1991). Breeze-shooting
back-and-forth so formalized ("Um, let me see. Damn, I can't remember. I'll
receive the message, and you will play the sender.") that it feels utterly
effortless, which is the key to the best hip-hop. A dreamy Minnie Riperton
sample, some cranky horns on the chorus, and good jokes dependent almost
entirely on the voices of Q-Tip and Phife (nasal and hoarse, respectively), so
I won't write 'em down. Tribe's eventual falloff revealed that they'd always
been walking the tightrope between mellow and solipsistic, but they were this
good for so long we're lucky to have had 'em at all.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Closer," Nine Inch Nails (Nothing/Interscope, 1994). In which original
mechanical animal and all-around deadsexy motherfucker Trent Reznor shakes down
copulation to its squishy anatomical details to the tune of a squirmy diseased
deathfunk that's all insectoid buzzing, gloopy-fingered bass warts, and other
indications of topical inflammation. Diagnosis: inasmuch as "Closer"
equates/confuses God with sex, call this a terminal case of dark (artist
formerly known as) Prince-itis.
-- Carly Carioli
"Cold Feelings," Social Distortion (Epic, 1992). "Yeah, I got faith,"
howls Mike Ness, "but sometimes fear just weighs too much." You don't have to
be a prison-bound drugstore cowboy to shudder along with the formless dread in
Ness's voice, a sense of severe foreboding and doubt that frames punk in a
quintessentially '90s ambiguousness: three chords and the weight of the world
on your shoulders. Social D wrote lots of songs about fate dealing you low
cards and how bad luck is better than no luck at all, but none more harrowing
than this one, in which he wrestles fate and faith with his head and his heart
but can't shake these chills in the night that "come without a warning and stay
too long."
-- Carly Carioli
"Common People," Pulp (Island, 1995). The lie of rock is that it breaks
down class barriers. Little in recent memory has done quite so much to enforce
them -- especially in England, where class is the national obsession. So
consummate Brit Jarvis Cocker, who had spent 15 years dicking around with Pulp,
finally wrote a song that did for sex and class what "Lola" did for sex and
gender. It starts out pulsing like a seduction, but when he gets to his
slummer's come-on -- "I want to sleep with common people like you" -- his voice
starts dripping with fury, and by the end it's a storm of pure acid.
-- Douglas Wolk
"Connection," Elastica (DGC/Geffen, 1995). With a sound and a look right
outta 1977, Elastica's homonymous full-length debut offered a giddy,
effervescent update of taut 'n' snotty Buzzcocksian Brit-punk that
did more than merely draw on the legacy of the band's idols. "Connection,"
Elastica's obsessively catchy stateside breakthrough, nicked its signature
opening riff from Wire's "Three Girl Rhumba" -- an overzealous (and uncredited)
"homage" that proved that though imitation may indeed be the highest form of
flattery, it can also cost in publishing royalties. Great song, though.
-- Jonathan Perry
"Cornflake Girl," Tori Amos (Atlantic, 1994). The explicit fun and
implicit challenge of listening to Tori Amos has to do with peeling away the
layers of meaning buried inside her highly imaginative, phenomenally abstruse
lyrics. "Cornflake Girl," from her second full-length, Under the Pink,
is no exception. What makes the song one of her best isn't just the elastic,
jazzy swing of the arrangement, which features an ornate latticework of
instrumentation -- mandolins, guitars, and what sounds like a winter storm of
sleigh bells swirling around Amos's exquisite piano fills. Much of its appeal
and power has to do with the feeling you get that, despite the sly asides and
veiled confessions about "hangin' with the raisin girls," you somehow know what
she's talking about: identity and social acceptance, being an outsider amid the
cruel cliques of adolescence. Or maybe it's just about breakfast cereal.
-- Jonathan Perry
"Creep," TLC (La Face, 1994). The Afghan Whigs' take on this superb
cheatin' song may actually be superior to the original from T-Boz, Chilli, and
Left Eye, because it replaces the silk-PJs production and elegant trumpet licks
(horn-synched, in the video, by Tyson Beckford look-alikes) with Greg Dulli's
guilty growl and keyboards as greasy as the rooms where illicit boot knockin'
tends to take place. That said, TLC are endlessly wise about what makes playas
play and fly girls stray, and a hot 'n' bothered T-Boz fanning
herself with ohhh-ahhs is '90s R&B's sexiest sound.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Cut Your Hair," Pavement (Matador, 1994). Rock used to teem with
moments of transcendence, those go-for-broke gestures when a performer risked
utter foolishness to bring a song to an emotional breakthrough and make the
listener shiver in awe. In the ironic '90s, however, such naked emotional risk
was unfashionable. So it's no small thing when Pavement, the decade's most
ambivalent band, in the decade's most diffident song about pop stardom, hammer
home their not-so-secret pop dream in the repeated climactic phrase "A career,
a career, a career . . . " At that moment, the song bursts
free of irony and vacillation to reach a rousing, brave, resonant affirmation,
an instant of unexpected grace.
-- Gary Susman
"Daytona 500," Ghostface Killah (Razor Sharp/Epic, 1996). A timely
reminder that the Staten Island that the Wu renamed Shaolin and shrouded in
Mafia methodology, mostly eerie Chris Carter crapola, and Shaw Brothers
mysticism was also where Martin Scorsese shot GoodFellas, the best flick
of the '90s. On this scorching three-verse workout, Raekwon is De Niro swinging
aluminum bats, Ghostface (the "Black Jesus") is Joe Pesci "pissin' out the
window on turnpikes" and stealing dirt bikes, and (because he went on to betray
the crew by dropping a lame solo joint) Cappadonna is Ray Liotta, the shnook,
but his verse still smokes.
-- Alex Pappademas
"The Diamond Sea," Sonic Youth (DGC, 1995). A song about constancy that
tosses and turns and somehow sustains itself for nearly 20 minutes. The band
have long had a knack for pop-punk abandon and electric-guitar screeds both
short and long ("Kill Yr. Idols," "Expressway to Yr Skull," "Teenage Riot,"
"Kool Thing"). But here was a number that encompassed everything (all of
Daydream Nation in one song?), harmonically static and calm at its
depths but turbulent on the surface, with a burst of extroverted noise and a
dreamy meditation. It starts off with a benedictory folk-pop ditty, wanders out
to the electronic sea, makes a slight return, and then sails out forever.
-- Jon Garelick
Liz Phair
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"Divorce Song," Liz Phair (Matador, 1993). Phair's greatest strength as
a lyricist is her deadlock grip on the attraction-repulsion games of
relationships. Here she zooms in on the exact instant a marriage collapses --
starting in the middle of a sentence, piling up her characters' petty
complaints, concessions, and resentments to show that they love each other
deeply and know they're still not going to make it. She's also a master of song
structure, and this one's essentially one very very long verse, spilling out
everything the narrator feels at that moment.
-- Douglas Wolk
"The Dope Show," Marilyn Manson (nothing/Interscope, 1999). The best
T-Rex song of the decade, and though Manson's core teenage demographic doesn't
see it this way, the bored-and-bitchy disillusioned starlet half of his persona
is a hell of a lot more compelling than the serial-killer Antichrist shtick.
This song was part of the conceptual Ziggy Stardust half of Mechanical
Animals, but Manson comes on less like an interstellar decadent than like a
cynical, faded, half-cocked beauty whispering warnings and advice to some
fresh-faced newly arrived dreamer down on Hollywood Boulevard: "There's lots of
pretty, pretty ones who want to get you high . . . "
-- Carly Carioli
"Down by the Water," PJ Harvey (Island, 1995). Polly Jean Harvey always
seems to be connected to something much older and deeper than herself, never
more than in this song. It's a murder ballad where the crime is just barely
obscured, a singsong rhyme made terrifying by the pain in her voice and the
curdled nursery-rhyme whisper at the end. She surrounds her black-snake moan
with sticky, dark sounds: strings that stay glued to a single note, an organ
that growls like an animal through the whole song. And the words mess with
folk-song tropes like nobody since Bob Dylan.
-- Douglas Wolk
"Dress," PJ Harvey (Too Pure/Island, 1992). Ugly as the term "do-me
feminism" is, it could have been invented for this burst of dread and desire
from Harvey's epochal debut, Dry. Getting ready to go out dancing,
wanting to "dress to please" a shadowy "him," a young woman amazed by her own
sexuality breathlessly reminds herself what will happen "if you put it on."
Meanwhile, the momentum of guitar/drum/cello crosstalk trips itself at every
step. The music's as tight around the hips as the dress, a reminder that, early
on, PJ Harvey meant not just Polly Jean but her unstoppable band.
-- Franklin Bruno
"Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town," Pearl Jam (Epic,
1993). Around the time Bill Clinton took office, Pearl Jam were his
arena-rock counterpart in feeling your pain. Eddie Vedder didn't just sing
about his own haunted psyche. In this brief acoustic tune, he sings in the
voice of an old woman who is stunned to run into a lover from long ago. The
song whips through her gamut of emotions -- surprise, excitement, embarrassment
(because, in her abbreviated phrase, "I'm not my
former . . . "), regret, nostalgia (she recognizes even the
scent of his breath), apprehension (could it work again?), and resignation (the
refrain, "Hearts and thoughts, they fade, fade away"). It's a marvelous piece
of storytelling and the decade's most extraordinary act of musical empathy.
-- Gary Susman
"Enter Sandman," Metallica (Elektra, 1991). Mere months after this song
was released, Kurt showed up and stole the mantle of the decade's teen spirit
right from under their noses. But for a few weeks the '90s belonged exclusively
to Metallica, and to "Enter Sandman," which distilled the band's machine-gun
arias into one perfect stutter-step riff. Not just a monolithic hard-rock song,
it was an instant standard covered in quick succession by lounge singers,
chamber ensembles, high-school marching bands, and the Bosstones (who attempted
to get an advance copy of the "Black Album" so as to release their own version
before Metallica's!). It also proved the beginning of Metallica's Spinal
Tap period -- "Sandman" was originally going to be about Sudden Infant
Death Syndrome, until they sobered up and realized SIDS was too morbid and
arcane a topic even for them.
-- Carly Carioli
"Everlong," Foo Fighters (Roswell/Capitol, 1997). Dave Grohl thinks like
a drummer when he writes songs, and the real star of "Everlong" is his
drumming: propelling its droning chords with a high-speed pitty-pat, springing
every section out with a flourish, playing give-and-take with the chorus the
way you'd expect a lead guitar to. The words are a straightforward declaration
of vertiginous passion (and the "breathe out so I can breathe you in" line
comes from Def Leppard), but the relentless build-ups and little explosions of
the music make it molten-hot.
-- Douglas Wolk
"Fade into You," Mazzy Star (Capitol, 1993). The somber strum and gentle
sob of David Roback's acoustic and electric slide guitars, the lonesome rustle
of tambourine, a piano playing somewhere in the distant dark, and
narcotic-voiced singer Hope Sandoval languidly drifting into dim view with a
declaration that was part confiding, part carnal: "I wanna hold the hand inside
you . . . " In just under five minutes, the haunting single
that opened the California duo's second disc, So Tonight That I Might
See, consummately captured the drowsy elegance of the post-Velvets "paisley
underground" that had defined Roback's previous bands, Rain Parade and Opal, a
decade earlier. It was worth the wait.
-- Jonathan Perry
"Fake Plastic Trees," Radiohead (Capitol, 1995). What's this? An
ear-shattering power ballad about "girls in the '80s"? Or a carefully
constructed mini-epic that prefigures the ambition of OK Computer? Both,
and more -- it's Radiohead's most effective mixture of emotional outpouring and
prog-rock smarts. Whether he's blowing through the ceiling or sobbing in the
corner, Thom Yorke manages to be all we wanted -- if not all the time, then
certainly this time.
-- Sean Richardson
"Feed the Tree," Belly (Sire/Reprise, 1993). Hearing Belly's first album
was like watching your little sister blossom. Once the overlooked junior
songwriter in Throwing Muses, Tanya Donelly was now evincing mystery, sexiness,
and depth -- all of which came out beautifully in Belly's greatest hit. Behind
the oft-misinterpreted title, the lyric was a demand for lifelong fidelity --
but let's face it, "Stay with me till I'm pushing up daisies" wouldn't have had
the same ring.
-- Brett Milano
"The Freed Pig," Sebadoh (Homestead, 1991). A pitiless autopsy of a dead
friendship, caustic and honest, with music that paces obsessively around a
single point the same way the words do, and a nagging lead-guitar line that's
like salt in a deep wound. Lou Barlow's enunciation makes it clear that he's
been turning this over in his head and is going to say it only once; the extra
guitar that comes crashing in with his last word slams the door shut. This is
the kind of kissoff that starts, "You were right," the kind so well crafted
that its object, J Mascis, later produced the Breeders' cover of it.
-- Douglas Wolk
"Friends in Low Places," Garth Brooks (Capitol, 1990). In terms of units
moved, Brooks is the unrivaled artist of the decade, gunning for artist of the
century even as the clock ticks down. This song went a long way toward getting
him started, even if afterward he sublimated the elements that make it so
wonderful. Blue-collar proud like Merle Haggard and lustfully rowdy like Hank
Williams (1, 2, or 3), the track boasts a cornpone chorus that's more exuberant
fun than any "classic" Beatles sing-along. Too bad Garth now thinks he has to
outsell the four lads as well.
-- Franklin Soults
"Fuck and Run," Liz Phair (Matador, 1993). Often, Phair takes men by the
balls to fondle or crush their seat of power. The imaginary heroine here is for
powerless girls who have been fondled and crushed by men. Like the song's
professed inspiration, Keith Richards's monumental "Happy," Phair lets her
thoughts spill forward behind some driving guitar and drums, but she saves the
chorus and title phrase till the end, when the heroine pinpoints her problem in
those two short, sharp words. As with that other "limited" singer, the passion
then breaking in her voice can make you cry.
-- Franklin Soults
Fugees
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"Fugee-La," Fugees (Ruffhouse/Columbia, 1996). Lauryn's rhyme about "Say
say say/Like Paul McCartney/Not hardly" may explain why Paul snarkily called
her "Lawrence Hill" on this year's MTV Awards; Lauryn also mentions drinking
Boone's Farm wine, so this song resonates with me because it came out when I
was a freshman at Syracuse, which was the only time I hung with people who'd
drink that shit. Wyclef's jab at "a boy on the side of Babylon tryin' to front
like he's down with Mount Zion" is cool, but Lauryn's the real bong in this
reggae song, and the haughty flame that keeps it lit.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Good Morning Captain," Slint (Touch and Go, 1991). Probably the only
Midwestern indie/math/art-rock song you absolutely, positively need to hear.
Intricate, arachnoid guitars grope for a foothold in the darkness, voices
whisper just out of reach, desperate, home-seeking, lost, building to a
bone-chilling Blair Witch-type climax, only way spookier. This is also
the song responsible for starting the underground craze for nautical themes
that was picked up by June of 44, Shipping News, Victory at Sea, et al.
-- Carly Carioli
"Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)," Green Day (Reprise, 1997). Day-glo
punk papa Billie Joe Armstrong would've been on the short list of folks least
likely to write the best prom ballad since Tesla's "Love Song," and "Good
Riddance" wasn't nearly so treacly as the sentiments it was subsequently called
upon to signify as the tearjerker du jour on all manner of "very special
episode"-type prime-time events. Everyone deserves a balm for the rash of
freeze-dried, instant nostalgia that erupts like emotional acne in
late-teenagers (and late-twentysomething rock critics, too), and this, kids, is
it.
-- Carly Carioli
"Greatest of All Time," Archers of Loaf (Alias, 1995). The frontman of
the world's worst rock-and-roll band is caught and drowned while the people
reminisce about just how bad he sucked. Meanwhile, the leader of the greatest
band of all time flies back home to the USA. And somehow amid the mess of
slacker-key guitars and a backbeat that keeps threatening to collapse, the
frontman leader of this Sonic Youth brigade chokes out the mantra "The
underground is overcrowded." An allegory? Or a moment of spontaneous
savant-garde genius? Hard to say, but it's easily the best Pavement song
Stephen Malkmus never wrote and one of indie rock's finest moments.
-- Matt Ashare
"Hold On," Sarah McLachlan (Red Hot/Arista, 1993). In a prime example of
what Phoenix/Village Voice critic Michael Freedberg has termed
"industrial folk," a pre-Lilith McLachlan melts glints of pedal steel into an
ethereal drum-looped country moan about the impossibility of saying goodbye:
she tries to save herself but keeps slipping away. Outcrowing Sheryl and rating
better than even Bonnie herself, McLachlan captures the throbbing ache that's
eluded her on subsequent hits. "Hold on to yourself," she gasps, trying to
brace her heart and failing, "this is gonna hurt like hell."
-- Carly Carioli
"How I Could Just Kill a Man," Cypress Hill (Ruffhouse/Columbia, 1991).
Along with Ice T's "New Jack Hustler," the Geto Boys' "Mind Playing Tricks on
Me," and BDP's "Love's Gonna Get 'Cha," this defined the logical limits of
gangsta rap in the first years of the decade, ending the story until Dr. Dre
arrived to remystify its possibilities in a haze of blunt smoke and soft-focus
cinematic clichés. Cypress Hill were blunted too, but their whining
sound effects, sneering vocals, and insolent swagger focus attention like a gun
waved in the air. The words then draw a line in the sand, right on the edge of
a precipice.
-- Franklin Soults
"Hyper-ballad," Björk (Elektra, 1995). Once a mere novelty in
Iceland's answer to the B-52's, Björk Gudmundsdóttir's acrobatic
voice came into its own as a serious force to contend with on 1995's
Post. And the disc's crowning achievement was "Hyper-ballad," a sweet
slice of dream pop seasoned with skittering club beats and smothered with
techno atmospheres as forward-looking as anything that hit the radio or the
dance floor in the first half of the decade. You can credit the all-star cast
of producers (Nellee Hooper, Graham Massey, Howie Bernstein) with setting the
stage for this artistic triumph, but it's that voice -- girlish yet sensual,
playful and profound -- that brings down the house.
-- Matt Ashare
"I Am a Scientist," Guided by Voices (Scat/Matador, 1994). So it wasn't
Robert Pollard's catchiest song, or GBV's most daring recording. But "I Am a
Scientist" was something more important -- a friggin' rock anthem, in an era
that was far too cynical about friggin' rock anthems. Pollard may be more
verbose than his '70s heroes, but it was evident that the meaning behind lines
like "I am an incurable and nobody behaves like me" was something close to
"Free Bird." Pollard actually wrote this by looking through his high-school
yearbook and making up captions for graduation pictures, but the song took on a
life of its own.
-- Brett Milano
"In the Meantime," Helmet (Interscope/Atlantic, 1992). As sculpturally
perfect as "Iron Man" with twice the economy. Helmet cleaned up Sabbath's
Mephistophelean knuckle-dragger death blooze until it gleamed with a rational,
mechanical, lab-nerd precision. "Meantime" was, upon its release, the absolute
heaviest thing ever, and its atomic drop-D tuning became metal's new standard
(well, at least until Korn), sinking the sound of apocalypse just a little
deeper into the abyss. No one who heard it ever looked back -- including
Helmet, who rewrote the song over and over for two albums before calling it
quits.
-- Carly Carioli
"It Was a Good Day," Ice Cube (Priority, 1992). The potential for
violence clings to every note like grease on a Fatburger, but the violence
itself never comes, so Cube just cruises through his semi-charmed life,
bullshittin' about dice and hoops and getting laid. The Isley Brothers sample
is as warm as the sun, the bass line's so deep it puts your ass to sleep, and
Cube's tone is both oddly tender and calm as the bomb squad.
-- Alex Pappademas
"It's a Shame About Ray," Lemonheads (Atlantic, 1992). No wonder
everybody wanted to be Evan Dando. The punk-rocker turned teen idol could take
life easy, bask in the glory, and still write classic songs -- like this one,
born from an in-joke and graced with a breezy tune and a killer guitar lick.
What exactly happened to Ray will remain one of those rock-and-roll mysteries,
like who put the bomp, what Meat Loaf won't do for love, and for that matter,
whatever became of Dando.
-- Brett Milano
"I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone," Sleater-Kinney (Chainsaw, 1996). If
Bikini Kill's "Rebel Girl" was riot grrrl's nascent battle cry, then
Sleater-Kinney's "I Wanna Be Your Joey Ramone" was the post-war plan in action,
a way of coming to terms with a decade in which underground revolutions lasted
only as long as it took Madison Avenue to deliver a new Volkswagen ad campaign.
Singer-guitarists Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, both veterans of grrrl
bands, did some co-opting of their own with this tune, grabbing hold of the
male rock-and-roll fantasy and claiming it as their own. Funny thing is, the
bassless guitar interplay and vocal call-and-responses are way more
sophisticated than anything remotely Ramonesy.
-- Matt Ashare
"Jenny Ondioline," Stereolab (Elektra, 1993). Stereolab's genius isn't
so much their cleverness in appropriating ideas from their favorite records --
this one owes a lot to "Für Immer," by the '70s German band Neu! -- as the
way they inevitably improve on the originals. To the endless chime and steady
propulsion of their pure rhythm (and the louder the song's massive organ drone
gets, the purer it sounds), they add Laetitia Sadier's graceful vocal melody
and dramatic shifts in tone and texture. The greatest two-chord song ever
written -- and it's seven minutes of one, then 10 of the other.
-- Douglas Wolk
"Jeremy," Pearl Jam (Epic, 1991). The impact this song had before Eddie
Vedder started acting like an alterna-rock King of Pain is a perfect reminder
of why sometimes you just need to shut up and play. The cryptic tale of a kid
who gets pushed or falls over the edge and who speaks with bullets in class,
"Jeremy" proved to be ominous in more ways than one. It's a song that builds
and builds and builds until you're not sure whose side you're on. Sometimes a
little dose of empathy really is the best medicine.
-- Matt Ashare
"Jesus Christ Pose," Soundgarden (A&M, 1991). This from an album
whose title was an amalgam of Motörhead and Badfinger, even though the
somewhat dubious promise of spiking the poor man's Beatles with a schnozz fulla
amphetamines wouldn't come to fruition till Soundgarden's big breakthrough,
"Black Hole Sun." "Jesus Christ Pose" is still, blissfully, all speed-induced
paranoia -- clacking down the tracks with an epileptic twitch, casting evil
eyes and quaking like a Shaker. The funny thing was how that ol' longhaired,
chest-bared soprano hesher Chris Cornell didn't seem to realize he was singing
about himself in the title.
-- Carly Carioli
"Juicy," the Notorious B.I.G. (Bad Boy/Arista, 1994). This made Big
Poppa large, with good reason: he flips English around as if it were a willing
groupie ("Birthdays was the worst days, now we drink champagne when we
thirst-ay") and sounds genuinely amazed at all his good fortune. It's a flash
of R&B sunshine, contextually ironic and painful on the otherwise
dark-hearted Ready To Die album (which ends with Biggie committing
on-record suicide); none of the B.I.G. memorials is a harder listen.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Killing in the Name," Rage Against the Machine (Epic, 1992). Before
this single even broke onto the airwaves, Rage Against the Machine were
bringing out the hardcore rap-metal audience to clubs with the formula laid out
here. They play with tempos, dynamics, and a series of repeated and opposing
riffs. The song coils like a spring winding tighter and tighter with Zach de la
Rocha's whisper-to-scream raps, then boings loose with agitprop refrains and
Tom Morello's skittering guitar breaks. And the sentiments are suitable for
frustrated teenage radicals of all ages: "Fuck you I won't do you tell me!"
-- Jon Garelick
"Little Fluffy Clouds," the Orb (Big Life/Mercury, 1991). The first time
a track from the European dance subculture reached out and shook the pop
mainstream by the throat, partly because it reached beyond the world of the
Roland 303 and 808 for its hooks. But not to pop songs -- instead, it lifted a
riff from Steve Reich's avant-garde composition "Electric Counterpoint" and cut
up a bit of an interview with Rickie Lee Jones. It was a shockingly novel
sound, and its subtext -- as an understated, abstracted AIDS memorial -- still
gives it amazing poignancy.
-- Douglas Wolk
"Loser," Beck (Bong Load/DGC, 1994). The song that supposedly did for
our time what "Subterranean Homesick Blues" did for Dylan's. I'm not so sure
"In the time of chimpanzees I was a monkey/Butane in my veins" is the same as
"Johnny's in the basement/Mixing up the medicine." But "My time is a piece of
wax/Falling on a termite/That's choking on the splinters" might be. This was
never supposed to be the slacker anthem it turned out to be -- which just shows
that you never can tell how people are going use a song, no matter how well you
make it.
-- Jon Garelick
"Losing My Religion," R.E.M. (Warner Bros., 1991). Green had
broken R.E.M. and now Out of Time nailed them. Old fans complained that
they liked Michael Stipe's lyrics better when they were mumbled, and what was
with those strings? It mattered not: in no time college parties were
rocking to the acoustic-guitar-and-mandolin groove of "Losing My Religion" and
singing along en masse to those ambiguous, self-reflective lyrics
about . . . self-reflexiveness? For the tortured freshman in all
of us.
-- Jon Garelick
"Magic Box," Helium (Pop Narcotic, 1993). A tragic and affecting
hide-and-seek allegory for indie rock, with Mary Timony promising prized and
magical secrets -- "some trees, a river, and an old man's head" -- that, it
slowly becomes clear, she's either unable or unwilling to deliver. Each time
her folksy reel comes crashing to tantalizing fruition, she mumbles a litany of
excuses -- "On second thought, never mind, I'll have to show you some other
time" -- that string us along for just another verse. And on and on until our
interest wanes and with equal parts indignation and desperation she makes this
final plea for one more chance, but we're already gone, and she lets out a
sound, a cooing wisp of melody that floats and dips suddenly and then rises,
and keeps rising.
-- Carly Carioli
"Man in a Box," Alice in Chains (Columbia, 1990). The apotheosis of
Seattle grunge's metal edge -- one pummeling chord that gets its comeuppance in
a chorus halfway between Guns N' Roses (the band's original spelling was, after
all, Alice n' Chains) and Ethel Merman -- and the song on which gnomish smack
casualty Layne Staley first unveiled the quavery croak now quoted like
Scripture by apostles from Creed to Godsmack. "Man in a Box" foreshadows AIC's
later immersion in obtuse Baroque harmony and pharmaceutical metaphor but
settles for good old-fashioned blasphemy and this one solid wail of evangelical
anguish that's eluded more subsequent seekers than the holy grail.
-- Carly Carioli
"Merchandise," Fugazi (Dischord, 1990). Back before Guy Picciotto
declared that he hated the sound of guitars, Fugazi were damn near the only
guitar band that mattered, making Marxism you could dance to years before Rage
Within the Machine. A two-minute-and-55-second manifesto that explains why
those "This Is Not a Fugazi T-Shirt" T-shirts were so funny, "Merchandise"
finds MacKaye packing several forests' worth of Chomsky into inordinately
catchy shout-along slogans -- "When we have nothing left to give/There will be
no reason for us to live"; "Merchandise keeps us in line/Common sense says it's
by design" -- and the closing, raucous, transcendent cry that launched a
thousand all-ages consumer critiques: "You are not what you own!" Still
available for less than $10, postpaid.
-- Carly Carioli
"Midnight in a Perfect World," DJ Shadow (Mo'Wax/ffrr, 1996).
Instrumental hip-hop lets nerdy white kids revel in rap's potential for
boundless sonic experimentalism without confronting their fear of public
speaking or claiming specious Compton roots. But only DJ Shadow, a disciple of
both John Williams and Ali Shaheed Muhammad, has managed to work backward from
beat-head austerity, making his rhyme-free compositions signify with the
self-expressive depth of great MCing. On "Midnight," Northern Cali fog,
mood-indigo orchestration, pensive funk guitar, and a space-ghostly moan (by
Meredith Monk) swirl around a kickdrum as heavy as the weight of the world.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Miss Misery," Elliott Smith (Capitol, 1998). You can lead an
indie-rocker to water, but you can't make him drink. Fortunately, though,
Elliott Smith of Heatmiser and a couple of very promising lo-fi solo albums was
thirsty enough when Gus Van Sant brought him in on the Good Will Hunting
soundtrack to deliver this gem. Listen closely and you'll see it's really got
nothing to do with the film, but it's the kind of tune that softens you up for
a good cry -- a thing of beauty from a guy who's seen his share of ugliness.
Proof that even when a song can stand on its own merits, production values
still make a difference.
-- Matt Ashare
"Miss World," Hole (DGC, 1994). The most bittersweet song on one of the
decade's most important albums (Live Through This), this soft/loud,
acoustic/electric, ballad/rocker also represents the bittersweet apex of
feminism in American rock and roll. Every bit as unclassifiable yet instantly
comprehensible as the wrenching music, Courtney Love's lyrics are an admission
of powerlessness and fucked-upness delivered with an edgy, aching vocal that
nonetheless demonstrates masterful strength and control. These contradictions
have never been laid so bare on popular commercial radio. As Love elsewhere
puts it, "They get what they want, but they never want it again."
-- Franklin Soults
"MMMBop," Hanson (Mercury, 1997). An ephemeral pop song about ephemeral
pop moments, like the one embodied in the repeated made-up word of the chorus.
The lead-in verse anticipates loss -- precious pre-teen doggerel -- but the
hook is about having. And it's made more credible by the urgent delivery --
"MMMBop," the name of the song, the name of the hook. "It's a secret no one
knows," sing the Hanson boys. But for one song at least, they knew it all.
-- Jon Garelick
"My Curse," Afghan Whigs (Sub Pop/Elektra, 1994). If there's a better
concept album about romantic dysfunction in the pomo world of gender awareness,
then I haven't heard it. Gentlemen pretty much sets the standard with
candid lines like "Ladies, let me tell you about myself/I got a dick for a
brain and my brain is going to sell my ass to you" and its palette of dark,
churning, R&B-tinged guitars. But Greg Dulli's masochistic masterwork would
be only half an album without Marcy Mays's devastating torchsinger delivery of
"My Curse," a gorgeously damaged ballad that reminds us it takes two to tangle
up in blue.
-- Matt Ashare
"Natural One," Folk Implosion (London, 1995). Given Lou Barlow's
penchant for homebaked melodies, kitchen-sink production, and disinterest in
mainstream stardom (this is a guy, after all, who once named a solo EP
Losercore), this soundtrack single from Kids, Larry Clark's
gritty film about adolescence in the age of AIDS, was a thoroughly unlikely Top
40 smash. It was also unlike anything Barlow or his Folk Implosion (or Sebadoh)
had ever released before. Taking style points (consciously or not) from Beck
and Luscious Jackson, Barlow and FI collaborator John Davis retro-fitted spy-fi
guitars, fatback bass, and cheesy synth burbles onto a ridiculously propulsive
hip-hop groove that was all but impossible to ignore. Add to that Barlow's
coolly conversational speak-sing rhymes and pop had a new folk-hop hero.
-- Jonathan Perry
"1979," Smashing Pumpkins (Virgin, 1995). Alterna-rock's last great hit?
Its nostalgic mood certainly made it feel like a reverie about a passing era:
"With the headlights pointed at the dawn/We were sure we'd never see an end to
it all." The video suggested something else -- a paean to the next generation,
who were just coming into their own. (I still prefer to mishear the penultimate
line as "The street heeds the urgency of now.") Whatever. The skittish beats,
low rubbery riffs, and Billy Corgan's clear, yearning vocal for once excuse his
usual lyrical imprecision, creating a melancholy so palpable you could almost
smell it on the breeze.
-- Franklin Soults
"Nothin' But a G Thang," Dr. Dre (Death Row, 1992). Aside from Biggie's
identical-sounding anthem "Big Poppa," this cut's legacy is grim: umpteen
crummy G-funk albums, white kids callin' one another "beeyatch," and David
Arquette bouncing in a hydraulics-enhanced Caddy in a 1-800-COLLECT ad. But
before all that, there was a razor-sharp rimshot, Snoop Dogg's mesmerizing
menace, and Dr. Dre's sampler surgery, which jacked a symphony of sighs, bumps,
and grinds from late-'70s funk because (as the LA uprising demonstrated)
looting don't mean shit unless it's flagrant.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Nothing Compares 2 U," Sinéad O'Connor (Ensign/Chrysalis,
1990). In many ways, the song isn't hers: Prince wrote it, Nellee
Hooper co-produced (with those lush, ghostly dance beats and strings), and MTV
made it as inescapable as it was irresistible, in a video that for a change
simply showed a singer singing and let that perfectly shorn head and that voice
do the rest. And the voice was all soul: alternating chest tones, head tones,
and that signature Sinéad back-of-the-throat glottal catch to convey
multiples levels of emotion: love, anger, grief, resignation. She hasn't
sounded this righteous again since she dissed the pope.
-- Jon Garelick
"Oh Comely," Neutral Milk Hotel (Merge, 1996). Jeff Mangum picks up an
acoustic guitar, opens his mouth, and sets a new standard for what's possible
with three chords and an overactive imagination. He seems to belt it out -- all
eight minutes of it -- in one long breath, this tantric odyssey of folksy
psychedelia and Sephardic majesty, a "bright and bubbly, terrible dream" about
reproduction and memory, music and death and Siamese twins freezing in a
forest. It has the feel of the impossible, the Biblical, as if
post-motorcycle-crash Dylan had scored Fanny and Alexander: surreal and
exquisitely phrased, beautiful and ludicrous. And quite possibly just plain
crazy.
-- Carly Carioli
Bono od U2
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"One," U2 (Island, 1991). At the height of his popularity, bruised
romantic Axl Rose proclaimed this his favorite song, and it's easy to see why:
not since GNR's "Patience" had a stadium-rock icon come up with something so
gorgeously despairing. Bono works up his deepest howl and concocts a
hilariously unimaginable pronunciation for the word "carry" while the Edge
keeps the chime to a minimum in favor of muted, R&B-style chording. There's
the usual nonsense about sisters and brothers at the end, but it hardly leaves
a mark -- this is a love song so dark even U2 can't politicize it.
-- Sean Richardson
"Put Your Hands Where My Eyes Can See," Busta Rhymes (Elektra, 1997).
Wherein a phat Seals & Crofts loop, an insinuating bass line that wriggles
like a snake in stealth camouflage, and an MC who laces his verbals with
itching powder conspire to put a Yoruba hex on your booty and turn the party
out. Chameleonic, blunted on phonics.
-- Alex Pappademas
"The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)," Missy Elliott (Gold Mind/EastWest, 1997).
It's got Missy's sexy, stoned nonchalance and Timbaland's deep funk whump, with
thunder peals punctuating the beat like high-hat rimshots from God. Then
there's the Ann Peebles sample, a primordial blues couplet that is God.
But above all, what made this rap such a turning point were the silences, empty
spaces through which hardcore challengers leaked away like so much piss and
vinegar. Standing astride their incontinent remains, Missy could rule by just
counting out the tempo, escaping clean on the one line everyone remembers:
"Beep, beep/Who got the keys to the jeep?/ Vrrrrooommm!"
-- Franklin Soults
"Ray of Light," Madonna (Maverick/Warner Bros., 1998). The Girl Least
Likely To Age Gracefully defies the odds and invents club music for grown-ups.
Poignant, spiritual, rich with detail, and pumping harder than an E'd-out
teenager's fist, "Ray of Light" is a magnificent song about the end of mourning
and, thanks to William Orbit's brilliant, original production, a magnificent
piece of dance music -- what's the last time you heard a club track with this
much guitar? It's also Madonna's greatest vocal performance: she sounds radiant
with joy, and her final scream sends the whole thing into the stratosphere.
-- Douglas Wolk
"Rebel Girl," Bikini Kill (Kill Rock Stars, 1993). The "Marseillaise" of
riot grrrl nation was later re-recorded with guest vocals by Joan Jett, but the
real deal is the chaotic 1992 original. Over squalling guitar and martial
snare, Kathleen Hanna careers from shriek to nyah-nyah to near-traditional rock
growl on the chorus: "Rebel girl, you are the queen of my world." This is
liberation via confusion: is it a show of solidarity ("She's my best friend"),
a come-on ("I wanna date you"), a manifesto ("When she talks, I hear the
revolution"), or simply a send-up of punk/garage machismo? Answer: all of the
above.
-- Franklin Bruno
"The Rockafeller Skank," Fatboy Slim (Astralwerks, 1998). The triumph of
obviousness. "The Rockafeller Skank" slave-drives every big, cheesy trick
Norman Cook had picked up in a dozen years of rocking and clubbing: a
ludicrously exaggerated beat, catchy bits stolen from a dozen other songs, the
simplest chord progression in the book, the "French Kiss"/"Come On Eileen"
breakdown and rev-up, and a sampled hook that's hammered through your skull,
then stapled to each of your vertebrae and hot-glued onto your genitals. And
just try not dancing to the goddamn thing.
-- Douglas Wolk
"Rock 'n' Roll Machine," The Donnas (Lookout!, 1998). The Ramones reborn
as Mötley Crüe-loving teenage Valley girls smokin' cheeba, dodging
curfew, looking for some quick 'n' easy satisfaction, ditching class
at Rock and Roll High School, and pissing on a new decade's worth of sacred
cows. Dig Donna A's delivery: snotty, indifferent, shouting down the car radio
in the parking lot. Just as priceless: the girl-group-era historical
correctness of its being ghostwritten by a thirtysomething-year-old guy.
-- Carly Carioli
"Sabotage," Beastie Boys (Grand Royal/Capitol, 1994). Dumbest move on
the recent Beasties retrospective Sounds of Science, besides claiming
"Fight for Your Right" was all Rick Rubin's idea: putting "Root Down" and
"Sabotage" on different discs. On Ill Communication, the old-schoolisms
of "Root Down" gave way, on beat, to the corroded dive-bomb bass of "Sabotage,"
in the most thrilling transition since A Tribe Called Quest segued "Rap
Promoter" into "Butter"; these songs go together like summer rock fests and
young men acting retarded, and keepin' em separated is a travesty. "Sabotage"
itself is a rap-rock landmark, white guys feigning blackness by jocking Black
Flag and Black Sabbath.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Salvation," Rancid (Epitaph, 1994). After this single, from the Bay
Area punks' second (not first) album, hit the airwaves, Tim (no relation to
Billie Joe) Armstrong would never again have to go rooting through other
people's trash to furnish his pad. But having lived it, he sure knew how to
sing it. And having studied the Clash, he'd already internalized the notion
that populist punk should be popular, that good intentions are nothing without
a rousing chorus, and that, well, some truths are known only by guttersnipes.
"Salvation" opens with one helluva rousing chorus replete with divebombing
guitars, and it keeps coming back with a tenacity and singleminded
determination that's hard to deny.
-- Matt Ashare
"Santa Monica," Everclear (Capitol, 1995). The ghosts Art Alexakis is
still living with are a product of struggling to find a place in the
pre-alterna-rock '80s, and the disease he's shaking away is the same one that
killed Kurt. But Alexakis had been through all that by the time Capitol picked
up on Everclear's indie debut, World of Noise, and set the stage for
Sparkle and Fade and its most convincing hit, "Santa Monica," a song
that bridged the gap between the unsatisfied longing of '80s Paul Westerberg
and the degraded teen spirit of '90s Nirvana with romantic visions of oceanside
retreats, a sing-along chorus, and a nice big pile of guitars.
-- Matt Ashare
"Say It Ain't So," Weezer (DGC, 1994). Couch-bound wallowing that soars
to a cathartic arena-Pavement climax, this song vents divorced-kid damage with
more ache than Pearl Jam's "Alive"; it helped Weezer dodge that novelty-rock
bullet (see Nada Surf) and marked their emergence as major modern-rock artists.
More important, the video marked Rivers Cuomo's emergence as a major hottie,
and it features the most dramatic hacky-sack game ever filmed.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Seether," Veruca Salt (Geffen, 1994). Lip-gloss slick and
chocolate-factory sweet, Nina Gordon and Louise Post mixed Melrose Place
grunge, pre-Spiceworld faux feminist girl power, and a dash of
postpunk Pixie dust at just the right moment and -- vavoom! -- a
gynocentric "Smells like Teen Spirit." The follow-up to American Thighs
was even better, but the girls still knew how their bread was buttered,
namechecking "Seether" like Chubby Checker namedropping "The Twist," convinced
we'd forget. They were right: Eight Arms To Hold You took a nosedive,
whatever short leash they kept the Seether on wasn't short enough, and the
original line-up split over boy troubles. Tragic.
-- Carly Carioli
"Smells like Teen Spirit," Nirvana (Sub Pop/DGC, 1991). Probably the
song of the decade, or at least the one that made the '90s as we knew them
possible. Inspired by the Pixies and probably by distant radio memories of
"More Than a Feeling," polished in the studio by everybody's favorite
Garbageman (Butch Vig), and then delivered unto a generation hungry for
meaning, direction, excitement, or maybe just a rock-and-roll classic to call
their own, "Smells like Teen Spirit" turned the world upside down for a day, a
week, a month, a year, if not quite a full decade; and sometimes it still does.
"Here we are now, entertain us." Exactly.
-- Matt Ashare
"Song 2," Blur (Virgin, 1997). Pavement began their career by pillaging
the British postpunk institution known as the Fall, so it was only fair when
another British institution -- Blur -- relaunched their career by pillaging
Pavement in one of the more interesting examples of rock's accidental evolution
in the '90s. Pre-Blur Blur were a self-conscious holdover from the
new-wave '80s, and descendants of a long line of Brit bands who were a little
too British for America (i.e., the Kinks and the Jam). But with its
abraded guitars, lo-fi-tinged drum production, free-associated "lyrics," and a
chorus call stolen from Homer Simpson, "Song 2" made modern rock gold and
brought Blur belatedly into the '90s.
-- Matt Ashare
"Sour Times," Portishead (Go Discs/London, 1994). Will trip-hop even be
remembered as a distinct genre in a couple of years, or will using hip-hop
beats to go on dream-pop trips be just another one of rock's many facets? I'd
bank on the latter, but when Portishead surfaced with this melancholy reverie,
it really did sound revolutionary, even if you'd spent the last decade
listening to the Cocteau Twins. Most trip-hop placed the emphasis on the hop;
"Sour Times" is more about the sonic trips technology can take us on. Yet it
sounds oddly traditional, like some torchsong classic beamed in from some
future past.
-- Matt Ashare
"Summer Babe," Pavement (Matador, 1991). After this milestone, Pavement
spent the decade inventing ways both to recapture and to renounce its slanted
enchantment, the consummation of generations of pencil-necked punk romance. The
lyrics here seem like everything, but they're nothing without Steve Malkmus
lumbering and tumbling forward with sweet, tired longing -- which would be
nothing without the guitar roiling behind him expressing all the feeling his
voice restrains. Words, voice, and roil become one in Malkmus's climactic wail
of "Don't go!", which, as one critic said, raises the specter of Bob Dylan. And
of your last broken heart.
-- Franklin Soults
"Under the Bridge," Red Hot Chili Peppers (Warner Bros., 1991). Anthony
Keidis's delivery is too cute at first, but then the psychedelic choir vocals
(the Chilis' most skillful Funkadelic cop ever, and that's counting the entire
record they made with George Clinton) rise up behind him. He drips blood on the
pavement for his dead homies and the needle and the damage done, and it turns
out that unlike, say, Randy Newman, he loves LA mostly because at the last
second it decided not to kill him. John Frusciante's guitar is heartbreaking
throughout, as are Anthony's love handles in the video.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Unfinished Sympathy," Massive Attack (Virgin, 1991). Trip-hop gets its
own "Don't Leave Me This Way" and its own "Wings of Desire" in one swell sweep,
on a string-drenched track that anticipates the Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony,"
UNKLE's "Lonely Soul," and even Madonna's "Frozen." Shara Nelson sings as if
she'd never realized she had a heart until somebody broke it; countless studio
dweebs would quickly xerox the shook-down, smoked-out, reggae-ragged beats on
the rest of Massive's seminal Blue Lines LP, but never with this much
soulful hunger.
-- Alex Pappademas
"Walkin' on the Sun," Smash Mouth (Interscope, 1997). Garage punks have
been passing off "authentic" (read: scratchy, arcane) ? and the Mysterians
ripoffs like bad checks for decades, but "Walkin' on the Sun" is the one that
cashed those checks and moshed all the way to the bank. On the upside, it
returned ticklish Farfisa organ to the summertime airwaves, where it belongs.
And inasmuch as the '60s wonders on the Nuggets discs mostly played frat
parties in their prime, maybe this is how it's supposed to be.
-- Carly Carioli
"What It's Like," Everlast (Tommy Boy, 1998). A self-proclaimed old man
at 29 with his first heart attack behind him, written off even by his own
record label, House of Pain's Everlast had something to prove on Whitey Ford
Sings the Blues. And this is the song that did it, not just for white folks
who wanted to be part of the playas club, but for playas looking for a way to
grow up in a genre that's still ruled by youth. It took rock and roll two
decades to mature into something more than a kids' game, and though Everlast
ain't no Dylan or Lennon, this rugged folk-hop survivor's tale is a case of the
old dog teaching everyone a new trick or two.
-- Matt Ashare
"When I Come Around," Green Day (Reprise, 1994). On most of
Dookie, singer Billie Joe Armstrong is your typical stoned suburban
geek, content to waste away in a hedonistic muck of masturbation and all-ages
shows. On this one, though, Armstrong dons the more interesting guise of stoned
suburban loverman: he's got a nagging girlfriend now, and she's not too keen on
his mindless pursuit of punk pleasure. He makes an immediate concession by
downshifting to a more girl-friendly AOR tempo, then realizes he still really
can't be bothered. Hey, you can't go forcing something if it's just not
right.
-- Sean Richardson
"Where It's At," Beck (Bongload/DGC, 1996). Up with People meet the Cold
Crush Brothers downtown. The original funk-savant Hansen brother tries on a
rack full of identities -- Mantronix Youth? Rhinestone computer-cowboy?
Home-schooled hip-hop? -- and winds up testifying in the church of the boom bap
("Two turntables and a microphone! TWO TURNTABLES AND A MICROPHONE!"). The
music's strut is so deadpan-fly, you can (literally!) hear people ringing up to
hire his producers.
-- Alex Pappademas
"You Oughta Know," Alanis Morissette (Maverick/Reprise, 1995). Want to
know the difference between Alanis 1995 and Alanis 1999? It's the difference
between "I have to stop taking all these antibiotics" and "I'm here to remind
you/Of the mess you left when you went away." After her dark Canadian disco
past was exposed, and the presence of song doctor Glen Ballard was pointed out,
and it was all debated and analyzed, and her second album went thud, the song
and the performance remained standing, in all their shaking rage and
vulnerability and sharp, sarcastic wordplay.
-- Jon Garelick
"Zoo Station," U2 (Island, 1991). What was that scrape and buzz, that
snare beat that clanked like a hammer on a junkyard gas tank? And was the most
stentorian, humorless singer in modern rock singing: "I'm ready, I'm ready for
laughing gas . . . " So they shredded Bono's vox with
barbed electronics, and the Edge made similar gargling roars on his guitar.
Noise has never been so lovingly manicured, and it doesn't take long for the
guitar to glow with celestial light and the big-time dance beat to kick in.
"Zoo Station" announced emotional and artistic risk as one and the same, the
band's wake-up call to itself.
-- Jon Garelick