[Sidebar] December 23 - 30, 1999
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Singled out

The 90 best songs of the '90s

Kurt Cobain

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

"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

"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

"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

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