The Top 200 Songs of the 1990s (according to Issun, no repeats)

[Issun]

Trip-Hop is another genre that really took off in the 90s, and Portishead is one of the most successful groups in said genre. #114 "Glory Box" is a fine example of their work. When that heavy bass kicks in near the end it's pretty amazing.

 

[Issun]

Cake is a fun band with catchy basslines and great horn hits. Sometimes that's all you need. Here's #113 "Never There"

 

[Issun]

We've already had two individual Fugees on this list (with one more on the way. Don't think that's really a spoiler), but when the trio burst on to the scene in 1996 with #112 "Fu-Gee-La" it was a game changer in hip-hop.

 

[Issun]

Another one that was absolutely everywhere way back when. It's a tad bit late, Nate Dogg & Warren G had to #111 "Regulate"

 

[Issun]

Mariah Carey was one of the biggest pop artists of the first half of the decade. It was hard to choose a song of hers to represent but I ultimately had to go with the beat of #110 "Always Be My Baby"

 

[Issun]

Get A Grip was probably Aerosmith's last truly good album, and I think #109 "Cryin'" was the best song on that album. The video also kicked off teenage me's years long crush on Alicia Silverstone, but I doubt that experience was specific to myself. Fans of the show Lost should keep an eye out for a young Josh Holloway.

 

[Issun]

Chris Cornell was part of so many bands that it's easy to forget he had some great solo stuff, too. Like #108 "Can't Change Me".

 

[Issun]

Elastica is a band most famous for their mid 90s hit "Connection" (which was also featured in Captain Marvel) but my favortie song of theirs is from the same album, and it is #107 "Stutter"

Also I wouldn't be surprised if Justine Frischman would have gladly identified as nonbinary if it were on offer in 1995.

 

[Issun]

It took me a long time to learn to like The Prodigy. Now I do, and #106 "Firestarter" is really fun!

 

[Issun]

I've always enjoyed the Spice Girls, and I think their ballads are their strongest tracks, especially their first one, #105 "2 Become 1"

 

[Issun]

Queensryche were the American answer to Judas Priest and Iron Maiden, and they were a Seattle band to boot. Also they rocked pretty hard. Their signature track is the ballad #104 "Silent Lucidity"

 

[Issun]

The Batman Forever soundtrack was a big deal. Mostly because it had a ton of great songs, but one in particular stands out. Because Seal compares you to a #103 "Kiss from a Rose" on the grey.

 

[Issun]

At the start of the 90s, it was presumed that the more classic style of rock was the domain of established acts from the 60s and 70s, but The Black Crowes proved them all wrong with #102 "Hard to Handle"

 

[Issun]

1995's song of the summer was #101 Montell Jordan's "This Is How We Do It", and it's a banger that's guaranteed to get people going at parties and barbecues even today.

 

[Issun]

Olympia, WA's own Sleater-Kinney came in at the tail end of the Riot Grrl movement, but their lead singer, Corinne Tucker, had already been at the forefront with Heavens to Betsy a few years earlier. #100 "Dig Me Out" is from the album of that title, which is an absolute masterpiece.

 

[Wolf]

Matchbox Twenty is a band that I've grown to appreciate more over time, though #185 "3AM" was one of the first of their songs I started liking early on.

I am tremendously late to this party, but you're doing God's work.

My wife and I got to see Matchbox Twenty in concert about a year ago, and it was legitimately a great time. I'm not a huge fan of them (my wife's the one who bought all the CDs and campaigned to go to the concert), but they put on a hell of a show. A lot of heart, and a lot of songs I liked a good bit more than I remembered having liked them. Maybe it's just the live-show energy?

Anyway, I think "Bent" would have been my pick, but that song appeals to me in a way that takes some serious thought to articulate. There's something thoughtful, introspective, anxious, and a little bleak about that one, and that speaks to me more than I'm sometimes comfortable admitting. The image or concept that occurs most often to me when I listen to it (irrespective of the video, which I've never actually watched) is one of being out and about between places at some unholy hour of the night or morning (say... 3:00 a.m., maybe?), in between places and in between purposes.

Really, though, as a guy born in 1981, this thread is basically a long trip back to my junior-high and high school years. At least for the rock parts. I never got much into country, and my knowledge of pop and hip-hop is pretty anemic. My wife was more into those genres, so for long road trips we alternate CDs from each other's collections and wax nostalgic and tease each other about it. For me, though, basically my whole life up to somewhere in the early-mid 90s, I'd listened to whatever my parents had on. I had my radio set to a pop station because it was nice and inoffensive enough, and never budged the dial. Then one day I came across the video for Soundgarden's "Black Hole Sun," and between the sound and the visuals, radically unlike anything I'd ever seen in my life, it felt a little like having my third eye violently crowbarred open.

Also, it may not go on your list, but I would like to humbly submit the following (in the vein of introspective/anxious/bleak from before) as worthy:

 

[Issun]

The mid 90s saw a bit of a young blues revival with Johnny Lang and Kenney Wayne Shepherd, the latter of whom didn't sing on #99 "Blue on Black" but man does he wail on that guitar.

 

[Issun]

Adam Ant's heyday was the 80s of course, when he made quite a lot of bouncy rock songs. His more introspective 90s ballad, #98 "Wonderful" is actually my favorite song of his though.

 

[Issun]

Dionne Faris kind of fell off the map after her funky anthem #97 "I Know" which is too bad since she's clearly very talented.

 

[Issun]

Bush is another of those bands that took me a bit to fully come around on, and one of the songs that hooked me was #96 "The Chemicals Between Us". It rocks pretty hard. Also, five years ago I saw Bush and Live and Gavin Rossdale just does not give a fuck about going up into the audience. He was just running around hi-fiving people and having a good old time.

 

[Issun]

#95 "C U When U Get There"
R.I.P. Coolio

 

[Issun]

#94 "I Want it That Way" may well be the greatest boy band song of al time. The individual Backstreet Boys may not have had the fame of some of the members of N Sync, but they had a hit that, two and a half decades later, still causes anyone under 50 to immediately start singing along.

 

[Issun]

Godsmack has become synonymous with generic 2000s metal, and there is some merit to that, but their brand of Alice In Chains influenced metal was pretty new in 1999, and their all time best song (I think), #93 "Voodoo" eschews the heaviness of one kind for heaviness of another, and it's in this song where Lane Stayley's influence on Sully Erna is most obvious.

 

[Issun]

Can't have a 90s music list without some Weezer. While they've had a lot of great songs, for me they've never matched the energy and originality of their first single, #92 "Undone"

 

[Issun]

Sublime's self-titled 1996 album was n all-timer, and it's a pity Bradley Nowell passed away so young. Still, #91 "What I Got" is still the gold standard for reggae and hip=hop infused slacker rock.

 

[Issun]

#90, Natalie Imbruglia's cover of "Torn" was the sad pop ballad of 1998, and it's still great today.

 

[Torzelbaum]

"Torn" is a song written by Scott Cutler, Anne Preven, and Phil Thornalley. It was first recorded in 1993 in Danish (under the title "Brændt" [pʁænˀt], meaning "Burnt") by Danish singer Lis Sørensen, then in English in 1995 by Cutler and Preven's American rock band Ednaswap, and in 1996 by American-Norwegian singer Trine Rein.

...

In 1997, Australian singer and actress Natalie Imbruglia, working with Thornalley, covered the song for her debut studio album, Left of the Middle (1997).

 

[Issun]

The latter half of the decade saw the rise of the south in rap music, and leading the pack was Outkast. Their breakout hit, #89 "Rosa Parks", was both incisive cultural commentary and a danceable groove.

 

[Issun]

U2's heyday was in the 80s, but they carried over into the early 90s quite well with Achtung Baby, wdely considered to be one of their best albums, and its signature single, #88 "Mysterious Ways"

 

[Issun]

Sheryl Crow's success with Tuesday Night Music Club was a long time coming for her. There's a lot of killer tracks on the album, but my favorite is #87 "Strong Enough".