OH MY GOD ANOTHER HUGE LIST: The 101 Hottest Hits of the 90s (part 4)

The first half of my top 40 pop hits of the 90’s. Watching all these videos by alternative bands from the 90’s is sort of depressing today–they seem so fake, and it’s really morbid how the imagery seems so specifically designed to appeal to angsty teenagers and get them to buy records. I mean, obviously that’s what was happening, but watching lots of videos at once reinforces it in a way I don’t think I’d fully processed before. But back to the countdown–it’s getting sort of exciting, isn’t it?

40. SWV, Weak (1993, #1)
Another great slow jam, this one most notable for its catchy chorus. SWV sounded younger and a little more nasal than other girl-groups of the decade, but sometimes that works for the best when you’re singing about falling in love. “It’s not a phase,” and you want to believe her, to the point that you can ignore that someone in the background is playing their keyboard on the vibes setting.

39. Madonna, Deeper and Deeper (1992, #7)
Although Deeper and Deeper was a top 10 hit it was overshadowed by Erotica and the Sex book and the Truth or Dare movie and HBO special and all the rest of it. I feel like a lot of people (the gays excepted) don’t even really remember this song, which is too bad because it’s one of her best. Latin guitars, flamboyant backup singers, a quote from one of her previous songs, and a single thundering boom five minutes and eight seconds in (on the single version, anyway) that says Madonna means business. And the awesome video, which features phallic bananas, linedancing, balloons, and probably 700 hours worth of hair styling, is one of her best.

38. Oasis, Live Forever (1995, #35)
A song I most clearly associate with the week my grandfather died and I hung out with my cousins a lot. They listened to BRU, the local alternative station, and that weekend was my first introduction to the Stone Roses, Oasis, and Peter Gabriel songs that weren’t Sledgehammer. It was also kind of a rite of passage for me, musically as well as emotionally, because it was the first time I ever really hung out with anybody that was older than me but younger than my parents.As far as the song itself goes, aside from being one of the only Britpop songs to have a stateside impact on the pop charts, it’s Oasis at their best, catchy, jangly, self-involved,and, most importanly, concise. While their later songs would devolve into pretentious druggy guitar jacking off,* Live Forever remains one of the great rock achievements of the nineties.

(*Wanking, they’d call it!)

37. Whitney Houston, My Love Is Your Love (1999, #4)
Whitney Houston’s last major hit was also her best, a totally perfect Wyclef-produced slow jam that was sadly overshadowed by her tabloid trashiness and the fact that that radio stations decided to play a shitty club mix of the song instead. Every line of the verses has a corresponding backup vocal to follow it, like she’s doing a call-and-response with herself. The strings and the choir that comes in after the bridge elevate the song from great to reeeeeally great.

36. Sunscreem, Love U More (1993, #19*)
Lyrically similar to Whitney, here’s a ballad for depressive ravers about loving somebody even through drought and famine and Redwoods dying and fathers raping their daughters and oh my god did she really just say something about incest on 92 Pro FM?!?! A love song that only really makes sense if it’s about Greek gods, there’s parts of the lyrics I still don’t get (like making the sea turn turtle**) but overall its mysteriously bleak enthusiasm make it one of the weirdest, and best, crossover techno hits.

(*Apparently it spent 6 weeks climbing to #19 and then dropped off the top 40 entirely the next week. Weird.)
(*Never mind, I forgot I had the information superhighway to answer questions like that.)

35. Eleanor McEvoy, Precious Little (1997, #27)
Right before the Federal Telecommunications act killed regional variation in radio playlists, Eleanor McEvoy’s Precious Little was a big pop hit in Providence, more so than other places I think because nobody I’ve ever met from the rest of the country remembers it. A mid-tempo ballad with trumpet and church organ, the Irish singer should have been the kind of hit that would still get played on adult contemporary radio six times a day a decade later. Instead, nobody seems to remember it and today her albums (according to the always mystifying Wikipedia entry) are mostly collected by members of “the hi-fi community” to test speakers.

34. Cathy Dennis, Touch Me (All Night Long) (1991, #2)
This is the kind of dance-pop that’s perfect for that scene in the movie when you’re going on a first date and your friend sits on your bed and makes faces while you try on all of your kooky and inappropriate outfits before she drags you to an expensive store where really old and snooty people will eventually outfit you in the perfect thing for you to wear.Also, I just remembered my Cathy Dennis tape, and how I tried to use it to DJ my cousin’s high school graduation party, and how his friends made fun of me and wouldn’t let me near the boombox because they said I wasn’t old enough to pick the music. Since recording this cover, her biggest hit, Dennis has moved into songwriting, with results both wonderful (she wrote Toxic for Britney Spears) and dreadful (she also wrote A Moment Like This.)

33. Gin Blossoms, Hey Jealousy (1993, #20)
“If you don’t expect too much from me, you might not be let down.” Ahh, Daved & Confused-era youth! With all the edge of a formica countertop, the Gin Blossoms called themselves alternative and wormed their prissy way into America’s hearts. The first time I heard this song was on American Top 40 the week is debuted, when my mother and I were driving home from mass. Casey Kasem told a story about how they once played at a pound and the dogs loved it!* Written by an alcoholic who got kicked out of the band and committed suicide when it became a hit, Hey Jealousy is a slacker-pop anthem that your whole family can love.(*Sometimes I wish I remembered less of my childhood. For real.)

32. The Cranberries, Linger (1993, #8)
The Cranberries’ Everybody Else Is Doing It So Why Can’t We? album was the third CD I ever got, and I played the holy hell out of it, many times a day for many, many days. It’s still a great album–producer Stephen Street made sure to keep Dolores O’Riordan’s often terrible couplets just low enough in the mix that they didn’t really stand out until they got a new producer on the band’s third album. Linger, their debut single, is as lovely now as it was in 1993, a winsome little ballad with universal appeal.

31. En Vogue, My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It) (1992, #1)
Even though I haven’t listened to my worn-out cassette copy of Funky Divas in years, it’s still got a special place in my heart as one of the best albums ever. 1992 was when I started looking at critics’ albums of the year lists, though I mostly just had access to the People magazines in my grandmother’s bathroom. But I was happy to see this (and Annie Lennox’s similarly-titled Diva) on their year-end wrapup, and felt like I had somehow made a really smart decision to invest so much energy into liking this song. People approval or not though, this song is fantastic. Highlights include the sampled flutes, the chorus that repeats a kajillion times for almost five minutes, the part where she screams “and I’m out the door!” Oh, and that guy that says it’s time for a breakdown.

30. Nirvana, Come As You Are (1992, #32)
Intrigued though I was by the bassline of this song, I rejected Nirvana for most of my youth because I associated them with the bad kids I wasn’t supposed to hang out with. Specifically, the bad kids that wore this t-shirt. Extra-specifically, this one boy in my eighth-grade gym class who scared the shit out of me because he had chest hair (in eighth grade!) and also got suspended for dying his hair unnatural colors. In other words, I was so lame I thought even the outcasts were too cool.

29. Folk Implosion, Natural One (1995, #30)
Being the good boy that I was, I didn’t get swept up in Kids-mania like a lot of people my age. I thought it was an okay movie, but I preferred The Madness of King George and even horny lil’ me thought shirtless Leo Fitzpatrick was pretty grody. Still, the Folk Implosion’s hit single from the soundtrack sounds as hot today as it did in ‘95. Fun fact: In my delinquent adulthood, I drunkenly passed out in a field at a friend’s outdoor wedding reception, and totally un-passed out and started dancing again when Natural One came on. It’s a great wedding dance song.

28. Stevie B, Because I Love You (The Postman Song) (1990, #1)
In fourth grade, even though everybody hated me, I was still voted the best singer on the gifted minibus thanks to my passionate rendition of this song. Stevie B, in his whiny way, created possibly the cheesiest, and dare I say one of the best, love songs ever written. Complete with a synthesized toy piano interlude, this song undoubtedly led to lots of tears on the Rocky Point Music Express, this tilt-a-whirl kind of thing that pumped in Hot Hits For Tweens at the local amusement park (a park which, I should note, Stevie B used to totally play at, although I never got to see him there.)

27. George Michael, Freedom ‘90 (1990, #8)
Heaven knows I was just a young boy when this song came out, but George’s flashy pop sounded like a secret code coming through the radio, just for me. Decadent and percussive, Freedom ‘90 marked Michael’s step out of the spotlight–like Prince and Michael Jackson, the fame got to him and he turned his back on Sony and MTV. Instead of a candy-pop video with Michael cavorting with half-naked supermodels, we were treated to a David Fincher video with half-naked models cavorting around alone.

26. Oasis, Don’t Look Back in Anger (1996, #33)
1996 was a good time to be British, or at least a good time to like the British. Not only was there lots of sexy Damon Albarn pictures to pin up in one’s locker, there were also Spice Girls lollipops, Cool Brittania ice cream, and, before long, Teletubbies. Which is to say nothing to the music–from Menswe@r and Ash to Echobelly and late-period Lush, I loved it all. And although I would have gladly shot the Gallagher brothers in a Blur-Oasis war, there was no denying they could put out really excellent singles sometimes. I don’t know who Sally is, or what he’s waiting for, but it doesn’t matter. It’s about the longing in the vocals, the dramatic finish. Also, I totally had a pair of those orange round hippie sunglasses and thought they were the coolest thing in the world.

25. Britney Spears, Baby One More Time (1998, #1)
I spent the first two months of this song being out thinking it was Robyn, because I had given up on MTV and missed the video’s daily showing on then-new TRL. The first of a handful of excellent Spears singles, it’s sort of depressing thinking about how she used to be an innocent Louisiana schoolgirl with mild S/M tendencies who probably had no idea that within a few years she’d be the new Princess Diana/Anna Nicole Smith/Any Other Blonde I Might Have Forgotten That Popular Culture Will Sacrifice Just For Shits And Giggles. On the other hand, if you totally ignore all the depressing stuff about what it’s teaching young girls, the video’s pretty awesome!

24. Everclear, Santa Monica (1996, #32)
This list has an absolute dearth of attractive men on it, which is kind of funny because if I liked girls I’m sure I’d have lots to choose from. But Billy Corgan or 2Pac? Um, no thanks. That said, I’ve always had a secret crush on Art Alexakis, the bleached blond ex-junkie Oregonian Everclear frontman. Maybe because he seems really manly compared to about 90 of the other songs on the countdown, or maybe because seemed a little more mature than other guys on MTV and had better hair than, say, Eddie Vedder. Or maybe I just thought it was sexy when he sang You Make Me Feel Like A Whore. Regardless, he was kind of a hunk, is all I’m saying, and all the singles off the band’s Sparkle and Fade album kicked ass, especially this one.

23. Janet Jackson, If (1993, #3)
Karaoke favorite alert! A song that was really big around the time of a really stressful seventh-grade pool party, it’s endured as one of Janet’s best singles, with strings making way for a robotic opening before a sugary chorus full of guitar skronk. The perfect balance of slutty lyrics and innocent vocal delivery, it’s also a great example of how Janet used to make really fluffy songs seem tough with guitars and fascist dancing. Too bad the video’s dated pretty badly, coming as it did during the Japanese exotification era.

22. Chumbawumba, Tubthumping (1997, #6)
One of the only bright spots in my dreadful Summer of ‘97, when the Mighty Mighty Bosstones took over the world and I got my first job, counseling kids* at a city-run day camp. This song brightened my days, so that even when bratty six-year olds dumped sand in my discman and tried to steal my Sleater-Kinney and Portishead CDs I still had something to look forward to on the radio when I got home. I can’t really tell you what the song’s about, but does it matter? Does it bollocks! Not compared to how trumpets, a chorus designed for soccer hooligans and a lady who says “Don’t cry for me, next door neighbor” matter!If you’re a regular Mixtapes For Hookers reader you’ll know how tickled I was by their last album, which was really folky and all about history. Also, check out The Sex Patels, a side project they have going where they do punk covers in a Bollywood style.(*I hate kids!)

21. Ce Ce Peniston, Finally (1993, #5)
The charm of this piano-driven ode to infatuation, now performed annually by Peniston at gay pride festivals the world over, is hard to articulate. With quiet disco strings and predictably divalike vocal antics, it somehow manages to stand out similar early-90’s hits by Robin S and Rozalla.