OH MY GOD ANOTHER LIST: The 101 Hottest Hits of the 90s (part 5)

Okay, we’re up to the top 20. In my typical way I’ve gotten more and more verbose about each song as I’ve gone along, so I’m breaking the top 20 up into segments. That’ll just make it more exciting, right? Right?

20. Technotronic, Get Up (Before The Night Is Over) (1990, #7)
The first house act to have any mainstream success in America, Technotronic hit it big late in 1989 with Pump Up The Jam. But while that song’s since been adopted by legions of jocky frat boys, Get Up–the very similar-sounding follow-up with the more memorable chorus–is still all about shaking your butt on the dance floor. 15-year old Zairian singer Ya Kid K did vocals, but this was back in the era when lip syncing to techno was all the rage. (She had also sung Pump Up The Jam, but that record was credited to Felly, a more photogenic Zairian singer.) Regardless, like most techno, the vocals aren’t about listening to the singer’s story, so it doesn’t really matter who’s singing them. The vocals are commands. And what is commanding you to get up and dance.

19. REM, E-bow The Letter (1996, #20)
Although they’re way outre now, I still say REM were periodically brilliant. Monster, their popular but woefully underappreciated 1994 album, is one of my all-time favorites, though their best single of the nineties–maybe ever–came two years later in the form of a beatnik dirge. The tinfoil tiaras and cherry-flavored neck and collars are grounded by gorgeously drony guitars and the undead backing vocals of Patti Smith, whose brilliantly weird Summer Cannibals had dropped just a month or two previously. E-bow the Letter didn’t have much to appeal to mainstream American audiences, but then, I’m not sure why REM ever caught on in middle America to begin with. Michael Stipe was bald and weird. (I thought he was hot*, but I don’t think many other people did.) And their aesthetic–part pastoral indie, part camp, and part hipster underground–didn’t seem like it ever went far enough in any one of those directions to make anybody happy. Which is to say nothing of their never-sensical lyrics. The One I Love? Stand? Drive? Shiny Happy People? Weird, weird, weird, weird. New Adventures in Hi-Fi got them lots of critical acclaim (like this adorably early-internet Pitchfork review) but people eventually started to lose interest and now nobody likes them anymore.

(*I definitely remember specific Michael Stipe fantasies taking place in my junior high locker room. It might sound weird because he was all pasty and full of weird forehead veins, but come on, how can you not get a just little turned on by the guy that sang Crush With Eyeliner?)

18. Ace of Base, The Sign (1994, #1)
I don’t know why I didn’t bother to mention this until now, but from 1993 to 1997 I religiously kept a weekly chart of my favorite songs. The Sign, the second and biggest American hit for Swedish pop quartet Ace of Base, set a number of records on the chart, including the one for longest streak at number one–six weeks, which was never to be repeated. Watered-down reggae injected with a dose of poppy Swedish fairy dust, The Sign got everybody’s heads bobbing to its absurdly catchy call to self-empowerment, a techno-era I Will Survive sung with emotion by the sisters Linn and Jenny Berggren. Part of the joy of the song is that it could be about anyone–a lover, parents, or God–and it doesn’t change. All that matters is that I’ve left you, oh oh oh.

By the way, if you thought the group’s popularity seemed odd at a time when the charts were full of New-Jack Swing and not much else, consider that this song was recorded at Clive Davis’s behest specifically to appeal to American audiences–well after the album (called Happy Nation) was already a hit in Europe.

17. Arrested Development, Tennessee (1992, #5)
I can’t find it online anywhere, but Arrested Development’s performance at the 1993 Grammy Awards sticks in my mind as one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen on TV. The group with the old man in the corner won Best New Artist for rapping about homelessness and race issues from perspectives that a lot of people hadn’t thought about before, and did it in a way that simultaneously very accessible and also really, really crazy. I mean, what other pop hit has anything even close to the line about challenging you to a game of horseshoes a game of horseshoes? While I tried and failed to understand the appeal of positive hip-hop acts like De La Soul, Arrested Development managed, briefly, to be mentally engaging without coming across as total tightasses.

(I also feel like I should mention the excellent vocal contribution by Dionne Farris, the lady singer on Tennessee who would go on to have a big hit with I Know and a much better, more interesting one with Don’t Ever Touch Me Again.)

16. Green Day, When I Come Around (1995, #2)
Like with Nirvana, when Green Day came out I was more scared than anything–I liked Longview and Basket Case because the magazines I read (and vh-1’s Four On The Floor!) told me to and not because I actually found them appealing. But the catchy hooks of When I Come Around eventually won me over. While I haven’t been a fan all along (I really hated the Nimrod singles) I still think their International Superhits singles compilation is one of the all-time best things to sing along to in the shower, and last week when my crazy parents mysteriously bought me a Green Day t-shirt for Christmas, it was kind of my favorite gift.

15. Christina Aguilera, Genie In A Bottle (1999, #1)
Comparing their debut singles, the difference between Christina Aguilera (who most people agree has a good singing voice) and Britney Spears (who most people agree don’t) is pretty negligible. The “Oh yeah” bit at 3:08 is my favorite part of the song, but mostly the song’s strengths are in the Disney-rific production, which came along courtesy of the same songwriter/producer who wrote Physical for Olivia Newton John (and also terrible, terrible songs like Chicago’s Hard Habit To Break and Kelly Rowland’s godawful Stole.)

14. The Real McCoy, Another Night (1993, #1)
In the five years of my favorite songs chart, this was the only song to ever debut at number one. Loved by my suburban mother and Eurotrash club kids alike, Another Night sounds like all innocent yearning until the creepy Teutonic man sweeps in and starts intoning about “just another night” when he comes to the lady in her sleep and talks to her like lovers do (!). Karin Kasar*, the female vocalist, comes back to tell us that she’ll be alone when the night is gone. Yes, listeners, it seems pretty clear–this delicious, chart-topping slab of Euro nonsense is actually about lonely girl being haunted by an incubus.

(*Although credit went to Patsy Petersen, who used to lip-sync the song. If anybody could explain the necessity of this I’d be very happy.)

13. Smashing Pumpkins, Disarm (1993, #1)
Gothically charming, the strings and bells of the Pumpkins’ Disarm were infinitely more interesting than the endless guitar nonsense of the rest of Siamese Dream. Billy Corgan sings like a whiny twelve-year old, but somehow it works when placed against the song’s epic orchestration. Although nowadays MTV would probably bleep the word “killer” out of the chorus, this should totally be playing during the epic climax if there’s ever a teen movie adaptation of Return of the Native.

12. Sophie B Hawkins, Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover (1992, #5)
Speaking of sweepingly romantic, Hawkins’ first and (by far) best hit nuzzles you with warmth and then halfway through assaults you with trumpets and a note held for a twelve seconds. Then it fades away and starts over, this time admitting that the lover in question is a she*. A year later, Cindy Crawford and kd lang would be gay together on the cover of Vanity Fair, but in 1992 I guess some people were genuinely upset about this song, which seems crazy now that it’s had a decade and a half to settle in as an adult contemporary standard. It’s probably also the only love song written after 1964 where somebody sincerely says “Shucks!” in the middle of the chorus.

(*She also says she feels like a schoolboy during the fadeout, although a minute before that she was saying she’d be your mother. Kinky!)

11. Sinead O’Connor, Nothing Compares 2 U (1990, #1)
Sinead O’Connor’s always been a woman with a lot to say. And while I support her in pretty much anything she wants to do, most of America just can’t. That’s why her only real hit here was a cover of a minor Prince album track. But what a cover it was! Almost unbearably sad, she tries to stay strong as she addresses the lover who left her, but the repetition of the song’s title–which O’Connor so wonderfully spits, cries, and whimpers at different points of the song–is an admission of defeat. It’s not even the best song on her second album (that’d be Black Boys on Mopeds) but it’s so stunningly lovely that even American audiences were ready to overlook the shaved head and strange clothes and refusal to sing the national anthem for a few months.