OH MY GOD IT JUST WON’T END: The third-hottest hit of the 90s

At number three, a song about the crazy, devilish things a boy does when he falls for the new girl in town.

3. Edwyn Collins, A Girl Like You (1995, #16)

Edwyn Collins is quietly judging you, his hand against his face thoughtfully, probably disapprovingly, like a fashion photographer about to throw a tantrum and tell you that you’re getting it all wrong. At least, that’s what it looks like on the cover of Gorgeous George, his third solo album (and first to be released in the US.)

A somber affair, the record opens with the epic The Campaign for Real Rock, wherein Collins sings for six minutes about rotting carcasses and putrifying brains. Fifty or so minutes later, the album concludes with a hidden track telling you that the music won’t take you higher unless you’re a moron.

In between there are glum but pretty-sounding songs like North of Heaven and the title track, cynical and sad tunes sung thoughtfully in a brooding sort of snot-filled way. But nothing else on the record compares to A Girl Like You. An obscenely booty-shaking blast of guitar fuzz and retro vibraphone, the song became his only American top 40 single thanks to its appearance on the Empire Records soundtrack.

Nobody saw Empire Records when it was released in 1995, and the few people that did see it all hated it. Years later it would become a minor cult hit, but the only thing it had going for it in 1995 was its soundtrack. The CD went gold, largely because of the Gin Blossoms’ hit single ‘Til I Hear It From You. Comprised of decent-enough songs by decent-enough alternative acts like Evan Dando and Cracker (both of whom were on pretty much every compilation to be released that decade), two songs in particular made the CD stand out from other soundtracks of the era.

The Innocence Mission’s Bright As Yellow, which first appeared on their Glow album, is pretty much the polar opposite of A Girl Like You. One is a dream-pop ballad by a married couple from western Pennsylvania and the other is a scorching northern soul dance number by a generally mopey guy from Scotland. I’ve never seen Empire Records so I’m not sure how either song is used in the movie, but it’s hard to imagine a critically-hated slacker comedy being pretty enough or fun enough to require two songs as good as these. (Not that I don’t like Liv Tyler or Anthony LaPaglia or Debi Mazar or the young Renee Zellweger, mind you.)

A Girl Like You would tie for second for Best Single in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll for 1995, but possibly the truest thing I’ve heard about the song comes from an uncharacteristically astute Betty Boop-loving Canadian Youtube commenter named Stirner123, who wrote about the song just yesterday: “This song gives me an erection. Seriously.”

It’s shiny, it’s sexy, it’s sweaty, it’s draped in purple velvet, and it makes you move. From Swingers to the Austin Powers movies, mid-nineties America (and Britain, I guess) was cheesy, sleazy, masculine and smoky, and a guy who looked like one of the girl-getters singing about spell-casting devil-women* made for the perfect theme song.

Lots of people that bought Gorgeous George were probably disappointed that it didn’t all sound like the single–they’d have to wait for Smashmouth’s record two years later to get that–and Collins was written off by the public. Even The Magic Piper (Of Love), which appeared on the first Austin Powers soundtrack, didn’t give him a second round of airtime.

He just put out his sixth solo album this past September; it’s his first release since a series of awful-sounding brain hemorrhages in 2005. Pop radio won’t play it, but that’s fine; the moment for hit songs like this has passed. I think Collins is too cynical, too British, and his songs are too intellectual for Americans to really get, anyway.

(*And protest singers, which is the one line of the song that really sticks out.)

Further listening:

You know where to find it.

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