The Authoritative Essential Indispensible Top 25 Songs Of The 90s

"California Love".
"Say It Ain't So".
"Bad Reputation".
"Last Goodbye".
"Interstate Love Song".
"Loser".
"Don't Speak".

There is a short list of awesome, awesome songs.

And not a one of them in the top 25.

The nineties is probably going to end up the most important decade in my life. 11 to 21. Kool-Aid to Jell-O shots. Girls are icky to I wish a girl would get me icky. Bush the Elder to Fun Time Bubba. By the time this decade was over I had transformed from wide-eyed babyfaced optimist to binge-drinking babyfaced cynic. Did the music change me? No, it was evolution, baby. But did the music come with me and mark pivotal moments in my life?

As we used to say in my youth I pray to keep (yeah, didn't make it either): for sure.

XXV) Beastie Boys, "Sabotage" (94)
Oh, by the way, just in case you were wondering: Best. Video. EVER. The New Yorkers got away from the even-now-ahead-of-it's-time Paul's Boutique and the back-to-roots Check Your Head by--melding the two styles in a way that reminded everyone of the impact of Licensed To Ill.
Best part of a great song: The building guitar before AdRock lets out the word "I" as a five-second breakout.

XXIV) Snoop Dogg, "Gin & Juice" (93)
By the time Doggystyle came out, it was going to be a mortal lock you were going to be hearing it all year long. At your prom, at the game, at the mall, at your friend's house. Didn't matter. Between this and "Who Am I? (What's My Name?)", it's a reminder Suge used to be feared more for wallet size than his gangsta ways. So good, it'd take 10 years and some scrawny kid from Virginia barely doing anything for Calvin to do any better.
Best parts: Three key phrases to sum it all up: "G's up, ho's down while you motherfuckers bounce to this", "I don't love you ho's, I'm out the door", and the closing "BIATCH!"

XXIII) Big Punisher feat. Joe, "Still Not A Player" (98)
Sometimes choruses are just the weak support for strong bridges. And sometimes the chorus is a perfect summation of a song. This song, however, is a perfect summation of a lifestyle. Everybody may look back on Chris Rios' life and wonder how a man the size of a Starbucks got pussy--'cause the man 'could flow.
Best part: "I regulate every shade of the ass." Not there yet. But someday.

XXII) Nine Inch Nails, "Closer" (94)
On the Mt. Rushmore of All Time Creepy Fucking Songs right next to "Every Breath You Take" and "Possession", this is Reznor summarized: broken, twisted, creepy, psychosexual, minimalist, dirty, outcast, godless, and frightening--and yet, there's still something about him that makes you empathize, especially when you're a 15-year-old boy. Probably the part in you where you're all those things, except you can't turn it into art as he did and Mark Romanek did with the SCENE MISSING video. I remember hearing this song on the radio and just assuming I was going to get arrested for listening to this.
Best part: "You let me penetrate you". He didn't just say what I think he did, did he!?

XXI) U2, "One" (91)
I wonder why Bono thinks he's God. Maybe it's because he cuts right to the whole "Why are we here?" in the opening three questions of the song, and then homages Bob Marley. Maybe it's because they had the foresight to say get to carry each other instead of have to. As usual, U2 trades off the basics of humanity with the muck and shit of relationships. Or the basics of the muck and shit of relationships with the muck and shit of religion. Or...
Best part: "Love is a temple, love's a higher law". You don't get this when you're 12. And you might not when you're 42. But somewhere in the middle, you start to understand it.

XX) Notorious B.I.G., "Hypnotize" (97)
You know how good this song is? It got played during the funeral procession. And the immediate response was dancing. This is the song our kids are going to be rolling their eyes to when their old folks come out to the dance floor and attempt to recapture their youth. Herb Alpert gets his props here, and it gives a young kid in the Cardinals system a hell of an idea.
Best part: Quite possibly the best five opening seconds in hip-hop history. Your head ain't nodding, I don't know ya.

XIX) Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, "T.R.O.Y. (They Reminisce Over You)" (92)
Probably the least-known song on the list, and it's a goddamn shame fifteen times over. A man's life, told in less than five minutes to a beat so stand alone and unique nobody's had the balls to dare sample it and go over it themselves. The last one got played at a funeral procession, and this one comes from the result of another one--jazzy enough to keep the olders, but hip-hop at it's realest for the young folk.
Best part: The horn sample coming in at the beginning, one of the most singular recognizable notes in hip-hop history.

XVIII) Warren G. & Nate Dogg, "Regulate" (94)
Because nothing says West Coast Death Row gangsta hip-hop like...Michael McDonald?! This would begin a continuing phenomenon where Nate Dogg sings a hook and the song goes double plat, and give the other 2 guys in 213 the spotlight if only for a summer in which this song played on every station. Even the country ones.
Best part: The fourth verses between them, because nothing says friendship like postponing ho-banging to unload a couple clips into people fucking with your people.

XVII) Skee-Lo, "I Wish" (95)
This song isn't so much a corny one-hit wonder as the story of my life in the last millennium. A lot of people write songs I like; a very select few write songs I feel I would be writing myself. And as a side bonus, the first way I indirectly found Buffalo Springfield's "For What It's Worth".
Best part: For me, the whole damn thing. Stupid short parents.

XVI) R.E.M., "Everybody Hurts" (92)
Before I knew what a DiStiple was, before I'd heard "Radio Free Europe", before I'd seen them in '03, this song was just a warm blanket of support. I wasn't one of the people who's lives was saved by this song; I gotta settle for the rung right below that.
Best part: The violins.

XV) Ice Cube, "It Was A Good Day" (92)
The godfather of "Regulate" for the slice-of-life-in-LA over a minimal beat, and Ice Cube's biggest departure from the rest of his catalog at the time (NWA, the immortal dis song "No Vaseline). How big a lasting impact did this song have on me? Did you see the title of the post before this? All right then.
Best part: Obviously, "I didn't even have to use my A.K.", the one slice of normal Cube in the song, and one of the most unlikely catchphrases of my youth was born.

XIV) Outkast, "Rosa Parks" (98)
Longtime readers will reference this as the song playing when I made the Cristal post last year. And for damn good reason. The Blender that inspired me to do this listed "B.O.B." as the second-best song since 1979, claiming it was the history of black music in five minutes. Which is all well and good, except a) this beat "B.O.B." by an album b) this is better than "B.O.B." c) about a miunte shorter and still covers the same ground and d) the title and chorus references one of the most important black events in history, leaving aside the music aspects. Oh, and there is the little matter of e)
Best part: You don't say the harmonica solo, I stab you.

XIII) Green Day, "When I Come Around" (94)
Oh, sure, Joey and Dee Dee may've been rolling over in their yet-to-be-made graves, but the reason punk music connected in the first place was it shook up a bunch of disaffected alienated people by hitting them right in the ventricles. And when you're a 15-year-old boy, it's all disaffection and alienation. It doesn't get better with age all the time, but especially when you're 15. As American Idiot provided the soundtrack to me being 26 in this country at this time, so Dookie did to me being 16 and trying to survive high school (a process that to all seems impossible until it's actually happened, and you know some of your teachers could give Presodent Squinty a run for his Confederate money.
Best part: All four verses.

XII) Radiohead, "Creep" (93)
They would spend the rest of their careers running as far away from this song as they could muster. No knock against the transendence to follow, but why? I just thought it was another song, and then all of a sudden that fuzz feedback came in--chugga! CHUGGA!--and I was like, "Oh, my God, that's the best thing I've ever heard in my fucking life!" I've never known Flea to lie to me, I'll say that much.
Best part: chugga! CHUGGA!

XI) Nirvana, "Lithium" (91)
Some of these songs are awesome but didn't make it to the autobiography list for a myriad of reasons. And vice versa. This song, one of the doomed middle children singles from the best album of the decade, sure isn't one. And Kurt throwing himself into the drum stand at the video provides another excellent metaphor for high school. It's also telling a lot that when he said "I'm not going to crack", nobody believed him, and not just in the song way--I see a crazy blur of cocaine and arms, an awesome second album when everbody wanted the Second Coming...
Best part: Plug in, turn up, sit down, shut up.

TEN) Notorious B.I.G., "Juicy" (94)
Back-to-back Autobios! I think what he missed out on when he wrote one of the most immortal opening couplets in hip-hop was how his story was going to continue manifesting itself through newer MCs wherever they happened to be from. And every rapper coming up now has their "I used to be on the block, now I fuck K.D. Aubert on the regular" song in their opening album, and you know what? No two of them combined get within the same time zone of this.
Best parts: "If you don't know, now you know, nigga", and the last half of the third verse which alongside the opening minute of the "Flava In Your Ear" remix would make Big a top 5 all-timer off of those 90 seconds alone.

NINE) R.E.M., "Losing My Religion" (91)
When you have a crush on somebody, and you think that they understand that but you're not sure, and you're dropping all kinds of hints, and you're not sure, and then you drop a hint the size of Idaho. And they've responded in a way that's confused you... Again, add pop quizzes, Clearasil, and bad cafeteria food--exactly.
Best parts: I got a fever, and the only cure is more MANDOLIN, especially at the end; "Oh, no, I've said too much", because we've all been there at least twice and at least once have screwed over a friend that way.

EIGHT) Mazzy Star, "Fade Into You" (94)
What do you do with a torch song that's sung so lowly it barely illuminates, a country song that breaks down routinely, and a piano stutter that surges up and dies in 3 seconds? If you're me, you wish you'd lost your virginity to it, and you give a band that got swallowed up in the tide of Everything Grunge a couple extra seconds to their 15 minutes of fame.
Best part: "I think it's strange you never knew" at the end, with instruments starting to drop out, is like a tuning fork to the heart.

SEVEN) The Verve, "Bittersweet Symphony" (97)
Somewhere in heaven, Rod Sterling gave a wry laugh. Imagine if you will, a band of boys from the wrong side of the tracks who keep coming apart only to find they're the only things keeping themselves together. A band determined to give success one more try. A band who then unleashes an operatic, beautiful song that goes to #1 around the world and finally puts them on the map as the Next Big Thing--until the 8-second bell sample is challenged by a larger band with actual lawyers, who win 100% of the profits off of the song and sell it off to advertisers within the year. The band breaks up, and you never hear from any of them again. But for almost six minutes, for one man's graduating year, a group of blokes found themselves #1 with a bullet--charttoppers in The Twilight Zone.
Best part: The entirety.

SIX) Digital Underground, "The Humpty Dance" (90)
Okay, for the last time, just so everybody's clear: the best old-school song ever. Groucho who?
Best part: Did anybody think I wasn't putting "I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom"? Good.

FIVE) Rage Against The Machine, "Bulls On Parade" (96)
It's funny most people my age use "The Downward Spiral" to refer to their HS years, because my mother always called it my rage against the machine. # of times she'd listened to their songs: 0. # of times I came walking in playing one of their songs: roughly 32,271. This would make 13k, easy. We all kept looking for the next Public Enemy in hip-hop--we just shouldn't been looking in hip-hop. I still maintain that if they weren't so militant they could've been one of the best funk bands ever. And seeing Tom Morello play his guitar like a turntable for the first time--holy shit.
Best part: bow wow chicka bow wow chicka chicka chicka bow wow chicka bow wow chicka chicka chicka

FOUR) R.E.M., "Man On The Moon" (92)
Mott the Whattle? Who the fuck is Andy Kaufman? Why is he wrestling and goofing on Elvis? And thus, Automatic For the People gets my attention and holds onto it...well, let's just say ever since. Pop before it became a dirty word, and the sort of wink-and-a-nudge cynicsm that would become my m.o. not only before I got that way, but even knew what an m.o. was or what it stood for.
Best part: "Here's a little legend for the never-believer yeah yeah yeah yeah Here's a little ghost for the offering yeah yeah yeah yeah".

THREE) Dr. Dre & Snoop Doggy Dogg, "Nuthin' But A G Thang" (92)
In the span of about 9 months--November 1991 to August 1992--two songs change everything for everybody forever. The other one gets #1, as everybody would expect. The N.W.A. menance, slightly cleaned up with a little bit of George Clinton to ride in and out on. And that guy next to Dre who couldn't look at the camera, which just made you pay more attention to his style, which was so laid-back it was like you were high just looking at him (which would eventually happen). Last occurence of a crowd losing their shit the s e c o n d the needle dropped on this track: Saturday night. 'Nuff said.
Best part: BAYYYYYYYYYYYYYBAYYYYYYYYYYYY!

TWO) Oasis, "Wonderwall" (95)
The question must be asked: if I hadn't tried to slit my wrists to this, would it be #1? The answer, is no. But only because of the force of the #1. Once upon a time, this song drove me to tears because of its beauty. And then it'd drive me to tears because of the painful memories it caused, a horrible 28-car pileup of misguided first love, race relations, spring formals, careening hormones, a crisis of faith and increasing isolation. Once I got over those things as much as one could, I began remembering why I fell in love with the damn thing to begin with: simple guitar structure, insistent but not overlying drums, and the fact that you can fall again, but the first love always stays with you. How come? Because maybe, they're going to be the ones that save you.
Best part: Liam's stand-alone opening verse.

ONE) Nirvana, "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (91)
The answer is 3:46. The question: what time was it when everything I ever knew got knocked on its fucking ass? I went to my old friend Mike Hammond's house. Mike is the gateway to me finding rock and roll, and grunge. We waited for the SNES to fire up, and he started playing this on cassette (you hear me, you punk kids! CASSETTE!) , and [insert Hiroshima footage here]. My head was moving before any part of my rational mind had reacted; by the time THE Guitar Riff was over and that long-haired guy who's face I was convinced was never going to be exposed to the world came in beating the drums like they owed him money, I knew this was talking to me, had a vice on my balls. I didn't know what Kurt was saying (and for the first couple of weeks would get him and Krist confused), and it didn't matter. It was 1991. I was 12. Hell, I'd been raised on Marvin & the Reverend. But with 9 years of the decade to come, this five-minute look into what was to come put the #1 far, far out of reach.
Best part: You want to talk about "Teen Spirit"? How about the chorus? More specifically, how about "I feel stupid and contagious"--what the hell else is there to life at that age?