Best Songs of the 90s: Lonely at the Top

In the process of putting together our list of the best songs of the 90s, certain brave people made certain brave tastes known. These list-makers might not have known they were committing an act of bravery at the time, but no fewer than seven of our 22 participants submitted #1 votes – choices for the single best song of 1990-1999 – that no one else in the poll voted for at all. Some were from artists whose other works were recognized; others were from artists whose works were roundly ignored in any form. I so admire this kind of free-thinking that I asked these people to write a little about their particularly distinct choices. Below are the responses I received. (And for the record, six of my personal 40 received no other votes from anyone else.)
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Reliving the ’90s Through 15 Music Videos

One of the major themes that’s emerged from our deep exploration into ’90s music is the link between music and film. Many of us first came to our favorite songs (or several Elastica songs) by hearing them used perfectly in a movie or TV show and, in turn, directors first made themselves noticed by directing some kind of calling-card music video. These intersections really stuck with us; just look over our ’90s song list and see how many of us couldn’t help but talk about the music video when writing about the song.

Now, that cycle is mostly missing a link. Music videos aren’t the cultural drivers they once were. It’s not that there are no videos anymore; it’s just that there are so many other kinds of videos, all vying to eat up our attention and go viral, that music videos no longer get prime placement. I mean, who can focus on them when there are cats vs. shadow cats? Now and then, a music video may break through to the public consciousness—I’m thinking something like the “Single Ladies” video, or “Fancy”—but it’s not like the days when people would come home and turn on TRL.

So, it’s worth going back and revisiting what the 1990s music-video scene was like. I’ve chosen 15 to look at here. I didn’t just want to go and pick out the videos from our Top 90 songs—you can see most of those right in that list. And I didn’t want to talk about the same videos that everyone talks about in the best-of video lists, basically the ones included in the Palm Pictures Director’s Label series. If you haven’t seen those, you definitely should watch all of them. They’re amazing. But you don’t need me to tell you, yet again, that Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry are the best video directors out there, and no one needs another list that says that video where the dude is running and on fire is pretty boss.

To recap: These aren’t the best songs of the ’90s (at least according to this website) OR the best videos of the ’90s. But that’s the thing about that decade: You can lop off the top of the iceberg and there’s still so much left to talk about. So, let’s begin.
Continue reading Reliving the ’90s Through 15 Music Videos

Best Songs of the 90s: Behind the Scenes

Now that the official SportsAlcohol.com list of the best songs of the 90s has been revealed to the world in full, I thought I’d offer the list geeks among you a quick peek behind the scenes at the making of the list. So if you’re wondering why Pavement didn’t make the cut or how assured Nirvana’s victory really was, read on!

Participants
As mentioned, we had 22 voters each assemble a ranked top 40 list. There were twelve women and ten men, and most of the participants spent at least some time as teenagers in the ’90s, though one of us didn’t enter teenagehood until after the turn of the century.

Because of the high number of participants, a single number-one vote was not enough to propel a song onto the master list. Every song on our final list garnered at least two votes, and while it was theoretically possible to make the list without any of those votes being in anyone’s top ten, that was not the actual case when all was said and done. Every song on this list was on at least one person’s Top Ten of the ’90s, and in fact several songs with two votes (where one was passionate enough) beat out a number of songs that garnered three or even four votes. That four-vote wonder, the most-voted song that failed to make the list? The subject of founding editor Sabrina’s t-shirt: “It’s a Shame About Ray” by the Lemonheads. A shame indeed; sorry, Dando.
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The 90 Best Songs of the 90s (Part 1)

We here at SportsAlcohol.com can get down with a good list, but we’ve never attempted one quite so expansive before: a list not just of a band’s best songs, but the best songs of an entire decade: the ’90s, which have been experiencing a major nostalgia boom over the past five years or so, and which we hope to cash in on in a major way with this very undertaking; we just haven’t worked out the specifics of how that will work. In the meantime, you can send us personal checks.

While we wait for those to clear, let me reiterate: yes, this is the biggest list project yet undertaken by this organization. As it turns out, though, even a big list of 90 songs can feel too short when you’re dealing with a whole and particularly eclectic decade. Over 500 songs received votes, and plenty of favorites were left off the final list. Participants were asked to send their ranked lists of the 40 best songs of the ’90s, and the votes (weighted by ranking) were diligently counted in Excel to come up with the list that kicks off today. No adjustments were made for any reason beyond math. No fudging the rules to include a song by a particularly important artist or to cut down on the number of songs by an over-represented ones. This is the list of 22 children of the ’90s, though many of us approach that designation from different ages, directions, and backgrounds.

Today we’ll unveil songs 90 through 51. Tomorrow, we’ll hit 50 through 11. And on Thursday, we’ll get to the top ten. Look for other Best Songs of the ’90s content on SportsAlcohol.com all week, including our biggest podcast ever where a bunch of us got together to hash out this list.

And before we get started on list itself, I’d like to introduce your Best Songs of the ’90s voters. The panel included beloved SportsAlcohol.com mainstays, editors, and contributors whose biographies and past contributions are available at the click:

Chris Adams
Sara Batkie
Jeremy Bent
Jason Forman
Jesse Hassenger
Craig Iturbe
Rob Kuczynski
Marisa LaScala
Sabrina Lauzon
Bennett Morrison
Nathaniel Wharton

Plus these great people I’ll introduce here:

Shelly Casper is an artist, photographer, and teacher.
Sara Ciaburri is a librarian and former DJ.
Kerry Cullen is a fiction writer and editorial assistant.
Derrick Hart is a music fanatic and librarian from Boston by way of Upstate New York.
Michelle Paul is Director of Product Development at Patron Technology.
Lorraina Raccuia-Morrison edits textbooks and makes pottery.
Cristin Stickles is a book buyer for McNally-Jackson who makes New Jersey look good.
Erin Styne is a teacher and mother.
Alex Templeton is a middle school teacher, voracious reader, and writer in Philadelphia.
Bayard Templeton is a teacher, Mets fan, and theater enthusiast.
Jennifer Vega is a birder, administrator, and Mariah Carey scholar.

I am especially proud of two things about our contributors:
1. The gender makeup is majority female.
2. None of us are professional music critics.

Now then:

The 90 Best Songs of the 90s (Part One of Three)

Continue reading The 90 Best Songs of the 90s (Part 1)

Dana from Morphine is sitting 4 feet away from me…

[ed. note: chris sent me this email years ago and I asked that we be allowed to publish it as part of our ’90s music rundown because it is the best email I’ve ever received]

Dana from Morphine is sitting 4 feet away from me…

at a cafe.

I see Dana from Morphine all the time.

Dana from Morphine is a carpenter or fix-it dude of sorts.
He does work at the bookstore that my boss owns.
He drives a pick up truck with assorted band stickers on the back.
It is parked outside my office building all the time.
One of the stickers is a Twinemen sticker.
The Twinemen suck.
Compared to Morphine, at least.
duh.

My office is on the fourth floor.
On the fifth floor is Hi n Dry studios.
Morphine recorded and hung out there all the time.
Various Dana from Morphine related projects record there still.
Sometimes i can hear Dana from Morphine playing the saxamaphone.
Often the same thing over and over again.
For a long time.
That is what recording is all about.
The saxophone carries, so often that’s all i can hear.
wahwahwah, through the ceiling.

Sometimes i pass Dana from Morphine on the loading dock.
Or the stairs.
And i say “hi”,
like he’s not Dana from Morphine,
and he’s just some dude, that plasters ceilings,
carrying a baby car seat,
and i think about telling him that i was way way into Morphine.
That when i was, like, 15,
Morphine, was, like, my fourth favorite band,
between, like, TMBG and Weezer.
That i remember exactly where i was,
and what i was doing,
when i heard that Mark Sandman was dead.
But i think about all that for a sec,
and that he’s got a baby carrier,
and ‘hi’ will have to do.

Top 6 90s Soundtrack Albums Featuring Elastica

I spent a lot of time preparing for our top songs of the ’90s list by just trying to remember all the songs I heard in the ’90s. Unlike when I put together a list of my favorite songs of the ’00s, I couldn’t just consult my iTunes/last.fm history. With CDs often priced in $15-20 range, teenagers like me in the pre-mp3 ’90s absorbed music through a disparate collection of sources: the radio, MTV, going to shows, browsing record stores, and many, many tapes (be they mixed, dubbed, or recorded from the radio).

One of the most popular delivery methods of popular music in that bygone era was the movie soundtrack album. While some movies still market soundtracks like they did back then (YA movie adaptations spring to mind), they definitely aren’t the original popular music delivery system they were back in the day. The episode of Parks & Rec where Millennial April is disdainful of Gen-Xer (and avowed Letters to Cleo fan) Ben’s collection of soundtracks on CD wounded me to my core.

parks-and-rec-soundtracks

I wanted to write something authoritative about how special soundtracks could be in the ’90s, but this list is the most I’ve ever agreed with a list on the internet that I didn’t contribute to. I didn’t want to be redundant, so I decided to narrow my focus a little, to just soundtracks featuring the band Elastica.

Why Elastica? To me this group of (mostly) women who kicked out late-70s/early-80s-style post-punk blasts of sound a decade before it was trendy again were the coolest band on earth in the ’90s. They also happened to show up on soundtrack albums as much as anyone else in the ’90s, and I wanted to celebrate them because none of their songs made our list of the top 90 songs of the 1990s.

This list only includes soundtracks where Elastica is included on the album. It was always annoying when a song appeared in a movie but not on the soundtrack and vice versa, but that’s a rant for another time.  The albums are ranked on three criteria, weighted on a case-by-case basis according to my whimsy:

  1. How good the movie is
  2. How good the Elastica song is
  3. How good the rest of the soundtrack is

Nowhere

6. Nowhere (1997)

What is this movie?
Wikipedia says it’s the final chapter of director Gregg Araki’s “Teenage Apocalypse Trilogy.” The box cover says it’s “90210 on acid.” I literally just discovered it existed when putting together this list so that’s all I got.

How is it?
I haven’t seen it, but if Akari’s other Teenage Apocalypse films are as unfunny, bleak, and heavyhanded as The Doom Generation (which I have seen), I’m in no rush. The trailer seems to confirm my suspicions.

What is the Elastica song?
“In The City” which as far as I can tell first appeared on this soundtrack. Unfortunately, the pile of scholarly research about Elastica I was hoping to reference for this piece doesn’t actually exist so I can’t be sure.

How is it?
It’s pretty good! Clocking at a tight 90 seconds, this ditty about ambivialance over a potential relationship would be right at home on Elastica’s classic self-titled debut. Points off because I was kind of hoping it was a cover of The Jam song with the same name. As much as I like Elastica, the Jam song is better.

How is the rest of the soundtrack?
Like a lot of compilations, it’s a mixed bag. Hole’s atonal, anti-rape culture screed “Dicknail” reminds me of when Morrissey plays “Meat is Murder” live in the sense that it’s both preaching to and turning off the choir at the same time. There’s also a 311 song that sounds like a parody of a 311 song and a Daft Punk remix of a Chemical Brothers song that’s so boring I don’t believe either group was actually involved. Bright spots include some dreamy-sounding tracks by Catherine Wheel and Lush as well as a Chuck D solo joint that’s a few years ahead of its time.

subUrbia

5. Suburbia (1997)

What is this movie?
Richard Linklater’s adaptation of Eric Bogosian’s play of the same name. It follows a group of (you guessed it) slackers over (you guessed it) the course of a single night. For the movie, Linklater transplanted the action to a suburb of (you guessed it) Austin, Texas.

How is it?
I don’t know! I feel kind of bad about my glib description above, but it’s interesting to remember there was a time when Linklater was a promising young filmmaker and not the acclaimed auteur he is today. It’s also weird how the director who made Boyhood made so many movies before that take place over the course of 24 hours or fewer. I’m trying to say I haven’t seen this or very many of Linklater’s films in general and I’m trying obfuscate that fact by making fun of him. This one isn’t entirely on me as the film is not widely available. It’s never been released on DVD or Blu-Ray. However, I am more familiar with Bogosian’s work on Law & Order than I am with his plays, so there’s a strong case to made that I’m the problem.

What is the Elastica song?
“The Unheard Music,” a cover of an X song featuring Pavement’s Stephen Malkmus

How is it?
So freaking good! Despite the fact that Malkmus and Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann retain the original’s boy/girl vocal interplay and melody, it sounds like an entirely different (and much more interesting) song. One awkward trivia tidbit about Elastica is that they were accused of plagiarism more than once by bands that obviously influenced them, like The Wire. However, I always thought what they did was different enough to constitute original work. It’s interesting here to hear them strip away X’s rockabilly roots and replace it with Wire-style robotic noise. Also, it reminds of my favorite songs on The Menace, Elastica’s underrated second (and final) album.

How is the rest of the soundtrack?
It might be good. Like the movie itself, it’s surprisingly hard to find. It doesn’t seem to be digitally available anywhere. Like, you can’t buy it on iTunes or the Amazon MP3 store, let alone stream it. Sonic Youth scored the film so there are a bunch of their songs in addition to Beck, Superchunk, and other things you would expect to find on there. A definite strike against the album is the cover, which is the only one on the list to not have the names of the bands. That was always an important piece of information when making soundtrack purchase decisions.

mallrats

4. Mallrats (1995)

What is this movie?
Kevin Smith’s followup to his classic no-budget debut Clerks (which almost received an NC-17 rating for its bawdy dialogue) follows some aimless twentysomethings as they try to win their girlfriends back during a hi-jinks filled day at the mall.
How is it?
I don’t know, but not because I haven’t seen it. I loved this movie as a teenager so much it felt like it was made for me. But much like my own attitudes and brand of humor from that era, I worry that Smith’s movies are a little on the juvenile side and haven’t aged well. I’m afraid to rewatch them and have them tarnish my memories.
What is the Elastica song?
“Line Up,” the first track from their self titled debut

How is it?
It’s great, but there’s not much to say about a song you already know.

How is the soundtrack in general?
Not bad! Like the movie itself, I had a lot of trouble properly rating this one. It is strangely, almost equally, divided between previously released songs (like “Line Up”) and  brand new tracks. New songs included an OK Bush song, a pretty good Belly ballad, and “Suzanne” by Weezer. “Suzanne” is not the best Weezer song of the ’90s (according to our list), but with its Beach Boys harmonies, crunchy guitars, and soaring solos, it may be the platonic ideal of a Weezer song.

The Mallrats soundtrack also had the very ’90s feature of breaking up the songs with tracks of dialogue from the movie. I consider this a plus.

deadmanoncampus

3. Dead Man On Campus (1998)

What is this movie?
MTV Films’ attempt at a National Lampoon/American Pie style comedy with their first R-Rated feature. Mark-Paul Gosselaar and Tom Everett Scott play college freshman who try to find a third roommate to commit suicide so they don’t fail all their classes.

How is it?
It’s bad! In the next entry I will refer to The Craft as good for what it is. Dead Man On Campus is not even good for what little it is. I think I laughed at one joke. While I was surprised to find Gosselaar had actual comic timing, there are so many bad performances from actors I generally like that I assume the director is to blame. Reread my plot synopsis. It’s actually dumber than that if you watch the whole thing. This movie’s release was timed with the start of the college school year, specifically right when I went to college for the first time. This was aimed right at me and missed completely. This is all compounded by the fact that as an MTV film, it was the recipient of of a large cross-promotional effort that was inescapable if you watched MTV at all.

What is the Elastica song?
“Human,” which would later show up on The Menace

How is it?
I feel like I’m not qualified to say. This came out during the five-year gap between Elastica’s only studio albums, so I was hungry for any Elastica at that point. It was dark, mid-tempo, over three minutes long, and introduced some new textures to their sound, so it showed some growth for the band.

How is the rest of the soundtrack?
About as good as a compilation with a Creed song can be. It was exec-produced by The Dust Brothers and put out by DreamWorks. This lead to some interesting choices like including songs by Self and Creeper Lagoon (two bands I loved at the time, but never got their due). I actually like Marilyn Manson’s cover of David Bowie’s “Golden Years.” This came out right around Mechanical Animals, which also sported a noticeable 70s Bowie influence. What I’m trying to say is that there were a few months in 1998 where I kind of liked Marilyn Manson. The highlight of the soundtrack for me is Blur’s “Cowboy Song,” where Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon give into to some of their worst musical instincts (falsetto, slide guitar) but come up with a genuinely fun song. Bonus points to whomever at DreamWorks thought it would be cute to put former couple Frischmann and Albarn’s bands back to back on the tracklist.

thecraft

2. The Craft (1996)

What is this movie?
A supernatural thriller about teen girl outcasts who become witches to deal with problems of adolescence but end up turning on each other.

How is it?
Good for what it is: a campy romp. Fairuza Balk gets a career-defining role. It plays as much as a superhero movie as it does a horror film. If that sounds like your type of thing, you would probably enjoy it. I do fear, however, that people who loved it growing up now overestimate how good it is in adulthood (much like another movie of the era starring Robin Tunney and having a memorable soundtrack, Empire Records).

What is the Elastica song?
“Spastica,” a B-side from the “Connection” single

How is it?
It’s a B-side for a reason. A pretty cool chorus without many lyrics, a pretty cool bass line, and some digs at a guy. Kind of a by-the-numbers Elastica song, but not fully baked. It would have been a weak point if it was included on one of their albums. Also, maybe just don’t use the word ‘spastic’ in this day and age unless you’re referring to very specific medical conditions.

How is the rest of the soundtrack?
Underrated! I don’t know why I don’t hate Love Spit Love’s cover of “How Soon Is Now” like most Smiths fans, but I enjoy it! I even enjoy Our Lady Peace’s cover of “Tomorrow Never Knows.” I even enjoy Our Lady Peace’s cover of “Tomorrow Never Knows.” That is not a typo; that sentence is there twice for emphasis. Letters to Cleo and Heather Nova also do surprisingly not-bad covers. It’s rounded out by a very ’90s list of artists including Jewel, Matthew Sweet, and Tripping Daisy.

trainspotting

1. Trainspotting (1996)

What is this movie?
Danny Boyle’s pitch black comedic adaptation of Irvine Welsh’s classic novel about a group of ‘friends’ in Edinburgh who use any vice (but mostly heroin) to fill the void.
How is it?
A testament to how good this film is: I sometimes faint when having blood drawn, but I will watch this movie full of graphic depictions of people shooting up heroin at least once a year. Funny, well-acted, inventive, and real, it’s amazing how rewatchable a film with such dark subject matter is.

What is the Elastica song?
“2:1,” from their self-titled debut.

How is it?
It’s good, but notable for being maybe the only downtempo Elastica song from their early period. Also, it’s a bit of a bummer that this is a reused album track as opposed to something new. That being said, it perfectly scores a montage in the back half of the film.

How is the soundtrack in general?
Would it be hyperbole to say it is the most culturally significant movie soundtrack since Saturday Night Fever? Yes, but I’m saying it anyways. It was instrumental to popularizing britpop outside of Britain. The inclusion of “Lust For Life” introduced Iggy Pop the musician to a generation that just knew him as Nona Mecklenberg’s father on The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Unlike a lot of soundtracks of the time, the songs were really used as score and it was done to perfection.

REST OF THE 1990S TRACK MARKS: “WHAT’S THIS?” BY DANNY ELFMAN

Starting next week, we’ll unveil our big list of the Best Songs of the 1990s. In the run-up to the reveal, we’re featuring some of our favorite songs that didn’t make the list through our regular Track Marks feature.

When the contributors to our upcoming ’90s list talked about how they put together their individual ballots, it was inevitable that the subject of how many avenues of discovering music there was in the ’90s came up. The radio played songs we wanted to listen to! The TV showed music videos! Just when all of that was starting to fade, we went to college and found the anything-goes world of a fast internet connection hooked up to peer-to-peer filesharing! The world was our musical oyster.

But, when going over the songs that actually made it onto our ballots, one path to discovering new music—one that’s very much still used today—kept coming up over and over: movie soundtracks. We’d discuss a song, then someone would talk about how it was used to perfection in a critical movie scene. I’m sure Rob and Jesse could write a Track Marks post about every single song on the soundtrack to Danny Boyle’s A Life Less Ordinary (see our upcoming podcast for more on this); I myself almost did this post about “A.M. 180” by Granddaddy—which has been my only ringtone since my very first cell phone—a song I first heard in Boyle’s 28 Days Later. (And, you know, non-Boyle soundtracks are pretty good, too.)

But there’s a certain category of movie soundtracks that, while I’m sure we all listened to them on a loop in the ’90s, probably didn’t make it on our individual ballots: animated movie soundtracks. My long list had a few, including “Belle” from Beauty and the Beast and “Be Prepared” from The Lion King. My short list only had one: “What’s This?” from The Nightmare Before Christmas.

It’s one of the only animated-movie soundtrack songs I still listen to today; granted, it’s because I treat it as a Christmas song more than anything else. But the fact that it could have a second life in my annual iTunes Christmas playlist also speaks to its craft—I’m pretty picky about my holiday music. (Sorry, kids from South Park, your holiday songs don’t make the cut because your voices are too irritating.) To me, this one is up there with Vince Guaraldi.

What makes “What’s This?” unique for a holiday song is that it’s about looking at Christmas from the outside. Yeah, our traditions should seem both strange and incredible to an outside observer; seeing Jack Skellington’s awe invites us all to look at the holiday as if it’s our first time.

And then, of course, there’s Danny Elfman. I bet that man could write the instrumentation for 10 perfect Christmas songs in his sleep—he seems like I’d bet he’d want to add sleigh bells to nearly everything, holiday-related or not. It’s a harder hurdle to clear to seamlessly combine the musical aesthetics of Christmas and Halloween, like he does on other songs on The Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack. But his performance as Jack is what really makes “What’s This?” (I should be ashamed to admit that I’ve only heard Elfman sing through Jack Skellington; my knowledge of Oingo Boingo is nil.) Through his Skellington, we get the excitement of discovery, the wonderment of Christmas, the puzzlement over coming across an unknown culture, and then the burning desire to possess and control it all.

By the end of the ’90s, The Nightmare Before Christmas became shorthand for a certain kind of Hot Topic goth. But they don’t get to own “What’s This?” the way  Jack Skellington doesn’t get to own Christmas. It’s ours this time.