NME's "Best Tracks of the Nineties"

http://www.nme.com/list/100-best-songs-of-the-1990s/267775/page/10

vogue

really tempted by No Diggity.

Of all the singles that SFA released in the '90s, they went with 'If You Don't Want Me To Destroy You'?

You could say that about any of them though

I thought this was a Mark G thread.

This isn't even what the NME was listening to in their actual 90s let alone mine.

no biggie no credibility

green day or mazzy star... i guess.

St Etienne or TLC I guess but I'm kinda sick of the latter and the whole discourse that grew up around it. Or maybe Madonna. Wish there were some easy shoegaze / dronepop option coz I spent the 90s listening to Strereolab, MBV, Lush etc.

http://cache1.bigcartel.com/theme_images/138639/fresh_thread_ladies.jpg

This isn't even what the NME was listening to in their actual 90s let alone mine

In their early 90s, maybe. It fits pretty well with what they were listening to in the late 90s, if you exclude RATM/Pumpkins/Green Day, all of whom would have been mocked at the time. Otherwise even the token picks ring pretty true for me.

the first six songs of this list are such a fucking disgrace. how what who JUST DIIIIIIIEEEEEEEE

although the rage induced by seeing them there has made my decision easy - kelis. I HATE YOU SO MUCH RIGHT NOW NME

yes, it's a "disgrace" that some songs you don't like are in a list compiled by a publication you don't like.

Guess what I'm voting for.

Oh god Lex, why do you even click on threads like this?

Voted for Lazarus.

A quick look reveals that, predictably, 100-51 is a WAY better list. Like, amazingly better.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds- 'Into My Arms'

I would actually have been happy to vote for the Ship Song here, but fuck this Into My Arms nonsense tbh.

No Diggity vs Fade Into You vs Motorcycle Emptiness

astonishingly not bored by and would actively choose to listen to maybe 15 of these, wouldn't turn the radio off on another 15.

would hurl the radio out of the window for 7 of them.

In their early 90s, maybe. It fits pretty well with what they were listening to in the late 90s, if you exclude RATM/Pumpkins/Green Day, all of whom would have been mocked at the time. Otherwise even the token picks ring pretty true for me.

'Killing in the Name' was their #5 single in 1993 but yeah 'Basket Case' and '1979' didn't even make the top 50 of their respective years. At a glance this looks pretty faithful to the NME of old although they've conveniently forgotten about e.g. 'Race' by Tiger.

The other 50 - Coolio - Gangsta’s Paradise
Black Grape - Reverend Black Grape
Paul Weller - The Changingman
Snoop - Who Am I? (What's My Name)
New Radicals - You Get What You Give
Guns N Roses - November Rain
Leftfield - Open Up
James - Laid
Dr Dre - Nuthin' But A G Thang
Pulp - Babies
Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It?
Belle & Sebastian - Boy With The Arab Strap
Metallica - Enter Sandman
Manics Street Preachers - A Design For Life
Oasis - Wonderwall
Sonic Youth - Sugar Kane
No Doubt - Don't Speak
Happy Mondays - Step On
2Pac - California Love
Ride - Vapour Trail
Beta Band - Dry The Rain
Deee-Lite - Groove Is In The Heart
KLF - What Time Is Love?
Air - Sexy Boy
Primal Scream - Come Together
Hole - Celebrity Skin
New Order - Regret
Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U
Cornershop - Brimful of Asha (Fatboy Slim remix)
Wu-Tang Clan - Protect Ya Neck
Radiohead - Creep
Bjork - Hyperballad
Chemical brothers - Hey Boy, Hey Girl
Tricky - Hell Is Round The Corner
Brandy and Monica - The Boy Is Mine
U2 - One
Missy Elliott - The Rain (Supa Dupa Fly)
Spiritualized - Ladies & Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space
Pearl Jam - Alive
Lemonheads - It's A Shame About Ray
Breeders - Cannonball
Green day - Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)
The Cure - Friday I'm In Love
Elliott Smith - Needle In The Hay
Ol' Dirty Bastard - Got Your Money
Fugees - Ready Or Not
Lauryn Hill - Doo Wop (That Thing)
Elastica - Stutter
Nirvana - Lithium
The Stone Roses - One Love

Yesterday, for the hell of it, I located my old workplace on Google Map View, and using the 'little man', followed the route home that I used to drive. Because GM's pics are some years old, it was just like going back in time. Various shops that don't exist anymore, etc. Eventually got back to my house, and there parked in the drive was the blue car that died a car-death 2 years ago (gasket blew, first thing that had ever gone wrong with it). Nobody visible in the house but could see old stuff in the window.

Did not vote.

This isn't even what the NME was listening to in their actual 90s let alone mine.

Really? Pretty sure they covered all of these songs at the time.

I went with '1979', liked it at the time, love it now. Definitely wouldn't want to listen to these songs in a row (or at all in some cases) but about half of them are decent.

When faced with a difficult list like this, I imagine I have 50p and am at a jukebox.

Picked "Glory Box"

1979 is a great tune. Obviously I voted Lazarus as it is my favourite (rock-pop) song of the '90s.

I looked at the village I grew up on Google Map View the other day, it was p fun

can we talk about doing this instead of which of 50 really well known songs are the best

shhhhhh, i wanna find out if anybody on this board feels tremendous affection for the Yacht Indie of their adolescence

the house of my most well-off friend in the village (this is v relative, I think his dad had a shop selling radiators) now appeared to be some kind of really basic looking digital recording studio

wtf use anyone in the village would have for that I have no idea

I bumped into Supergrass in a park once.

they've tidied the park up a lot tho or maybe kids just don't bother with it anymore: :/

the park in my village, not the Supergrass park

i visit the town i grew up in every month and i live in the city i've lived in since i left so the google maps thing is kinda redundant

suppose i cd have a look for Pleck Park and all the stuff i used to visit with me grandparents

Kind of remarkable that three of the four rap songs in the top 50 are by Eminem, Beastie Boys and House of Pain (fourth is by Warren G) (should we throw Beck in there). Are they not even remotely self-aware?

It's not a great list but by the power of nostalgia it does have plenty of "don't really care about the band, quite like that track" moments.

Then again it also has the worst tracks by a few bands I don't especially hate (REM the most egregious example) and apparently the entirety of 90s dance music was Daft Punk, Born Slippy and, well, at least the Prodigy track is pre-FoTL, I guess

well you guys it took me 5 minutes to read the list and now you've all xposted me so I'm going to submit anyway and then go round Streetview wondering why my primary school looks kind of like a shed when I remember it being approx one mile high and 5 miles long

Hey this is the playlist from the wedding I went to at the weekend

apparently the entirety of 90s dance music was Daft Punk, Born Slippy and, well, at least the Prodigy track is pre-FoTL, I guess

First thing I noticed; my list would be like 60% hardcore and drum n bass tunes. Also absolutely no metal, but that's to be expected.

I might vote for Regulate.

i found my nan's house so that's something

This is a surprisingly decent list. I went with McAlmont & Butler as it's one of my five favourite songs ever but I love all of these.

Suede- 'Stay Together'
Radiohead- 'Paranoid Android'
Daft Punk- 'Da Funk'
Suede- 'Animal Nitrate'
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds- 'Into My Arms'
Jeff Buckley- 'Last Goodbye'
Kelis- 'Caught Out There'
Warren G- 'Regulate'
Massive Attack- 'Unfinished Sympathy'
Smashing Pumpkins- '1979'
Portishead- 'Glory Box'
Julee Cruise- 'Falling'
Boo Radleys- 'Lazarus'
Blackstreet- 'No Diggity'
TLC- 'No Scrubs'
Saint Etienne- 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart'
Blur- 'For Tomorrow'
R.E.M.- 'Losing My Religion'
Supergrass- 'Caught by the Fuzz'

Biggest omission has to be Pet Shop Boys, Being Boring should be in there.

At one point my wife was looking at a potential job close to a village in Germany that I lived in when I was three. We looked at the map and it was pretty strange seeing all the town names I was 'vaguely' familiar with. They didn't have the MapPix then, but that would have been strange on toast, yes.

chip shop's still there, now i feel sad and i really want some potato scallops

actually i think there used to be one chip shop on Chants Ave that does them, maybe i will go for a walk if i can be bothered to dress

Intergalactic just over Supersonic, boy have I just totally given up on all the canonic songs of this decade. This list is just a cavalcade of stuff that I once liked, now overplayed to death.

That, it is.

I hadn't really realised how much the street planner of the town I lived in aged 2-9 liked giving the same name to streets which don't even join up, or only join up by footpaths

I thought it was weird as a kid that the street next to my school had the same name as the one I lived in even though I had to walk a quarter of a mile along some other streets to get there

the street planner's life has few opportunities for amusement

the Three Men in a Boat pub seems to be gone, but all the churches are still there :(

Common People

Good, angry piece by Neil Kulkarni about this list - not so much the content, but the awful writing that accompanies it:
http://fuckyouneilkulkarni.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/new-list-from-nme-and-some-thoughts.html?spref=fb

It could do with a second draft itself ("'Unfinished Sympathy' a record that shudders like an iceberg through your heart, always swells like a fresh new bruise, the turning of personal torment, of the battle between freedom and love, fearlessness & loneliness into a whole new universal noir" etc etc) but I like a good rant and the examples of God-awful NME text he chooses make his argument for him.

Scrubs
Girl from Mars
Motorcycle Emptiness
Fade into You
Common People
Step On

This is hard for me. :/

i don't necessarily disagree with kulkarni there, either specifically or in a more general sense, but bad writing at feature-length is much more ire-worthy than whatevia filler in a listicle (aim your ire at the editor for that one).

also this

'Unfinished Sympathy' a record that shudders like an iceberg through your heart, always swells like a fresh new bruise, the turning of personal torment, of the battle between freedom and love, fearlessness & loneliness into a whole new universal noir

is not good writing either imo (though i've never got with NK's frothy-mouthed ~passion~ or unseemly physicality so maybe just my tastes).

i'm in two minds about how much of a good look it is for an old, established writer to call out young writers like this in such a public way. on the one hand it seems a bit bullying, i'd rather nurture young writers whose style isn't quite there yet. on the other i'm not actually sure how established the writers he criticises are, if they're working at nme they should be able to take it. i've always had a "bring it on" attitude to old writers criticising my writing (unless it's actually helpful advice given politely) so i'm sure they can cope

haha xp with dl!!

Picking on some easy targets as quoted in the Kulkarni piece, if the 72nd best track of the 90s was merely "absolutely pleasant" then it's a good job they didn't write about the other few million

(and if H McB didn't start writing abt music until 2002 and would've liked someone to tell him at the start of his career that the internet was going to be invented, er... sorry, back to Google Streetview)

though it's a terribly boring list, there's bunch of stuff on here i like to some degree or another:

Pulp- 'Common People'
Beastie Boys- 'Sabotage'
Daft Punk- 'Da Funk'
Suede- 'Animal Nitrate'
Radiohead- 'Street Spirit (Fade Out)'
Eminem- 'My Name Is'
Weezer- 'Buddy Holly'
Blur- 'Song 2'
Green Day- 'Basket Case'
Warren G- 'Regulate'
PJ Harvey- 'Down by the Water'
Foo Fighters- 'Everlong'
Blur- 'Girls and Boys'
Massive Attack- 'Unfinished Sympathy'
Smashing Pumpkins- '1979'
Portishead- 'Glory Box'
Mazzy Star- 'Fade into You'
Julee Cruise- 'Falling'
Blackstreet- 'No Diggity'
Beastie Boys- 'Intergalactic'
TLC- 'No Scrubs'
House Of Pain- 'Jump Around'
R.E.M.- 'Losing My Religion'
Supergrass- 'Caught by the Fuzz'

went with beastie boys just cuz

^ probably should have been "street spirit (fade out)"

lex's will be the only good posts in this thread not to be about british geography

what even is the nme's target market these days? do they even know?

Oh, I didn't see Portishead in there.

Not voting - I agree that too many of these tracks have been overplayed and overexposed to the point where they induce mild nausea.

The NME's "writing" on them though is so bad that I felt like writing about them myself on the blog to see if anything "new" could be gained from them, but I resisted the temptation. "If You Don't Want Me To Destroy You"; the compromise result of down-the-middle voting (the only SFA single I regularly revisit is "The Man Don't Give A Fuck").

Not going to go through what I would have put in there since I don't have all day and it wouldn't satisfy the NME's "target" audience anyway (whatever/whoever that means).

There's just nothing on the top list that makes me want to jump up and go "OMG, best! song! evah!"

There's a couple on the bottom 50 I could see getting that excited about (Groove Is In The Heart, Vapour Trail, What Time Is Love, Cannonball) and a couple of artists I wish they'd picked a different track (Bjork, Missy E, Hole, Chemical Brothers)

Even for, you know, NME-ish taste, like... no My Bloody Valentine? No Aphex Twin? Bizarre.

Why am I even arguing with an NME list? Like, seriously, I could find some paint to watch dry or something.

Not the most exciting ever list, but I went with "Everlong"

Unfinished Sympathy. Yes, it's received all the praise it deserves; but it still kills.

Not the most exciting ever list, but I went with "Everlong"

― justfanoe (Greg Fanoe), Wednesday, May 16, 2012 2:48 PM (17 minutes ago) Bookmark

ditto

what a wonderful list~~

underworld, saint etienne, or beasties

Pulp- 'Common People'
Radiohead- 'Paranoid Android'
Beastie Boys- 'Sabotage'
Daft Punk- 'Da Funk'
Blur- 'Song 2'
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds- 'Into My Arms'
Warren G- 'Regulate'
Underworld- 'Born Slippy'
Massive Attack- 'Unfinished Sympathy'
Portishead- 'Glory Box'
Nick Cave & Kylie Minogue- 'Where the Wild Roses Grow'
Mazzy Star- 'Fade into You'
Daft Punk- 'Around the World'
Blackstreet- 'No Diggity'
Beastie Boys- 'Intergalactic'
Saint Etienne- 'Only Love Can Break Your Heart'
R.E.M.- 'Losing My Religion'
Supergrass- 'Caught by the Fuzz'

voted Primal Scream.

quick attempt at my top 10 (no order):

the White Stripes - Cannon
Pavement -Loretta's Scars
Olivia Tremor Control -Holiday Surprise 1, 2, 3
Ween - Push The Little Daisies
Palace - More Brother Rides
Le Tigre - The The Empty
Built To Spill - Car
PJ Harvey - Sheela Na Gig
Neutral Milk Hotel - The King Of Carrot Flowers, Part 1
The Flaming Lips - Felt Good To Burn

Oh, I didn't see Portishead in there.

Me neither, but I'm not too gutted as Glory Box is nowhere near my favourite cut from Dummy; it's a record on which most of the album tracks are better than the singles imo.

This is true, but I went with Glory Box anyway. There are a lot of good songs here, though.

McAlmont & Butler - 'Yes'

Small question: how many of the current NME staff are old enough to remember these songs clearly first-hand? Or are they just relying on received "wisdom" or back-to-back Xfm?

i don't think you can blame for not being old, sir. no one has a choice over when they were born.

i feel like i've seen 'common people' listed on these fuckin' lists more often than i've ever listened to it. and i've listened to it, like, a lot.

Ash- 'Girl from Mars'

This justifies the entire list. Besides that it's all the same shit we've seen in plenty of other "best of the 90's" things.

Cornershop - Brimful of Asha (Fatboy Slim remix)

Didn't Pitchfork include this as well? Why do they choose the Fatboy Slim version??!

Because that's the version most people know

No Diggity vs Fade Into You vs Motorcycle Emptiness

― Goodbye 20th Centipede (NickB)

Because that's the version most people know

I had no idea. Among people I know IRL this is definitely not true.

That's the version that made Number1

Ohhhh I get it... Yeah I don't live there.

From that list, Kelis - Caught Out There.

Not voting - I agree that too many of these tracks have been overplayed and overexposed to the point where they induce mild nausea.

Not voting either. I love most of these songs but they're so overfamiliar now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-30nX3a6IF4

How is Lazarus (aka the correct choice in a poll like this) overplayed?

(other than in my house of course)

House Of Pain- 'Jump Around'

That track underwent a renaissance in the late 90s and ended up being played at every cheesy club night ever for the rest of time.

How is Lazarus (aka the correct choice in a poll like this) overplayed?

the boo radleys being played anywhere ever even for half a song would be too much

xpost What, "Common People"?

What, as in "lie on the floor and let it wash over you" too much?

for like my immediate group of acquaintances, "Common People" is like "Let it Be" or something. I have no idea where everyone even heard it the first time because it certainly wasnt on American radio and I don't remember ever seeing it on MTV even though I'm pretty sure it had a video.

I heard it on John Peel, I think it was a 'session', had to wait about 4 months before it came out properly.

Just looked it up, Sept 1994 was the Peel session recording, and the single came out 22 May 1995.

I was going to say 6 months, thought that may have been exaggerating, but h.

xxpost, I meant Jump Around. I think the first time I heard it again I remember thinking "hey I remember this, this is great!" but then it got wheeled out every weekend and now I just cringe.

Common People? Probably on Radio 1, an evening session or something. I don't remember too well. It got loads of play in the UK, although I never really appreciated it properly until Bill Shatner and Joe Jackson covered it in 2004 for some reason. Pulp always seemed too seedy and adult for 14-15 year old me. All the songs were about class and sex and pimpliness whereas I just wanted gut lords and marching. I like them a lot more nowadays than I did back then.

Yeah, but you guys are english, i grew up in the land of Everclear and OOOOOOOHHH GOT U WHERE I WANT U YEAHHHH SUFFA SUFFA U KNO IT GET NO RUFFA

i feel sorry for americans who like "common people". like, you didn't even have to suffer it irl and you willingly went out of your way to make it part of your life?

For them, Common People is only for Christmas.

Sod it, I'll vote for Common People just to aggravate lex

aggravate lex is for life..

Actually, looking at these songs again in the cold light of day, I like a lot of them. Really like them. Some of it's residual affection from being a teenage (and there's enough distance betwixt then and now for me to quite like them again), and some of them I think are genuinely just really good songs. I still think the bottom half of the list (i.e. the bit not in the poll) is more ILM-friendly, though.

Huh, just realised 'Caught Out There' wasn't a hit in the UK until March 2000.

(Realised meaning it suddenly struck me and I had to go to everyhit.com to check)

NME thinks there are 78 better songs than "Groove Is In The Heart?!"

Yeah, that's totally fucking crazy.

the boo radleys being played anywhere ever even for half a song would be too much

― liberté, égalité, beyoncé (lex pretend)

Great stuff Lex.

Did you honestly click on this thread thinking the list would be full of Tori Amos and En Vogue? Is it more fun to click on these threads so you can get yourself all wound up and shout about how much you hate Pulp and Radiohead (Again) then to actually go on other threads and talk about music you like. It just seems like a waste of time and energy to me.

I saw Pulp premiere “Common People” on stage at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane just before Xmas ’94 – JC said it was the first time they’d played the song live.

This was of course before Pulp and Cocker’s careers were effectively reduced to this one song for the convenience of lazy/computer-led oldies radio.

I think the age thing is important because the current NME is I think viewing this period in part as history rather than something they themselves lived through (since I perhaps lazily assume that most of today’s scribes there were too busy kicking a ball in the street in the nineties to bother with music).

I was kicking a ball in a field for a lot of it.

Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life) being on the longer list is kinda funny because that's clearly the choice of people mostly too young to have been there at the time.

No Diggity til I die

and then, some Diggity.

"Good Riddance" is hilarious, i would like to think even the worst US publications know better to pick that as the best Green Day song of the 90s

god the 90s sucked.

what are people's thoughts re bittersweet symphony these days? i am a u.s. person so i guess i wasn't overexposed to it. maybe it's corny or whatever but i still think it's great

I like it! Particularly since it doesn't really sound like anything else from that period apart from the lyrical preoccupations - - it kind of cuts through the mix in a given playlist, yknow?

Yeah, I've never thought of it that way.

There was this "Britpop" dj night I used to go to in the mid-nineties (does that concept sound weird to UK ppl or was that a thing there, too?) anyways, it was a long walk from my place to the club and invariably i had to pee by the time i got there. on more than one occasion i walked in while that song was playing. somehow it made even waiting in line for the men's room seem like a cool thing to be doing. also the video of course justifies the existence of music videos

NME thinks there are 78 better songs than "Groove Is In The Heart?!"

― nicky lo-fi

Yeah, that's totally fucking crazy.

― Sick Mouthy (Scik Mouthy)

yeah the list screams out some kind of pathology at work, i'm just not sure what to properly label it

went with "fade into you" & also considered "unfinished sympathy"

torn between girls and boys/fade into you/bittersweet symphony, girls and boys is so massive it's just hard to argue with. and even though i greatly prefer opal to mazzy star, fade into you is undeniably good

of course the other fifty contains all the real gems

There are totally 78 songs better than Groove Is In The Heart, it's just the NME hasn't picked any of them.

"Jump Around" is overplayed - but it's objectively probably the best song on this list, so I voted for it.

Objective schmobjective.

There's no such thing.

It's totally objective! I imagined I was someone else and asked myself which song was the best, and the answer was still "Jump Around".

i'm hard-pressed to name a song on the list that isn't better than tori fuckin' amos.

if you're someone who privileges jump around above "i missed the bus" then i don't even know what to say to you

say again?

i was being hyperbolic but that song is way better than jump around, which is something from the nineties that like "the heights" i'm still trying to forget

if someone says "word to your moms/ i came to drop bombs" they should probably be on a lot of lists, but best of the nineties is not one of them

"jump around" is fine and good, but yeah top 100 of the decade is pushing it... especially since the list contains no nas and no biggie.

I imagined I was someone else and asked myself which song was the best, and the answer was still "Jump Around".

That's such a weird way of looking at it.

Yeah, it would have been more productive if he imagined he was someone else and asked the other person which song was the best.

I imagined I was my mum and she said she didn't like Jump Around at all.

I imagined I was me and Jump Around was still shit.

I imagined I was God, and it did offend mine ears, and I smoted with a great smite all those responsible for such an abomination.

whoever i imagine i am, "jump around" remains overplayed

Who'd have known House Of Pain were so existential?

"Good Riddance" is hilarious, i would like to think even the worst US publications know better to pick that as the best Green Day song of the 90s

In fairness they put Basket Case a lot higher and that objectively is the best Green Day song of the 90s, by which I mean ever.

Welcome To Paradise is better, you johnny come lately ;-)

2,000 Light Years Away ftw

GREEN DAY SINGLES POLL
WORST Single By Green Day or the Offspring

jump around" is fine and good, but yeah top 100 of the decade is pushing it... especially since the list contains no nas and no biggie.

I'm not saying it's better than Nas or Biggie - just better than the other stuff on this list. I'd rather have voted for a Cypress Hill track - but they're not on here either.

that's going insane..

Of these, 'Da Funk'

Regulate!

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

only 19 hours left til I find out that I was the only one who voted for Ash

only a kid at the time, but i reckon 'still life' is by far the best suede track. i think 'common people'... not only the best song of the 90's, it seems to perfectly put its finger on that kind of vulgar class tourism that alot of folk seemed to be indulging in the latter part of that decade.
i reckon daydreamer by menswear should be on the list.

no YOU fuck off.

i think 'common people'... not only the best song of the 90's, it seems to perfectly put its finger on that kind of vulgar class tourism that alot of folk seemed to be indulging in the latter part of that decade.

this is the most exquisite 'valuable new poster' post to date I think

I would actually like some clarification wrt that statement. What vulgar class tourism are you refering to, dex?

this is the posh kids in dufflecoats/ tony blair and his everlasting glottalstop thing. Azaera, read/listen to the lyrics of Common People, it's a clearer explanation than anything you'll get here.

See, irony does not work terribly well in a post..

See, I am half asleep and hadn't yet read the, uh, context. anyone join me for a coffee? I fucking need it.

I'm having one now. Cheers. (blk, no sug)

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Pretty boring answers ILM, non? Where's the challops?

Ps biggups to the four of you who also voted Lazarus

BORING

I didn't realize "Where It's At" was in there until now.