top 50 "lost" US hits of the late '90s

below the top 50:

51. Elton John - Believe
52. Madonna - Don't Cry For Me Argentina
53. Ma$e ft. Puff Daddy - Lookin' At Me
54. Mo Thugs Family ft. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - Ghetto Cowboy
55. Total ft. Missy Elliott - Trippin'
56. Sylk-E. Fyne ft. Chill - Romeo And Juliet
57. Scarface ft. 2Pac & Johnny P - Smile
58. Montell Jordan - What's On Tonight
59. Barbra Streisand & Bryan Adams - I Finally Found Someone
60. Michael Bolton - Go The Distance

A buddy and I often shout TO FINND MY SOOULLLL YAH

lotta major late 90s jams here, also a lotta stuff i don't know by name. good expansion of/companion to this Reverend thread from back in the day: best song that reached #1 on airplay but was never allowed to chart on the billboard hot 100 1995-1998

this is an interesting list cause it mixes gigantic, era-defining hits with things that got a lot of MTV/VH1/BET and radio airplay, but faded pretty quick soon after. wonder when the last time was i heard "Don't Cry For Me Argentina." some of which is now at the level of 50 Memorable Songs Of The Late 1990s That Apparently Only You Remember, Even Though They Were Totally On The Radio And Stuff

i kinda wanna see one of those "zoomer listens to X for the first time" YouTube channels do a series with this list. really curious whether artists like Wyclef and LeAnn Rimes still play today or whether they just connected at a certain moment.

Not surprised to see a lot of soundtrack stuff here.

god I hated "Kiss the Rain"

"I Still Believe" is a nice tune, though I'll always go to Brenda K. Starr's version first

I guess its placement here is down to the revelations of the past few years, but "I Believe I Can Fly" was pretty inescapable up until the mid 2010s.

lol at the R. Kelly songs, I wonder why people stopped playing those, it is a mystery

Jams:

Jordan Knight - Give It To You
Martin Page - In The House Of Stone And Light
Aaliyah - The One I Gave My Heart To
Madonna - Frozen
Busta Rhymes - Turn It Up (Remix)/Fire It Up

Fire It Up rules so hard. I'm sure at least 80% of that is the Knight Rider sample but... so what? I'd love to see how that one plays on a dancefloor someday.

I only remember 7 of these by title. This could have been my first and last vote for Jordan Knight, but "You'll See" is better.

wow, aside from "Candle In The Wind" the only two I can remember hearing are Wyclef and Aaliyah

this was peak "go see Less Than Jake four times a year" ska-punk era for me though

"You'll See" is a solid (if forgotten) example of what Madonna does as co-producer. I saw David Foster's name on the credits at the time and gagged; the result is too lachrymose for my taste, but she sings it with feeling and great care and the strings don't get in the way.

can't vote for it at 56 but "romeo and juliet" rules.

jordan knight "give it to you" is prob one of the most underrated pop singles ever to me. jam & lewis flipping squeaky clean boy band pop R&B verses into a windswept like hip house chorus w/ nods to timbaland beatbox percussion throughout. also has this unnecessary but great bridge/refrain kinda thing that happens 4 mins into the song. the whole thing still sounds very futuristic to me. i also have always thought jam & lewis used it as the blueprint for "someone to call my lover." the janet song is better, but you can see the germ of the whole musical concept on "give it to you" & i always loved that weird connection between those two songs

Merril Bainbridge, now there's a name I hadn't heard in forever. A friend of mine had that CD and there was a song on it that got stuck in my head all the time. Had no clue what it was for the longest time, though!!!

Wonder what she's up to now. There seemed to be a trend in the 90s with all these folky women singer/songwriters who were uh...maybe forced to dress a little provocatively to get airplay. iirc Donna Lewis gave a few interviews about that. As someone who grew up in that era I feel like it stunted my growth a little bit!!!

702 - "get it together" is a wonderful song, just a perfect lil slice of 90s R&B. glacial, misty, forlorn.

and of course total "trippin" is a complete classic, tim & missy best of material

yeah I thought "Give it to You" augured a change that Jam-Lewis never developed, but I forgot about "Someone to Call My Lover."

I think that Jamie Walters track soundtracked the scene where his character Ray throws Donna down the stairs in 90210.

I never stopped loving "Give It To You."

pretty much like all of these

8. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - Look Into My Eyes
14. Color Me Badd - The Earth, The Sun, The Rain
18. Boyz II Men - 4 Seasons Of Loneliness
20. Coolio ft. 40 Thevz - C U When U Get There
22. Master P ft. Sons Of Funk - I Got The Hook-Up!
23. Wyclef Jean - Gone Till November
24. R. Kelly ft. Ronald & Ernie Isley - Down Low (Nobody Has To Know)
25. B-Rock & The Bizz - MyBabyDaddy
26. Puff Daddy & The Family ft. The Notorious B.I.G. & Busta Rhymes - Victory
32. Busta Rhymes - Turn It Up (Remix)/Fire It Up
33. 702 - Get It Together
38. Immature - Constantly
39. Toni Braxton - I Don't Want To
41. New Edition - I'm Still In Love With You
42. Jordan Knight - Give It To You
45. 4PM - Sukiyaki
46. Mariah Carey - I Still Believe
47. Warren G - I Shot The Sheriff
49. Aaliyah - The One I Gave My Heart To
50. Uncle Sam - I Don't Ever Want To See You Again

down low is one of my favorite songs ever but uhhh yeah.

my top three here would be 4 seasons of loneliness, give it to you and gone til november.

Voting for ‘Coolio - C U When You Get There’, mainly for the ominous caveat ‘…if you ever get there’

Although ‘Gone Til November’ is a jam tbf

‘Give It To You’ is a classic of the ‘amazing beat but horrible rapey lyrics’ genre unfortunately.

I mean:

“It's creepin' around in my head (in my head)
Holding you down in my bed
You don't have to say a word (uh)
Just relax, I'll do the work
I can't wait to give you some
I'm convinced you need one,”

Er yeah no thanks Jordan you’re alright

"We Want Some Pussy" -- Holiday song? Rapey?

Candle in the Wind 1997 was so ear-excruciatingly bad, and worst of all, my choir teacher in high school made us sing that crap (but she kept calling it "English Rose" because it begins "Goodbye English Rose"). if yr gonna write new lyrics, maybe make sure they fit the meter.

Az Yet's "Hard to Say I'm Sorry" was a pretty shitty remake, even though I usually like R&B remakes of pop tunes. just kinda lifeless.

"In The House Of Stone And Light" makes Sting sound like Cryptic Slaughter

I still dig:

Boyz II Men - 4 Seasons Of Loneliness
the R Kelly songs (except I won't listen to them anymore)
Puff Daddy & The Family ft. The Notorious B.I.G. & Busta Rhymes - Victory
New Edition - I'm Still In Love With You
4PM - Sukiyaki

i didn't know about that sukiyaki cover

Aside from Candle and I Believe... the only one I know is Wyclef and I probably still like that one so

lol that Sukiyaki cover got paid on the local teen/pop music station when I was like 13, my brother had the cassingle. weirdly had it on my spotify playlist recently

"Frozen" puzzles me, has it really been lost? I feel like I hear it out in the world.

same with "In the House of Stone and Light."

This list really highlights how “I Believe I Can Fly” is really the only R. Kelly megabit that’s worth a damn

XP List concerns terrestrial radio, not CVS airplay charts.

Pretty sure I went from (approx) 1998-2012 without once hearing "In The House Of Stone and Light."

"GET IT TOGETHER"!!!!!!

lotta fine choices to be made here, but whooooo!!! "get it together" just can't be beat.

honorable mention to "gone till november", aaliyah, and "c u when you get there" (which i played for my music appreciation teacher in high school because he said he didn't understand how sampling made a "new" song. he liked it!). also really liked "sukiyaki" at the time, but less so after i heard the renditions that preceded it.

also lol b-rock and the bizz. that schitt was so trash.

“Uncle Sam”

would quibble with some of these being "lost," including the wyclef jean song which i'm gonna vote for

Nearly all of these have indeed sunk into obscurity pretty quickly (probably because most of these artists have a number of way bigger hits), but I’m sure I’ve encountered Come With Me, Frozen and I Believe I Can Fly a lot throughout the past two decades?

There's gotta be some good trivia factoid about "Sukiyaki," since it was a #1 single (US) w/ Japanese lyrics, and then a top 10 single twice more w/ English lyrics. In three different decades. Don't know how best to phrase it though.

also it appeared in Snoop's cover of "Lodi Dodi" only see in that song it was "you took your DOPE away from me"

There is A LOT shitty R&B on this list. Voting “You’ll See”.

lol I remember when "I Believe I Can Fly" was ubiquitous and I heard it played at like every inspirational school or youth-oriented event I covered as a reporter for a couple of years (often sung by the school choir). I bet they don't play R. Kelly in elementary schools anymore.

Nearly all of these have indeed sunk into obscurity pretty quickly (probably because most of these artists have a number of way bigger hits), but I’m sure I’ve encountered Come With Me, Frozen and I Believe I Can Fly a lot throughout the past two decades?

the methodology for this list was just looking at a week-long period of radio play (doesn't say exactly when but the article was from early 2021), not any extended period, so it's almost certainly just that radio understandably won't touch r. kelly these days and it would probably look very different even a few years earlier for "i believe i can fly". no idea about "frozen" though, that's definitely the other one i've heard the most in the wild.

frozen is, no lie, one of my only madonna touchstones bcz i saw the video debut on mtv when i was 16 or so and was kind of blown away.

I bet they don't play R. Kelly in elementary schools anymore.

Actually, they still do. I've got 2 kids in elementary school, and they learned a dance routine to that song at afterschool.

Voted Wyclef, FWIW.

"The World's Grossest"?

Btw I’m guessing the Mariah Carey one is “lost” because it’s really just an homage to Brenda K. Starr’s version of that song which had already been a big hit 10 yrs earlier. And the video is boring.

Merril Bainbridge, now there's a name I hadn't heard in forever. A friend of mine had that CD and there was a song on it that got stuck in my head all the time. Had no clue what it was for the longest time, though!!!

Voted "Mouth" without hesitation. It still pops into my head a couple times a year and I'm never mad about it.

"I'll Remember" feels a lot more "lost" than "Frozen" these days. Which is too bad because it's her best ballad.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Divine - Lately

i've come back to this song every so often specifically because i'm not sure if i heard it back when it was actually popular. at that point in my childhood i still heard whatever i happened to hear and seldom cared to know who or what whatever i was hearing was, but it definitely sounds like a song i could have heard at that time. of course it sounds like a lot of the ballads that would customarily be released in the fall and winter months in those days, cooled down and contemplative, so it's hard to say. it's not especially distinguished but i've come to sort of like it. after poking around on discogs i see it was released in the uk in a somewhat bizarre remix by stargate. more importantly there seems to have been a bass/freestyle mix by cibola and of course it's perfect :D

by the way it is obviously that bass/freestyle sound that was the precedent for "give it to you" and "someone to call my lover" and "don't think i'm not" and so forth, the lineage basically spawned by "my boo"

anyway my faves are:

Boyz II Men - 4 Seasons Of Loneliness
Madonna - Frozen
B-Rock & The Bizz - MyBabyDaddy
R. Kelly - I Believe I Can Fly
New Edition - I'm Still In Love With You
Jordan Knight - Give It To You

i would call "frozen" not only a great song, but perhaps the first that i can recall really captivating me upon hearing it on the radio as a child. it seemed mysterious and a little frightening. i didn't know who sang it and honestly i'm not sure if i knew who madonna was at the time, but i found it again in my cousin's cd single collection the next year lol. supposedly there's a new remix of it breaking out on streaming a little bit recently? but i haven't heard it. anyhow that's my vote i think

Chris Cunningham video is the shit -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XS088Opj9o0

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

Whoa. Wyclef!

I voted Frozen, which has aged much better than the other Ray of Light songs. Had forgotten how good the CC video was.

This sounds lovely imo

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NHydngA5C4E

You are right, it does.

and *cough* her post-Evita lessons work here

I never want to hear a Madonna song without its accompanying video, and "Frozen" is an amazing video, so it's one of my favorite Madonna products. Like, top five, easy.

It's weird that "Frozen" would be a 'lost' hit. That song was enormous - I heard it and saw the video everywhere all the time when it came out.

Well, the #1 on the list is the 2nd biggest selling single of all-time...

Didn't get mentioned here, but (if I remember correctly) the radio version of "Secret Garden" included an interlude with soundbites from Jerry McGuire.

the radio version of "Secret Garden" included an interlude with soundbites from Jerry McGuire

I don't think Springsteen ever agreed to that, it was some DJ's horrible idea.

djs loved doing that around that time, i remember it was very common to hear an edit of "my heart will go on" with rose/jack titanic dialog mixed in