My 100 song playlist of songs from 1990 -- admire, disparage, discuss, search/destroy, c/d, etc

Spent the last two weeks only listening to music from 1990 and put this playlist together -- a hundred songs, one song per artist or release. To whittle it down, I pretty much listened to the whole albums except in cases where I knew it back to front or loved a particular song at the time. Heard a lot that I missed, but also heard to a lot of bad and meh music to get this done. Given how much I heard, omissions are probably intentional. Have at it.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0kXz5iSqsyeZeSWQcVGIHg?si=4d99fc39d3b448c6

Will have a listen!

As a sidebar, I accidentally copied the thread URL instead of your Spotify URL and stuck it into the search bar. This is the track Spotify returned: edding141F by Ilya Gubin-Babayeu: https://open.spotify.com/track/3OXgqgP5ebDWRXg7kg7oxX?si=3cad6461471e4864

(1) it's not from 1990; ii) it's shite)

thanks for putting this together, it's the kind of thing I feed on, and there are a lot of interesting choices here I wouldn't have thought of. I won't complain about individual ommisons as I hate people doing the same to me, and 100 songs isn't really that many, I would have personally included a lot more dance music.

Nice work. But...isn't Thumb by Dinosaur Jr from 1991?

You could always replace it with The Replacements All Shook Down

ah, shit…you’re right!

Cool! Some of these are in my own top 250 songs playlist.

Let me seize the opportunity and plug it:

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3pl4AYZKKvmCXyIKFFNXkA

Only the top 20 are in order:

1990-1994:
1. A Tribe Called Quest - Electric Relaxation
2. Stereolab - Jenny Ondioline
3. Portishead - Roads
4. Massive Attack - Unfinished Sympathy
5. Pavement - Here
6. Souls of Mischief -93’ til infinity
7. Mazzy Star - Fade into you
8. Slowdive - Alison
9. Ween - Baby Bitch
10. Saint Etienne - Avenue

1995-1999:
1. Boards of Canada - Roygbiv
2. Stardust - Music Sounds Better with You
3. Björk - Possibly Maybe
4. Aphex Twin - IZ-US
5. Nearly God - Poems
6. Moodymann - I can’t kick this feelin when it hits
7. Outkast - SpottieOttieDopaliscious
8. MF DOOM - Doomsday
9. Mariah Carey - Fantasy
10. Low, Transient Waves & Piano Magic - Sleep at the bottom

The rest are not ranked.

you've got a connells song twice

props for nice choices by unrest, scrawl, beat happening, world party, brand nubian, they might be giants, george michael - those would be my 1990 picks for those artists too. nice to see jazz butcher and embarrassment as well.

hadn't heard something happens before - decent irish dad rock, digging their 80s recordings.

Something Happens was a WXRT staple that year, iirc. Hadn't heard it in years.

Great stuff. This was the year I discovered I loved music

i was 16 this year so this thread is bait for me.

with a casual thought of my personal weird picks and then giving a cursory glance at rym top 100 singles/lps for 1990, my top adds would be...

thinking fellers - 2x4s
trash can sinatras - obscurity knocks
new fast automatic daffodils - get better or big or working for him (this album is so ace)
inspiral carpets - this is how it feels
something from rhythm of the saints, not sure what, probably can't run but
tribe - can i kick it? or bonita applebaum or left my wallet
teenage fanclub - everything flows
sonic youth - tunic or dirty boots
cure - harold and joe
nick cave - ship song
saint etienne - only love can break your heart
slayer - seasons in the abyss
nirvana - sliver or dive
lush - sweetness and light
jazz butcher - she's on drugs or mr. odd
la's - son of a gun or timeless melody or... yeah something from that album (there she goes came out in 88)
smashing pumpkins - i am one
social distortion - story of my life
beats international - dub be good to me
concrete blonde - joey
betty boo - where are you baby

and i'm embarrassed to admit it, but probably kill your television by ned's atomic dustbin

this is such brain candy, i should stop looking at 1990 singles and get back to drumming with my toddler

"Charles" is a great pick

this is such a weird era in retrospect, right in between "college rock" and "alternative"

Yeah, I got that sense especially with the Soul Asylum album. The sound is better than anything they'd done before but not as good the next one, which went double platinum. But also there was still a decent amount of 80s reverb and keyboards this year, which didn't age well. Country was also transitional, too. A lot of it sounds awful, but things were shifting. I couldn't include "Friends in Low Places", since Garth's still not on Spotify, but it would've made the cut.

Nice to listen to such obscurities as "Patterns of Behaviour" and "Hedonist". Also amused to see my least-favourite songs from Manic Nirvana and Ragged Glory!

Yay, Scrawl! I still have my Smallmouth t-shirt, although it’s now too, erm, small for me.

https://imgur.com/a/pzxP7xM

Here are my additions

808 State - Cubik
A Tribe Called Quest - Bonita Applebum
Adamski - Killer
Beats International - Dub Be Good To Me
Cocteau Twins - Iceblink Luck
Heavenly - Our Love Is Heavenly
Joey Beltram - Energy Flash
Kim Appleby - Don't Worry
LFO - LFO
Madonna - Vogue
Pulp - My Legendary Girlfriend
Ride - Vapour Trail
Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U
Snap! - The Power
St Etienne - Only Love Can Break Your Heart
Sweet Exorcist - Testone
The Adventures of Stevie D - Dirty Cash
The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - It's Grim Up North
The Orb - Little Fluffy Clouds

Oh just realized this is solely 1990 not the 90s as a decade. Makes sense why there were so many songs missing there.

Any 1990 list missing "Space Prophet Dogon" is a complete failure imho.

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

Yeah, Esoterica of Abyssynia was what I put on mix tapes, so I picked that

xxp I went w/ US release dates, otherwise Little Fluffy Clouds would've made it. That's a song I remember hearing for the first time.