1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die - 1991

A much better list. But then... 1991 is kinda famous.

Hard for me to avoid Crowded House here, even though there are many better songs on the "Woodface" album ("Four Seasons In One Day" for starters....).
Still, lots of other tracks here that might have been worth voting for as well. The usual 1991 contenders: U2, Nirvana, Metallica, R.E.M... But also a couple of nice "dance" tracks by the likes of KLF and Shamen. And Lenny Kravitz too. Not to mention Bob Dylan - not from 1991, really, but great song. One of his best.

KLF, Bonnie Raitt, Massive Attack, one of my favorite Crowded House singles, and "Summertime." I can't fuck with any of'em.

Massive Attack

KLF so, so easily. Despite Nirvana pretty much defining my teens SLTS was never close to my favourite.

Whoever wrote this book is insane.

Errr idk. Maybe Enter Sandman or One. Life is a Highway is strangely calling to me though.

It's Calling All Angels vs. Unfinished Sympathy for me, and I'm only going for the latter because I suspect no one else will vote for it.

Give It Away, Smells Like Teen Spirit, Losing My Religion, One and Life Is A Highway are all songs I've heard more than enough of for one lifetime, despite liking some of them.

Also should mention that although they weren't in the running for me, I'm happy to see Vincent Black Lightning, I Can't Make You Love Me and Weather With You all listed here.

90s are gonna be pretty grim huh

Unfinished Sympathy for me, and I'm only going for the latter because I suspect no one else will vote for it.

Massive Attack

― Bee OK, Monday, October 24, 2011 6:58 PM (1 hour ago)

weird list

"Summertime" is an easy vote for me; "I Can't Make You Love Me" gets second, "Teen Spirit" third (sometimes I'm tired of it, sometimes not--right now, I prefer "On a Plain"). I've never understood the appeal of "Losing My Religion." From the hard drive: Black Sheep's "The Choice Is Yours," Bongwater's "What If," Culture Beat's "No Deeper Meaning," Digital Underground's "Kiss You Back," Feelies' "Find a Way," Fudge's "Girlwish," Geto Boys' "Mind Playin' Tricks on Me," Jellystone Park's "Consider Me Gone," Marty Stuart's "Tempted," My Bloody Valentine's "When You Sleep," Naughty by Nature's "O.P.P." (absurd omission), P.M. Dawn's "Reality Used to Be a Friend of Mine," the Primitives' "Lead Me Astray," Seaside's "Completely," and the Spin Doctors' "Two Princes." Good-to-great year. Scott Woods and I launched Radio On, and that dominated my life for the next seven years.

Richard Thompson: 1952 Vincent Black Lightning
Ministry: Jesus Built My Hotrod
Ozzy Osbourne: No More Tears
Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince: Summertime
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Give It Away
Massive Attack: Unfinished Sympathy
The KLF feat. Tammy Wynette: Justified & Ancient
Cypress Hill: How I Could Just Kill a Man

I will always and forever stan for these. Leaning towards "Summertime" because its probably stood up the best over the last 20 years. Well, I mean, its probably the only one that I pull out year after year without fail.

cmon folx, JESUS BUILT MY HOTROD!

voted richard thompson. had no idea the song was that recent tbh

these 90s lists are really weird so far

Unfinished Sympathy for me, and I'm only going for the latter because I suspect no one else will vote for it.
Massive Attack

― Bee OK, Monday, October 24, 2011 6:58 PM (1 hour ago)

― Bee OK, Monday, October 24, 2011 10:44 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

By which of course I meant I'm only voting for the *former* because I suspect no one else will...

Balada Conducatorolui is fuckin sick so that

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wS-_W-dOYeo

Everybody will be too afraid to vote for the obvious one. Ha. Go on I dare ya.

voted richard thompson. had no idea the song was that recent tbh

good list.

I remember when rock was middle aged (there, didn't say back whenever), "Unfinished Sympathy" won some 'best of' by a big margin and I was like "really?". Never thought a lot about it, but considered it after that and knew they wre probably right.

Still, of that list I only bought two at the time.

Voted Ministry.

(the other was the KLF)

weird list

It does contain all the typical rock canon picks, but I can imagine that - even though it has its share of dance numbers - people who think of 1991 as particularly a wonderful vintage for dance, finds the choices a bit underwhelming. Yet it has all of the typical "canonical" 1991 album contenders represented, other than "Loveless" and "Screamadelica" (and the latter was represented in the 1990 selections).

Also let me add that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would have won this poll anywhere outside of ILM, but I suspect it will not win here. :)

It's an underwhelming list. Nothing that 'shouldn't be there', really, but then again, nothing that comes unexpectedly.

The "O Superman" days are over...

A much better list.

???

This is Justified & Ancient fairly easily, though much love to the Shamen, Candi Staton and Jesus Built My Hotrod. (Which are not better songs than Unfinished Sympathy or SLTS, but I am less tired of them.)

but then again, nothing that comes unexpectedly.

Taraf de Haidouks: Balada Conducatorolui
Yothu Yindi: Treaty

And, sure, this is a much better list. But then, the reasons why I think it is a better list are largely guitar bands with traditional songs, so I can understand some disagree.

I don't mean "like that"..

Those aren't songs that became big chart hits with unusual aspects, etc, blah, ties self up in knots trying to explain...

xposted, yes, Guitar bands with traditional songs. Kinda short shelf-life with me.

Alot on this list I would have no sadness if I never heard them again, I like "Teen Spirit", "Religion" is alright, etc ...

I approach these polls and others like them as a punter with a 50p for the jukebox. I'd like to hear "Jesus built my hot rod" plz...

Life is a Highway is strangely calling to me though.

hearing this too lol. voting massive attack

Ministry: Jesus Built My Hotrod
Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince: Summertime
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Give It Away
R.E.M.: Losing My Religion
The KLF feat. Tammy Wynette: Justified & Ancient
The Source feat. Candi Station: You Got The Love
Cypress Hill: How I Could Just Kill a Man

Love all these. Even the RHCP track (Hate them, but I always liked this song). Suddenly this book is recognising hard rock/metal. I heard You've Got The Love in a chazza the other day and was struck at how restrainedly great it is compared to Florence's version. 'Summertime' relies very much on the Kool & The Gang sample, but it uses it well. Never a Will Smith fan, but this is pop-rap magic. My KLF fave was always 3am Eternal (which no one ever talks about even though it's their best single). The Cypress Hill track - there are better ones on the album, but Cypress were my introduction to underground music as a kid.

Went for "Summertime". It just works so well and does exactly what it set out to do - to make a cool summer jam for barbecues and family fun.

"Move Any Mountain"!!!

Had the Shamen track been "Pro:Gen (Land of Oz)" and not the remix, I would have voted for it.

(or "Hyperreal Orbit")

Also let me add that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would have won this poll anywhere outside of ILM, but I suspect it will not win here. :)

I bet it wins by at least 20%

I voted for Metallica. Does that make me a bad person?

yes

My guess is that SLTs comes in third after Massive Attack and REM, maybe tied with W Smith

ranking the songs I know/remember:

Massive Attack: Unfinished Sympathy
DJ Jazzy Jeff & The Fresh Prince: Summertime
The Source feat. Candi Station: You Got The Love
Red Hot Chili Peppers: Give It Away
Cypress Hill: How I Could Just Kill a Man
R.E.M.: Losing My Religion
Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit
The KLF feat. Tammy Wynette: Justified & Ancient
Bonnie Raitt: I Can't Make You Love Me
U2: One
Tom Cochrane: Life Is a Highway
Lenny Kravitz: Always On The Run
The Shamen: Move Any Mountain (Progen 91)
Ministry: Jesus Built My Hotrod
Metallica: Enter Sandman
Ozzy Osbourne: No More Tears

(the big drop-off happens after "I Can't Make You Love Me")

I cried when I heard "1952 Vincent Black Lightning" for the first time, that was live and the recorded version's never sounded as good to me

um what is this list? who made it? it seems completely random - massive ubiquitous classics mixed in with, uhhh jane siberry?!

voted richard thompson. had no idea the song was that recent tbh

― done took the whine out of YG garden (symsymsym), Tuesday, October 25, 2011 5:16 AM (10 hours ago)

I assumed it was one of those 'recorded earlier released later' deals but it seems not. It is a great track.

"Jesus Built My Hotrod" destroyed the last vestiges of goodwill I had towards Ministry. I will not listen to anything they've done since A Mind...

Lex, it's from a book called 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die. There have been loads of these polls already. Most people (including me) agree with you, though, it is a bit of a stupid list. Still, it occupies time.

oh okay. i think i glanced over previous polls but they were from years before my time.

that jane siberry song is gorgeous btw - i know candi staton/massive attack/jazzy jeff are the unfuckwithable classics here but i might give this a nod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ev5byDGADKs

xp interested to know whether you like Nirvana or not Lex, questions of canon, influence etc. aside.

nope. kind of hate cobain's voice, whenever i listen to nirvana i always think "well if i felt like that i could be listening to hole instead"

actually no - the key difference is that when i listen to hole it makes me feel uhhh powerful or something? all that rage and energy is directed outwards, it's catharsis with a target. when i listen to nirvana it all feels claustrophobically directed inwards, kind of dank and self-absorbed and sulky.

Holes should be directed inwards not outwards.

Only on ILX...

Holes should be directed inwards not outwards.

Not if it's a window

It's ajar

...in-fucking-sane...

xp to Lex depends which record you listen to IMO. In Utero definitely has that element, but the production and guitar sound are astonishing. I never liked Hole, they never had the songs.

Hole always sounded like the female Nirvana to me, although I only ever heard Live Through This. Love's vocal affectations are almost exactly the same as Kurt's. The idea that Nirvana were an introspective band is a bit of a one-dimensional way of looking at them IMO.

Yeah, I don't see how you can make such a huge distinction between Hole and Nirvana's attitudes beyond gender. When Courtney sings Old Age, originally a Nirvana demo, it seems like a natural fit. Though I guess her voice is more of an instrument of fury than Kurt's.

Why the female Nirvana? They were contemporaries.

i'm as over "teen spirit" as anyone most days but tbh there was just no other song on this list that posed serious competition for poll winner

there are at least three other songs on this list i think of as totally canonical

― lex pretend, Tuesday, November 1, 2011 7:11 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark

lots of songs here are in the canon, i'm saying none of them have the kind of ILM consensus to beat "teen spirit." imo it says a lot that i can't hum more than half of the top 10.

The Candi Staton/Source version of You Got The Love is so so much better than the Florence version. I thought I'd fallen out of love with the song after hearing hers for the fifth time, but when I heard the 90s versh again it was like trying the Gold Top milk after years of skimmed.

Anyone who doesn't know that version of "You Got The Love" should really REALLY go investigate it.

i think lex otm re: Nirvana & Hole, I think that his songs took definitely took punk rage and turned it inward, transmuted into agony. In Utero is my favorite album of the 90s, and the time it resonated most was during a weird emotionally masochistic crisis, when Kurt's gestures of sef-evisceration almost...felt cathartic?? I don't know Hole as well but I've never heard anything to refute the fact that she was railing outwards, against forces that would contain + control her...

I do think the gender differences blur the distinctions between the two. Courtney is raging against her own body, but in a weird way, that's still an outward rage, because it's her body that is being primarily used to control her...obviously Kurt's own fierce self-loathing heavily influenced her learning how to do this...

Nirvana is the male Hole.

pffft

there's a bean burrito joke here, I just know it

^^^

Kidding aside, I recoil from statements like "Hole always sounded like the female Nirvana to me," dog latin. No offense. It's so condescending, and doesn't take into account the probability that Courtney Love influenced Cobain.

But she's a girl! They're not influential!

Hole always sounded like the female Nirvana to me, although I only ever heard Live Through This.

That's a pretty small sample size to go from. Celebrity Skin is nothing like Live Through This.

xpost How is it condescending? Similar way of playing, dress sense, singing-style, overall vibe etc. They're not exactly poles apart. Nirvana and Hole were pretty similar bar only a few ways other than gender, so I think it's justified. Okay, saying they're the "female Nirvana" is a pretty simplistic way of looking at things, but mine was a response to Lex's "Why should I listen to Nirvana when I could be listening to Hole?" which is plain bizarre to me. Of course Lex attempted to clarify this in a later post, by saying Hole's rage is internal rage being thrust out, whereas Nirvana's is the outside world's problems being internalised. I guess if we were to analyse each band's lyrics on a song-by-song basis that could well be true, but at the end of the day they're not really that different. Championing Hole over Nirvana is something I can see only the Lex doing, and my first reaction was that it's either challops or the fact it's a female-led rock band (more likely, considering Lex's history of preferences in rock music). Didn't mean this to become a debate about gender politics - Nirvana's music is just plain better than Hole's IMO, and saying you don't like Nirvana but you do like Hole is inconceivable to me. And yeah, I haven't heard much after Live Through This but I have a feeling Celebrity Skin won't top In Utero if I were to hear it.

just read all that back - it's difficult to express what i mean without coming off as a major prick, so i apologise for that.

Championing Hole over Nirvana is something I can see only the Lex doing, and my first reaction was that it's either challops or the fact it's a female-led rock band (more likely, considering Lex's history of preferences in rock music). Didn't mean this to become a debate about gender politics - Nirvana's music is just plain better than Hole's IMO, and saying you don't like Nirvana but you do like Hole is inconceivable to me.

xhuxk also prefers Hole. I probably listen to Hole more often these days; I find her hooks and words, insofar as I pay attention, trenchant, incisive, and witty in ways that Cobain's aren't, but I acknowledge that Cobain and Love wrote about different experiences.

I didn't understand lex's point either.

Well, it's reminded me to check out some of their other stuff. Admittedly I first heard Live Through This back in the mid-90s and wasn't impressed enough to keep following them. Plus I'm just not a big fan of Courtney Love.

I find her hooks and words, insofar as I pay attention, trenchant, incisive, and witty in ways that Cobain's aren't

I'd disagree with this, or at least the couched implication (to me) that Cobain's weren't incisive or witty. I do think that, lyrically, In Utero was a big step up from Nevermind, so that might possibly be some of Love's influence there...?

Or heroin

lol @ "influence" only going one way

you guys are talking about a married couple, not a ventriloquist and his/her dummy

Yeah, I mean, it's the John and Yoko argument all over again.

OTM

"hole > nirvana" is an argument that's been made plenty of times, including ON THIS BOARD, at this point how is it even a challops? i also find courtney a way smarter lyricist but am really just going off nirvana's singles here.

its a challops often made on this board. i like hole well enough but theyre not in the same league as nirvana

but nothing wrong with preferring one over the other either.

saying you don't like Nirvana but you do like Hole is inconceivable to me

I prefer Nirvana myself, but I don't think there's any opinion that's inconceivable, where matters of taste are concerned. I'm sure there are people who prefer Yoko Ono to the Beatles.

Massive Attack: Unfinished Sympathy 21

lol @ britain

Don't really like any of these

I'm sure there are people who prefer Yoko Ono to the Beatles.

uhhhhhhh yeah

lol I was actually gonna troll dog latin along the lines of "itt dog latin tacitly admits to preferring John Lennon over Yoko Ono"

"the point isn't that Loveless is too alt, the point is that no way are its virtues centred on the songs qua songs, they're at best unremarkable."

You should keep in my mind that Geir is merely starting the threads, he didn't write the book itself! ;-) If the songs on Loveless are unremarkable, then it's only in the same way that "I Feel Love"/"Bring the Noise"/insert whatever you prefer are unremarkable. Whatever the book is, it certainly doesn't just consist of "songs" in the classical sense of the word, which seems to be your argument as to why nothing from Loveless should be there.

Also let me add that "Smells Like Teen Spirit" would have won this poll anywhere outside of ILM, but I suspect it will not win here. :)

I bet it wins by at least 20%

― kornrulez6969, Tuesday, 25 October 2011 15:34 (6 days ago)

Ha! Whaddya know. My bold claim came true. Everybody's gotta get it right sometime. ILM has always had a very strong Nirvana silent majority.

bold.

who will be president of the united states in february 2012?

Obama.

The best the GOP had, my governor Chris Christie decided to sit it out. He was their only chance. Romney is a perfectly capable fellow and would probably be a fine GOP president, but for some reason, nobody likes the guy. The fact that Herman Cain is beating him in the polls speaks volumes.

consider Jesus Built as in thr 3rd place cause that's what i would have vote if and when...

2012 election results:

1. Barack Obama (D)
2. Mitt Romney (R)
3. The KLF feat. Tammy Wynette (Independent)

"Jesus Built My Hotrod" would be the best electoral slogan ever.

who will be president of the united states in february 2012?

I detect a trick question.

so is this the end of the line for this sad book?

nah i think geir said it lasts til 2000?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f1aCaG_On20

Geir, just wondering if you're going to continue with these polls, I always enjoyed reading the varied opinions. Or does the book end at 1991?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsN7BAtLs8I