Modern Rock #9 Hits (1992-1997)

For the amount of airplay it got, and still gets, Plush seems deceptively low.

Cardigans, REM, Connells, Pumpkins, Soundgarden, Frente, even the Toad song is OK.

"Zero." But more crucially, not "She Don't Use Jelly."

Tough choice. One of these:

"Disappointed" (maybe my favorite Electronic single)
"Sheela-Na-Gig"
"Hail Hail"

PJ Harvey – Sheela-Na-Gig (9/5/92)
Primus – My Name Is Mud (5/29/93)
Soundgarden – Spoonman (4/9/94)
Smashing Pumpkins – Zero (4/13/96)
Screaming Trees – All I Know (8/3/96)
Pearl Jam – Hail, Hail (11/16/96)
Cardigans – Lovefool (2/22/97)
Beck – The New Pollution (4/26/97)

Not sure how much longer even a devotee like me can keep going with these polls, but they are good click-bait. Anyway, one of the above - all pretty cool and I remember them fondly. "Lovefool" really more of a pop hit (would rate the followup here though), guess I'm going "Spoonman" just over "Zero," "Sheela-na-Gig," and "The New Pollution." Surprised all three of those are this low actually but hey.

PJ Harvey not well represented on this chart; tbh I never heard her much on college-not-modern-rock-radio except "Down by the Water" and "50 Ft Queenie."

lol for me this is either black metallic or naked

i voted catherine wheel just to make sure

if anything other than PJ harvey wins this you are all jerks

Frente!

i don't feel any really strong affection for any of these. i just pulled up "Slackjawed" on YouTube, though, and it sounded pretty good after having not heard it for about 20 years, so i'll vote for that.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

The charts were so fucked up in the '90s. To think that "Watch the Girl Destroy Me" by Possum Dixon (me neither) was as big of a hit as "Lovefool" is just crazy.

This is "Lovefool", btw.

pj harvey pretty easy, screaming trees and beck for runners up. almost all of these i'm kinda surprised to see peak at #9 - either they felt like much much bigger hits (and i can buy that 'lovefool's omnipresence but man there's no way 'plush' was unavoidable because of other formats) or they were the sort of maybe scratches the top twenty type of tracks that add 'depth' to a station's playlist and make it seem hip (playing the 'hidden track' from an album was a classic move along these lines). had literally completely forgotten that rem deep cut from born to choose. what prompted the 'sweet jane' revival in 94?

natural born killers sdtk

i actually missed Cowboy Junkies as an option first time i saw the thread, wish i had given them my vote

from my own experience the Cowboy Junkies cover had even more impact and airplay in late '94 and early '95 than it did in the late eighties -- just like I heard "The Future" in '94 like I didn't in fall '92.

totally forgot about nbk, it did well on modern rock radio and mtv in the late 80s (and owned college radio) but obv the format was alot stronger in 94. is the actual soundtrack a somewhat psychedelic mix like in the movie or is it just 'well here's the songs you heard in the movie', i remember reznor's fucking around was one of the few things i really enjoyed about that movie.

soundtrack >>>> movie. It simulates "sensory overload" about which we heard so much in the early nineties pre-net days: Cohen into L7 into froggy Good As I Been to You Dyan into Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, etc.

And the nbk version had dialogue from the movie in it...

"I've loved you since the day we met"

i'm kinda surprised to see peak at #9

Feel like many of these were #1 videos at the time...

my first email address was a flaming lips reference :(

i see it's going to be another of those PJ Harvey vs Catherine Wheel polls

the NBK soundtrack "Sweet Jane" was different but i only ever heard the straight up Trinity Sessions track on the radio

I had no idea "Sweet Jane" charted in '94. I thought "Burn" was the "hit" from the NBK soundtrack?

harsh list

NBK was released just a few months after The Downward Spiral, so "Burn" totally got lost in the shuffle of that album's singles, the video was on 120 Minutes a little but "Closer" was blowing up so radio didn't bother with it.

Much as I love Sheela-na-Gig and New Pollution, I can't not vote for Barneywaves.

Spoonman just over Sheela Na Gig

All I Know

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

lolol

Ferment love.

Yay! I <3 Catherine Wheel!