*scans list for "Breakfast at Tiffany's*

FAIL

Venga boys but no Aqua? That's absurd.

I mean, I'm not gay.

That had to be the worst period for rock music since its existence. Double crap because those were my high school years. I hardly have any good songs to get all nostalgic about.

I just played a show about 2 weeks ago with the drummer from Harvey Danger, so I'm really getting a kick out of these replies.

*scans list again for Semisonic's "Closing Time"

DOUBLE FAIL

Transpogue:*scans list for "Breakfast at Tiffany's*

FAIL

Transpogue:*scans list again for Semisonic's "Closing Time"

DOUBLE FAIL

True, even though Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (sadly, no, I didn't have to look up the name of the band) wasn't a song from the late 90s. But if the author's not sticking to it, why not.

/one of the ironic quipster countdown shows on VH1, I have to say, nailed "Breakfast at Tiffany's" - "after a while, you forget you're listening to music"

Transpogue:*scans list again for Semisonic's "Closing Time"

DOUBLE FAIL

It had a decent guitar riff in the chorus. :P But yeah, I agree.

browntimmy:That had to be the worst period for rock music since its existence. Double crap because those were my high school years. I hardly have any good songs to get all nostalgic about.

1996-1999:

311 - Transistor
The Beta Band - The Three EPs
Blur - Blur
Cake - Fashion Nugget
Cake - Prolonging The Magic
Chevelle - Point #2
Deftones - Around The Fur
Incubus - Enjoy Incubus
Incubus - Make Yourself
Foo Fighters - The Colour And The Shape
Godsmack - Godsmack
Green Day - Nimrod
Helmet - Aftertaste
(hed) pe - (hed) pe
Limp Bizkit - Three Dollar Bill, Y'all (I know what you're saying, but STFU the first one was good)
Marilyn Manson - Antichrist Superstar
The Offspring - Ixnay On The Hombre
Pantera - The Great Southern Trendkill
Pearl Jam - No Code
Pearl Jam - Yield
Radiohead - OK Computer
Rage Against The Machine - Evil Empire
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication
Stone Temple Pilots - Tiny Music
System Of A Down - System Of A Down
Soundgarden - Down On The Upside
Tool - Ænima
Weezer - Pinkerton
Wilco - Summerteeth

Honorable mention:

Alanis Morissette - Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie
Dropkick Murphys - Do Or Die
Ozomatli - Ozomatli
The Presidents Of The United States Of America - II
Ween - The Mollusk

Chevelle - Point #1 omg lol :(

Forget Eagle-Eye...


... Whatever happened to his sister Neneh?

theurge14:1996-1999:

Which covers rock. For electronics I'd have to add anything from that time by Squarepusher, Aphex Twin, DJ Shadow/UNKLE, Plaid, Orbital, Boards of Canada, Chemical Brothers, Future Sounds of London, Lamb, Luke Vibert, The Prodigy. Back to rock, Rammstein turned up around then and Muse's first album is a 1999 vintage, and that's just off the top of my head. There's plenty of great music all the time no matter what decade, just don't expect your local radio station to serve it up.

Most of the listed songs aren't that bad, if they're bad at all. And a few are the last gasps of happy go lucky fun pop-rock.

That wasn't as bad as I had anticipated. Some are actually great songs (Semi-charmed life, Dammit, All for you, Angel), others are just throwaway memory songs, then you get to the end and see LFO's "Summer girls" in which they just say anything that will rhyme, including referring to Shakespeare as "Billy Shakespeare." Awful.

I get stupidly nostalgic for most of those songs and they jumped into my head as soon as I read the title.

I forgot to add anything by The Cardigans.

WhyteRaven74:Most of the listed songs aren't that bad,

Agreed. I like almost half of those songs in there. And I don't care how many car commercials and basketball games they use "Ready To Go" for, that song had me at hello. Plus, the red-headed Republica chick was hot.

And any "Flagpole Sitta" fans who still haven't seen College Humor's lip sync version of it, take a click (pops). Another cute girl, to get it all started.

To fully appreciate the syncopated goodness of Marc Anthony's "Need to Know", just watch people dance to it who know how to dance to it.

All that said, I may not loathe any 90's song as much as OMC's "How Bizarre".

Forest for the Trees -- Dream
White Town -- Your Woman
Primitive Radio Gods -- Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth...
Cornershop -- Brimful of Asha

...say what you will, but songs this odd and wonderful would never make it to the airwaves today. I don't know if its deregulation, consolidation, or just the general dumbification of America, but whoever's in charge has managed to rockblock everything that isn't...

A.) shiatty rap.
B.) shiatty country.
C.) Pop, ranging from American Idol to Norah Jones/Sarah Bareille crap.
D.) Crappy grunge-ish rock of the Nickelback/Fallout Boy variety.

Peaceboy:WhyteRaven74:Most of the listed songs aren't that bad,

Agreed. I like almost half of those songs in there. And I don't care how many car commercials and basketball games they use "Ready To Go" for, that song had me at hello. Plus, the red-headed Republica chick was hot.

"When I met her, she looked like that girl Saffron from the band Republica."

ukiah:then you get to the end and see LFO's "Summer girls" in which they just say anything that will rhyme, including referring to Shakespeare as "Billy Shakespeare." Awful.

Yeah, that's a pretty solid contender for the worst song of all time award.

Note to list compilers--a crappy techno remix of an eighties song ("Missing") does not count as a bad nineties song.

That being said, I award this list massive doses of fail for not including Aqua's "Barbie Girl" with the male vocals that sound like a child molester and Len's "Steal My Sunshine" which ripped off the freaking Andrea True Connection.

/Sharon! I love you!

LonMead:Forget Eagle-Eye...


... Whatever happened to his sister Neneh?

I think she's hanging out in a buffalo stance...or something.

Say what you want about the 1990s, there were some fun songs that were put out that would never get airtime today.

If anything the 90s are great because it brought us Shirley Manson, the hottest Scottish woman alive. Plus Nirvana killed off hair metal once and for all, no matter how much Sebastian Bach wants to imagine people still think he's relevant.

Then theres fun, lets get drunk kind of songs/albums:

Banditos by The Refreshments
Ruby Soho by Rancid
Anything by NoFX
Dude Ranch by Blink182
creepy ass songs by Marcy Playground (Sex and Candy, Pigeon Farm)
Last Splash by the Breeders

I know theres more, but this was music you could listen to for hours in your car driving around.

Dynascape:Plus Nirvana killed off hair metal once and for all

No Nirvana didn't do that. The record labels did it. Even if in doing so they trashed their own bottom lines and allienated their customers.

White Town -- Your Woman
....
Cornershop -- Brimful of Asha

...say what you will, but songs this odd and wonderful would never make it to the airwaves today.

It's completely true. And the stories behind both of these songs illustrate it perfectly. White Town wasn't even a real band, it was some South Asian guy from the UK who made music for fun in his spare room. Apparently he sent a mix tape to a friend who had a record-label connection, and eventually the label picked up "Your Woman" and it went to #1 in the UK. I'm not sure the guy behind White Town ever released another record or even ever played a concert. As for Cornershop, their first record was so awful NME gave it a zero. Their lead singer Tjender Singh shrugged it off and came back with When I Was Born For The 7th Time, which included "Brimful of Asha".

These days White Town would have had to pay off the record label to get a look in, and Cornershop would have been dropped after album #1.

There are loads of classic records from that time: OK Computer, Odelay, Perfect From Now On, Either/Or, Endtroducing, Homework, Moon Safari, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Summerteeth, The Soft Bulletin, Overcome By Happiness, and 69 Love Songs, to name several.

Damn. I'm old, now.


browntimmy:That had to be the worst period for rock music since its existence.


Proven wrong with one band: Pavement.

/And JSBX, and Unsane, and Man? Or ASRTOMan?!, and Rapeman/Shellac, and....

"Ready to Go," Republica*


I dug that song. 'specially since I was dating an Aussie chick at the time.


The hysterical thing is that I'm reading the comments and guess what song I have in my head now? BUFFALO STANCE!


/When you lost your babe, you lost the race, now you're lookin' at me to take her place!

There were a couple decent songs on that list, but yeah, for the most part, it's a load of crap.

/Tal Bachman was okay
//New Radicals was decent, but made me want to listen to Todd Rundgren

WhyteRaven74:Dynascape:Plus Nirvana killed off hair metal once and for all

No Nirvana didn't do that. The record labels did it. Even if in doing so they trashed their own bottom lines and allienated their customers.

To be fair hair metal had a huge hand in its own demise. Endless "power ballads", overblown stage shows and tours, and personal excesses had just as much to with it as anything else.

browntimmy: That had to be the worst period for rock music since its existence. Double crap because those were my high school years. I hardly have any good songs to get all nostalgic about.

I went through high school in this period as well, and right up until this moment I wondered why, right after Radiohead's OK Computer, I fell into listening to the Wu-Tang Clan, Tupac, Biggie, and Jay-Z during those remaining years. (I was a white suburbanite!) Why do I get nostalgic about Protect Ya Neck?

Now, with your help I've pieced it together. There wasn't much else to listen to. The internet hadn't become the music treasure chest that it is now and besides college radio, which I hadn't discovered yet, the choices were limited to the list in the article.

Damn you Sugar Ray. Now I've got that gawd awful "Fly" in my head. Probably soon to be replaced by "Every Morning," which I seriously thought was a Weird Al parody of Sugar Ray when I first heard it.

My three-year-old nephew thinks that it is the coolest thing ever that I've met Smashmouth. I have neglected to finish the story with the "...and I didn't recognize them and accidentally insulted them to their faces." The disdain with which I called them top 40 was obvious. Oops.

Hey, I liked Eagle-Eye Cherry.

At a glance through cd's copied to my laptop, a few 1996-1999 good ones:
Beck's Odelay
Cracker's the Golden Age
Oingo Boingo's Farewell: Live from the Universal Amphitheatre
R.L. Burnside's A Ass Pocket of Whiskey
Stone Temple Pilots' Tiny Music
Weezer's Pinkerton
Foo Fighters' the Colour and the Shape
James Mathus' Play Songs for Rosetta
Jonny Lang's Lie to Me
Junior Kimbrough's Most Things Haven't Worked Out
Junior Wells' Live at Buddy Guys Legends
Kenny Wayne Shepherd's Trouble Is
Live's Secret Samadhi
Modest Mouse's Lonesome Crowded West
Tito & Tarantula's Tanantism
T-Model Ford's Pee Wee Get My Gun
Veruca Salt's Eight Arms to Hold You
The Verve's Urban Hymns
Garbage's 2.0
Joe Satriani's Crystal Planet
Tito & Tarantula's Hungry Sally & Other Killer Lullabies
The White Stripes' the White Stripes

Yes, not a single good album in the late 90's.

browntimmy:That had to be the worst period for rock music since its existence. Double crap because those were my high school years. I hardly have any good songs to get all nostalgic about.

Oh shut up.

TheUrge14 good list; I'm definitely with you. I'll also add "Goldfinger" (S/T) to the list. It was a great era to be in a rock band, since people actually listened to guitar-oriented music, and there were plenty of great songs and albums to enjoy.

Bash the pop music of any era, you'll find loads of generic crap throughout history. The older stuff seems better because we only remember the actually good stuff. There are tons of #1 songs and albums from the 60s and 70s that were just f'n awful.

Finally, a lot of the songs on TFA's list were done in merely by being overplayed to death. Semi-Charmed Life definitely qualifies, as do Walkin' on the Sun and One Week.

Summer Girls, Mambo #5, Steal my Sunshine all decreased the weight of my soul, on the other hand, so the author wasn't crazy.

Transpogue:*scans list again for Semisonic's "Closing Time"

DOUBLE FAIL

Loooooved Semisonic back in the day. Although my favorite song from them was "Singing in My Sleep".

I say, "WTF??? No Diz Nee Land??"

Just reviewed/actually read the article.

As stated by others, a lot of those songs just got overplayed. That's one of the reasons I stopped listening to radio for ten years. The stations, combined w/ VHI1 and MTV, would just pick a song or two and play it every 30 minutes. Even if they weren't that good. Just kill even a decent song with massive overplaying. The jerks.

Modest Mouse's Lonesome Crowded West


Win!

ELF Radio:
Primitive Radio Gods -- Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth...
Cornershop -- Brimful of Asha


Strange and wonderul? Those are the two most annoying songs that have been mentioned in this thread. One is a half-aseds rip of a Nine Inch Nails song with an overused BB King sample, the other is possibly one of the most trite and mindlessly repetitive songs to come out of the entire decade. But hey, to each his own... the next cornershop album was pretty good, I'll give you that much.

Heh, apparently I think music that most people think is terrible... also getting a kick outta these replies... Verve Pipe rock

theurge14:1996-1999:

Okay, but 1991-1994:

Foo Fighters - The Colour And The Shape
Nirvana - Nevermind
Pearl Jam - No Code Ten
Pearl Jam - Yield Vs.
Rage Against The Machine - Evil Empire Rage Against the Machine
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Californication Blood Sugar Sex Magik
Stone Temple Pilots - Tiny Music Core
Soundgarden - Down On The Upside Badmotorfinger, Superunknown
Tool - Ænima Opiate, Undertow

I'd go on, but I'm supposed to working.

I still think we (people born in '75) got the better deal, in terms of music-at-the-end-of-adolescence, but of course that's only my opinion (and probably applies to every person ever).

Is Foo Fighters worth investing a few dollars in? I've heard they're quite inconsistent, with only a couple of good songs per album. I've only really heard the singles... :(

browntimmy:That had to be the worst period for rock music since its existence. Double crap because those were my high school years. I hardly have any good songs to get all nostalgic about.

Okay, I can see how you missed the "rock" radio crapfest that was the most of the 80s, but how could you have missed the current decade's mind boggling suckitude? Compared to the decades surrounding it, the 90s were an absolute delight.

jj325:WhyteRaven74:Dynascape:Plus Nirvana killed off hair metal once and for all

No Nirvana didn't do that. The record labels did it. Even if in doing so they trashed their own bottom lines and allienated their customers.

To be fair hair metal had a huge hand in its own demise. Endless "power ballads", overblown stage shows and tours, and personal excesses had just as much to with it as anything else.

Guns 'n' Roses really ended up having the effect on hair metal that's always attributed to Nirvana. Once GnR hit, bands like Poison put down the make-up and tried picking up acoustic guitars to see if they could pull it off.

I remember when Pop radio played rock bands...then came the N'Sync era. Thankfully that's when I had my "Classic" Rock faze. Which ended with the coming of the White Stripes, Modust Mouse (I only got into them after they became popular, I admit, but I really like discovering their older stuff), Flaming Lips (see previous) and of course, Audioslave, which isnt the same as Rage or Soundgarden, but given my choice of alternatives, I can dig it...

I like all music from all eras. I am complete.

Misery by Soul Asylum. I hate that song so much it actually makes me angry just thinking about it.

"Hey, I liked Eagle-Eye Cherry.

At a glance through cd's copied to my laptop, a few 1996-1999 good ones:
Beck's Odelay
Cracker's the Golden Age
Oingo Boingo's Farewell: Live from the Universal Amphitheatre
R.L. Burnside's A Ass Pocket of Whiskey
Stone Temple Pilots' Tiny Music
Weezer's Pinkerton
Foo Fighters' the Colour and the Shape
James Mathus' Play Songs for Rosetta
Jonny Lang's Lie to Me
Junior Kimbrough's Most Things Haven't Worked Out
Junior Wells' Live at Buddy Guys Legends
Kenny Wayne Shepherd's Trouble Is
Live's Secret Samadhi
Modest Mouse's Lonesome Crowded West
Tito & Tarantula's Tanantism
T-Model Ford's Pee Wee Get My Gun
Veruca Salt's Eight Arms to Hold You
The Verve's Urban Hymns
Garbage's 2.0
Joe Satriani's Crystal Planet
Tito & Tarantula's Hungry Sally & Other Killer Lullabies
The White Stripes' the White Stripes"

CRAP

Aenima is still the best Tool album, the other stuff is ok, but just sounds like derivitives of Aenima.
Until they can pull something new out of their hat, Aenima is the only Tool album you really need.

theurge14:1996-1999:

that is a truly sad list.

FTA
Disc One

"Semi-Charmed Life," Third Eye Blind

"Push," Matchbox 20

"Walking on the Sun," Smashmouth

"All For You," Sister Hazel

"Save Tonight," Eagle-Eye Cherry

"Sweat," Inner Circle

"Angel," Sarah McLachlan

"Rhythm is a Dancer," Snap

"Meet Virginia," Train

"Flag Pole Sitta," Harvey Danger*

"Fly," Sugar Ray

"Hook," Blues Traveler

"Dammit," Blink-182

"You Get What You Give," The New Radicals*

"We Like to Party," The Vengaboys

"Ready to Go," Republica*

"Torn," Natalie Imbruglia

Disc Two

"Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen)," Baz Luhrmann

"Tubthumping," Chumbawumba

"The Freshmen," The Verve Pipe

"Blue," Eiffel 65

"Kiss Me," Sixpence None the Richer

"How Bizarre," OMC

"One Week," Barenaked Ladies

"Sex and Candy," Marcy Playground*

"Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth With Money in My Hands," Primitive Radio Gods

"She's So High," Tal Bachman

"Missing," Everything But the Girl

"Take a Picture," Filter*

"I Need to Know," Marc Anthony*

"Livin' La Vida Loca," Ricky Martin

"Steal My Sunshine," Len

"Mambo No. 5," Lou Bega

"Summer Girls," LFO

*Actually not that terrible

Flagpole Sitta gets a pass because it gave us the girl in the first 30 seconds of this.

I love you, whoever you are.

You people have a disturbing lack of Ween in your musical diets. Best band of the 90s, barring a few.

Gimee that Z!
O L O F T!
No longer pissed,
You don't bother me.