23 February 2011

Nothing Lasts Forever

NPR's All Songs Considered looks back to the '90s this week and although some of their song choices do scream "'90s" to me (Song 2Smells Like Teen SpiritDoo Wop (That Thing) and No Surprises), none of them would make my ultimate '90s playlist, not even the latter, which was released soon after I started listening to the UK Top 40 each week and so stands out as being characteristic of its era in my head.

I've picked my own top ten, although not simply by getting iTunes to tell me which songs released in the 1990s I've played the most or like the best. Instead, I've tried to pick those songs to which I used to listen the most back in the '90s (and still like now; I'm no longer a fan of Somewhere or One and One by Robert Miles -- the first single I ever bought). This means that songs released in the '90s that make my all-time top ten, like Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah and I Wanna Be Adored by the Stone Roses, don't count because I didn't listen to them at the time. Of course, if this list were really representative, there would be at least one more Oasis song, but that's just boring. And of course, because I only discovered there was more to music than musicals and prog rock (thanks, parents!) in about 1996, this top ten is biased towards the second half of the decade.
  1. Oasis - Wonderwall (Some Might Say that this is a boring choice but I stole Papa's CD of What's the Story in about 1996 mainly so that I could listen to Wonderwall on repeat. I prefer the Ryan Adams cover now but I still love to sing along with Liam, especially when I'm driving.)
  2. No Doubt - Don't Speak (Another one for singing along in the car.)
  3. Eagle Eye Cherry - Save Tonight
  4. Green Day - Good Riddance (The Boulevard of Broken Dreams vs Wonderwall mash-up hadn't been created at this point; it probably still wouldn't have made my top ten)
  5. Radiohead - Street Spirit
  6. Embrace - All You Good, Good People
  7. The Cardigans - Lovefool (This one was used in both Romeo & Juliet and Cruel Intentions. Nice.)
  8. The Manic Street Preachers  - A Design for Life (I used to really like the Manics. I liked calling them "The Manics," like a real fan, even more.)
  9. Monaco - What Do You Want from Me? (Because I hadn't heard of New Order yet...)
  10. White Town - Your Woman (The second single I ever bought; hey, I was 13; also, it's a reworking of a Bill Crosby song, apparently, which makes it much more acceptable.)
Honourable mention: Bittersweet Symphony by the Verve. I didn't like this song much at the time but it was in the charts for over three months and it was always on the radio, so I think it counts, especially after I "rediscovered" it when it was on the Cruel Intentions soundtrack.