Ten Great Songs from 1995

I didn't plan it this way, but this list turned out to be one strong on songs that are party compatible in terms of music, but have melancholic or glum lyrics. Also, with the exception of #1, this is very conventional, like the result of some students' magazine's "best songs of 1995" poll, magnifying a general feature of playlists in this series. This is in part because Deezer's not so strong on the far-out stuff and in part because, well, I just happen to think that Blur's "The Universal" is just a better song than Guided by Voices' "Motor away" (for example). Before you complain along these lines, consider that I left out both Oasis and Björk.

The usual: To listen, go here and click on the "play" icon next to the first song. Alternatively, use the player below, but some songs are going to get faded out after half a minute.

1. Chavez: Peeled out Too Late I distinctly remember seeing this band in 1995 and the singer ironically thanking the audience "for sticking around." Well, what do you expect of a crowd that's waiting for Guided by Voices and Tocotronic and Ash and you're holding up traffic?

2. Smashing Pumpkins: Tonight, Tonight George Martin famously urged the Beatles to release only a single record from the white album recording sessions. Would they have done that and selected the right tracks (and I would guess Mr. Martin's and my opinions diverge with respect to which those are), it would have been the greatest album in the history of music. Would the Smashing Pumpkins have filled only one CD with the best material from the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness sessions, they would certainly have made my top 30. A different title might have been a good idea, too.

3. Ash: Girl from Mars I used this song as an excuse to tell a longish story of sexual frustration in relation to the aforementioned concert here (scroll down to #14).

4. Tricky: Black Steel In preparing this post, I realized that I don't own Tricky's Maxinquaye album, which, contrary to other evidence, may suggest I wasn't alive in 1995. The special charm of this track, a cover version of Public Enemy's "Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos", is that a clearly British female sings, in a can't-be-arsed-to-put-in-effort style, about how she wouldn't do nothing for the US government because they don't give a damn "about a brother like me" to an ever-intensifying instrumental track. Come to think of it, I probably was alive in 1995, but not owning the album explains why I couldn't get laid. I mean, who'd want to fuck someone who's that out of touch? Can't blame 'em, really.

5. Tocotronic: Drüben auf dem Hügel The ultimate alternative summer song.

6. Ramones: Life's a Gas One of the three great songs from the Ramones' underwhelming last album, Adios Amigos.

7. Lagwagon: Sleep I've never been a Lagwagon man, but on this one they do their usual, only a little better and with surprisingly grownup, melancholic lyrics.

8. The Cardigans: Rise & Shine I'm a sucker for these kinds of chep contrasts, and "Rise & Shine" wins the grand prize by setting lyrics about suicide against the most upbeat, "All Summer Long"-type music.

9. Pulp: Disco 2000 There are too few genuinely pop songs about ageing and adulthood.

10. Blur: The Universal To continue talking about lyrics, for all my writing most of this blog in English, watching films undubbed et al., I don't usually get much of a song's text except for the chorus if it's in English and I don't concentrate. So I was surprised this one (at least as I read it) is a pretty gloomy comment on the modern world. I mean, this could have been a great hopeful love song: "Yes, it really, really, really could happen..."

Ten Great Songs from 1994

1. The Cranberries: No Need to Argue What's great about this song's our-love-is-over lyrics is their mediocrity: "And I remember all the things we once shared." What might that be? "Watching TV movies on the living room armchair." Brilliant! Hundreds of thousands of people could have come up with that exact same thought. At the same time it highlights the fact that pretty much everything is fun if you're doing it with someone you're madly in love with. Am I making myself clear? I think not.

2. Lard: Forkboy

3. Nine Inch Nails: Burn The ideal song to get yourself fired up by before taking a gun and judging everybody in your school. The Church of Rationality, obviously, does not condone that kind of behaviour. Still a great song, though.

4. Die Sterne: Nüchtern

5. Bob Dylan: You Belong to Me According to Wikipedia, this version of the song, which was originally recorded by one Sue Thompson in 1952, "was recorded by Bob Dylan for the 1992 album Good as I Been to You but was eventually left off as an outtake, the recording only surfacing two years later in the soundtrack for the 1994 movie Natural Born Killers" (hence the voiceovers by Juliette Lewis and Woody Harrelson towards the end). This was an outtake? How good will the album be? Well, I've listened to the first two tracks and I'm less than impressed. We'll see about the rest.

6. Die Regierung: Natalie sagt From the tracklist of the Unten album: "5. Natalie sagt 6. Charlotte 7. Corinna 8. Nicole." Well, I guess singer Tilman Rossmy's womanizer image has got to come from somewhere. (Warning: There's also another band called Die Regierung, and they're crap.)

7. The Cardigans: Sick & Tired An underused trick in pop music: Set really bitter lyrics to really happy-go-lucky music.

8. Ash: Petrol A trick not underused in rock music: Silent-loud. Used to great effect here.

9. Weezer: Only in Dreams Ash play (or used to play) this song live. I've heard a few recordings. Someone should tell them getting the notes right isn't enough.

10. Oasis: Live Forever


As usual, you can use the player below, but some songs are going to be faded out after half a minute. Alternatively, go here and click on the "play" icon next to the first song.

Ten Great Songs from 1993

No comments this time, just the tracklist. To listen, go here and click on the "play" icon next to the first song. The whole thing is very indie/alt rock.

1. Chokebore: Coat

2. Nirvana: Serve the Servants

3. Helmet & House of Pain: Just Another Victim

4. Frank Black: Two Spaces

5. Saint Etienne: You're in a Bad Way

6. Suede: So Young

7. The Breeders: Divine Hammer

8. Leatherface: Do the Right Thing

9. Smashing Pumpkins: Today

10. Ramones: My Back Pages

Ten Great Songs from 1992

1. The The: True Happiness This Way Lies Everybody's always talking about the first two albums, but let's not forget that The The's fourth, Dusk, is also great. Here's the devastating opener.

2. Throwing Muses: Pearl On the contrary, Throwing Muses' Red Heaven, which this one is taken from, is not worth buying.

3. Suede: Metal Mickey The most underused ability pretty much all humans have is handclapping. Seriously! There's not enough of it in the world! To promote handclapping, I give you "Metal Mickey", an ideal song to clap along to.

4. Beastie Boys: Finger Lickin' Good Indeed.

5. Lou Reed: Harry's Circumcision Most of the rest of Lou Reed's very good album Magic and Loss is about death, so this is actually the feel-good track on it.

6. Sonic Youth: Wish Fulfillment More music should be like this.

7. Suzanne Vega: In Liverpool The memorable track from the underwhelming 99.9F.

8. Hallelujah Ding Dong Happy Happy: Lied für dich Sounds as though the composer had to pay for every different note used in the melody. Great lyrics!

9. Sebadoh: Brand New Love Could be even better if the silent bits were more silent and the loud ones louder. Someone should do a remix.

10. R.E.M.: Find the River To talk some more about albums, R.E.M.'s Automatic for the People has lots of tracks in the same league as this one.

Summary: Not the greatest collection of songs you'll find in this series; was it an album year?

As usual, the player below will fade some songs out prematurely. To avoid this, go to the list's homepage and click on the "play" sign next to the first song.

Ten Great Songs from 1991

What? No Nirvana?

This Mortal Coil: Late Night This is the kind of thing that's sometimes called "deceptively simple", but what's that to mean anyway? Simple in a deceiving way? I guess what people often mean is that something is only seemingly simple, as in "Merton's anomie theory looks simple at first, but is actually pretty complicated". (And that's a fair point.) Maybe even more often people use it when they want to articulate that something, albeit simple, is cultured enough for their refined tastes. But what's wrong with simple? "Tutti Frutti" was simple, and so is this song, which doesn't sound like Little Richard at all.

Dinosaur jr.: How'd You Pin That One on Me? "Their songs explode," said Thurston Moore. He was right, too.

Matthew Sweet: I've Been Waiting On the same (very good) album (called Girlfriend) was a song called "Winona", which was generally understood to be called that because of Winona Ryder. That's because it was generally understood that Matthew Sweet had a crush on her. And then Sould Asylum, whose lead singer (name escapes me right now) was Winona Ryder's boyfriend at the time, booked Matthew Sweet as a supporting act for their tour. I would like to have been there.

Pixies: Letter to Memphis Once read a review of a Pixies best of album the first sentence of which went something like, "Let's get this straight right away: There were the Beatles and then there were the Sex Pistols and then there were the Pixies." At least the Sex Pistols should be blushing, I think.

Throwing Muses: Not Too Soon Some works of art aren't just great, they also make you me think that the people responsible are genuinely nice. This is one of them.

Sting: Mad about You Yeah, I know, after the great music revolution people who like Sting will be first against the wall. Well, fuck you.

Massive Attack: Unfinished Sympathy It's not trip-hop. It's not soul. It's "Unfinished Sympathy". A stand-alone song, really.

U2: Ultra Violet Strange Relationship: U2 and Me is not the title of my upcoming book, but a good summary of this: I actively dislike most of U2's pre-1990 stuff, think their 1991 Achtung Baby is one of the great albums in the history of pop, really like their follow-up Zooropa and am bored by everything that followed. "One" is an even better song from the album, but you've all heard it more than once, so here's the not-quite-as-brilliant-but-quite-brilliant "Ultra Violet".

Elvis Costello: Couldn't Call It Unexpected No.4 It's a waltz and it's really good and I have no more to say.

John Cale: Hallelujah Leonard Cohen's own version of this great composition of his is rather poor, so many people recommend the Jeff Buckley one instead. Buckley's version is very good, but John Cale's is one of the great, say, 100 recordings in the history of pop music. Dignity!

Summary: 1991 was a very good year for music.

If you use the player below, some songs are going to be faded out after 30 seconds. To avoid this problem, go here and click on the "play" icon next to the first song to start the playlist.

Ten Great Songs from 1990

1. Lou Reed/John Cale: Hello, It's Me After his death, Lou Reed and John Cale got together once more to record an album for/about their mentor Andy Warhol, using only instruments they could play themselves (no drums!). Great, calm music by and for grownups. Here's the best song.

2. Nirvana: Sliver A great, rough rocksong and the last single they issued before becoming huge. A friend of mine told me that he could have seen them that year - he had a ticket - but he preferred to spend his time in the bar while the supporting act was playing. He was there for the headliners: Sonic Youth.

3. Pixies: The Happening Better known for their silent-loud contrasts, The Greatest Band of Their Time here use the equally effectful but less in-your-face rhythmic/melodic trick.

4. Depeche Mode: Enjoy the Silence "Enjoy the Silence" is the only great song Depeche Mode ever came up with. That's more than most bands manage.

5. The Charlatans: The Only One I Know The Happy Mondays and EMF didn't make it to the short list, but "The Only One I Know" definitely had to be on it.

6. Saint Etienne: Only Love Can Break Your Heart It's supposed to sound that cheap. That's the point.

7. Huah! Was soll ich mit der Welt? (a.k.a. Was soll ich mit der Welt wenn ich dich nicht hab) Charmingly rumbling along.

8. Iggy Pop: Livin' on the Edge of the Night Iggy Pop being Iggy Pop.

9. Sonic Youth: Tunic Majestic.

10. Dinosaur jr.: The Wagon Injects Happiness. Well, at least in me.

You can use the player below to listen, but songs 4, 7 and 10 will be faded out prematurely. To avoid this problem, go here and click the "play" sign next to the first song.

Ten Great Songs from 1989

Are you discovering a pattern already? That's right, last week we had 1988, now 1989, guess what next week is going to bring. The playlist's page is here. Click on the "play" icon next to the first song to start. Alternatively, use the player below, but some songs are going to be faded out at 0:30.

1. Nine Inch Nails: Something I Can Never Have: I don't mind whining if it's done this competently.

2. The La's: There She Goes: Better than the Velvet Underground song of the same name. And you won't read this kind of sentence from me very often.

3. Lou Reed: Romeo Had Juliette: New York is quite possibly the best-produced album in the history of rock music, so get a vinyl copy instead of listening to this through your crappy computer speakers.

4. All: Carnage: It's surprising how much a thing of the past All seem to be - by which I don't mean to say that the song hasn't aged well. Strangely, "Carnage" didn't even make the vinyl version of the album. It's almost as though the band didn't agree with my assessment of the relative merits of their songs!

5. Kolossale Jugend: Bessere Zeiten klingt gut: Angry young men, Hamburg 1989 version.

6. Sugarcubes: Planet: Alternatively, try the Icelandic version.

7. Ramones: Pet Sematary: Which song was responsible for the most misspellings in pupils' English tests? I nominate "Pet Sematary", which also spawned this never-ending thread.

8. Red Hot Chili Peppers: Knock Me Down: Hey, convergence of form and content, or whatever you'd properly want to call it. It's fitting that in the lyrics of their most commercially promising song that far the singer the lyrical I would express concern about the psychological consequences of becoming famous.

9. Pixies: Hey: The best song from the best album of the decade.

10. The Stone Roses: I Am The Resurrection: Starts out like not much, turns into an anthem-type britpop song and then goes somewhat funky. Great.

Ten Great Songs from 1988

The title really says it all. I was going to comment on each song, but if music can't speak for itself, what can?

Discover Pixies!

Please let me know whether this works for you, technically I mean. If it does, this might become a regular feature.