50 Memorable Songs Of The Late 1990s That Apparently Only You Remember, Even Though They Were Totally On The Radio And Stuff

Which I see now was posted (and linkrotted) back in '12, so here's the follow-up to that, "Sharks Can't Sleep"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVl6ZzScxqk

For whatever reason, whenever Bonham comes up, I have to go look up "Mother, Mother" and try to remember what it sounds like. I think I started listening to alt-rock radio just a couple months after its moment in the sun.

"Sharks Can't Sleep" is pretty cool, SUCH a 1996 sound... that midtempo chug with the moody, kinda watery guitar figure on the verse, the pounding A A A A, B B B B chorus, and the little dip into 60s studio effects 2/3 of the way through. Does feel more like an album track, maybe even a good album-closer, than a single.

"The One" on the other hand feels a bit weighed-down by the post-grunge trappings. I can imagine a bouncier, power-poppier version of that chorus working better... fill out the space with backing vocals or a bit of keyboard or horns or something, rather than with that pummeling wall of distorted guitars.

I'm not sure if I've ever heard that before but if you played me the first 15 seconds I would've assumed it was Blur

(Sharks Can't Sleep, I mean)

Could Ben Folds Five's "Song for the Dumped" drift into this category long-term? Hard to imagine any teens glued to alt-rock radio at the time not remembering it, but has it had any shelf life at all? Can't remember hearing it anywhere in the wild in twenty years.

"Battle of Who Could Care Less" almost certainly qualifies. "One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces" also was apparently a single, with a music video, but I don't honestly believe that got on the radio and stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gBCdP7AfTE

Bush - Cold Contagious. Third US single off Razorblade Suitcase, and the gas was out of the hype tank. In my memory, the radio kept playing "Swallowed" and the Sixteen Stone singles, and quickly ignored this. It's a slow burn (or a slog if you're not 100% on board with grunge aesthetics), even in this four-minute edit of the six-minute album version. ("Greedy Fly," the second single, did much better on paper, and is probably not as forgotten, but still has to be one of their most obscure hits.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8TrkCObypE

Bush - Letting the Cables Sleep. This is a 2000 single from their '99 album, the one where they explored "electronica." In this case this means an OK Computer type sound, which I think is a more interesting fit for Gavin's voice and songwriting than the cluttered and exhausting "Chemicals Between Us." I always kinda liked it, and even put it on a mix CD once!

An aside: I know the 90s are back (and stuff), but are the kids really listening to Bush?

they're listening to kate bush instead

Bush was really fucked when they ran out of Nirvana albums to bite.

My friend has been doing a series on his blog which may be of interest here: writing up the songs from the Album & Modern Rock charts that _didn't_ cross over Pop.

https://vjbigsuit.wordpress.com/2022/02/14/fools-gold-vol-1-ready-for-a-good-time/

oh, that's fun! good method for digging up stuff in this zone. and would be an amazing resource for an equivalent thread on the early 90s (which is way further from my wheelhouse).

lol there's a Bush-knockoff BritGrunge band called Addict covered in the first entry!

I remember "Letting the Cables Sleep". I think my older brother also put it on a mix CD at the time circa 2000.

my other half put Addict - Monster Side on one of his first mixtapes for me. not heard it for 20+ years!

thanks for the blog link, enjoying this project!

razorblade suitcase is alright

"Monster Side," wow... yeah, haven't heard or thought about it in 20+ years, but every second of it was familiar.

More Brit Nerf Grunge

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nQTqX11zNjU

Feeder: "Cement"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zc1ljqKNEMk

Feeder: "High"

The latter track popped up on the Can't Hardly Wait soundtrack.

Dionne Farris opened for Bryan Ferry in 1995. She performed a 13-minute version of "I Know."

That song is an absolute banger.

Self-XP Wow, reading Feeder's wiki--didn't know they were one of those Status Quo-style 'huge at home, barely known in the US bands'. 11 Albums!

25 Top 75 singles!

Who knew?

Only two of the original band members are left at this point?

Yeah, the drummer died in 2002.

I've always wondered, at what point does a band simply become a group of musicians operating under a name, a la most sports teams? Is it like the ship of Theseus? A friend of mine back in college once saw Herman's Hermits . . . without Herman.

it's from 2000 but "Shaniqua" by Little T & One Track Mike seemed like such a huge track when it came out, now I find that basically no one remembers it

I remember it! I saw the video on late-night MTV once, and never again. It stuck in my head for some reason.

that stuff was like its own distinct genre, like

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

and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BXzphHiHD8

I remember Bad Ronald debuting on MTV and thinking "wow, I guess anyone can be in a band now"

^^Did this start with Beck, or G.Love, or even Sublime?

Seems like the biggest hits of this style were "Hooch" by Everything, "Better Days" by Citizen King, and I guess "Steal My Sunshine" by Len. Good-timey Alternative Hip Hop Rock?

Sugar Ray probably fits in there somewhere too.

Beastie Boys possibly the year zero, and later on Gym Class Heroes ran with it all the way to the bank.

On a different tip, I'm not sure if this ever broke out of the "Alternative Station Sunday Night 'College Music' Show" circuit, but I did hear this on the radio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_6pc-tWwccU

Drugstore (featuring Thom Yorke): "El President"

I had never heard “Shaniqua,” Scapegoat Wax, or Bad Ronald (the last one is pretty great).

In addition to the other artists mentioned, this mini-genre seems kind of Bloodhound Gang–adjacent

i remember "shaniqua" but it seemed like one of those songs you would only encounter on mtv and nowhere else

^^Did this start with Beck, or G.Love, or even Sublime?

Seems like the biggest hits of this style were "Hooch" by Everything, "Better Days" by Citizen King, and I guess "Steal My Sunshine" by Len. Good-timey Alternative Hip Hop Rock?

yes, yes, and yes, maybe even "Summer Girls" as well. it's definitely Beastie Boys adjacent, like what if the Licensed to Ill Beasties made Hello Nasty

personally I could not get that "I've been waiting all day for that Bad Ronald" line out of my head. what does it mean

if nothing else these videos seem like they were a lot of fun to make!! always amused by the constant dancing and fist pumping regardless of what the music is doing which suggests they had no idea what the video was gonna look like when they were filming it

Oh I made a playlist a while back that I posted elsewhere on here that's very much stuff all in that vibe:
https://open.spotify.com/track/1TF61rLJ7HQPgpFMHfblPA

Just added Bad Ronald in there as it fits. Shaniqua is a bit too funky and hip hop for the overall vibe of the playlist.

That link just leads to the track, can you link the playlist? Thx

Whoops:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/29OSMeThq1N86C0P7cBSxi?si=5eacf817e5b34eee

amusingly this tweet just went viral a couple days ago

back when life was great pic.twitter.com/KFoeHSybht

— ༺☆ 𝔪𝔦𝔪𝔦 ☆༻ (@plvnetmimi) June 27, 2022

fun to see people discover it for the first time. it was all over the place when I was a kid. never understood any of the MJ references though, in fact I didn't even know it was an MJ song until I was like, 19. you know what, it doesn't suck

awww yeah that playlist looks awesome, gonna start listening to it now

I loved "Legend of a Cowgirl" so much when I was a kid. when I finally caught the video I was obsessed with her. though not enough to buy the CD apparently lol

"Soft Serve" is such a great SC pick. the chorus (is it really a chorus?) with the bass like a half step behind the vocals is a really great embodiment of what made this stuff so endearing. its all so chill

"Pinch Me" is also classic, imo that's the tune that should've made them stars, it's so perfectly constructed

Robert Pollard was ahead of the times:

“Three years ago I thought Alien Ant Farm was the worst it could get. Now I look back nostalgically on Alien Ant Farm”

first time hearing “Shaniqua”, but it screams Eminem to me first and foremost - which makes sense for a 2001 track.

feel like Black Grape belongs in that playlist, after all Madchester was sort of a spiritual successor to all this stuff. Get Higher or In the Name of the Father perhaps

oh wow I didn't know there was a version of "Fly" without Super Cat. its a lot worse!!

yeah :( and somehow both versions were on the album

The bridge in the Super Cat-less version is especially bad. I thought there would be some solo or something to fill it out but nope, nothing

ok one more thing about Bad Ronald I clearly remember Carson Daly saying something like "kids, this is like Sesame Street on crack!" which is still very very funny to me

belated response to the last revive: good inclusions, Grisso! and wow at Feeder's UK success. never ever would have guessed. also never ever heard "Cement" before, but it pairs amazingly with "High"; together, they cover some key bases of alt-rock as it stood by '97. obviously "High" is derived very much from the Pumpkins (I WILL), but it's a good bit and a good use of it imho. Soccer Mommy's "Circle the Drain" in turn updates "High" for a new generation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DTc1w32Vbeo

MarkoP, that playlist is a GREAT encapsulation of this micro-interzone-subgenre. also agreed about "Soft Serve" being a great Soul Coughing pick! probably Doughty's best version of this basic song type, it pops into my head a lot, mainly when ordering soft-serv. Bad Ronald has definitely gotten some love (?) upthread, and Hello Allison on 50 Memorable Songs Of The Late 1990s That Apparently Only You Remember, Even Though They Were Totally On The Radio And Stuff .

there's probably a lot of stuff from around 2000-2002 that fits this bubble, even as it was getting pushed off the dial by nu-metal, pop-punk, et al., and as the Sublime and Beck affectations passed their sell-by date. i feel like you already have basically all the acts i'd suggest... maybe "Prisoner" or another downtempo 311 number? and Dynamite Hack's dumb cover of "Boyz-n-the-Hood." "Everyday is a Winding Road" might also qualify, and surely Collective Soul or late 90s U2 did something with a drum loop or a vaguely scratchy sample... also i think of David Garza "Disco Ball World" and Alana Davis "32 Flavors," though neither has as much "rock band" DNA. finally: Bicycle has this sound all over their debut album but not so much on their would-be hit "Electrolux" - check out "68" and "Daisydunes.com," now apparently retitled just "Daisydunes."

surely Collective Soul or late 90s U2 did something with a drum loop or a vaguely scratchy sample

Well, U2 had Pop, which was very loopy, a lot of digital chicanery going on. This got some minor airplay as an album cut and was maybe the best track on it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=199bc_xIv5Y

"Do You Feel Love?"

...and of "Discotheque" was huge for about three weeks.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpvF7Qq9svk

As for Collective Soul, they smartly combined looping and live drums on "Precious Declaration" in '97:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFebAtN7hhk

And they must have heard Pop afterwards, explaining this groove move in '99:

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

"Heavy"

Feeder's album from this year starts off sort of semi channelling Simple Minds ish. Which is actually a first for them I think.

From Pop there's also the very loop-y "Mofo" and the backwards hi-hats of "Miami". Neither a proper single (although "Mofo" had requisite remix 12"s).

I guess the big diff, listening back to those, is that U2 and their disciples Collective Soul were both reaching more directly for rave/club music than for the SoCal stoner-skater-hip-hop fusion of these other acts. Another playlist could really track this whole, like, post-INXS axis, shading into the "electronics" fusion attempts recently mentioned in connection with Bush.

The opening of CS's "Listen" keeps making me think it should fit in here too. Just needed a pinch of fake vinyl noise to make the guitar-and-drum bit sound like a sampled loop.

"Run" is another Collective Soul song that's got a drum loop going on throughout it.