Modern Rock #1 Hits of 1995

really, really dire lineup from what was actually a pretty good year.

This is the first year in this poll series where I don't own anything, exactly when my interest in so-called alternative radio faded away and I went off to find my kicks in other scenes.

Green Day by a mile.

And I'm here
To remind you
That only one of these songs is worth damn
It's not fair
To deny that
You lose your mind when you hear this song
You
You
You know you do

"JAR"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x30jgxnfBzM

i never really cared for "You Oughta Know" but i am actually considering voting for it

"JAR" has really been lost in the sands of time, I don't think I've heard it on the radio since 1996...sounds OK i guess? better than "Geek Stink Breath" at least

It's way better than "ok i guess"

I feel weird that it might be down to U2 and RHCP for me. Ugh. Although..."Misery" is a pretty decent song.

I heard "You Oughta Know" the other day and it finally occurred to me that I should congratulate Alanis on her masterful depiction of every unhinged girl I ever regret dating. YES, I'M AWARE OF THE UTTER MESS OF A PERSON I LEFT WHEN I WENT AWAY, FOUR YEARS AGO. STOP CALLING, AND STOP GOING TO MY GIRLFRIEND'S WORK.

Alanis also mastered tinny sounding drums and guitars that sound like they're fed through 9 digital effects processors.

it's weird that i didn't ever realize that Flea and Dave Navarro play on "You Oughta Know" and are in the video until, like, 2 weeks ago

A lot of decent not great, samey sounding grunge songs here. Going to go with "You Oughta Know". Song has really good lyrics and the "And I'm here to remind you..." part is a great hook.

I will vote for any Batman soundtrack hit in any poll except the one by Jewel.

the video has an orchestra of cartoon Batmans! none of the other hits have this! plus it is one of maybe 4-5 U2 songs I actually like.

FRUSTRATED INCORPORATED

was this the lowest number of #1s to date?

(not counting the late '88 start)

Wait until 2000... I think there were like 8 or 9 #1 songs. Radio got more homogenized and awful in the ensuing years...

(I do like that U2 song, I'd just never vote for it in a poll) (also it's no "Moaner")

I'm going to have to vote for it! I didn't like it then but I do now. And I don't have the love for early Bush that lots of ILMers do.

Second would probably be "Misery."

I hate all these songs and feel they should be pushed down a flume into a pool full of gorillas.

those gorillas would be here
to remind you
of the mess you left
when you dumped those songs
it's not fair
to deny them
the bananas they were expecting
you
you
you oughta know

Pretty much the year I threw up my hands and said the hell with it.

you joined the army?

Here is a picture of me a year later at the H.O.R.D.E. festival.

aside from Alanis, I spent most of this year listening to Prince, rave, UK breakbeat/hardcore, trip-hop, drum n bass, industrial and PJ Harvey

"Down By the Water" hit #2 too.

just fyi for you all, you should really get up on Gigapus by Severed Heads from this year, which was basically all kinds of awesome (think "New Order does industrial dance")

gigapus is awesome

this list however is horseshit

god help me am i really about to vote for wonderwall

Wow, this is so much worse than 1994...

JAR still rocks though.

fuck it im voting for lump

god can't help you, jj

I underrate "Lump" because that band went on to give us "Peaches", I song I hate so so so so so much that it permanently tainted everything else they did

'95 was pretty much the start of my alternative alternative phase (and first year of college, natch): Yo La Tengo, Julianna Hatfield, Sebadoh. Y'know, the real fringe stuff. Plus all the stuff I discovered from mixtapes made by my riot grrrl friend who I crushed on massively (Softies, Lois, the proto S-K bands).

(And who's all super normal and married and domesticated now, of course.)

I listened to a lot of Tricky in '95.

I detect some sarcasm in your post, Deric, but you remind me of some former band members of mine who wanted to cover "Box Elder" because it was "an obscure song from an obscure band."

Oh shit. This is the year I graduated from high school and I distinctly remember Name being played CONSTANTLY ugh. I never liked Alanis at all. I don't remember what JAR is. Huh. I was in the Soul Asylum official fan club around that time (don't judge! OK you totally can but I will still rep for a couple of their early albums) and did like Misery. Hmmmmmmm.

xxxpost

(I told her recently that I'd found my stash of her old zines and she was like "BURN THEM!!")

I listened to a lot of Tricky in '95.

In retrospect I am surprised my wife ended up marrying me, given the number of times I played "Overcome" at her in an attempt to be broodingly sexy.

Bush always blew but Gavin Rosdale was so fucking hot when he sang glycerine alone on stage in the pouring down rain at MTVs spring break in '06. Man alive:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfatUZ5RDG0

I distinctly remember watching that in my dorm lounge during my freshman year of college and just being like O_O. I have a soft spot for that song as a result. I'll totally sing along if it comes on the radio while I'm driving.

I detect some sarcasm in your post, Deric, but you remind me of some former band members of mine who wanted to cover "Box Elder" because it was "an obscure song from an obscure band."

Yeah, a total goof. But at the time, I certainly felt fringe-y, if only because I discovered a lot of that stuff on my own and didn't know anyone else who was into it.

this is my regularly scheduled "bte was totally underrated through their first three albums but on the fourth then yeah they did start sucking" comment

that's a really bad list though
when i come around was the only green day song i ever really liked (despite people hyping basket case on 94 thread)
and i liked good, as stated but i'd probably go with wonderwall

i don't think anyone ever admits to liking bush but i got that album, little things was probably the best track on it though and didn't really get anywhere

Good is actually really fun to sing along to at a very high volume.

what, I have heard "Little Things" on the radio at least once a week for the past 17 years (xpost)

Which one goes "breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out"? That's the one I hear on the radio most often, I think.

machinehead, that had that werewolf movie tie-in tho

ooh ooh

here is a sentence I never thought I would type: I now understand why so many of the ppl in my high school who listened to this stuff defaulted to Skid Row fandom

i actually heard "18 and life" in a jimmy johns earlier today, which I guess would have been like hearing "Fire" by Crazy World Of Arthur Brown at a restaurant in 1992

Climb to the top of the highest mountain
Just to see how far I get

Uhhh... the top?

SHE'S MAAAAHHHH CHERREHHH PIIIIE!!!

the second half is just as nonsensical:

Dancin' with my shadow
But I let my shandow lead
And if I die with a penny in my pocket
Then I guess that's all I need

lol

32 Pennies in a Ragu jar
is all I got to my name
but I love her and she loves me
to the pennies its all the same

If one doesn't appreciate the Arthur Lee-like beauty of these lyrics I have to assume you a) don't dig psychedelia or b) are a member of a Hair Metal Vs College Rock War Re-Enactment Society

And this from the same guy that wrote:

Swingin' in there, 'cause she wanted me to feed her
So I mixed up the batter and she licked the beater

:(

it's like they listened to "Pour Some Sugar On Me" and went ".... nope, too coherent"

xp: that couplet, while gross, at least exhibits cleverness

I actually don't remember how we started arguing about the merits of pop-metal on a thread concerning the brief period of time where it was out of fashion

dying at Hair Metal Vs College Rock War Re-Enactment Society

can we start talking about who resembled a homeless person most while fronting a multi-platinum band, Dave Pirner or Adam Duritz?

Dave, easy. Duritz admitted to extensions.

JAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR

Hair Metal Vs College Rock War Re-Enactment Society

COLLEGE ROCK OF AGES

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ae-_XicGGkk

seriously, aero you need to check out "32 Pennies" by Warrant. Check it out, and apologize to Jani.

feel like I missed this party but yeah Warrant and about half a dozen to a dozen other bands from that era are basically the same band to me

Can't wait for the day in like four or five years where we struggle to remember what thread had the big dust-up over whether Warrant's lyrics are better than the Ramones' and someone finally figures out it was the thread about Modern Rock #1s from 1995.

I thought about that too. So: apologies to fans of 1995’s biggest modern rock songs (I thought about relocating this to a lyrics thread), but some follow-up to this afternoon.

I bet Shadow Morton, who I rank over Taupin, looked and nodded approvingly

Well...that seems a little too easy--two years earlier, Morton was producing the New York Dolls. Having said that, the Dolls-Shangri-Las lineage is a little more obvious than the line connecting the Ramones to the Shangri-Las, or at least it was in 1976. So while I’m guessing Morton would have understood and approved of the “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend”/”Oh Oh I Love Her So” side of the Ramones, I can’t see why he necessarily would have been any more receptive to “Chainsaw” or “Blitzkrieg Bop” or something like that than any other old Brill Building veteran (who were all heavily invested in the songcraft and care that you venerate). I doubt if Tony Orlando or Neil Sedaka or Carole King were big Ramones fans circa 1976.

I much prefer the Ramones’ words to Bernie Taupin’s myself (Bernie had some good ones--“Levon”’s a nice lyric). You seemed to imply that a songwriter would intuitively understand the Ramones’ skill as lyricists, so I’m just making the point that if you’re talking about someone who grew up with the Ramones, sure, but I don’t think that would have been at all true in 1976. And I threw out Taupin as an example.

Anyway, again, I get it. There’s inspired/sublime/strategic/clever/funny dumb, like the Ramones and “Surfin’ Bird”; there’s adequate dumb, those people who write lyrics that are neither here nor there, but they at least don’t get in the way of a good song; and there’s egregious dumb, words that are so lazy and clunky and outright inept that they make it impossible for you to like a song. For you, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” is the third kind of dumb. For me, it’s safely on the right side of #2; I like all the other good things about the song--the melody, and the, uh, melody--well enough that I’ve never even taken notice of the lyrics beyond the title phrase. And now that they’ve been pointed out, they don’t elicit much more than a shrug from me.

It’s a completely subjective call--and I think the second you start reducing a pop song to its lyrics, and saying this one’s the right kind of dumb and that one’s the wrong kind, or this dumb is okay because I like the song, while this dumb is bad because I don’t (and I’m quite sure I’ve done it myself when convenient), then you just end up going around in circles. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever loved a song because of the way it sounds, and then stopped loving it because I decided the lyrics were inept. What instead happens is the lyrics become abstracted into the entirety of the song, and eventually they're just sort of there.

would have been like hearing "Fire" by Crazy World Of Arthur Brown at a restaurant in 1992

I have done this! I was 12 and was like, oh, that's where the sample from the Prodigy track (which was a recent semi-hit) came from

lol Britishland?

anyway I forgot to vote in this but that's fine because there was nothing really worth voting for, and it means that I get the satisfaction of seeing the 2 crap songs I have any vague nostalgia for ("Lump" and "Misery", which, let's be honest, are both pretty terrible) get some votes without having to vote for them

I think 'Come Down' is beautiful, not "grating". There is never going to be enough people that share my music taste (I call it Whiney G syndrome)

I remember my high school friend being ashamed of owning a Bush cd during their prime. I'm not sure why

― we gotta move these refrigerators (CaptainLorax), Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:00 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah i liked comedown and definitely don't get glycerine being better than it, glycerine was just kind of sappy and boring

― fauxmarc, Thursday, May 24, 2012 8:13 AM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

OK - I admit, I just listened to it for the first time in over a decade and it's better than I remember. Great chorus. 5:27 is LONG for this kind of thing though. Bush in general seemed to really ride the long loud grunge thing hard on their singles - - wonder if they'd be more fondly remembered if they'd been a little more punchy in their delivery.

when "Comedown" first came out i was like alright, this is totally the most tolerable Bush song to date, but that was so many millions of spins ago that i can barely find any emotional recall of not being sick to death of it. it really does become a plod with its running time, too, yeah. i have fond memories of a Foo Fighters HFStival set they broadcast on the station where they started playing "Down In The Park" and Grohl noted the similarity to "Comedown" and started doing a really mean Rossdale impression.

hahaha, that sounds great.

Have we done a Bush singles poll? Either best or worst?

(he typed, listening to "Cold Contagious")

i don't think anyone has been brave enough to wade into those waters, no

Before there's any serious discussion of this, I'd like to draw everyone's attention to lyrics that made me actively angry in '95 (it's miraculous that later singles were able to pull me back to the shores of "eh..."):

There must be something we can eat
Maybe find another lover
Should I fly to Los Angeles
Find my asshole brother
Mickey Mouse has grown up a cow
Dave's on sale again
We kissy kiss in the rear view
We're so bored
You're to blame

Try to see it once my way
Everything zen
Everything zen
I don't think so

Raindogs howl for the century
A million dollars a stake
As you search for your demi-god
And you fake with a saint
There's no sex in your violence
There's no sex in your violence

Try to see it once my way
Everything zen
Everything zen
I don't think so

I don't believe that Elvis is dead
I don't believe that Elvis is dead
I don't believe that Elvis is, Elvis is

There's no sex in your violence

holy fucking shit, are those the real words

i mean, a lot of songs back then had horrific lyrics, and sometimes i have to actively try to forget what the real words to "Cherub Rock" are in order to continue enjoying it, but with a band as shitty as Bush it's just fun to see how bad the lyrics really were

TS: "There must be something that we can eat" vs "Sitting around the HOUSE" for slacker poetry scene-setting.

Like, I'm sure Gavin was going for something more tormented given their whole vibe but it just sounds like he's rifling through the fridge, rejecting the Chinese leftovers and discovering that the yogurt is unexpectedly past its date.

i always thought Bush was too brooding to evoke the Pixies as much as Rossdale wanted to, but apparently it was just his delivery that was brooding and the lyrics were suitably wacky nonsense

I remember "Everything Zen" coming on the radio and my mom being like "ugh, is that that 'find my idiot brother' song?" and wondering if she was censoring herself or had somehow gotten the words wrong or...what, I don't know.

There must be something we can eat
Maybe find another lover
Should I go to Redbox
Rent Our Idiot Brother

http://www.emilykayelazzaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/our-idiot-brother-bd.jpg

hahahahaha

Now that has the feel of a genuine slacker anthem.

Bush in general seemed to really ride the long loud grunge thing hard on their singles - - wonder if they'd be more fondly remembered if they'd been a little more punchy in their delivery.

This was extrapolated in their live performances too. The version of Everything Zen they played at HFStival had to have been over ten minutes long.

The lyrics to Silverchair's 'Tomorrow' are just as terrible, but at least Daniel Johns had the excuse of being 15 or something when he wrote them.

very hard to drink

YOU GONNA WAIT 'TIL, FAT BOY, FAT BOY, WAIT 'TIL TOMORROW!

morrisseyesque

thing is, very hard to drink is very fun to sing

VERY HAHD TO DRAAYYYAAANKKKK
Fat BOOH-OOOHY! Fat BOYEEEE! WAIT TEW TOMARROOOOOOOOOOH

I'll always remember when the video to 'Tomorrow' appeared on Beavis & Butthead; when the drums kick in after the opening guitar arpeggios, and Beavis goes "MORE THAN A FEEE-LIIIING!".

I think "Everything Zen," "Comedown" and perhaps even "Glycerine" had radio edits that made them much more concise.

Ogling Billie Joe Armstrong was all the pleasure this era could offer.

"What I Got" deserves the firing squad.

I saw the #1 and was like...

http://media.giphy.com/media/l4FGnnlIQslHkOPaU/giphy.gif

But then I saw the rest of the list and I was like...

http://media2.giphy.com/media/xUySTD7evBn33BMq3K/giphy.gif

Lump gets stuck in my head the most these days out of this crew.

Most of these songs are catchy like herpes.

This is making me realize just how short-lived was my intense affair with the Alternative Nation. Lots of strained smiles and forced conversation by the time '95 rolled around.