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

Scrolling down I was sure ^^ this was a Karl Malone post, but halfway I was like 'no wait, it's bizarro'. Kudos. The Bentley is a dead giveaway tbh.

all credit must go to a redditor whose account is now deleted, presumably because they were getting dangerously close to the truth

does anyone else remember "Got You (Where I Want You)" by The Flys?

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

yeah that song is dope

love that one. chorus is probably the best fake Cornell to ever hit the radio.

video is fake "velouria" also, and iirc disturbing behavior was fake stepford wives, oh well

Classic 'One & Done' band. The song had its run, which concluded with both it and the band disappearing.

Thought about this song the other the day for the first time in forever:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIriSoch9rE

The video and song are both 'so 1996' that of course they came out in early '97.

From the comments:

Carlos Roots 2 years ago
Man, I used to wait up until all hours to watch this music video back in the 90's. Now, the only time I am up at all hours is if I have to go pee. Oh, and the lead singer looks strangely like my next door neighbor.
Reply 2
Mike M
Mike M 8 months ago
the lead singer probably is your neighbor

^^Orbit: "Medicine", for those w/images/vids off and still keeping score.

watching that Flys video, I'm reminded of a little bit of useless trivia: There were two versions of the song serviced to radio--one was the version heard in the video, with the other singer doing his rapping/toasting thing, and the other identical but with his track removed/muted.

Huh - a rare case of that being done to a white act - and one loud and grating enough that a top 40 crossover surely couldn't be in the cards. (Obviously things like the massive Semi-Charmed Life edit are sort of related, but specifically cutting out the 'rapper' is normally reserved for Supercat, Snoop Dogg, et al.)

That Orbit song isn't ringing any bells besides the really loud and clear debt to the Pixies' arrangements. The rest is a kind of mishmash of 1996, indeed - bit of Better than Ezra, bit of Gavin Rossdale, maybe even a bit of Trent Reznor. Not bad though!

Gilby Clarke (Izzy's replacement in GnR) brings the buttrock in '94. Both of these were MASSIVE on Houston radio at the time. For some reason I still vividly remember riding around all day on a Saturday in the summer and hearing one or the other every hour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0qg1APJTk14

"Tijuana Jail"

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

"Cure Me or Kill Me"

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OQsQZvsR_QI

Is it true that Bran Van 3000 - Drinking in LA wasn't a hit i. The US? I know it was big in Canada and in Mexico.

I found out it wasn't that popular in the US after a couple of friends and me were drunk singing the chorus in LA (felt apropos and we very surely sounded like idiots) and some people were asking us what song it was. I went to the wiki article the next day and apparently it didn't chart at all in the US but did good on UK and Canada and still gets some airplay now and then.

It was an alternative sort of "hit" the video for which got played a lot in NZ too, dunno if it sold at all. I get it in my head a lot still.

Same. Was a huge hit w/ MTV Europe, they played the shit out of that video (regardless of how it charted I suppose).

It got short-term alt-rock radio play in the US. It didn't really "take," but people like me (aka teenagers obsessively listening to such stations in the late 90s) know it and can sing along if you bring it up.

(Also, thinking about that, if someone else wants to start an Early 90s version of this thread for things like those Gilby Clarke tracks, they should go for it! I didn't start digging into radio and MTV until right around '95 so it wouldn't really be my turf.)

damn, sugar should've sued orbit

Is it true that Bran Van 3000 - Drinking in LA wasn't a hit i. The US?

I worked at Sam Goody when it came out and we received one copy that never sold during the year-and-a-half that I worked there. I only just listened to it now for the first time.

It got enough play on MTV for me to buy the album; I don't remember ever hearing it on the radio.

I didn't have MTV at the time and also never heard it on the radio.

It got enough play on MTV for me to buy the album; I don't remember ever hearing it on the radio.

― PJD PDJ DPJ (DJP), Wednesday, May 24, 2017 6:06 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Same, and I even hung around for their second album, which I still think is really actually pretty good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUNWhKq80_s

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pA-DmFtryFY

wow, never heard that before in my life. #1 on Mainstream Rock, as was "Without You"! Actually based on chart placement they have a lot of contenders for this thread, from that greatest hits album and the one Gary Cherone record. "Humans Being" and "Fire In The Hole" were also top-ten Mainstream Rock and "Can't Get This Stuff No More" and "One I Want" made #12 and #27 respectively. What stations were playing this stuff though?

There was an Active Rock station in my area that played it a lot. (Not sure if that format exists anymore.) Another popular station in my area was splitting 2/3's classic rock with 1/3 dad-friendly '90s rock bands like Alice In Chains, Tom Petty etc.

I definitely heard this song a lot on the radio within the months after VH appeared at the VMAs with Roth but the song was not an MTV hit.

tasmin archer sleeping satellite

'96 was one of the last years geezers made a big impact on Album/Mainstream (Soon to be rebranded "Active") Rock Radio. Plus, Roth getting back together w/VH was a Big Deal--I remember the evening DJ in Houston taking listener calls on air all night when the news broke.

Speaking of reunions, this might of been one of--if not the last old dude (or old dude not named "Ozzy") radio jam before the Nu Metal takeover of late '98.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fnxz6yXRJL0

Page/Plant: "Most High"

^^ENGINEERED BY STEVE ALBINI

Just updated the Spotify playlist with stuff mentioned in the last couple years, plus a nice handful of tracks that have finally showed up on there. For my own reference, these are still missing:

LL Cool J, "Deepest Bluest"
Little T and One Track Mike, "Shaniqua" (2001)
B-Real, Busta Rhymes, Coolio, LL Cool J and Method Man - "Hit Em High (Monstar's Anthem)
Salt-n-Pepa - "Champagne"
Imperial Teen's "You're One"
Jamie Blake's "Runaway"
Forest For The Trees, "Dream"
Sun-60, "C'mon Kiss Me"
Amateur Lovers, "Consolation Prize"
Sylk-E. Fyne, "Romeo & Juliet"
Sylk-E. Fyne, "Keep It Real"
Chopper One, "Punk Named Josh"
Carnival Art, [?]
Yvette Michele, "I'm Not Feelin You"
INXS, "Elegantly Wasted"
Patti Rothberg, "Inside"
Asante "Look What You've Done (Refugee Camp Remix)"
Dayna Manning, "My Addiction"
Fluorescein, "Cathy's On Crank"
Memory Dean, "So Complicated"
Billy Crawford, "Urgently In Love"
Janet Jackson, "Runaway"
Drivin n Cryin, "Everything's Gonna Be Alright"

That link again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PpHWiiaC4Ow

Everclear - The Swing, a So Much For The Afterglow afterthought that saw the light of day on the Scream 2 soundtrack. My station played it approximately twice, for some reason (it was not a single).

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=yqls1UvU6oI

96 was one of the last years geezers made a big impact on Album/Mainstream (Soon to be rebranded "Active") Rock Radio.

I mean, Dave Grohl, whose band has the current #4 song on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, is the same age that Robert Plant was in 1996.

cf. Marilyn Manson, who has the #5 song

Local H: Bound to the Floor

Love Spit Love - How Soon Is Now

Does anyone remember this? Richard Butler of Psychedelic Furs fronted this band and had a radio hit with the Smiths cover.

Opening theme to Charmed! How could anyone forget? :)

I mean, Dave Grohl, whose band has the current #4 song on Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart, is the same age that Robert Plant was in 1996.

Then swap out "Geezers" with "Classic Rock Artists Whose Careers Began In The '60s To Mid-'70s". Besides Group, there's also RHCP, who are now mostly in same ballpark, age-wise, as the Stones circa Bridges To Babylon, which kicked up a little noise on AOR in '97-8.

"Grohl", Stupid Phone.

Also: That LSL cover of "HSN?" was quite witchy, as it was recorded for and first appeared on the covers-heavy soundtrack to The Craft.

Of course, there are exceptions to my Classic Rock Rule.

Aerosmith spun a few AOR radio hits off 1997's Nine Lives before "Pink" actually crossed over to Top 40 late in the year. I actually heard the radio premiere of this, the first single, early that year. It was supposedly a 'Satellite Transmission' prefaced by a mayday recording of Steven Tyler crashing a spaceship on the "Planet Fallopia" (or some other equally dopey entendre).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3BaVSjFWZbY

Aerosmith: "Falling In Love (Is Hard On The Knees)"

Sammy Hagar relaunched himself as a liquor impresario and Kid Rock's Dad or Grampa in '98

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRKUPj1UfR0

Sammy Hagar: "Mas Tequila"

And then there's the Stones...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xf0ZM6HWj4s

The Rolling Stones: "Flip The Switch"

In the mid to late 90s, between the ages of 11 and 14, I made a series of VHS tapes featuring all the songs I liked on Musique plus and Much Music. I'm pretty sure there are a couple of tracks from Local H's As Good as Dead on them… Some memories are best repressed forever.

some dude gave us "Mas Tequila" upthread, and I can't believe that "Bound For The Floor" is really forgotten.... but y'all have reminded me to add "Eddie Vedder" to the playlist along with "Flip the Switch" which I'm not sure I've ever heard before. I had a friend who repped for Bridges to Babylon for about... a week I think.

I got Nine Lives as a castoff from the same guy and I remembered "Falling In Love" being a little more exciting than it now seems. Something really doughy and sluggish about it despite the horns and other signifiers of energy and fun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lsV500W4BHU

Powerman 5000 - When Worlds Collide

(can't imagine anyone who's ever heard this mess has forgotten it, but it had a pretty brief moment in radio rotation and it's another one where the entire genre is sort of out in the cold right now)

^ an ice hockey dressing room smash

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9kXiLeBXzG4

Jamiroquai - Alright. Third single off the album led by "Virtual Insanity." I remember it, like "Cosmic Girl," getting at least token airplay (maybe even with more of a 'rock' remix? can't find any proof of that existing)... and then it was gone. I suspect they're thought of as one-hit wonders in the US even though "Canned Heat" topped the dance charts and the video was around for a minute.

Surprised to realize Metallica hasn't come up here yet. Between Load (1996), Reload (1997), Garage Inc. (1997) and S&M (1999), they were constantly pushing new product (twelve singles!) in the late 90s, a period capped off in 2000 with substantial hit "I Disappear" off the Mission Impossible 2 soundtrack. I won't list them all, and a few of them like "Fuel," "Until It Sleeps" and their cover of "Turn The Page" are surely not forgotten... but when was the last time you heard Mainstream Rock chart-topper "No-Leaf Clover" or the covers of "Die, Die My Darling" and "Whiskey in the Jar"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fd9ohpDDCRU

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTqxn6KCNs

I don't know if The Tuesdays ever made an appearance on US radio in the late 90s, but they come off as a rigorous attempt to craft a Bangles for that era--something that 1997 probably wasn't looking for, but I still think its kind of a shame that they never had more of a career. I had pretty much forgotten about them until I found their self-titled (and only?) album among my CDs a few weeks ago. On the whole, its a bit too ballad-heavy, but in their better moments, they come up with some irresistible sugar-rush pop songs like this one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ljV0KM5zZOk