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

"Blue On Black" is still huge and gets tons of recurrent plays, it just felt like the kind of thing that would be considered 'forgotten' on ilx

"Starseed" was a pretty sizable hit in '95, definitely more remembered than most of their singles from the actual late '90s

Wait, really? "Superman's Dead" and "Clumsy" were HUGE where I was at. I know "Naveed" got some play back in the day but "Starseed" was totally new to me when Armageddon dropped.

DJ Quik f/ El Debarge and 2nd II None - "Hand In Hand"

I discovered it a few months ago and loved it.

i said "most" not "all" -- the Clumsy singles were definitely bigger but "Starseed" was much more popular than "Naveed"

Neil Finn - "She Will Have Her Way"

I was a Crowded House fan but this one was one of the first examples of which I was aware of how aging singer-songwriters got hip by adding drum loops and scratching and weird post-Froom sounds: the late nineties/2000's equivalent of McCartney using Linn drums and synclaviers.

Yo I totally remember that Jimmie's Chicken Shack single

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cAez4hlV-Fo

Mxpx - I'm OK, You're OK

not sure how heavily played this was on the radio, as opposed to The Box, but I dug it. Anyway, I feel Mxpx fit the vibe of the thread enough to merit more than just one song in the playlist. Amazingly, the video isn't on Youtube. The gimmick is that a snow globe keeps getting passed from one character to another through a series of unlikely coincidences and run-ins...and the band is playing inside the snow globe! Whee!

Have we talked about Cadlebox?

Banditos by the Refreshments

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmujs348H5o

omg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O94CW_tIEzU

Er. I now see that "Starseed" was mentioned, not very far upthread at all.

Wow, Hitchhiker Joe...don't think I've ever heard that before, pretty damned catchy! (It's '94, though, and very much an early 90s sound IMO - compare to, e.g., "New Age Girl" by Deadeye Dick - Classic or Dud? - which I think is sorta pushing it...what's the consensus?)

Yeah, true. I suppose these are more early 90s than late 90s. They don't possess the darker undercurrent of late 90s music (even though "Hitchhiker Joe explicitly brings up people being brutally butchered and eaten).

Rah Digga - "Break Fool"

^^love this, had it on some tony touch cassette

1. I have been in a band that covered "Banditos." And I don't mean in the 90s, I mean in the last 5 years. Dude from The Refreshments now leads an apparently well-regarded group called Roger Clyne & the Peacemakers.

2. Tracy Bonham had a way better song than "Mother, Mother" released as her second single:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nWVWGKg-r1c

3. You know who has a new record out? K's Choice, that's who.

Mya f/ Silkk The Shocker - "Movin' On"
Mystikal and Outkast - "Neck Uv Da Woods"
Jimmie's Chicken Shack - "Do Right"
Juvenile - "U Understand"Naughty By Nature f/ Zhane - "Jamboree"
Sugar Ray - "Falls Apart"
Chris Cornell - "Can't Change Me"

I remember these!

Little T and One Track Mike - Shaniqua Don't Live Here No More (technically released in 2001 but feels very 90s)
some cover version of M's "Pop Muzik" that shoehorns in references to "Spice Girls, Britney"... no idea who did this
Ideal - Get Gone
Silk - If You
Carl Thomas - I Wish

also:

Citizen King - Better Days (and the Bottom Drops Out)
Fastball - Fire Escape (only remembered the line "I don't wanna make you mad/I don't wanna meet your dad")

I had that Citizen King song stuck in my head last week

"Fire Escape" is great - I believe it got mentioned upthread but happy to have it recognized again. Very pleasant tune.

I'm counting "Falls Apart" in despite its relatively high pop profile, as it's the biggest Sugar Ray single to be excluded from the abridged Sugar Ray singles poll ...seems a good indicator that its former ubiquity has really faded.

Re: Pop Muzik - - Wiki says "Other remixes and remakes recorded by other artists have come from all sides since its creation, including Marcus' "Pop Muzic 2001", eX-Girl in 2001, and by Junior Vasquez and the Dub Pistols in 2003." The Marcus version seems to fit your description:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8EiogMvt0YU

Sadly, it's from 2001 and wow, does it ever sum up the "transitional period."

Carl Thomas is 2000, not sure what to do with that one. The piano part is REALLY familiar - I feel like I heard this a bunch on the quiet-storm station that would sometimes be on in the background at my last job. May not be so forgotten!

man, that rah digga song is great. I remember a guy in high school having a big crush on her, picture in the clear sleeve of his three ring binder, etc., but I don't know that I ever heard her music.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LhBt2PgGryM

"I WANT THE PRODIGY REALLY LOUD"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zxj60CNxftc

uggggggggggh was pretty okay with forgetting all about Athenaeum

added to the playlist along with Oleander, who they reminded me of, with their trudging late grunge hit "Why I'm Here."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtmdUzG1I9A

Methods of Mayhem - Get Naked

i'm sorry, everyone.

I thought that was 2000.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glPS5I40xsU

The Methods of Mayhem album came out in December '99, "Get Naked" I guess got released as a single in 2000.

How do we feel about Gravity Kills's "Guilty"? I dunno if it passes the basic test laid out in the thread's title but at this point I see this thread as a repository for the larger project of "stuff that got radio play in the late 90s but long ago fell out of rotation, either because it didn't chart high enough, or because radio formats shifted around so that the sound it represents became homeless."

I remember hearing this on regular pop radio in 96, before later finding out that they were a Christian band:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6e-k6I1hOc

Same with Jars of Clay's Flood, though that one's a little more well known and I still occasionally hear played in shopping stores. Though I didn't know until now that their songs "Crazy Times" and "Unforgetful You" actually charted on the Modern Rock and Adult Contemporary charts in 97 and 2000 respectfully.

Oh my heck I used to be soooooooo into that Newsboys album when I was 10

How do we feel about Gravity Kills's "Guilty"? I dunno if it passes the basic test laid out in the thread's title but at this point I see this thread as a repository for the larger project of "stuff that got radio play in the late 90s but long ago fell out of rotation, either because it didn't chart high enough, or because radio formats shifted around so that the sound it represents became homeless."

― Doctor Casino, Wednesday, October 10, 2012 5:53 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think of Gravity Kills (and Stabbing Westward and Filter) as being benificiaries of that long period after The Downward Spiral when Nine Inch Nails was huge but there was no new album, so all these really pathetic NIN knockoffs scored radio hits left and right.

Filter also more of a straight up heavy guitar band but definitely with a burbling grimy "darkness" that resonated with the NIN aesthetic I think. Maybe closer to Tool, with more wide-open quiet-loud hooks? Or an offshoot of the Alice In Chains wing? I'm glad you reminded me of them - "Jurassitol" is going straight into the playlist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFj3vXp3R_M

HEY OLD MAN GOT SOMETHING FOR YOU

That Newsboys song is remarkably irritating, and several years ahead of the curve insofar as the beats, processing on the vocals, chunky-sunny "Pinch Me" type chorus, inexplicable chorused "Jimmy Ray" breakdown (1:42 forward) etc., all would be perfect fits for '99-00. Wow.

I also like how the video thumbnail makes it look like the background is trying to give Filter dude bunny-ears.

Wow I remember "Banditos" on the radio and that line "Everyone knows that the world is full of stupid people".... have never ever heard the song mentioned anywhere and I was doubting for a while that it actually even existed. Thanks for bringing that up!

Remember too that the Filter dude was part of the NIN road band in the early days.

wait, if you guys are talking about Filter, does that mean I can talk about God Lives Underwater

Man, the "From Your Mouth" video is pretty brilliant, total one-idea video but there's something really hypnotic and tension-inducing, hard to look away.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_FZGu5JrQU

Black Lab - Wash It Away

pretty ordinary on all levels - I remember thinking it was kinda epic at the time, for some reason. Maybe it's the "send me an an-gel!" part.

Also wanted to add Memory Dean's "So Complicated" to the playlist but they are apparently not on Spotify. Or Youtube, for that matter!

One of the area CC's has a FM radio station specializing in Rock of varying vintages. They have student djs during the day, but after midnight they go automated and things get interesting. Tonight's find:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG1FSt9Tm-k

I think this was Sweet's last hit of any consequence. I don't think I've heard or even thought about this song in at least ten years.

Oh YEAH! That was actually my introduction to Sweet, believe it or not. Also completely forgot about it. Nice one.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HKqUglOC3_8

Indigo Girls - Shame On You

^^^ good song and sort of typical of one strain of stuff on this thread IMO - even when it was getting airplay, it was on stations (at least, my station) that didn't really "sound" like this by 1997. But they had been big into this kind of music just a few years earlier, the DJs were probably interested in this record, whatever one show on the weekend they had that played retro-college rock would still have "Closer To Fine" and "Galileo" in the rotation, so naturally this got carried in with that momentum. But the new song was never going to make it into the permanent file, even if the station's format hadn't further shifted with nu-metal and all that. And of course it never had a chance anywhere besides "modern rock" land.

Other factor here is that for me in Atlanta, IG were a "local" act (long since gone major) - curious whether this track made an impact in the wider world.

"Where You Get Love" either got a lot of play on my local or it was on a CMJ cd that I listened to a lot, because I knew about half of the words and I'm sure I haven't heard it since 1997

looked it up - it was the CMJ cd

ha i went on a Matthew Sweet binge on Spotify recently and when i got to "Where You Get Love" i was like oh yeah i remember the crappy outer space video that was on 120 Minutes for a few weeks and then disappeared

Another item from the CC Rock station by everybody's fave rave acoustic nerf grunge band on their sophomore album and it's first single, wherein the frontman fired the rest of the band and learned how to dance in the process:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1sA7YkLw1w

He says "yeah" alot, don't he?

Hahaha yeah "Enemy" is exactly the kind of thing I had in mind when first starting this thread! I might also have to add "The Shelf In The Room" which is a terrible song but certainly way below the profile of "Touch Peel & Stand." I remember my buddy and I at the time actually being kind of shocked by "Enemy" on the grounds of "hey, this is a kind of cool song, how'd that happen?"

This version doesn't sound so familiar though, I feel like the backing track was a little more forceful in the one I heard.

Spotify also reminds me of their "The Down Town" which might be too obscure for this thread - pretty sure I only heard that on the radio, like, three times max. (It also sucks.)