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

Woooooowwwwwwwww, that digs deep - through the first verse I was prepared to say "never heard that before" but the chorus clicks into focus. I don't know it well but I definitely know it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zSmeqrSH6xg

The Nixons - Sister

really getting into the dregs now, i fear

"Leech" was fairly big at the time, the follow-up to "Inside Out" iirc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Best..._Album_in_the_World...Ever!#Volume_6_.281997.29

"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

― infowars.go.com (los blue jeans), Sunday, October 21, 2012 5:22 PM (6 days ago

It got a lot of college airplay down here too and it sounded enough like a 100% Fun track to obviate the sense that his moment was about to pass.

Scanning through the "best album in the world" - my main takeaway is Monaco's "What Do You Want From Me" - very pleasant 80s throwback thing - which turns out not to be on Spotify. Did remind me of MONO's "Life In Mono" from the Great Expectations Soundtrack which is a gimme for the playlist.

Most of the rest is mysterious, which by which I mean "British." How do we feel about Republica's "Ready To Go?" Awesome song, major at the time - would we agree it's sort of vanished or does it have any kind of afterlife (video games maybe? feels like it might soundtrack a montage here and there).

my main takeaway is Monaco's "What Do You Want From Me" - very pleasant 80s throwback thing

When Peter Hook is involved, everything is an "80s throwback thing".

"Where Do You Get Love" has one of the stranger key changes in a pop song.

How do we feel about Republica's "Ready To Go?" Awesome song, major at the time - would we agree it's sort of vanished or does it have any kind of afterlife (video games maybe? feels like it might soundtrack a montage here and there).

Back when we had a "Classic Alternative" station around here, this was in their playlist, but in some less-poppy (and ergo, not as good) remix form.* I still dig the song, and could see it popping in movies about the '90s or at least in commercials again (IIRC, Mazda or Mitsubishi used it in a late '90s campaign).

*I always wondered how their library was put together. The station ran for about 8 months, was '80s/early '90s (non grunge) centric for the first couple before their listener feedback came in and the 80s stuff got mostly dropped in favor of grunge; by the time they went off the air, they were playing songs from 2006/7. They used to have weird holes in the catalogue too, like for the longest time all the Nirvana they played was from Nevermind or Unplugged. And then there was the unique versions thing, like the Republica remix, and what I assume was a "Top 40" mix of the Black Crowes' take of "Hard To Handle" which had horns and was completely new to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqoHqmo2irI

Porno For Pyros - Hard Charger

^^Good one!

I'm pretty sure I've heard The Nixons on the radio (WMMR in Philly probably) within the last 5 years or so

I thought this was totally a hit that everyone knew but I've mentioned it to/sang it to/played it for at least half a dozen people and not a single one knows it. You all know this, right? Right??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z778slDEsds

!!!! Didn't know it when I clicked "play," knew it from like 0:02. Wow, forgot all about this. I think I thought it was Sixpence None The Richer or something. Really pretty little tune IMO. Didn't recall all the details of the verses and so on but it's good.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrvxfX6LPDc

reminds me, somehow, of this: Fleming & John - Love Songs

Oh yeah, it's really really great ("Two peas in a pod, yes we are/or have I read too much fiction? Is this how it happens?")

Sincere question: was this era particularly characterized by a seeming parade of anonymous one- or two-hit rock bands that were identifiable basically by name only? That's not a jab at any of them, just me trying to figure out if I was a particularly uninterested listener (no magazine subscriptions etc). I mean, I could rack up megapoints on a trivia quiz that was organized by "here's the song, name the band" - - - "That's Republica!" - - - but I couldn't actually tell you anything about Republica, they didn't seem to have an image or a presence or anything besides the name.

Wonder how much of this is just also that I was too young to go to shows, etc.

Just found documents from 1997-1998 covering a series of tapes I made by mashing RECORD while listening to the radio. Mostly top-tier hits, but a few things that would go well in this thread maybe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y5HNCw3VLB0

Phish - Free

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T5C6hqZEX_8

311 - Transistor (video is an amazing video effects period piece)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hD3yVmT7ZEU

311 - Prisoner

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvQRRuckqM8

Filter/Crystal Method - (Can't You) Trip Like I Do

Man, I fucking love "Free" and didn't realize it was a radio single!

Dunno if it was - just heard it a lot on 99X for a couple months or so.

swinging for lilith fair:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rdG618TMc5E

Natalie Merchant - Kind & Generous. VH1 hit; I reckon this is still strong on the grocery-store circuit, but a considerable step down in bigness from the Tigerlily singles.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2JWJYLNUq4

Sarah McLachlan - Sweet Surrender. In between "Building A Mystery" and "Adia," I remember hearing this a lot at the time but it apparently peaked at #28 on the Hot 100, and I think it's pretty much vanished now. It's better than I remember, although certainly too long.

Also, btw:

The album was mentioned in the Starr Report, the late-1990s account of Independent Counsel Ken Starr's investigation of the Monica Lewinsky scandal.[17][18][19] After a visit to the White House in November 1997, Lewinisky wrote that she "noticed you (President Clinton) had the new Sarah McLachlan CD" and that "whenever I listen to song #5 (Do What You Have to Do) I think of you."[20][18]. McLachlan's representatives had no comment on the matter.[17]

"Free" was definitely the only Phish song besides "Down With Disease" that got a decent little bit of rock radio airplay

i remember hearing bouncing around the room quite a bit

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

Screaming Trees - All I Know

Who doesn't remember "Kind & Generous"??

Which is more obscure/forgotten, that or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M9ncAkKSNM

Which is more obscure/forgotten, that or

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3M9ncAkKSNM

well, i remember it now! 1992, but yeah. A lot of these I really haven't got a good sense of what's forgotten and what's not. Almost threw "The Perfect Drug" in at one point and then went "....nah." Again, on some level I think what this is really about for me is rehabilitating/archiving low-ranking hits that never make the long-term rotation but were essential to the landscape of what it sounded like to turn on the radio in 1998 or whenever. Any future "oldies" format that's missing this stuff will feel as hollow as the stations that boil the 60s down to "I Heard It Through The Grapevine" and "Mrs. Robinson" to the exclusion of everything else.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNQr6HLZHtk

Mack 10 feat. Snoop Dogg & Ice Cube - Only In California

The CC Station played "What's Up With That" yesterday, which leads me to the home team's prior single, from the From Dusk 'Til Dawn OST: "She's Just Killing Me" by ZZ Top (w/celebrity guests!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDeLYTw7EmU

Wow. I don't think I knew ZZ Top still existed in 99X. Nice one.

heard Live's "Freaks" on the radio today and thought of this thread

^^I think any Live that was post-"The Big Album" would fit here.

Amazing, really, that it took us this long to get there, since I think there are about 400 different Secret Samadhi discussions on ILX.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y2qkE_QXEog

Soundgarden - Bleed Together. Outtake/b-side, re-framed as the bonus song for the greatest hits comp. Not bad!

Today's CC Radio re-discovery: "One More Murder" by Better Than Ezra, wherein they "go dark", discover trip hop, and hold onto their audience for the last 30 seconds of their "15 Minutes".

FUN FACT: In 1998, they co-headlined the Sugar Land Texas City Fair w/Dishwalla. I bet they thought those golden days would never end...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cmzlf28SGD4

Don't remember that, but I do remember this song of theirs from 2001:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SwG6ivdn1IA

Huh, wow, no memory of either of.... shit, wait! He started singing on "One More Murder" and I know I've heard this. Not many times, mind you, but this certainly isn't the first.

lol i remember "One More Murder" from THE X-FILES: THE ALBUM

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_X-Files:_The_Album

Haha, all I had was SONGS IN THE KEY OF X, oddly also featuring the Foo Fighters, Filter, and Soul Coughing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ8_P3XB2qg

Sponge - Have You Seen Mary

Chorus is weirdly reminiscent of "Every Day Is A Winding Road," obviously mellowed out relative to that. This was in the regular rotation right when I started listening to alt-rock radio; hearing it, as with Fleming & John, makes me picture a particular stretch of my high school's corridors, presumably the area where I had my locker that year. Haven't heard it once since then.

OMG "Extra Ordinary" is one of those songs that I have not heard since it was on the radio

xpost I remember seeing that Sponge album in the cut out bin @ Best Buy about a year or so after it'd been released. It got a really good review in the old (lol 90s) MusicHound guide--like 4 or 4 1/2 bones.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ukTY752iuY

Tracy Chapman - Smoke and Ashes (fan video with clips from My So-Called Life but the other choice was a bunch of still photos of donkeys for some reason). LONG, but a nice tune I think. Fits comfortably into Chapman's larger career but also seems very much of a piece with certain other things going on around that time, with the Hammond organ and the naturalistic production. I think 99X had a weekend-morning program called like.. Roots X or something like that, where things like this (and probably that Indigo Girls track) got played a lot, alongside, I dunno, "6th Avenue Heartache" and, well, almost anything by Counting Crows besides "Angels of the Silences."

Lisa Loeb's "I Do" was mentioned upthread, but for some reason this one popped into my head this morning. It was her immediately follow-up to "Stay" and only got as high as 18 on the Hot 100, and 20 on the Modern Rock chart.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-Ca62l_X8M

Huh, wow, never heard that before! Pretty good track. I can see why it wasn't a hit - feels very "album cut"-ish. Nice find though!

Never heard the song, but I recognize parts of the music video because that song was featured on the first volume of the Canadian Now! series.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhS3YP04Fjk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kryV3E4QKGk

Semisonic - "Singing In My Sleep" and "Secret Smile." The followup singles to massive airplay hit and #11 pop hit "Closing Time" - neither charted on the Hot 100. "Secret Smile" is a Serious Snooze but "Singing In My Sleep" has some energy, a passable hook and a nice little organ doohickey.

Maybe it's all the S's but I always associate these with "Someday" by the New Radicals, the hopeless followup to "You Only Get What You Give." Decent adult-contemporary pop-rock.

Love Wiki's description of the video, which could almost be a Mad Libs template for this period: Directed by David Barnblatt, the video features the whole band playing the song in a damp warehouse with Gregg Alexander on guitar. It features scenes of people in different places: a laundromat, a bus, a diner, and a pool. In one scene, a lonely woman sits alone stirring her coffee, and the end of the video shows an empty seat at the back of a bus.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDmA8qQKhMY

Secret Smile is the only Semisonic song I know and I hear it all the time in the uk

I like that New Radicals guy switched to his sad times bucket hat