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

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

dog latin - wow, that amazes me! Standard UK/US shock I guess, but "Closing Time" was huuuuge in the US - #1 on Modern Rock, #1 on airplay, nominated for a Grammy, lots of TV show usage, and:

The song was prominently featured in the 2011 film Friends with Benefits where, in the climax, Justin Timberlake's character points out that the song is by Semisonic and not, as he previously believed, Third Eye Blind.

Whereas "Secret Smile" went straight to nowhere. Weird.

haha, i was just about to propose Natalie Imbruglia's "Wishing I Was There," stopped, checked, and, yup, huge hit in the UK. Wow.

This one might be a bit too big in comparison to the other songs on the list, but in comparison to his other singles at the time, I'd say it's pretty forgotten:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cugj6EBvkiA

Wow. I'm not entirely sure I've ever heard that. #56 on the Hot 100...might have slipped right past me. Nice pick!

hahah, the video is pretty great too. Transforming jet-car! Now that's crusin'.

'Closing time' was pretty big in the UK. All the Semisonic and New Radicals rubbish was played all the time on Radio 2, which I could not escape at work :(

Cowboy Mouth - Love of My Life

(only live vids on Youtube - added the studio one to the Spotify playlist though)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEfbL53jhN4

Alana Davis - 32 Flavors. A 1997 McLachlanization of Ani's less anthemically presented original, with added "I am who I am" chorus replacing the wandering oh-hoo-eee-a-hoo-la-de-heyya-whaaaaaa stuff. I remember hardcore Ani fans spitting at this whole business. It sounds okay now but not great. Sort of weirdly Sandi Thom-esque.

A few more things from the CC Rock Station:

Blues Traveler: "Carolina Blues"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MYdKho_5Y9A

Their follow-up to the big hits. More like Carolina BLOOZ, amirite?

Brother Cane: Lie In The Bed I Make (studio version not on youtube)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJ-TxlD1OMU

Follow-up single to "And The Fools Shine On", big in '95 and already mentioned upthread. In my neck of the woods, this one was just as ubiquitous spring/summer '96.

Jerry Cantrell: Cut You In

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b36pJh8Didg

Second Solo hit & Lead single from his initial post-AIC lp. "Second Solo Hit"? Cause this...

Jerry Cantrell: Leave Me Alone

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYXHoxCSO9g

THE CABLE GUY SOUNDTRACK

I actually had a cassette single of "Cut You In".

Can't say as I've ever heard any of those before, though there was a moment when "Carolina Blues" sounded like some shadow of something I might have heard once. Added 'em to the playlist, except the Brother Cane, which isn't on Spotify, and "Leave Me Alone," available only in karaoke form (?!). I do love how the video tries its best to make all the "Cable Guy" footage seem creepy and sick and wrong. I mean, moreso.

PM Dawn - Downtown Venus
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sT34WfGD6Ew

Ok I remember these two getting airplay and nowadays only a couple of friends remember them. I don't consider them memorable but they probably were to a grade if you're into christian rock (one is about keeping your virginity and the other about the story of Noah.

Sense Field - Save Yourself
http://youtu.be/s__QUKSWrK0

Jars of Clay - Flood
http://youtu.be/EfAhpX_wIBk

Wait, is that what PM Dawn sound like? That's great!

Added, in honor of Somebody helped me figure out what fucking song this is! - MC Breed, "It's All Good"

kind of hard for me to believe that #8 "The Fix (remix)" is real even though it shows every indication of being an actual video that was played on MTV2

do we have a "Directed by: Paul Hunter" appreciation thread yet

WAOOOW! AWRIGHT Y'ALL!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KZ5av3dglzY

Stroke 9 - "Letters." Followup to the unexpected success of the re-release of four-year-old track "Little Black Backpack." A Modern Rock #27 "hit"; pretty sure I haven't heard it since a week or two in early 2000. You're leaving me here. Dear. Alone with all your lettERS.

I've never heard that song before, but I am aware of Stroke 9 through their song "Kick Some Ass", which I've often thought of it as one of the last songs of the "90s" since I only saw the video for it once and that was on like September 9, 2001.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-0Ds0sYARY

Pushmonkey - "Handslide." Also known as "the 'break that water' song."

I remember that Stroke 9 song but prob less from the radio and more from my dad playing the CD in the car all the time

God, Pushmonkey were fucking HUGE on Houston Rock radio in '96.

I remember that Stroke 9 song but prob less from the radio and more from my dad playing the CD in the car all the time

― WE WANT FET WAP (Stevie D(eux)), Sunday, June 28, 2015 7:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm having trouble imagining a dad playing this CD a lot in the car, was your dad a member of stroke 9?

Playlist updated btw! Found a bunch of things not previously available, and purged some karaoke versions. Threw in K's Choice - Everything For Free, which somehow hasn't come up here already.

Still missing, for future checkup reference:

Billy Lawrence - Come On
LL Cool J, "Deepest Bluest"
Warren G's "Smokin' Me Out"
Little T and One-Trick mike - Shaniqua Don't Live Here No More
B-Real, Busta Rhymes, Coolio, LL Cool J and Method Man - "Hit Em High (Monstar's Anthem)
Salt-n-Pepa - "Champagne"
Tracy Lee - "The Theme (It's Party Time)"
Imperial Teen's "You're One"
Jamie Blake's "Runaway"
Tatyana Ali - "Daydreamin'"
Forest For The Trees, "Dream"
sun 60 c'mon kiss me
Amateur Lovers - consolation prize
702 - steelo
qkumba zoo - the child inside
Liquido - Narcotic
Liquido - Play Some Rock
Chopper One - Punk Named Josh
Carnival Art
Moxy Fruvous - King of Spain
Patti Rothberg - Inside
Sylk E Fyne, Romeo & Juliet
Sylk E Fyne - Keep It Real
Asante "Look at What You've Done (Refugee Camp Remix)"
Dayna Manning - My Addiction
Eve's Plum - I Want It All
Fluorescein - Cathy's On Crank
Sprung Monkey - Get 'Em Outta Here
Huffamoose - Wait
Filter - Jurassitol
Memory Dean - So Complicated
Cardigans - My Favorite Game
Jerry Cantrell - And the Fools Shine On
Jerry Cantrell - Leave Me Alone

that's https://open.spotify.com/user/doctorcasino/playlist/2taIeJ0IhYbdEJWgGXJBsK

Billy Crawford - Urgently in Love
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qp1oAy5lwZQ

I remember that Stroke 9 song but prob less from the radio and more from my dad playing the CD in the car all the time

― WE WANT FET WAP (Stevie D(eux)), Sunday, June 28, 2015 7:47 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i'm having trouble imagining a dad playing this CD a lot in the car, was your dad a member of stroke 9?

We just listened to a lot of modern rock radio!

haha, fair, fair!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VdAt4qWvz_8

Squirrel Nut Zippers - "Put A Lid On It," the followup to the unlikely success of "Hell." I also feel like I heard "The Suits Are Picking Up The Bill" (the go-nowhere lead single from the next album) but listening to it, it seems like there's no way this ever got on the radio -- maybe on a station promo compilation or something.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T8IPLgAIueo

The Urge - Jump Right In (1998). Featuring Nick Hexum of 311, who clearly shot all his scenes separately and is thus spared from having to perform fifteen feet in the air on a wobbling pole. So many questions about this video - why the bleak, washed-out color for this mood-boosting ska song? Why Chinatown? Why the Hare Krishnas?