pitchfork is dumb (#34985859340293849494 in a series.)

My gf showed me the p4k 90s songs list the other day. I ctrl-f'd "Missy" and was very pleased.

In 2008 when I was a 20yo college radio DJ my station started holding regular 1990s dance parties. The top 25 of this list includes many of the songs I was most excited to play out, including their #1. My first thought is "Wow I really knew what was up," but the reality is probably just that this list was assembled by a bunch of 30something former college radio DJs with similar taste lol

For a look at how things have changed (or not), here is a playlist I made last year when I was trying to assemble a top 10 for each decade. I am a lot less high on either the boom bap or the shiny suit era hip hop than I used to be, but Nas will always have a place in my HOF
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/32xQXPJ3kT1y0u9mEdKlS5?si=wlWHLakoRByn8dOA3-bhVg&utm_source=copy-link

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-grunge-albums-of-the-90s/

ok so, afghan whigs, sonic youth, and pj harvey are grunge

I feel like the Whigs are at least defensible but not those other two.

Dirty is at least grunge-adjacent/informed, no?

Best Grunge was made in the 80s

idk, for some reason I always associated Experimental Jetset more with grunge than Dirty.

Neither of them really sound "grunge" to my ears, but the former is just some weird association I've always held.

If Dirty and Gish are grunge, then Come’s Eleven: Eleven sure as fuck is and needs to be there

Also, no Gits? Love Battery? What a basic list

“Best grunge was made in the 80’s”

I’d probably say so, given the work of Band of Susans and Live Skull

Hardly think of those as grunge bands. Capital-G grunge in the '80s was, unfortunately, the likes of Green River or Mother Love Bone.

best grunge was in the 60s, blue cheer, everybody knows this is nowhere

High Tide - Sea Shanties!

Superfuzzbigmuff was 88

Therefore the best grunge was made in the 80s

Superfuzz Bigmuff, Ultramega OK and Bleach all feel like outliers rather than representative. The was a lot of unlistenable dreck in that late '80s Pacific NW scene.

🎵 Gloried version of appellate grunge 🎶

Lol

Lack of Screaming Trees

High Tide - Sea Shanties!

― brimstead, Thursday, October 6, 2022 2:20 PM (thirty-eight minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

This shit is so classic

they made a grunge list and didn’t include Screaming Trees? lmfao dumbass publication, no wonder i don’t read it any longer

Next thing you know they’ll do a list if 2000s minimal and leave Villalobos off the list

they (nearly) lost you!

Was going to complain about this same glaring omission but noticed they threw Mark Lanegan on there to compensate, I guess

Like many of you I loathe all of these lists on general principle but I will concede I enjoyed the One Hit Wonders list, which was obviously not meant to be complete or exhaustive, and was just a fun read. I like a lot of those songs more than I remembered. That Sixpence None The Richer song sounds a lot better to me after not hearing it constantly in the 90s everywhere I went. Now I'm wondering if "Sex and Candy" and similarly once-ubiquitous hits have aged as well

"Sex and Candy" reeked like a damp sock in 1998.

No argument. I associate it with that Sixpence song and a few others that seemed to follow me everywhere I went the year it was released

Speaking from somewhere where it was only a minor hit (UK #29 but completely forgotten) I think Sex and Candy mystifies me more than any other US one hit wonder. It's so tuneless and comatose and it turned up very late.

Let me tell you about Wheatus

don't love the song but if there's a musical moment to it that hooks it's his kind kind of slinky dragging behind the beat phrasing and nice descending guitar lick of after a quick rest in the chorus the *pause* i smell sex and can....day then *pause* "who's that loung....in" part

not really enough to make it a good song but that is the musical thing that made the song popular imo

I feel like this song has come up a lot lately, lol

UMS otm... I don't blame anyone for not liking it (I do), but I think the hook is undeniable

I don't think that's top 10 catchy at all, especially not when its played as half-asleep as it sounds. Mind you I've never had to hear the song repeatedly.

I studied abroad in the UK in 1998-99 and was asked by the student newspaper to name my least favorite song of 1998, and I said "Sex and Candy," though I don't think the person asking was familiar with it.

Both were hard to find in the UK in that era iirc

Let me tell you about Wheatus

― hi hole im dad (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, October 7, 2022 11:59 AM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

that song never actually made the hot 100 but did hit #2 in the uk and #1 in australia

the one time i saw marcy playground in concert most of their songs reminded me of archers of loaf. also "sex and candy" is good imo

that song never actually made the hot 100 but did hit #2 in the uk and #1 in australia

And, regardless of whatever its quality may be, it's tuneful and lively and makes total sense in a 2001 chart context.

It actually kept Last Resort at #3 and was released just as Rollin' slipped from number one. Give the Feeder and Ash classics (for they are classics) in the top 10 as well around that time early 2001 was maybe the most powerful Kerrang! had ever been on the singles chart.

In the UK this is not AUS

Shame it was pure shite era Kerrang

Yet the 'pure shite era' is what Kerrang treats now as the totem age. Helps matters that many of their key bands of the time are popular with Gen Z.

the period after is actually when they got peak sales and over 50% of readership was female. I don't really know what they were covering though (Brad emo?) as I stopped buying it because of the pure shite era beforehand.

White Stripes were getting coverage in that so called totem age. Along with the darkness and the hives + the remains of nu metal.

Sex and Candy is a lazy groove banger. It was huge here in Aotearoa NZ and I can see why. Nobody can convince me it isn't a great song.

Oh god Maroon 5 covered it... Travesty

don't love the song but if there's a musical moment to it that hooks it's his kind kind of slinky dragging behind the beat phrasing and nice descending guitar lick of after a quick rest in the chorus the *pause* i smell sex and can....day then *pause* "who's that loung....in" part

not really enough to make it a good song but that is the musical thing that made the song popular imo

― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, October 7, 2022 1:00 PM (eight hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

like disco lemonayyyyyde

Oh god Maroon 5 covered it... Travesty

― The Ghost Club

Adam & the Levines would know.

Let me tell you about Wheatus

Today I learned that "Teenage Dirtbag" is my ten-year-old niece's favourite song.

“Here Comes the Hotstepper” = notable omission from the One Hit Wonders list (even if it wasn’t deemed worthy of Best Songs).

(checks site idly post-12am EDT Sunday)

Whoa… did Wu-Tang die or something?

how a 90s song list that doesn't include sugar ray's "fly" is criminal.

proto-Fleet Foxes

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtVORaI-f0s