Modern Rock #1 Hits of 1994

^^ I am now convinced this was the greatest year in the history of music.

"I Alone" and "Lightning Crashes" certainly seemed like bigger hits in LA than "Selling the Drama".

xxxpost

That list is just about equally good. If not better.

I was a sophomore in college so it def wasn't.

xxpost

"Lightning Crashes" hit in '95

Every single one of these 1994 songs is in my '90s alt' iTunes playlist. Which gets some healthy rotation, lemmetellya.

1994 was a horrible year personally and yet thanks to music my nostalgia for it knows no bounds

The Offspring "Self Esteem"

oh man, I love this song so much

Voting "Fall Down" because I heard it the other day and it was much better than I remember.

"God" is probably the song here that suffers most in comparison to the real biggest hit from its parent album, "Cornflake Girl," but it's still pretty fantastic, deserves more love itt

i think think five of my ten fave 90s albums dropped that year

When Scott Woods was running Top 5 lists on rockcritics.com, I named 1994 as one of my five favourite years for music ever--lots of great hip-hop and Top 40 R&B, too.

Ever do the relative-time thing? I do it all the time, and the older you get, the weirder it gets. I have a hard time getting my head around the idea that we're now farther from '94 than '94 was from the Sex Pistols.

between the stuff in this thread and the fact that '94 was also the year of "Gin And Juice" and "Cream" and "Regular" and "Flava In Ya Ear" i think yeah good candidate for best year of the '90s

Regular=Regulate

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/f/fe/Tonybennettunplugged.jpg

I have a hard time getting my head around the idea that we're now farther from '94 than '94 was from the Sex Pistols.

Scary...

Even this lame Counting Crows song has a good hook in the chorus.

a related thread: 'indie' modern rock radio hits of 1994

Beck, Beasties, Bedtime Stories, R.E.M., "Regulate," and Brit stuff like Suede kept me sane. The pop songs were okay but I have a hard time remembering anything from that summer beyond "I Swear" and Lisa Loeb.

haha yeah this might be the only cc song i begrudgingly like

1994 is probably the all-time low point for capital p Pop music -- the only enduring song i can think of is "All I Want For Christmas Is You"

Basket Case is still the catchiest shit ever. In retrospect it's not hard to see how a band that could put tracks like that together would still be around, but who would have foreseen five more top 10 albums and two #1's in the 2000s...

Compare the Modern Rock top ten with the pop one:

http://books.google.com/books?id=XQgEAAAAMBAJ&printsec=frontcover&rview=1&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

another good point, some dude... for children of the mid and late '90s pop music was Hanson, Spice Girls, boy bands and that's about it.

The Offspring "Self Esteem"

oh man, I love this song so much

― I'M THAT POSTA, AAAAAAAAAH (DJP), Monday, May 21, 2012 10:33 AM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Haha, YES, I heard it when I was getting my hair cut a couple weeks ago and it was like instant nostalgia.

or children of the mid and late '90s pop music was Hanson, Spice Girls, boy bands and that's about it.

much better acts than the ones on '94's chart

There's a couple here that I really like: "Basket Case", "Come Out and Play", & "Einstein on the Beach". Voted for "Einstein on the Beach", which is my favorite Counting Crows song by a pretty good margin.

"Regulate" is still awesome though.

Basket Case is still the catchiest shit ever. In retrospect it's not hard to see how a band that could put tracks like that together would still be around, but who would have foreseen five more top 10 albums and two #1's in the 2000s...

At the time I thought Green Day was going to be another catchy pop-punk band that was going to flare up on the radar and then go away a la K's Choice. I do like them but in the back of my mind I still feel that way, so it's perpetually mind-boggling to me to see (for example) posters for the American Idiot touring show all over major marquees in town.

I looked up my Top 10 for '94, and I don't think there's anything I don't still like a lot:

1. "Fantastic Voyage," Coolio
2. "Miss World," Hole
3. "Cut Your Hair," Pavement
4. "Gin and Juice," Snoop Doggy Dogg (later changed his name)
5. "At Your Best (You Are Love)," Aaliyah
6. "Self Esteem," Offspring
7. "Do You Wanna Get Funky," C&C Music Factory (nostalgia for 1991)
8. "Flashlight," Fuzzy
9. "Worker Man," Patra
10. "Pay No Mind," Beck

I was a little tired of "Loser" at that point, so--pursuant to something that came up on the Beastie Boys countdown--sometimes I do fall in love with songs all over again.

damn great list, you were cool in 94

The Billboard to which I linked has the following horrors on the top ten:

Big Mountain - Baby I Love Your Way (from "Reality Bites")
Jon Secada - If You Go
Elton John - Can You Feel The Love Tonight?
All 4 One - I Swear

mixed with:

Beck - Loser
Aaliyah - Back and Forth
Janet - Any Time, Any Place
Warren G- Regulate
John Mellencamp-Me'shell Mdegeocello - Wild Night

good list, clemenza. I often wonder whether that's my favorite Aaliyah song too.

(xpost) Thanks (he says as he ponders the deeper implications of that statement...)

P&J top 5 of that year:
1. Hole: Live Through This (DGC) 1552 (121)
2. Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Matador) 859 (77)
3. R.E.M.: Monster (Warner Bros.) 634 (66)
4. Nirvana: MTV Unplugged in New York (DGC) 552 (50)
5. Neil Young & Crazy Horse: Sleeps With Angels (Reprise) 520 (49)

one album by Cobain, one by his widow, and two albums with songs inspired by his suicide

and at least one more, Vitalogy, down at #25

^^ maybe the only recent P&J top five whose albums I still love

Was Cannonball 93?

yep

those Last Splash singles got plenty of blanket airplay on college radio through '94 though

Other notable '94 alt songs:

Archers of Loaf - "Web In Front"
Frank Black - "Headache"
Blur - "Girls & Boys"
Jeff Buckley's Grace singles
Candlebox - "Far Behind" and "You"
Collective Soul - "Shine"
all those other Counting Crows songs
Deadeye Dick - "New Age Girl"
Flaming Lips - "She Don't Use Jelly"
Frente! - "Labour Of Love" and "Bizarre Love Triangle"
Grant Lee Buffalo - "Lone Star Song" and "Mockingbirds"
a bunch more Green Day stuff
Jesus & Mary Chain - "Sometimes Always"
L7 - "Andres"
a billion other Live songs
Love Spit Love - "Am I Wrong?"
Lucas - "Lucas With The Lid Off"
Luscious Jackson - "Citysong" and "Here"
Mazzy Star - "Fade Into You"
Morphine - "Thursday"
Murmurs - "You Suck"
all kinds of NIN stuff from The Downward Spiral
Oasis - "Supersonic" and "Live Forever"
more Offspring songs
more Pearl Jam songs
Liz Phair - "Supernova"
Possum Dixon - "Watch That Girl Destroy Me"
more REM stuff from Monster
Rollins Band - "Disconnect" and "Liar"
Sebadoh's Bakesale (to the extent that those songs got MTV/radio play)
Shudder To Think - "X-French Tee Shirt"
Smashing Pumpkins - "Landslide"
Sonic Youth - "Bull In The Heather"
the singles attendant to Soundgarden's Superunknown
Sugar - "Your Favorite Thing" and "Believe What You're Saying"
Toad The Wet Sprocket - "Something's Always Wrong"
Tori Amos - "Cornflake Girl"
Urge Overkill - "Girl, You'll Be A Woman Soon"
US3 - "Cantaloop"
Veruca Salt - "Seether"
Ween's Chocolate and Cheese "singles"
Whale - "Hobo Humpin' Slobo Babe"

Soundgarden, NIN, Sugar, "Seether," "Landslide," "Cantaloop," and those Frente! singles def part of the fabric of my '94.

fuck you alfred, "i swear" is a classic

http://www.harrycutting.com/graphics/photos/children/serious-black-boy-crossed-arms-J178-07-619.jpg

a classic example of a terrible song

i can't hate on the soundtrack to me getting run over by people 5 times my size at the skate deck

ugh i swear

was boyz ii men/mariah 94 too? that song was a fucking plague.

who skateboards to all 4 one??

They skated by the light of the moon, the stars, and the sun.

I am dying over here

rollerskates not skateboards!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

guess i voted for Kenneth

wait NOBODY likes philip glass?

well in theory everybody does, i think

y'know "All Apologies" is maybe the one Nirvana song i wouldn't mind never hearing again

it's kind of awesome imo; I'm like the dude that things the chorus of "Bullet with Butterfly Wings" is a turd in a punchbowl, so the "in the sun" part of AA should really piss me off, it has no real right to work, and it works magnificently

like I see how lots of it (the q&a verses, that overinvoluted endchant) can come across as horrifically trite upon overexposure, but I think it sounds even more original than it did back then

i just don't really fuck with slow/midtempo Nirvana i think, am almost as weary of "Come As You Are" and "Dumb" and "Pennyroyal Tea"