Pitchfork: The Top 200 Tracks of the 1990s: 20-01

protect ya neck
common people
are you that somebody
g thang
the state i am in

my ballot from ILM 90s tracks poll:

1.Dr. Dre – Nuthin' But a G Thang
2.Breeders – Cannonball
3.Pete Rock and C.L. Smooth - "T.R.O.Y. (They Reminisce Over You)"
4.Aaliyah - "Are You That Somebody?"
5.Belle & Sebastian - "The State I Am In"

and I complained protect ya neck wasn't one of the nominiations. good to see my musical taste hasn't evolved over the last six years.

I voted for Hyperballad as it's one of my top ten songs of all time.

I never need to hear Loser or Smells Like Teen Spirit again but apart from those and Neutral Milk Hotel which I've not heard, these are all great tracks.

ilm list top 20:

020.- JAY-Z - "Big Pimpin'"
019.- DAFT PUNK - "Around the World"
018.- DR. DRE - "Nuthin' But A G Thang"
017.- SINEAD O'CONNOR - "Nothing Compares 2 U"
016.- STARDUST - "Music Sounds Better With You"
015.- MASSIVE ATTACK - "Unfinished Sympathy"
014.- BECK - "Loser"
013.- AALIYAH - "Are You That Somebody?"
012.- NIRVANA - "Smells Like Teen Spirit"
011.- BLACKSTREET - "No Diggity"
010.- BJORK - "Hyperballad"
009.- RADIOHEAD - "Paranoid Android"
008.- APHEX TWIN - "Windowlicker"
007.- WARREN G - "Regulate"
006.- NEW ORDER - "Regret"
005.- GETO BOYS - "Mind Playing Tricks On Me"
004.- MY BLOODY VALENTINE - "Soon"
003.- THE BREEDERS - "Cannonball"
002.- DEEE-LITE - "Groove Is In the Heart"
001.- PULP - "Common People"

i'll never understand why "hyperballad" seems to be the consensus pick from the björk discography. it's not even a standout on its parent album!

lol this is the first i realised "enjoy the silence" was released in the 90s. REALLY?! i've just always assumed it was from like 1981 or something.

basically came down to "are you that somebody?" vs "juicy" - rip babygirl and biggie ;_; - went w/the hawk in the sky in the end

"common people" is such an annoying song. i hate it when people canonise pulp as being better and smarter than the rest of britpop trash. NOT SO. JUST AS AWFUL AS ALL THE OTHERS.

anyway in that song my sympathies are entirely with the poor girl who had to put up with being jarvis cocker's gf briefly.

ahahahaha i've just realised these are meant to be the 20 best songs of the entire 90s?! lolololololololololololol and indeed smh

shocked by striking lack of overlap between lex & pitchfork's taste

that "loser" song. i remember that from when it came out! absolutely dreadful. it's like a fucking parody of every socially inept indie mumble there's every been! "i'm a loser so why don't you kill me?" - OK THEN, happily! i genuinely didn't know it was rated as remotely acceptable by anyone (ah, the days before i'd read any music crit). seriously i remember laughing at that song w/my girls in high school, it was so obviously lame.

idk i just feel a touch of pity for anyone whose top 20 of that decade includes, like, belle & sebastian or neutral milk hotel (lolllll @ their stupid name, still) or pavement or nirvana. or WEEZER! god, i remember them from the '90s as well, and i swear they were a joke novelty band possibly put together by comedians. i can't believe they still have a career.

keep swinging for the bleachers

like anyone who was a teenager in the '90s i liked a ton of "alternative" music from then but this is all the stuff that even 14-year-old me knew to mock

Loser

to be fair, weezer barely have a career

happy to hear it

my favorite line in Loser is "And my time is a piece of wax fallin' on a termite who's chokin' on the splinters". and yes, Loser is my #1 choice

"i'm a loser so why don't you kill me?" - OK THEN, happily!

Rap? More like CRAP!

yeah, i can't really hate on anything here. favorites = beck, belle & sebastian, daft punk, dre/snoop, B.I.G, and well, everything else straight through to the bottom. the last seven tracks in this list cannot be fucked with. but honestly, nothing here incenses me or even bums me out. bjork is not my favorite, but hyperballad is solid. if you have to have an aphex twin track, it might as well be windowlicker. neutral milk hotel track is probably my least favorite, closest to horrible, but i like other stuff from that record, so i'm okay with it.

"i'm a loser so why don't you kill me?" - OK THEN, happily!

Rap? More like CRAP!

― symsymsym, Friday, September 3, 2010 3:52 AM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

Belle and Sebastian - "The State I Am In"

rmde

oh my god, pavement #1?

s0 embarrassing for p4k

yes, last i heard, indie rockers en masse had rejected the teachings of pavement and burned all existing record of their heresy

well, if not, then why not

guys you're ignoring this important youtube comment

#
maitlanr
6 months ago 103

early 90s man. that was our sixties. and we blew it!

the 90s are gonna make the 60s look like the 50s

lol reactionary lex is back

god there are some b&s tracks i can vibe to but this is just abject

Aaliyah - "Are You That Somebody?" - freaking great
Aphex Twin - "Windowlicker" - feel like I should vote for this but it's not even my fave Aphex track let alone fave track of the 90s :-(
Beck - "Loser" - this was the first time I ever had the feeling I was being "marketed to" like my generation had become a demographic, and I didn't particularly like it
Belle and Sebastian - "The State I Am In" - at a particular moment in time, this was meaningful, but that moment has passed
Björk - "Hyperballad" - freaking great
Daft Punk - "Da Funk" - just a bit of fun, be cool
Depeche Mode - "Enjoy the Silence" - hated at the time, but it's really grown on me
DJ Shadow - "Midnight in a Perfect World" - can't remember how it went
Dr. Dre [ft. Snoop Doggy Dogg] - "Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang" - can't remember how it went
Mazzy Star - "Fade Into You" - oh just go away
My Bloody Valentine - "Only Shallow" - see my Aphex entry. Not my fave MBV track.
Neutral Milk Hotel - "Holland, 1945" - can't remember how it went
Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit" - oh just go away
The Notorious B.I.G. - "Juicy" - can't remember how it went
OutKast - "Spottieottedopalicious" - can't remember how it went
Pavement - "Gold Soundz" - can't remember how it went also OH JUST GO AWAY god I fucking hate Pavewank
Pulp - "Common People" - God I fucking hated this song with an utter passion
Radiohead - "Paranoid Android" - a moment in time but that moment has passed
Weezer - "Say It Ain't So" - can't remember how it went
Wu-Tang Clan - "Protect Ya Neck" - can't remember how it went

So OF THIS LIST it looks like the only tracks I still have unreserved love for are Aaliyah and Bjork. But at the same time I feel like I should vote for what Aphex Twin or MBV *mean* to me, and *mean* to my impression of what 90s music was about. Even though there are other songs by those artists that should get the nod.

But now I'm listening to Hyperballad again, I'm getting the same "BUT THIS ISN'T EVEN THE BEST SONG!" vibe.

Oh wah waht a boring and unrepresentative list etc. moan groan complain etc.

I hate the nineties and "Loser" is not at all my favorite Beck, but hating that song or dismissing it as an example of being "marketed to" is crazy talk. It could have been released in 1979. Just a buncha cool sounds and non sequiturs stitched together whose chorus happened to be exactly the generational catchphrase adapted by record companies.

think that was Kate's point...?

I mean given it originaly came out on a microindie before Geffen jumped on it, I don't think there's any suggestion that Beck was a literal marketing creation, but I can see why someone might roll their eyes at its presentation

Neutral Milk Hotel - "Holland, 1945" - can't remember how it went

played it about an hour ago and i can't remember how it went. as with weezer and pavement and belle and sebastian, totally unremarkable piece of music.

^ this. this is otm. but i remember feeling that same weird twinge of encroachment in 93. i loved the song in spite of the feeling that i'd been sold, but it was definitely there. wasn't beck's fault, either, cuz he was clearly & authentically of my generation & culture, but he was one of the first examples of what i then thought of as "my" outsider/slacker/indie-refusenik youth culture and values being sold back at me by the dreaded "mainstream". it was somewhat jarring in that sense.

whether or not this makes sense to you probably says a lot about where and who you were at the time.

by "this" i meant alfred's initial response to KDT.

not history mayne's inability to properly listen to music

Thanks for your dismissal of my personal reaction to a song as "a dismissal". It was not a dismissal, it was a pretty powerful disillusioning - which was probably rather important for me to make at that age, and in that time and place. I'm not denying that that song was, certainly, a generational moment. However, it did mark for me the moment (along with Grunge Boutiques in Macy's and the like) that I realised that anything and everything could/would be coopted by the mainstream, that I wasn't so unique and that I should stop being such a fucking snob about music because many of the lines were absolutely arbitrary and "indie" or "alternative" or whatever it was that I'd been a part of in the late 80s and early 90s was really just one lifestyle choice among others.

i was 13 when 'loser' 'dropped', felt it was something of a parody?

Karen, no offense, but that disillusionment seems like a good thing in retrospect, no?

wasn't beck's fault, either, cuz he was clearly & authentically of my generation & culture, but he was one of the first examples of what i then thought of as "my" outsider/slacker/indie-refusenik youth culture and values being sold back at me by the dreaded "mainstream". it was somewhat jarring in that sense.

Yes. This ^^^^^^^^

It was that sense of having your own self-generated culture sold back to you that I disliked, not the song. The song was actually pretty catchy.

Karen, no offense, but that disillusionment seems like a good thing in retrospect, no?

This was my ENTIRE point.

So then, thank you, record company!

Not really, no.

i was 13 when 'loser' 'dropped', felt it was something of a parody?

it totally was, but it was a clever insider's self-mockery. delivered to us from one of us, if you will. the otm wit was a big part of what made it feel so weirdly intrustive on pop radio. plus awesome. still love it, btw, though not as much.

As for Neutral Milk Hotel, still haven't heard'em, don't remember'em at all at the time. Were their tapes passed around in college dorms or something? Were they played on college radio?

kind of glossing over the parallel doublethink required, because at the same time is was SO FUCKING GREAT to see this stuff beginning to break through to the mainstream, to see "kool thing" on MTV and trade secret tapes of nevermind demos while waiting for it to officially drop.

speaking of tapes.

and yes, afred, college students passed neutral milk hotel demos around as if they were doobies

once again, there is a huge transatlantic divide on this [via the bbc]

I remember similar sort of phenomena, but the reaction to this stuff starting to break through to the meainstream wasn't so much "SO FUCKING GREAT!" but "Oh shit, we're about to get really completely screwed, aren't we?"

Perhaps that's down to indie snobbery, perhaps that was the cynicism that would haunt my generation. But my personal reaction to the sight of the kind of people who used to beat me up in high school suddenly walking around in Kurt Cobain t-shirts was "oh fucking shit, end times" rather than untrammelled joy.

Downloaded Neutral Milk Hotel years ago after it came high in an ILX poll. I remember them nearly as dull as The National.

now that's just mean

Sorry!

really, who gives a damn what's representitive anyway? it's not a best artists of the 90s poll.

― The Reverend, Wednesday, September 15, 2010 7:32 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark

i agree, but we were talking about whether it was 'representative' or not cuz deej said it was

still sounds representative to me -- conceptually, artistically, not exactly close to their most out-there shit.

and its way closer in vibe feel concept & execution to the stuff they did when they were younger than 'the love below'

dudes ... sometimes you rap like THIS, and sometimes you rap like THAT

Outkast's foreign policy: B-
Domestic policy: B+

theres no wanky love song shit, its about going clubbing & meeting girls & when that life meets with "real life situations" & about growing up, in a specific geographic place& time, semi-autobiographical, piece of ATL nightlife/life in general, universal but local, basically a perfect split point between experimental artiness - i.e. the spoken word approach, the extended length - and the more traditional concepts & styles & sounds theyd worked with before .... awesome track that showed them first starting to really upend shit

so perfect for this era, where ppl are overrating the crap out of conservative faux-UGK rappers, that suddenly dudes want to HONOR THE FIRE of trad earlier Outkast where they "rap their asses off" (c. tom breihan) & have totally 180'd on the worthiness of the way outkast actually made a name for themselves as one of the greatest rap groups ever by playing w/ song form & experimenting musically.

imo aquemini is their best record (and spottieottie one of the album's highlights) for exactly this reason -- it was the pt at which they actually started to really emerge as, like, multidemensional musical minds but kept it anchored in the past & w/ a strong sense of personal identity, the tension & chemistry really taking shape

ha, sorry if this has already been pointed out, but "Gold Soundz" won the Crooked Rain poll too.

CROOKED RAIN CROOKED POLL

posted this in the aquemini thread:

I think part of what makes "Spottieottiedopalicious" hit so hard is how in both Dre & Big Boi's verses, they start out as these surrealistic descriptions of chemically-enhanced nightclubbing experiences, but by the end of each verse shit has gotten too real in a very sobering way.

― grin and ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ it (The Reverend), Friday, June 25, 2010 7:10 PM Bookmark

^^^good post

Every time I listen to "Spottie" I promise myself to pay attention the lyrics but the horn charts and the rhythm distract me.

*TO the lyrics

deej all the way otmed up

also, it's not just funk, it's DUB too

yeah deej that was an excellent post, wish I could 'like' it

or 'upvote' or something

deej you can rockcrit this shit all you want but if you ask your average outkast fan to name five kast songs from the 90s this woouldn't be one

uhhh yr bringin' a lot of conceptual baggage into this with the "average outkast fan" -- like, has the "average outkast fan" listened to aquemini? if not, which albums have they listened to? or do they just know the singles/hits? and if so, when did they start paying attention? etc etc

"revolution no. 9 by the beatles is representative of the beatles because it's a DETOUR IN A CAREER FULL OF DETOURS WHOOOAaaaoaooaaahttp://i298.photobucket.com/albums/mm278/chri7stopher/scanners.gif!"

― assface johnson (Whiney G. Weingarten), Wednesday, September 15, 2010 3:47 PM (Yesterday)

i'm just saying this post is otm - i just doubt that people who were buying outkast albums around this time (among whom i can't count myself admittedly - i was like seven) are gonna be like ohhh yeah you know what i think when i think outkast? that seven minute horn song with almost no rapping! (to paraphrase whiney again)

i mean we all agree the song is pretty rad tho

maybe it's not the "average outkast fan"'s pick (whoever they may be), but it won the aquemini poll on ILX, and considering that's the biggest of their 90s album, it being the critics pick from aquemini doesn't seem that scanners.

it's also on that big boi and dre presents comp, which suggests its not exactly a deep album cut

can't we just accept that Pitchfork took some critical/fan favorites whose esteem has raised over time (whether everyone realized it) over the obvious pop hits?

NO

see if Pitchfork had just opened the list up to more than one song per artist then this discussion needn't have happened...

I would like to request an argument over DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World, which has been badly neglected itt.

whatever happened to that guy

I'm guessing "grad school"

argument: DJ Shadow's Midnight in a Perfect World does not exist.

according to wikipedia he's an avatar on DJ Hero, working on a new album and playing shows in Antwerp. Good for him!

You missed the "DJ Shadow sneaks his own records into shops in Hungary" story then I take it?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fcESmqxS4kI

Allegedly his latest track

Samples from Gary Numan?

Tuomas, it tells you on the page

About the Artist
Mickey Hart, best known for his work with The Grateful Dead, has collected and performed on many unusual percussion instruments found throughout the world. He has put both traditional and little-known instruments to new and unexpected uses in his own compositions. At the same time, he has worked diligently to preserve the wisdom of ancient musical cultures through his recordings of indigenous artists. His research into the ritualistic roots of percussion is chronicled in his 1990 book, 'Drumming at the Edge of Magic'. In 1969, Henry Wolff and Nancy Hennings traveled to India and Nepal where they studied with the Kagyu branch of Tibetan Buddhism and discovered the transcendent music of the Tibetan bells. In 1972, they became the first Western artists to make use of the then unknown Asian instruments in a 20th century Western idiom. The resulting album, Tibetan Bells, led to a succession of recordings featuring these instruments.

I assume you have heard the grateful dead?

oops wrong thread hehe

btw these arguments still going?

even the P&J arguments dont last this long. Pitchfork must be really special to posters on ILM

deej you can rockcrit this shit all you want but if you ask your average outkast fan to name five kast songs from the 90s this woouldn't be one

― k3vin k., Thursday, September 16, 2010 12:45 PM (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

bulllllshit

i still hear this one at clubs btw -- awesome 'end of the night' jam (i think i posted this somewhere)

way more than i hear rosa parks

deej has been otm itt

iet

yeah, def the 90s outkast jam i hear out the most. not sure kevin is old enough to go to clubs tho, so won't hold that point against him.

lol

the zinged becomes the zinger

i have never heard this song outside of me playing my own copy of aquemini, so ¯\(°_°)/¯

we're talking about strip clubs, right?

Midnight In A Perfect World is gorgeous, it's one of the few tracks on Endtroducing that's aged well.

^^^

played it about an hour ago and i can't remember how it went. as with weezer and pavement and belle and sebastian, totally unremarkable piece of music.

you're dumb.