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

Windowlicker's pretty stand-out, but there were so many awesome Aphex Twin tracks in the 90s that it's easy for me to see how someone could rate it pretty far down their personal list.

xpost to me, Just seems essential to 'telling the story' of 90s pop.

I get why everyone goes crazy for "Windowlicker" but I've always been a "Ventolin"/"On"/"Come To Daddy"/"Girl/Boy Song" guy; I would rather have seen any of those on the list.

xp "Try Again" came out in 2000.

dammit I knew this; I'm a disgrace to NMH fans everywhere :(

Don't let the current status of Jarvis Cocker (annoying knob) get in the way of the facts here, "Common People" is the best tune here.

Aphex's "Milk Man' ftw.

-x post-

Aphex, like many artists on this list, is irreducible. Not to the extent that, say, Oasis is (if you like them), but "Xtal", "Girl/Boy"/"4" - he was in the mix during multiple creativity peaks, techno, dance, jungle etc. My crit-hat quip on "Windowlicker" is that it's in so many ways a remix of "Closer". Which makes it even more excellent.

"Common People" is a great song but if you're purporting to account for the 1990s in any way, as a time period, take, say, Pearl Jam. Hugely unaccounted for, a random cut low in the list. I hate Vedder more than words but they were just an absolutely enormous band with a string of SMASH HITS off that debut. Even a deep album track in "Black". And to put a marginal, extremely UK-centric act like Pulp at #2 for the decade, with Nirvana at #13, who were easily massive as Pulp in Pulp's native country, is both challops and poor history.

Eh, usually I wouldn't post something like this on ILX because I know that both Common People and Cocker himself are such sacred cows (and I don't want my dislike to be interpreted as some lame challops for the sake of it any more than I want to repeat arguments I've had since the mid 90s.) But for you, Lex, I'll say a little of it, because I suspect you will understand my reasoning.

1) The terrible awareness that I (middle class, arty, have probably engaged in bouts of class tourism) am exactly the person that the entire nasty vipituous diatribe is aimed at. You're right. I will never *really* know what it's like not to have an expensive education. I will never *really* know what it's like not to have my class background. I don't think that gives you (author or listener) the automatic right to sneer at such a person for wanting to broaden my horizons and *trying* to understand. And also, due to peculiar quirks of the British class system (that one can actually have education and breeding and still be as poor as a church mouse) this does *not* mean that I do not know what it means to live with lack or poverty or difficult choices or narrowed horizons.

2) the conflation of the British class system (Posh vs. Common) with the idea of common vs. uncommon. You're right. I will *never* live like "Common people" and, in fact, I absolutely *refuse* to live "like common people" because I refuse to see it as something negative to aspire towards the extraordinary, the sublime, thegoodthebeautifulthetrue. This song, for me, really encapsulates this kind of negative anti-cultural-Thatcherism which produces some pretty questionable aesthetic results and political conclusions if taken to the logical conclusion. The only kind of aspiration is *not* simply the material kind. I am the kind of person who will spend money on books when she hasn't the money for new clothes, so this has nothing to do with wealth. I can NOT conceive of a world where there is nothing else to do but "drink and dance and screw, because there's nothing else to do" because no matter how little money I have, I *always* have my imagination and enough intellect to think of *something* else. I refuse to apologise for that.

I realise that these things are not entirely of Cocker's intentions, but they are certainly what the song has come to symbolise. In fact, I would have thought that Cocker, with his weirdo arty intellectual background, would understand, but, as we talked about on twitter yesterday, if you play with archetypes that are bigger than you, usually it's you that gets played.

This will of course all be misunderstood and torn to pieces because I don't think I've expressed this very well, but hey, it's Friday afternoon on ILX, I've got time. :-/

As an American tween/teenager it felt like an awesome pop song with an interesting angle and it still does today. It's amazing how much can be wrapped up in a song like that for some people and not for others. Not that yanks don't have our own multitude of issues but that kind of classist self-examination and judgmentalism isn't one of them, or at least it's not at the front of our minds.

it's the british 'pretty fly for a white guy'

As the lone Brit in a group of Americans (who were all massive Anglophiles) I kinda got sick of being the only person who actually saw any kind of class issues at work in that song, and also really really really hated having to constantly explain why I wasn't going completely bonkers over the "weirdoes, we're great, actually, thank you!" message that was all my American friends ever saw in the song.

So perhaps having that conversation about a dozen too many times has also contributed to my dislike of the song.

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MusicChangesMe
1 hour ago

I know nothing about rock music i'm only here because pitchfork named this the number 1 song of the 90's...i can kinda see why though...this song really has a 90 feels to it. when you hear this track it brings back memories from the 90's

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MusicChangesMe
1 hour ago

oops sorry for calling this rock i see that it's indie oops my bad

It is hard out there for a posh.

thought that might be something to do with it k8, and fwiw i totally agree (and though this is totally removed from what that song is about, i've seen it happen a lot whenever someone who isn't working-class becomes involved in "urban" street/underground music.

i don't like the song, but what i like even less is the way it's most often picked up by middle-class kids as a defence of working-class, idk, purity or something, and as an attack on "posh kids" (lacking the self-awareness of their own privilege, of course).

I also got really really really sick of explaining to Americans that "posh" and "rich" were not the same thing in UK culture at all, even though they are practically synonymous in the US.

And also wanting to say to Cocker, "look, I understand that you had it rough as a working class weirdo, but please don't leap to the assumption that it was somehow... *OK* to be an upper middle class weirdo. If anything, it had its own particular set of pressure from both sides. That you got kicked really hard by posh people for being a weirdo and kicked even harder by "common people" for being posh."

So yeah, first world problems. Whatevs. But also yeah: but what i like even less is the way it's most often picked up by middle-class kids as a defence of working-class, idk, purity or something, and as an attack on "posh kids" (lacking the self-awareness of their own privilege, of course). *TOTALLY*

it's got a good beat.

The in-the-know/out-of-the-know perspectives on Common People remind me of going to a party in Germany about 10 years ago and seeing people rock out to Sunday Bloody Sunday (not saying this only happens in Germany but I don't think classic U2 was a party staple here in the 2000s). I was kind of shocked that people were having a good time to this but it makes perfect sense if you have no idea what the song is about or no connection to Irish history.

(many xposts but) Lex, I guess the thing I find most infuriating is your implication that anyone who likes certain artists that happen to fall within the indie or rock canon has somehow been hoodwinked into doing so, and that you are the only person who is clear-eyed enough to see the truth.

everybody loves "Loser" then. good to know.

Think it's between Bjork and Shadow for me. Most of these are good.

And before there's any more "LOL @ Karen D. for her first world problems" - please understand. I'm not asking anyone to feel sorry for me or anything, just explaining why I really really REALLY hate the song.

There are a few songs I could vote for out of this list. Even Hyperballad, although Bjork in general annoys. The Robyn cover reminded me how great this song is.

i think i at least like every song on this list! (actually i'm not sure i've heard the bell and sebastian song unless it's on boy with the arab strap.)

For some reason, google chrome isn't fully reading the pitchfork list on my computer. What is are the top 7 songs?

gotta say i'm impressed the NMH hotel song isn't the first track on the album, indie album-artists i'm surprised to see chart on a pitchfork tracks list tend to be represented by those.

mbv and afx very far ahead of the rest, 'windowlicker' is certainly more of a signature song tho

tend to agree w/ kate abt common ppl although i've never given the song a lot of thought

completly agree w/ h8 of menopausal jarvis cocker and his stephen fryish reknown to a certain breed of slow-witted english ppl

'we love life is' is great tho

voted juicy btw, my favorite songs are songs that make me cry and "damn right I like the life I live/'cause I went from negative to positive" gets me every time, who can't feel that at some level

I haven't heard two of the songs on this list: B&S and Depeche Mode (I don't think). I like all the others. Hooray for me!

Wow, that's kind of impressive; "Enjoy the Silence" was almost as omnipresent in 1990/1991 as Lady Gaga's "Telephone" was this year.

I'm going to listen to it in a minute, maybe I'm just forgetting which song it is. But also I was living overseas in 1990/1991.

this nmh song (the only one i'm not familiar with) isn't bad!

I've never been sure exactly *what* makes "Windowlicker" a "signature" Aphex song though ... how much of this is because of the video?

Windowlicker's pretty stand-out, but there were so many awesome Aphex Twin tracks in the 90s that it's easy for me to see how someone could rate it pretty far down their personal list.

This is kind of what I meant ... to me, "Windowlicker" always seemed like such a random choice to be the *one* signature 90's Aphex Twin track.

I'd be saying the same thing if they'd pulled some random track off of Autechre's LP5 (I never really understood the love for that one either, and I LOVE Autechre) and talked about how it scaled IDM's tallest heights and still sounds like the future ... maybe this did happen and there was a track at #184 that I forgot about.

Actually I probably couldn't identify "windowlicker" or "da funk" if i heard them (blame videos that don't really highlight the tracks themselves, prefer "Come To Daddy" and "Around The World" easy), and I dunno one DJ Shadow track from the next, basically went from "i don't give a fuck if your lite jazz comes from two turntables or a harmonica up your ass" to "this aint bad lite jazz" on him.

oh I totally know "Enjoy the Silence," nevermind. I like it.

I listened to the B&S song and it didn't sound familiar but also it sounded like every other B&S song so who knows, maybe I'd heard it before. Anyways it wasn't my thing but it's pretty innocuous.

I've never been sure exactly *what* makes "Windowlicker" a "signature" Aphex song though ... how much of this is because of the video?

like... all of it? Which is partially why I'm bummed it didn't end up being "Come To Daddy"

xp: "Da Funk" is IMO the most easily-identifiable Daft Punk song aside from "One More Time"!

enjoy the silence is so classic. im more a policy of truth dude tho

xp: "Da Funk" is IMO the most easily-identifiable Daft Punk song aside from "One More Time"!

more than the one that goes around the world around the world around the world around the world around the world around the world? I've seen the video for "Da Funk" plenty of times and the song just never soaked in from it (probably because they keep turning off the song for extended periods of it.

Come To Daddy isn't any more "signature" Aphex than Windowlicker, to be honest.

Or maybe it is, in that CTD is a total pisstake song and Mr D.James is all about the pisstaking in ways that end up being quite intriguing and appealing to lots of people. But, as I keep saying in these kinds of debates is, what makes Mr D.James GR8 is the fact that there really *is* no signature Mr D.James - everything he does ends up sounding really not a lot like what everything else he does sounds, and yet it all sounds really *him*.

I just don't really like Windowlicker that much, except for the last minute and a half where all the distortion and phase kicks in and it suddenly goes really wubtastic. But that minute and a half is greater than most artists' whole careers.

Karen, from what you've written I think you hate Common People because you have completely misunderstood it and the kind of person it is attacking. It's not even about being a weirdo/outcast - that's Mis-Shapes. Surprised by such a misreading and staggered by your "being the only person [in your circle] who actually saw any kind of class issues at work in that song". What the hell else is there in the song BUT class?

"more than the one that goes around the world around the world around the world around the world around the world around the world?"

"da funk" is the one that sounds like it's going "around the world around the world around the world" except it's a synth riff.

Dorian, go and live in America for a while, and see how completely Americans can completely miss something WRT British culture that you think is BLINDINGLY obvious. It will really astonish you.

misinterpreting culture is sorta one way pop gets made though.

"da funk" is the one that sounds like it's going "around the world around the world around the world" except it's a synth riff.

it shouldn't be surprising that a song with a nagging vocal hook would be more memorable than an instrumental simulacrum (esp when the video for the former actually promotes the song).

kind of forget dance music never really cross the atlantic

xpost. Sure, I guess so, but I'm still amazed that anyone could hear those lyrics and not clock that it's a song about class.

Anyway, I think it's crucial to acknowledge that the song is about a specific individual, or at least a specific type - shallow, condescending, slumming it - rather than an attack on the middle classes per se.

"surprising"?

in ref to Dan's "only One More Time beats Da Funk in the recognition dept" claim

shallow, condescending, slumming it

it's a poorly-written song because cocker doesn't actually manage to portray this character as unsympathetic enough - she doesn't come across as malicious or unpleasant, just naive, and his vitriol comes off as disproportionate. your sympathies end up with her, not him.

spottieotte 4 lyfe