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

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

'da funk' is hugely memorable. what is going on itt

"da funk" is the only daft punk song i really and truly love, and it's hella catchy

"around the world" otoh is dreadful and grating

is there a difference between "hella catchy" and "grating" other than taste?

Songs that are about "a specific individual" can still be taken up and used as a trope in a way that leaves that individual behind.

And I never said it was an attack on the middle classes, it's much more of an attack on the upper classes, and on class tourism itself. But, as the Lex pointed out, I really resent the way that many of the middle classes take it up as a kind of battle cry, completely ignoring the fact that the lyrics are an attack on privilege itself, rather than on "someone more privileged than me".

Yes, I'm also aware that my takeaway from the song is also dependent on its context within the album and other songs and their themes. Which is perhaps where the conflation comes from, but I'm not the only person who has made that conflation in either a positive or negative sense.

"da funk" is many things, but for an instrumental single, i'm not sure if it's "memorable" in the sense that a pop instrumental is "memorable." (if you heard it once, on mtv, years ago, i'm not sure anyone can hold it against you for not being able to name the artist if you heard it again 10 years later.)

i mean it's no "sandstorm."

I voted for it, it is my precious. xp

too many favourites to choose from, but i plumped for depeche mode.

btw "sandstorm" robbed in both this and 2000's poll

Common People is the only song where the William Shatner cover is better than the original; wtg p4k etc.

tbf if shatner any pulp song it'd be better than the original

still need to make this happen somehow eight years later:

what would you like andrew wk to cover?

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"common people"

― jess (dubplatestyle), Tuesday, October 29, 2002

oh wait forgot Joe Jackson taking the chorus, I'll take the Pulp version over that actually

I fuck w/ every song here except for Beck, Weezer, Neutral Milk Hotel, Pavement, Belle & Sebastian. Voted "Enjoy the Silence" -- was a toss-up between that and MBV based on the insane # of times I've listened to each.

xp Yeah I'm also surprised about Sandstorm's absence. You'd think it fits in perfectly with p4k's pop reclamation efforts over the last decade.

good point, where is "sandstorm" on this list!!!

was it 1999 or 2000?>

it was both.

originally released in 1999, went massive in 2000

I have to really rrrrreaaallly resist the urge to make a "I prefer the Fake Blood remix" joke every time anyone mentions Sandstorm.

btw pretty sure i am the only "sandstorm" fan on staff tho

It's surely as rushy as Euphoria (Nino's Dream)..

btw pretty sure i am the only "sandstorm" fan on staff tho

― strongohulkingtonsghost, Friday, 3 September 2010 14:55 (2 minutes ago) Permalink

certainly not

in college parties at the 'russian suite' would play it three times over the course of one night

haha i almost added "except maybe drake"

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.

― لوووووووووووووووووووول (lex pretend), Friday, 3 September 2010 14:40 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

I would disagree that this song is badly written, and I'm a bit surprised you hate Pulp, Lex, I would of thought there is enough "non-indie" stuff going on with them to make it potentially of interest.

The whole album that this single comes from is pretty vitriolic, in particular "I Spy", the album's centrepice, a tour-de-force of bitterness and class resentment.

heady times