Ladies and gentlemen....the 1990s ILX SINGLES POLL RESULTS

Palace Music - "New Partner" (233 points, 12 votes, 2 first place votes)

Air - "All I Need" (233 points, 16 votes)

http://www.swr3.de/__pix/cover/500x435/3162.jpg

Madonna - "Deeper and Deeper" (234 points, 12 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000P09.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Teenage Fanclub - "The Concept" (from the pictured album above...)
(234 points, 15 votes)

WU-TANG CLAN - "Shame On A Nigga" (235 points, 13 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002WPI.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

meth's line on 'shame on a nigga' ('i'm better, than my competor, you mean competitor? whatever!') is, on a good day, the best line ever recorded.

-- ethan padgett

BEASTIE BOYS - "Intergalactic" (236 points, 13 votes, 1 first place)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000G6KQ.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

"Intergalactic" was like the only decent song they played in bars with girls in them that I went to in the summer/fall of 98, and I would always sing "Intergalactic Prophylactic" when dancing with girls who I knew weren't going to sleep with me anyhow.

- Horace Mann

MADONNA - "Ray of Light" (240 points, 21 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000898T.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

This is probably my favorite Madonna song, except for maybe a couple of her mid-nineties ballads. Really, it's astonishing. I don't think I'll ever be a fan of hers overall, but I'll hang into the CD for this song alone...

I'm going to get really depressed over not voting, I can tell.

CORNERSHOP - "Brimful of Asha" (243 points, 16 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000009GDN.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments on this one? I like it, a lot more than I like the rest of the Cornershop album...

BJORK - "Human Behaviour" (245 points, 12 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000007WMT.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I knew someone from Pakistan who likes "Human Behavior," which proves it's her best song.

-- Rockist Scientist

ORBITAL - "Belfast" (245 points, 14 votes)

http://www.paulstephenson.freeserve.co.uk/orbital_singles/orb_belfast-wasted12.jpg

Belfast is the absolutely blissful sound of being sublimely hammered and sitting on a kerb/haystack/car bonnet somewhere you don't know at 4am. It is beautiful.

-- Nick Southall

ISOLEE - "Beau Mot Plage"

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00004WX0P.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I heard this song on a mix tape a friend made for me awhile back and I've been trying to find any sort of Isolee CD, but it can't be done. Curses to me and my refusal to mail-order. This is a great cut.

ARAB STRAP - "The First Big Weekend" (247 points, 14 votes, 1 first place vote)

http://www.lyred.com/covers/arab_strap_-_week_never_starts_round_here.jpg

"The first one is pure ass, except "the first big weekend" and "deeper". "The First Big Weekend" is maybe the best Arab Strap song."

-- gygax!

NOTORIOUS B.I.G. - "Hypnotize" (249 points, 12 votes)

http://www.shima.iplus.to/img/mx/mx015797.jpg

I surprised this isn't higher. This is the one that sold me on Biggie and causes me to speak no ill of P. Diddy.

Hypnotize is WAY TOO LOW! Racists.

THE MAGNETIC FIELDS - "The Luckiest Guy On the Lower East Side" (250 pts, 14 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000JY74.01.LZZZZZZZ.gif

PAVEMENT - "Shady Lane" (250 points, 17 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000006ZLG.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Comments?

SAINT ETIENNE - "Like A Motorway" (252 points, 16 votes, 1 first place)

http://www.saint.etienne.net/ec/Like_A_Motorway.jpg

I noticed a while ago that St. Etienne's "Like a Motorway" is melodically very like the traditional ballad "Silver Dagger," which goes back at least many hundreds of years. I thought it was cool that the tune was being revisited and kept alive (probably unconsciously).

-- JesseFox

SLOWDIVE - "Alison" (254 points, 15 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B00000DR7P.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

I've been told for years to get the above album that this song is on, mostly for this song in particular...

LAMB - "Gorecki" (259 points, 15 votes, 1 first place)

ihttp://www.kompaktkiste.de/cd/_abc/_l/lamdj4b.jpg

"Gorecki"...it was blatantly obvious that that song is brilliant, wonderful, indispensible, etc. -- Dan Perry

this morning on my md walkman i found myself paying a lot of attention to the words to Lamb's Gorecki, and tho it gets a lot of Unfinished-Sympathy-knock-off criticism, i can't think of a more beautiful and affective love song.

-- Alan Trewartha

APHEX TWIN - "Girl/Boy Song" (259 points, 18 votes)

ihttp://www.dsl-recordstore.de/images/WAP78.jpg

OPO: Richard D James

girl/boy
-- jess (dubplatestyl...), February 4th, 2003.

i second girl/boy song
-- PMK

Girl/Boy thirded.
-- Matt DC

i fourth girl/boy
-- dyson

"Gorecki" is from Lamb's self-titled debut as pictured below, and "Girl/Boy Song" is from Aphex Twin's Richard D. James album.

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000001EOS.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000002HOF.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

BLUR - "Song 2" (262 points, 17 votes, 1 first place)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000005RM9.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The video for "Song 2" features Damon being satisfyingly hurled against a wall...

-- Ally

DIGITAL UNDERGROUND - "Humpty Dance" (262 points, 14 votes)

http://images.amazon.com/images/P/B000000HHM.01.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

Certainly "The Humpty Dance" is one of the finest singles of all time, no?

-- J0hn Darn1elle

1. Wu-Tang/Beastie Boys/Madonna/Cornershop should be 96/95/94/93 -- I think you may have caught your mistake by the time you got to 92, though, so this is just an FYI.

2. I don't know how many ties are left in the rest of the chart, but how would you feel about breaking them by favoring the track with more overall votes? It looks like you may have already taken this into consideration with the order you placed them in, actually. But I'd like that better, since ties always makes it seem like the sample size is too small.

SORRY! You're right -- I was forgetting that there were 101 songs!

tonight, 80-61
Monday, 60-41
Tuesday, 40-31
Wednesday, 30-21
Thursday, 20-11
Friday, TEH TOP TEN

the albums will begin the following Friday, if not sooner.

Sunday: 60-51
Monday: 50-41
etc

I was actually just amazed they hadn't been mentioned at all in either positive or negative terms, considering how they completely dominated the mid-90s in the UK (Take That) and worldwide (Spice Girls).

Never Forget is the best Take That song. Back For Good can fork off.

It's not real indignation, its faux-indignation in case you hadn't guessed.

East 17 are entirely without merit.

STAY NOW!!!

(sleigh bells)

Baby if you've got to go away

Don't think I could take the pain

This is the best "not actually a christmas song, but we'll add sleigh bells" song ever

hmm..let's see...one Arab Stap record, listened halfway through and currently in the pile of CDs I'm thinking about trying to part with.

I must have at least five ABBA records.

So...is the hypothesis of the test flawed, do you think?

Why is there no Best Of East 17 out?

hello dear. um, not quite. i'm whinging about indie because it's not as good as it used to be ;)

I see. You liked their early stuff better...

No, it wasn't you. You don't whinge, you complain in a mildly sardonic manner (or a less-mildly sardonic manner sometimes...)

james blount will you please stop trying to be robin carmody - you are not as good at it as him (and that's not presupposing i like anything he says much). also you make a total ass of yourself when you make sweeping statements about a whole nation such as "british people don't have any truck with hip hop", especially after insisting that dizzee/grime artists *are* hip-hop. what? only white people allowed to be british in your eyes?

this is the truest thing Alang has ever said

Hiphop had been a feature of the UK charts from Grandmaster Flash onwards (OK, there was a bit of a break in the mid 80s). There were *mad* scenes in '88 when Public Enemy and Run DMC toured. And as for the music press, hiphop albums had a lot of critical stock from 'Yo! Bum Rush The Show' winning the NME 87 poll onwards. UK Hip Hop was never that big, so there wasn't the feeling that homegrown music scenes can create, but I guess for large parts of the USA, the consumers of the music are far culturally removed from the creators too.

Actually yeah - the original 'In the 90s, dance music was to the UK what hiphop was to the US' statement was more about creators than consumers, I think.

Alba, Rapper's Delight was a huge hit well before Grandmaster Flash.

I mentioned the various club comps because I believe they were the biggest cash cows (and chart successes) of the UK club scene, but if I'm way off in that assumption then someone please clarify.

I don't know enough about USA charts to comment on MindInRewind's comparison. Certainly there was a lot of dance in the charts here, though obv. daytime radio tended towards the poppier stuff.