"Tonight, Tonight" is the best song of the 90s.

[Wasted]

I don't know that the 90's really had a Thriller.  There where some great clips to some great songs but I can't recall any that really went for the epic mini movie feel.

Radio head generally always had great production on their videos, Just stands out as the cleverest, Paranoid Android was loved at the time too and made that guys cartoon popular for a time (I can't remember it now and can't be arsed to look it up.)

Closer had the whole nudity controversy thing in the video and the song was hugely popular.

The Prodigy always had pretty good production in their video's as well.  Smack my Bitch Up had the controversy and really was a great video so it probably qualifies.

If I was to pick an Oasis song it would probably be Morning Glory.  The video was pretty well done, the song was popular and at the height of the whole Blur vs Oasis feud (The song is a rebuttal to the lyric "He's got morning glory but that's another story" in Country House by Blur) that added to the spectacle of the release.

Tool again had good production value on their videos, they had those holographic images on Aenima that had everyone spining it around to try to get different views.  I remember people loving the video to Stinkfist too.

As for Smashing Pumpkins I think Today the more defining song, it was popular, the video wasn't epic but I remember it was pretty well regarded.  Bullet with Butterfly wings had a pretty good video too

Trying to think out of stuff I liked I think Madonna had Erotica in the 90's with the controversial video pretty close to the time she made that sex book as well.  She had a pretty iconic and defining video with Vogue as well.

[Falconeer]

Madonna

Frozen.

[Segoris]

-Primus - My Name is Mud & Jerry Was A Race Car Driver

-Korn - Freak On A Leash
I greatly prefer other songs over this, but the video was great and

-Filter - Trip Like I Do
Even their remixes of this and Hey Man Nice Shot are fucking amazing

-Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealin'



On a side note:

To be fair, Nrivana was overrated... 

^ This is so fucking true.

I absolutely agree and believe that Nirvana was given a lot of misplaced credit for booming alternative music. I'm not a huge fan of the following person, but I have to give much more credit to Perry Farrel and Lollapalooza for the 1990's explosion and the alternative scene compared to Nirvana.

[Righ]

Madonna

Frozen.

Another great William Orbit song.

[Hoax]

I think a lot of you are missing the point. Tonight, Tonight isn't my PERSONAL FAVORITE song of the 90s. It's just sort of the unchallenged best song. Of course, coming up with a song that's better than Tonight, Tonight isn't hard. But coming up with a song that has an incredible video, incredible production values, super instrumentation, an important place on a very important album, the obvious opus of an incredibly popular band, blah blah blah - Tonight, Tonight is pretty much the best song of the 90s.

Personally? Wouldn't even be in my top 25. I love the song, but I'd put the entire track list of Losing Streak, And Out Came the Wolves, and Dookie before I'd even put a Smashing Pumpkins song anywhere near it.

Also, man, some of you all listened to some shit. Oh, and Nirvana still sucks balls no matter how many times you (the universal you), VH1, or some other asshole brings it up. ^_^ My hate for Nirvana runs really, really deep. I blame them for a number of things including but not limited to - shitty musicians becoming popular, emo music, shitty incoherent singing to hide the fact you can't sing, etc. etc. The list is long and makes me angry - and they weren't even remotely the best grunge had to offer, they were simply the most popular.

tl;dr: Best doesn't mean favorite. All the people that second Virtual Insanity should know that that was the closest one we could think of in terms of total package. Oh, and had I thought about it, I'd probably thrown Nada Surf's Popular on the list. Another song I didn't really "life" but deserves a place somewhere up there. Production was largely shit on that whole album though.

Fake Edit: Righ, you're fined 5 points for referencing Pulp's Common People instead of including a link to Shatner doing Common People, which is so vastly superior it's not even funny.

See, i read your first post in this thread and was like "yep yep, 8/10, solid troll".


Then i read the first paragraph of that and went into full mode. An important place on a very important album? Opus? Incredible? Bahahahahahaa. Oh my.

This or Grimwell's this is such an obvious troll post is the thread winner.  Schild is inventing some kind of special set of rediculous rules that nobody else can play by then asking why everyone insists on ignoring his criteria instead of just agreeing with him 100%.  Again.  He does this.  What's wrong with you people?

I'm saddened by how I only came up w/ 3 bands to go steal the music of after reading all 5 pages.

Also here are bands I remember listening to hella much in the 90's.  Fuck this did they have a good video shit but since I've been thinking about it I might as well post them.

RHCP
Green Day
Smashing Pumpkins
Offspring
Beck
Fugees
Cake
Weezer
Pixies
NIN
Sublime
NWA
Dr Dre
Tu Pac
E-40
Eazy-E

[slog]

To be fair, Nrivana was overrated... 

Look man, you have no idea.  Try being a high school senior in the Fall of 1987.  We had to listen to The Clash, The Sex Pistols and stuff like Joe Jackson because the only thing on TV was endless Hair Metal bands. We had NOTHING!!! NOTHING!!  Duran Duran, the Power Station and other Bullshit was the best we could do.  Thank god for Raves.

Then in 1991 Fucking Nirvana came out.  We got tatoos.  It kicked ass. What a great time to go to college.

Edit:  About the music.   in 1992 we went to LLollapalooza at Great Woods in Massachusettes.  6 of us crammed in a Pastel Sandstone Chevy Chevette with 5 cases of beer to hold us over on the trip down. What a day.  At the end, when Ministry came on, people tore down the wood fences in the back and made bonfires and danced around them while Al Jorgenson sings "So What"  (link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_yTCODyUCE&feature=related )

That was what the early 90s was all about.

[Grand Design]

I have nothing but appreciation for Nirvana.

[Lantyssa]

Look man, you have no idea.  Try being a high school senior in the Fall of 1987.  We had to listen to The Clash, The Sex Pistols and stuff like Joe Jackson because the only thing on TV was endless Hair Metal bands. We had NOTHING!!! NOTHING!!  Duran Duran, the Power Station and other Bullshit was the best we could do.  Thank god for Raves.

I was a waver who liked some punk.  So, um, what's wrong with The Clash, Duran Duran, and the Sex Pistols? (Okie, I wasn't all that big on the Sex Pistols.) 

I'll agree about the endless metal bands, but I didn't watch music on my TV.  That's what radio and tapes were for.

New Order, Depeche Mode, the Cure, Siouxsie, and a plethora of others.

[slog]

Look man, you have no idea.  Try being a high school senior in the Fall of 1987.  We had to listen to The Clash, The Sex Pistols and stuff like Joe Jackson because the only thing on TV was endless Hair Metal bands. We had NOTHING!!! NOTHING!!  Duran Duran, the Power Station and other Bullshit was the best we could do.  Thank god for Raves.

I was a waver who liked some punk.  So, um, what's wrong with The Clash, Duran Duran, and the Sex Pistols? (Okie, I wasn't all that big on the Sex Pistols.) 

I'll agree about the endless metal bands, but I didn't watch music on my TV.  That's what radio and tapes were for.

New Order, Depeche Mode, the Cure, Siouxsie, and a plethora of others.

Yes, I admit I saw Depress Mode in concert a few times.  The point being that the "popular" music was 100% crap.  Nirvania changed all that (for a few years at least)

[Grand Design]

Don't hate on Depeche Mode!

[Signe]

I've seen Butthole Surfers seven times live.  hehe.  Only  three or four were while I was working.   

[schild]

The point being that the "popular" music was 100% crap.  Nirvania changed all that (for a few years at least)

lol

Yea, 1991 sure was tough whatwith REM, Pearl Jam, RHCP, Metallica and Massive attack - all at their peak.

/eyeroll

Edit: Not to mention Moby, GnR, Bad Religion, etc.

You didn't have it hard in 1991. You just didn't have emo shit-music yet, but hey, Nirvana filled the whiny teenager MY LIFE IS SO HARD angst-filled crevice.

[Grand Design]

I believe that you have missed the point of Nirvana.  I had a diatribe, but I'm too busy reliving the glory.

[Engels]

lol

Yea, 1991 sure was tough whatwith REM, Pearl Jam, RHCP, Metallica and Massive attack - all at their peak.

/eyeroll

Edit: Not to mention Moby, GnR, Bad Religion, etc.

You didn't have it hard in 1991. You just didn't have emo shit-music yet, but hey, Nirvana filled the whiny teenager MY LIFE IS SO HARD angst-filled crevice.

I believe the original complaint was of 1987, to which I can attest to being utter crap in the mainstream. Yes, I was listening to the best stuff the Cure, the Clash, the Sex Pistols, Husker Du and REM had to offer, but that was not on the radio, that was not on MTV. Schild, I'm glad you found the 2000's so much better than the 90's, but you really gotta trust us on this one, it was even worse before.

[ahoythematey]

I wasn't a part of the crowd that worshiped Nirvana, and in fact didn't really care about them since at the time I was into stuff like Metallica, Pink Floyd, and Yanni.  However, as the years went by and I started listening to their stuff I found myself really enjoying it, to the point that I recognized how well their music captured that ever-present feeling of aimlessness and disappointment in life I had felt over and over.  I really doubt they themselves thought they were speaking to others about it, though: they were just making their music.

It's also really easy to look back at all the gems of the early nineties and forget that most of them were not easily found thanks to almost the entirety of radio and television drowning in over-commercialized, awful-pop bullshit.

[slog]

I believe that you have missed the point of Nirvana.  I had a diatribe, but I'm too busy reliving the glory.

heh.

One good thing about the 80's was that I got to see Jane's do a matinee in Boston with about 30 other people in the club. 

[schild]

Schild, I'm glad you found the 2000's so much better than the 90's, but you really gotta trust us on this one, it was even worse before.

I never said that at all, not even a little. The 00s are fairly unbearable in terms of the most popular stuff (even though there were some weird periods of genre blurring with She Wants Revenge and Blue October [the last synth act I'd ever expect to get popular]). The 80s, especially the late 80s had it rough though, no doubt. But then, typically the music I favor most is underground shit so complaining about 'hair metal' and other poppy shit normally just makes my eyes roll back into my head.

Also, I was exposed to pretty weird shit thanks to my incredibly bad (and strange) father. In 1991 (which plants me as a firm 8 years old), I had both Lords of Acid's Lust and had Scumdogs of the Universe from GWAR - admittedly that latter one was due to them being from my hometown. /shrug There's always good music and bad music, it's always a matter of what you surround yourself with. Complaining about what the mainstream is exposed to seems like a fruitless activity to me.

[Fabricated]

I know we're pretty much arguing over the virtues of trolling at this point but I just want to say that Halcyon and on and on is a better song than Tonight Tonight as well IMO. I'm pretty sure it was released in the 90's...

[schild]

Peter Murphy's Deep came out in 1990 and Cuts You Up, Marlene Dietrich's Favourite Poem, and A Strange Kind of Love were all better than Tonight, Tonight. Not really what I'm getting at though. >_<

[Tale]

To be fair, Nrivana was overrated... 

I'm a Nirvana fan and I agree. Kurt Cobain agreed with you, too. He was a junkie musician getting more attention than he deserved, and he couldn't stand it.

[Bunk]

Yea, 1991 sure was tough whatwith REM, Pearl Jam, RHCP, Metallica and Massive attack - all at their peak.

I can't let that go. While the Black Album was thier first real radio play acceptance, it also was the start of a very fast slide down the slope of generic crappiness. Metallica peaked in 1985.

[slog]

Yea, 1991 sure was tough whatwith REM, Pearl Jam, RHCP, Metallica and Massive attack - all at their peak.

I can't let that go. While the Black Album was thier first real radio play acceptance, it also was the start of a very fast slide down the slope of generic crappiness. Metallica peaked in 1985.

I forgot to add.

REM sucked. A lot.  Perl Jam was meh.  No idea who RHCP is.

[Bunk]

(chilli peppers)

[slog]

(chilli peppers)

Everything after Freaky Styley (or whatever it was) sucked.

[stray]

i disagree bigtime. i think hillel and flea had a cool synchronicity going on, but john frusciante is pretty much the shit. you've got to be an old fart to not recognize that.

[Stewie]

I have to take exception to the Nirvana bashing.
Whether you liked or hated them, thought they were geniuses or just lucky shitty musicians the one thing you can't deny is that Smells Like Teen Spirit was an anthem for a massive group of people and a whole genre of music that nearly 20 years later we are still seeing the results of.
The other thing that nirvana did was inspire a new generation of kids to pick up a guitar and try to become musicians whether they had any talent or not (mostly not). (much like punk in the late 70's)This is no small feat.

You don't have to like a band to see their impact. God knows I hate Abba but I have to give credit where it is due and they did what they did better and more successfully than anyone else and their influence and impact is unquestioned.

For these reasons I would pick Smells Like Teen Spirit as *the* song of the 90's. The best, no. My favorite, no. An Iconic song that is instantly identified with the 90's like no other, absolutely.

[voodoolily]

i disagree bigtime. i think hillel and flea had a cool synchronicity going on, but john frusciante is pretty much the shit. you've got to be an old fart to not recognize that.

...or too distracted by the douchesuckitude of Kiedis. Which is the major problem (maybe the only problem) with the chili peppers.

[stray]

aww, he seems like a sweet guy to me 

[voodoolily]

He probably makes great pancakes and gives the nicest hugs, but his singing is teh suck.

[Merusk]

Smells Like gets too much air play.. hell, the whole Nevermind album gets too much attention.  I enjoyed In Utero much more, and Heart Shaped Box's video killed SLTS.

Anywho, I still enjoy Metallica, so phhbt.  St Anger sucked all kinds of balls, but fuck I'm not an angry angsty 18 year old anymore so they've moved on as much as I have. The new album, while sounding WAYYY over produced (yay compression) is pretty damn good.

 

[stray]

i think kurt was trying to alienate and intentionally sound like shit for in utero. err, mostly. what's funny to me is that the song he was trying to throw it away with the most there -- scentless apprentice -- is probably the best one. i remember dave grohl made up the riff, and kurt used it because he thought it was "boneheaded" (said that in front of grohl...which visibly pissed grohl off). thing is, it's the grooviest thing they ever did.

but i like the poppy cheap trick ness of nevermind. i don't listen to the radio much, but i still dig the songs when my ipod shuffles there

He probably makes great pancakes and gives the nicest hugs, but his singing is teh suck.

OK, I can agree with that somewhat. I still like the newer songs where they're reverting back to freaky styley and funking it up, and keidis is just mc'ing basically (because when they do that, frusciante can pull out the funk better than hillel did)....instead of when he's trying to sing a lot. some of that is ok, but you're right, he's not a great singer.

on a sidenote, if you listen to frusciante's solo stuff, he's a better singer than keidis too. not great, but just a little more soulful

[Brogarn]

Nirvana went to the heights they did due to extremely lucky timing with at least a little bit of talent. The early angsty 90's after the over the top pop culture and hair bands of the 80's. It was just plain perfect timing. It's one of the reasons (beyond just being a good album) that Metallica's Black made so much money. People were tired of pop metal and the 80's in general. Angst hit the mainstream and Nirvana was one of the bands that hit right at the perfect time.

But, Nirvana also spawned Dave Grohl and he's a damn good musician so I have to definitely credit them with that.

Also, I spent time off and on over the past few days thinking about schild's point with Tonight Tonight and I think he's right. It hits all the points he mentions and I can't think of anything else that did.

Beyond that, I really liked 90's music. Also liked 80's music. I pop in Depeche Mode's 101 if I'm in the mood. Of course, I've also been known to crank up Metallica or Big Daddy Kane, so my tastes are eclectic to say the least.

[Nebu]

Also, I spent time off and on over the past few days thinking about schild's point with Tonight Tonight and I think he's right. It hits all the points he mentions and I can't think of anything else that did.

I disagree.  The video IS outstanding, but it makes up for a lot of shortcomings in the song.  If you listen to the song without the video, it's a VERY different experience.  The overproduction of the song smacks of a corrective measure for Corgan's voice.  It still reminds me of an updated Queen/ELO ripoff more than a unique work.  I like Tonight tonight as a song, but to say that it best represents the decade would be too much.  Nirvana, REM, U2, or RHCP do a better job, at least musically.

[Brogarn]

None of those bands fit under the "opus" bit he mentions later in the thread. And Tonight Tonight was pretty much an opus on the early 90's "alternative" if you include everything schild mentions about production, video, etc. So while I like the bands you mention it's only this one song that truly fits all the categories. The song even sounds like an ending.

[Nebu]

None of those bands fit under the "opus" bit he mentions later in the thread. And Tonight Tonight was pretty much an opus on the early 90's "alternative" if you include everything schild mentions about production, video, etc. So while I like the bands you mention it's only this one song that truly fits all the categories. The song even sounds like an ending.

Fair enough.  What about Losing my religion?