My Top 100 Rock Singles of the 1990s
I've already done lists for '90s R&B and '90s pop, but this one was a little more personal for me, because in the '90s I was an alt rock kid who religiously listened to WHFS and watched "120 Minutes" and read Spin and CMJ and Alternative Weekly and learned to play drums and formed bands. So I think I go a little further from conventional wisdom with this list and the others and championed my favorites over the popular consensus, partly just to celebrate that '90s rock was a lot more than just grunge (don't get me wrong, there's a ton of grunge on here). Here's the Spotify playlist:
1. The
Breeders - "Cannonball" (1993)
It's possible that the Pixies were a little too weird to be a massive mainstream band, but more than any other band of the era besides maybe Jane's Addiction, there's a sense that they broke up at the exact moment that their cultural cachet was exploding. But, in a great twist of fate, Kim Deal heard that Black Francis had announced the Pixies' breakup the day she was in the studio working on "Cannonball," the song that would propel her side project-turned-main gig into a platinum radio darling, charting higher than any Pixies song. My local alternative station DC101 has an absurdly named daily feature called Doo Doo Time Spectacular in which they play a song that used to be on the radio all the time that isn’t in regular rotation anymore. A few weeks ago they played “Cannonball” in honor of Kim and Kelly Deal’s birthday, and I realized that this song, which at one point was so overplayed that I kind of reflexively changed the station when it came on, sounds fresh enough to me again that it might be my #1 here.
2. Soundgarden - "Outshined" (1991)
There is, as you’d probably expect, a lot of grunge on this list – about 1 in 7 songs on this list is by a band from Seattle. And while I love all of the big Seattle bands to varying degrees, Soundgarden has really grown the most in my esteem over the years – Superunknown is my favorite big multi-platinum rock album of the ‘90s, and a song from another album, Badmotorfinger’s “Outshined,” stands out to me as an absolutely perfect song. Probably more than any other band, even Rush, Soundgarden taught me how to play drums in 7/8, and this is one of their best monster 7/8 riffs and an absurdly powerful vocal from Chris Cornell, perhaps the greatest melodic screamer of his generation. I was in Cleveland last week and visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I think I was about as awed to see Cornell’s guitar and a pair of Matt Cameron’s drumsticks as anything in the building, that’s how much those guys mean to me.
3. Depeche Mode - "Enjoy The Silence" (1990)
Depeche Mode managed to be the band from the early ‘80s UK synth pop wave that grew the most effectively into an alternative rock legacy act, even without any guitars on the majority of their first decade of singles. And even when they did finally put some guitars on hits like “Personal Jesus” and “I Feel You,” their bluesy riffs didn’t feel like any kind of attempt to keep up with the zeitgeist. And their most enduring song is a sweeping symphony of synths and drum machines, danceable enough to cross over to pop radio but still brooding enough to make sense in the modern rock landscape, standing alongside R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” as an unlikely pop standard of alt-rock’s early ‘90s takeover.
4. Nirvana - "In Bloom" (1992)
So many people of my generation have a story about hearing “Smells Like Teenage Spirit” for the first time and it totally changing their life and whatnot, and I always feel like I just barely missed the party for all that. Guns N’ Roses sort of pulled me into actively following rock music and interestedly watching MTV in late 1991, and by that point “Come As You Are” was in heavy rotation and as far as I knew Nirvana were just another established young band, and I wound up getting far more into Pearl Jam and some other contemporaries over the next year. So “In Bloom,” the 4th single from Nevermind, wound up being the Nirvana song that really grabbed me, and remains my favorite to this day. Dave Grohl has taken pains to credit his predecessor, Chad Channing, for coming up with those big distinctive tom-tom fills on the original Sub Pop recording of “In Bloom,” but Grohl and Butch Vig made those drums sound humongous.
5. Rage
Against The Machine - "Guerrilla Radio" (1999)
1992’s “Killing In The Name” is probably the definitive RATM song, and certainly one of their early tracks that really helped presage how much fusing hip hop and hard rock would become one of the defining sounds of the ‘90s. But I think my favorite Rage track is the lead single of what would turn out to be their last album of original material, which rifled through the band’s whole bag of tricks – big build-up to a roaring riff, insanely inventive Tom Morello guitar solo, intense whispered bridge, big climactic outro refrain, etc. – in a faster, shorter, righter package than anything else they’d ever done.
6. Green Day - "Basket Case" (1994)
Despite the undeniable if somewhat complicated punk and post-punk roots of most of the big grunge and alternative bands of the early ‘90s, I distinctly remember never hearing the P-word at all in most media coverage of new music until Guns N’ Roses released their “punk rock cover album” The Spaghetti Incident? in 1993 and California punk pop bands like Green Day and The Offspring started getting serious airplay in the following months (this is surely partly how young and sheltered I was – I also remember not hearing the term “indie rock” until 1994). I think I was still a little too much of a grunge kid to appreciate them at the time, but “Basket Case” and “She” are great songs, I still kind of only love Green Day songs when Tre Cool is just absolutely sprinting through the track as quickly as possible.
7. Matthew Sweet - "Girlfriend" (1991)
Matthew Sweet kicked around the second half of the ‘80s, guesting on a Golden Palominos record and releasing two overproduced solo albums on different major labels that went nowhere, before Girlfriend arrived and crystallized what would be his signature sound: dry retro production with hard panning, big power pop hooks, and killer guitar leads from Robert Quine and Television’s Richard Lloyd. Sweet was maybe decades ahead of his time in filling the “Girlfriend” video with anime footage, and it seems to match the earnest nerd vibe of the song perfectly.
8.
Lenny Kravitz - "Are You Gonna Go My Way?" (1993)
So much Lenny Kravitz stuff is just a little too simple and too beholden to his influences. But this one just feels like it has a little more meat on the bones, a flashier and more distinctive guitar line, all these little dynamic twists and turns and hooky moments. And I’m really impressed that Kravitz played the drums on this track himself, it really moves.
9. Mazzy Star -
"Fade Into You" (1994)
It’s weird to think that Mazzy Star’s David Roback was active on the Paisley Underground psych rock scene a decade before “Fade Into You” and played in a band with Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles. But then, “Fade Into You” is one of those songs that probably would’ve felt kind of out of time and completely at odds with its surroundings no matter what year it was a hit, and that’s helped it hold up incredibly well over the years.
10. Third Eye Blind - "Semi-Charmed
Life" (1997)
Most of these songs I liked right away, and some had to grow on me a bit, but if there’s one that I hated for months and then, years later, came around to love, it’s “Semi-Charmed Life.” The once-brooding alternative rock landscape got brighter and lighter very quickly in the mid-‘90s, especially in the summer of 1997, when McG’s videos for Smashmouth, Sugar Ray, Barenaked Ladies, and Fastball did as much as Hype Williams’s Bad Boy videos to make MTV suddenly blindingly bright. Third Eye Blind’s debut single had a moderately grittier-looking video and lyrics about crystal meth, but the “doo doo doot doo” hook just seems too garishly bubblegum to me at the time. Radio stations favored the 3:45 single edit, seemingly to play it even more times every day than any other song, but once I started to hear the 4:27 album track more, I realized how beautifully constructed “Semi-Charmed Life” is, bulldozing you with hooks and then breaking down and building back up like a Gen X “Born To Run.”
It's possible that the Pixies were a little too weird to be a massive mainstream band, but more than any other band of the era besides maybe Jane's Addiction, there's a sense that they broke up at the exact moment that their cultural cachet was exploding. But, in a great twist of fate, Kim Deal heard that Black Francis had announced the Pixies' breakup the day she was in the studio working on "Cannonball," the song that would propel her side project-turned-main gig into a platinum radio darling, charting higher than any Pixies song. My local alternative station DC101 has an absurdly named daily feature called Doo Doo Time Spectacular in which they play a song that used to be on the radio all the time that isn’t in regular rotation anymore. A few weeks ago they played “Cannonball” in honor of Kim and Kelly Deal’s birthday, and I realized that this song, which at one point was so overplayed that I kind of reflexively changed the station when it came on, sounds fresh enough to me again that it might be my #1 here.
There is, as you’d probably expect, a lot of grunge on this list – about 1 in 7 songs on this list is by a band from Seattle. And while I love all of the big Seattle bands to varying degrees, Soundgarden has really grown the most in my esteem over the years – Superunknown is my favorite big multi-platinum rock album of the ‘90s, and a song from another album, Badmotorfinger’s “Outshined,” stands out to me as an absolutely perfect song. Probably more than any other band, even Rush, Soundgarden taught me how to play drums in 7/8, and this is one of their best monster 7/8 riffs and an absurdly powerful vocal from Chris Cornell, perhaps the greatest melodic screamer of his generation. I was in Cleveland last week and visited the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I think I was about as awed to see Cornell’s guitar and a pair of Matt Cameron’s drumsticks as anything in the building, that’s how much those guys mean to me.
Depeche Mode managed to be the band from the early ‘80s UK synth pop wave that grew the most effectively into an alternative rock legacy act, even without any guitars on the majority of their first decade of singles. And even when they did finally put some guitars on hits like “Personal Jesus” and “I Feel You,” their bluesy riffs didn’t feel like any kind of attempt to keep up with the zeitgeist. And their most enduring song is a sweeping symphony of synths and drum machines, danceable enough to cross over to pop radio but still brooding enough to make sense in the modern rock landscape, standing alongside R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” as an unlikely pop standard of alt-rock’s early ‘90s takeover.
So many people of my generation have a story about hearing “Smells Like Teenage Spirit” for the first time and it totally changing their life and whatnot, and I always feel like I just barely missed the party for all that. Guns N’ Roses sort of pulled me into actively following rock music and interestedly watching MTV in late 1991, and by that point “Come As You Are” was in heavy rotation and as far as I knew Nirvana were just another established young band, and I wound up getting far more into Pearl Jam and some other contemporaries over the next year. So “In Bloom,” the 4th single from Nevermind, wound up being the Nirvana song that really grabbed me, and remains my favorite to this day. Dave Grohl has taken pains to credit his predecessor, Chad Channing, for coming up with those big distinctive tom-tom fills on the original Sub Pop recording of “In Bloom,” but Grohl and Butch Vig made those drums sound humongous.
1992’s “Killing In The Name” is probably the definitive RATM song, and certainly one of their early tracks that really helped presage how much fusing hip hop and hard rock would become one of the defining sounds of the ‘90s. But I think my favorite Rage track is the lead single of what would turn out to be their last album of original material, which rifled through the band’s whole bag of tricks – big build-up to a roaring riff, insanely inventive Tom Morello guitar solo, intense whispered bridge, big climactic outro refrain, etc. – in a faster, shorter, righter package than anything else they’d ever done.
Despite the undeniable if somewhat complicated punk and post-punk roots of most of the big grunge and alternative bands of the early ‘90s, I distinctly remember never hearing the P-word at all in most media coverage of new music until Guns N’ Roses released their “punk rock cover album” The Spaghetti Incident? in 1993 and California punk pop bands like Green Day and The Offspring started getting serious airplay in the following months (this is surely partly how young and sheltered I was – I also remember not hearing the term “indie rock” until 1994). I think I was still a little too much of a grunge kid to appreciate them at the time, but “Basket Case” and “She” are great songs, I still kind of only love Green Day songs when Tre Cool is just absolutely sprinting through the track as quickly as possible.
Matthew Sweet kicked around the second half of the ‘80s, guesting on a Golden Palominos record and releasing two overproduced solo albums on different major labels that went nowhere, before Girlfriend arrived and crystallized what would be his signature sound: dry retro production with hard panning, big power pop hooks, and killer guitar leads from Robert Quine and Television’s Richard Lloyd. Sweet was maybe decades ahead of his time in filling the “Girlfriend” video with anime footage, and it seems to match the earnest nerd vibe of the song perfectly.
So much Lenny Kravitz stuff is just a little too simple and too beholden to his influences. But this one just feels like it has a little more meat on the bones, a flashier and more distinctive guitar line, all these little dynamic twists and turns and hooky moments. And I’m really impressed that Kravitz played the drums on this track himself, it really moves.
It’s weird to think that Mazzy Star’s David Roback was active on the Paisley Underground psych rock scene a decade before “Fade Into You” and played in a band with Susanna Hoffs of the Bangles. But then, “Fade Into You” is one of those songs that probably would’ve felt kind of out of time and completely at odds with its surroundings no matter what year it was a hit, and that’s helped it hold up incredibly well over the years.
Most of these songs I liked right away, and some had to grow on me a bit, but if there’s one that I hated for months and then, years later, came around to love, it’s “Semi-Charmed Life.” The once-brooding alternative rock landscape got brighter and lighter very quickly in the mid-‘90s, especially in the summer of 1997, when McG’s videos for Smashmouth, Sugar Ray, Barenaked Ladies, and Fastball did as much as Hype Williams’s Bad Boy videos to make MTV suddenly blindingly bright. Third Eye Blind’s debut single had a moderately grittier-looking video and lyrics about crystal meth, but the “doo doo doot doo” hook just seems too garishly bubblegum to me at the time. Radio stations favored the 3:45 single edit, seemingly to play it even more times every day than any other song, but once I started to hear the 4:27 album track more, I realized how beautifully constructed “Semi-Charmed Life” is, bulldozing you with hooks and then breaking down and building back up like a Gen X “Born To Run.”
11. Pearl Jam - "Corduroy" (1995)
Led Zeppelin became the kings of classic rock radio in part by not bothering to release most of their best-loved songs as singles, turning seemingly half of their catalog into AOR staples in the process. And while Pearl Jam would probably bristle at the idea that boycotting MTV actually helped them make more hits, I do think it freed up radio to pick out the band’s catchiest songs, especially on Vitalogy, where “Better Man” and “Corduroy” wound up being more enduring than any of the album’s 3 official singles. I remember when Vitalogy came out on vinyl two weeks before it was out on CD, and a local radio station played it on vinyl and I taped it off the radio and listened to that tape for a week or two before I could get the CD. I had no idea what "Corduroy" was called but it was my favorite song right off the bat.
12. Nine Inch Nails - "Head Like A
Hole" (1990)
A lot of the people on this list that became stars in the ‘90s are still making music today, and I still dutifully check out a lot of it and hope for the best. But Trent Reznor is probably the guy who I still eagerly await new music from the most in the 2020s, whether it’s Nine Inch Nails or film scores or something surprising like Halsey’s great album last year. And while the NIN aesthetic and Reznor’s incredibly ear for production got refined quite a bit after 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine, that album and its late-breaking 1990 hit have still held up incredibly well. There was a point in the late ‘90s when half of hard rock radio sounded like NIN, but nobody else did it quite as well as them.
13. Metallica - "Sad But True" (1992)
Metallica’s self-titled ‘black album’ is the highest-selling album of the SoundScan era – it may not be Thriller, but nothing in the last 30 years has come close to matching it, and probably never will. And that’s kind of funny since many of the millions of metalheads the album helped create now consider it a fake metal disgrace that’s nowhere near as good as Metallica’s ‘80s work. And listen, I kind of get it, but those songs kick ass, “Sad But True” is certainly slower and slicker than “Master of Puppets” but it hits like a ton of bricks.
14. AC/DC - "Thunderstruck" (1990)
Like Metallica, AC/DC redefined the commercial horizons for hard rock with the double diamond sales of 1980’s Back In Black, but the diminishing returns of their other ‘80s albums suggested they’d just continue to coast on those big blocky signature riffs. But Angus Young had a new trick up his sleeve with the rapid fingerpicking of “Thunderstuck” that made it an instant standout in the band’s catalog and returned them to huge multiplatinum album sales.
15. Foo
Fighters - "Everlong" (1997)
Sonic Youth are my favorite band, so I found it a little validating that Dave Grohl openly says that the Foo Fighters’ greatest and most beloved song started as his attempt at a Sonic Youth riff – even the hi-hats have a bit of Steve Shelley in them (and given that he and Nirvana toured with Sonic Youth in 1991, it totally makes sense that it sounds very much like a Goo era riff). But Grohl really took it somewhere else with his songwriting, he really had a creative growth spurt on The Colour And The Shape.
16. Smashing
Pumpkins - "Cherub Rock" (1993)
I would say that one of the worst things about falling in love with music via ‘90s rock is that it took me a long time to gain an appreciation for lyrics, because so many of my favorite frontmen would kind of warble incomprehensibly, and often if I managed to figure out what they were saying I would end up disappointed. I mean, “Cherub Rock” is an absolutely incredible-sounding song, with enormous drums and one of the greatest guitar tones of the ‘90s, but I kind of wish I could go back to not having any idea that Billy Corgan was saying things like “Who wants honey? As long as there’s some money” and “Hipsters unite, come align for the big fight to rock.” To this day, if I hear a snare drum roll on the radio, I spend the next 2 seconds hoping with all my heart that it’s “Cherub Rock” and not Weezer’s “Beverly Hills.”
17. Belly - "Feed The Tree" (1993)
Tanya Donelly dropped out of the Breeders by the time they made “Cannonball,” as well as the band she rose to fame with, Throwing Muses. But she wound up with one of the defining alternative hits of 1993 too, and I kind of forgot this song existed for a long time before marveling at it again the last few years.
18. The
Mighty Mighty Bosstones - "The Impression That I Get" (1997)
Ska punk or “ska-core” has become a bit of a punchline since its brief moment of commercial dominance circa 1997. But I always had a soft spot for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones dating back to 1993’s “Someday I Suppose” and think Dickie Barrett’s hoarse vocals and self-effacing lyrics give their songs a much more interesting personality than the kind of smug bullshit Reel Big Fish was doing, so I was glad that the Bosstones got to capitalize on that moment and make arguably its most enduring song.
19.
School of Fish - "3 Strange Days" (1991)
People like to contrast the Seattle bands with the hair metal that saturated MTV before them, but I think it’s more interesting to consider what alternative radio sounded like before Nirvana – slick, revved-up jangle rock like the L.A. band School of Fish’s only hit. Frontman Josh Clayton-Felt died of cancer tragically young in 2000, but the other members of School of Fish reconnected during the pandemic to remotely collaborate on a new recording of “3 Strange Days.”
20. R.E.M. - "Man On The Moon" (1992)
I would like to unhear all those live performances where Michael Stipe belts out the world “COOOOOL” at the end of the chorus, and for that matter unsee the movie named after the song. Still a great song from a great album, though.
Led Zeppelin became the kings of classic rock radio in part by not bothering to release most of their best-loved songs as singles, turning seemingly half of their catalog into AOR staples in the process. And while Pearl Jam would probably bristle at the idea that boycotting MTV actually helped them make more hits, I do think it freed up radio to pick out the band’s catchiest songs, especially on Vitalogy, where “Better Man” and “Corduroy” wound up being more enduring than any of the album’s 3 official singles. I remember when Vitalogy came out on vinyl two weeks before it was out on CD, and a local radio station played it on vinyl and I taped it off the radio and listened to that tape for a week or two before I could get the CD. I had no idea what "Corduroy" was called but it was my favorite song right off the bat.
A lot of the people on this list that became stars in the ‘90s are still making music today, and I still dutifully check out a lot of it and hope for the best. But Trent Reznor is probably the guy who I still eagerly await new music from the most in the 2020s, whether it’s Nine Inch Nails or film scores or something surprising like Halsey’s great album last year. And while the NIN aesthetic and Reznor’s incredibly ear for production got refined quite a bit after 1989’s Pretty Hate Machine, that album and its late-breaking 1990 hit have still held up incredibly well. There was a point in the late ‘90s when half of hard rock radio sounded like NIN, but nobody else did it quite as well as them.
Metallica’s self-titled ‘black album’ is the highest-selling album of the SoundScan era – it may not be Thriller, but nothing in the last 30 years has come close to matching it, and probably never will. And that’s kind of funny since many of the millions of metalheads the album helped create now consider it a fake metal disgrace that’s nowhere near as good as Metallica’s ‘80s work. And listen, I kind of get it, but those songs kick ass, “Sad But True” is certainly slower and slicker than “Master of Puppets” but it hits like a ton of bricks.
Like Metallica, AC/DC redefined the commercial horizons for hard rock with the double diamond sales of 1980’s Back In Black, but the diminishing returns of their other ‘80s albums suggested they’d just continue to coast on those big blocky signature riffs. But Angus Young had a new trick up his sleeve with the rapid fingerpicking of “Thunderstuck” that made it an instant standout in the band’s catalog and returned them to huge multiplatinum album sales.
Sonic Youth are my favorite band, so I found it a little validating that Dave Grohl openly says that the Foo Fighters’ greatest and most beloved song started as his attempt at a Sonic Youth riff – even the hi-hats have a bit of Steve Shelley in them (and given that he and Nirvana toured with Sonic Youth in 1991, it totally makes sense that it sounds very much like a Goo era riff). But Grohl really took it somewhere else with his songwriting, he really had a creative growth spurt on The Colour And The Shape.
I would say that one of the worst things about falling in love with music via ‘90s rock is that it took me a long time to gain an appreciation for lyrics, because so many of my favorite frontmen would kind of warble incomprehensibly, and often if I managed to figure out what they were saying I would end up disappointed. I mean, “Cherub Rock” is an absolutely incredible-sounding song, with enormous drums and one of the greatest guitar tones of the ‘90s, but I kind of wish I could go back to not having any idea that Billy Corgan was saying things like “Who wants honey? As long as there’s some money” and “Hipsters unite, come align for the big fight to rock.” To this day, if I hear a snare drum roll on the radio, I spend the next 2 seconds hoping with all my heart that it’s “Cherub Rock” and not Weezer’s “Beverly Hills.”
Tanya Donelly dropped out of the Breeders by the time they made “Cannonball,” as well as the band she rose to fame with, Throwing Muses. But she wound up with one of the defining alternative hits of 1993 too, and I kind of forgot this song existed for a long time before marveling at it again the last few years.
Ska punk or “ska-core” has become a bit of a punchline since its brief moment of commercial dominance circa 1997. But I always had a soft spot for the Mighty Mighty Bosstones dating back to 1993’s “Someday I Suppose” and think Dickie Barrett’s hoarse vocals and self-effacing lyrics give their songs a much more interesting personality than the kind of smug bullshit Reel Big Fish was doing, so I was glad that the Bosstones got to capitalize on that moment and make arguably its most enduring song.
People like to contrast the Seattle bands with the hair metal that saturated MTV before them, but I think it’s more interesting to consider what alternative radio sounded like before Nirvana – slick, revved-up jangle rock like the L.A. band School of Fish’s only hit. Frontman Josh Clayton-Felt died of cancer tragically young in 2000, but the other members of School of Fish reconnected during the pandemic to remotely collaborate on a new recording of “3 Strange Days.”
I would like to unhear all those live performances where Michael Stipe belts out the world “COOOOOL” at the end of the chorus, and for that matter unsee the movie named after the song. Still a great song from a great album, though.
21. Spacehog - "In The Meantime" (1996)
Spacehog seem almost like a parody of a 4th generation glam rock band of Bowie wannabes, right down to the name. But this song is such a beautiful piece of work, the sound design of how that Penguin Café Orchestra sample is incorporated into the rest of the song is just fantastic.
22. Tori Amos - "Cornflake Girl" (1994)
When Tori Amos rose to fame there was a lot of Baltimore media coverage of her local roots, and my dad instantly became a big fan and I have a lot of fond memories of hearing her ‘90s albums in his car and around the house. Merry Clayton of “Gimme Shelter” fame once again gives a hall of fame backing vocal performance on “Cornflake Girl.” I wish the Under The Pink singles still got radio play but it feels like every female singer-songwriter that was on alt-rock radio in the ‘90s kind of fell out of recurrent airplay really quickly, even if they didn’t cross over to pop radio like Alanis or Jewel.
23. Jeff Buckley - "Last Goodbye" (1995)
The few times I heard “Last Goodbye” on the radio, I was taken with the bassline but I don’t think I was ready to really appreciate what Jeff Buckley was doing – so few people were really singing well on alt-rock radio at the time, and certainly there were no other men with a gorgeous falsetto, so I kind of dismissed it as too pretty and too pop. But then I heard “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” in the late ‘90s and was bowled over and Grace became one of my favorite albums of all time.
24. James - "Laid" (1994)
Another song where I think I found the falsetto silly or off-putting at the time but now I marvel at Tim Booth’s vocal performance. It surprised me when I learned that Brian Eno produced several albums by James, who have a much lower American profile than most of the other people he works with, but then “Laid” may be the most popular Eno-produced track that isn’t by the usual suspects like U2 and Talking Heads.
25. Stone Temple Pilots - "Big Empty" (1994)
Stone Temple Pilots were one of the first bands I really turned my nose up at, I was just horrified as “Sex Type Thing” and “Plush” (although in retrospect it was pretty bold for a band to start their career with two songs about sexual assault). But they grew on me big time with their second album Purple, and that began when “Big Empty” was previewed on the soundtrack album for The Crow. I don’t know if “Big Empty” was really that different from their last single, “Creep,” but I just liked it a whole lot more. I’m glad I got to see Stone Temple Pilots live once when Scott Weiland was still alive – last week I was at Summerfest in Milwaukee and I caught STP playing a few songs with their current singer Jeff Gutt doing his fairly accurate Weiland impression, and it all just bummed me out so much.
26. The Kenny Wayne Shepherd Band - "Blue On
Black" (1998)
There was a weird moment in the mid-‘90s when major labels were suddenly pushing a couple of white teenage blue guitar prodigies, Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. That moment has largely been forgotten, except for the fact that the third single from Shepherd’s second album became sort of a sleeper hit that doesn’t sound anything like his Hendrix tributes, or like anything else that was on the radio in 1998, which was almost definitely the worst year of the decade in terms of mainstream rock.
27. Alice In Chains - "Rooster" (1992)
Alice In Chains are by far my least favorite of Seattle’s ‘big four’ but they were still pretty incredible, especially songs like “Rooster” where Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell harmonized.
28. Nirvana - "Heart-Shaped Box" (1993)
I remember sitting in my bedroom listening to the radio, and the DJ said that the new Nirvana single was coming up after the break, and I turned down the lights and patiently waited to hear it, and was just blown away. That’s kind of funny because I didn’t even have a copy of Nevermind at that point, and wound up owning In Utero first, but that album was a really pivotal moment for me, really my gateway into things like Sonic Youth and the noisier side of indie rock and post-punk.
29. Sonic Youth - "Bull In The Heather" (1994)
I actually hated Sonic Youth the first time I heard “100%,” and still don’t particularly like that song, but “Bull In The Heather” really intrigued me and made much more interesting use of the sort of random bursts of feedback and string-scraping. And Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star was an odd first album to hear by the band, but it really helped ease me into loving their entire catalog.
30.
Dinosaur Jr. - "Feel The Pain" (1994)
In 1994 I remember watching Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and Dinosaur Jr. in 1991: The Year Punk Broke over and over and really falling in love with those bands. The ‘90s Dinosaur albums without Lou and Murph sometimes get a little downplayed, but J Mascis is an incredible drummer and I love songs like “Feel The Pain” where he’s just absolutely showing off on guitar and drums at the same time.
Spacehog seem almost like a parody of a 4th generation glam rock band of Bowie wannabes, right down to the name. But this song is such a beautiful piece of work, the sound design of how that Penguin Café Orchestra sample is incorporated into the rest of the song is just fantastic.
When Tori Amos rose to fame there was a lot of Baltimore media coverage of her local roots, and my dad instantly became a big fan and I have a lot of fond memories of hearing her ‘90s albums in his car and around the house. Merry Clayton of “Gimme Shelter” fame once again gives a hall of fame backing vocal performance on “Cornflake Girl.” I wish the Under The Pink singles still got radio play but it feels like every female singer-songwriter that was on alt-rock radio in the ‘90s kind of fell out of recurrent airplay really quickly, even if they didn’t cross over to pop radio like Alanis or Jewel.
The few times I heard “Last Goodbye” on the radio, I was taken with the bassline but I don’t think I was ready to really appreciate what Jeff Buckley was doing – so few people were really singing well on alt-rock radio at the time, and certainly there were no other men with a gorgeous falsetto, so I kind of dismissed it as too pretty and too pop. But then I heard “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” in the late ‘90s and was bowled over and Grace became one of my favorite albums of all time.
Another song where I think I found the falsetto silly or off-putting at the time but now I marvel at Tim Booth’s vocal performance. It surprised me when I learned that Brian Eno produced several albums by James, who have a much lower American profile than most of the other people he works with, but then “Laid” may be the most popular Eno-produced track that isn’t by the usual suspects like U2 and Talking Heads.
Stone Temple Pilots were one of the first bands I really turned my nose up at, I was just horrified as “Sex Type Thing” and “Plush” (although in retrospect it was pretty bold for a band to start their career with two songs about sexual assault). But they grew on me big time with their second album Purple, and that began when “Big Empty” was previewed on the soundtrack album for The Crow. I don’t know if “Big Empty” was really that different from their last single, “Creep,” but I just liked it a whole lot more. I’m glad I got to see Stone Temple Pilots live once when Scott Weiland was still alive – last week I was at Summerfest in Milwaukee and I caught STP playing a few songs with their current singer Jeff Gutt doing his fairly accurate Weiland impression, and it all just bummed me out so much.
There was a weird moment in the mid-‘90s when major labels were suddenly pushing a couple of white teenage blue guitar prodigies, Jonny Lang and Kenny Wayne Shepherd. That moment has largely been forgotten, except for the fact that the third single from Shepherd’s second album became sort of a sleeper hit that doesn’t sound anything like his Hendrix tributes, or like anything else that was on the radio in 1998, which was almost definitely the worst year of the decade in terms of mainstream rock.
Alice In Chains are by far my least favorite of Seattle’s ‘big four’ but they were still pretty incredible, especially songs like “Rooster” where Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell harmonized.
I remember sitting in my bedroom listening to the radio, and the DJ said that the new Nirvana single was coming up after the break, and I turned down the lights and patiently waited to hear it, and was just blown away. That’s kind of funny because I didn’t even have a copy of Nevermind at that point, and wound up owning In Utero first, but that album was a really pivotal moment for me, really my gateway into things like Sonic Youth and the noisier side of indie rock and post-punk.
I actually hated Sonic Youth the first time I heard “100%,” and still don’t particularly like that song, but “Bull In The Heather” really intrigued me and made much more interesting use of the sort of random bursts of feedback and string-scraping. And Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star was an odd first album to hear by the band, but it really helped ease me into loving their entire catalog.
In 1994 I remember watching Sonic Youth, Nirvana, and Dinosaur Jr. in 1991: The Year Punk Broke over and over and really falling in love with those bands. The ‘90s Dinosaur albums without Lou and Murph sometimes get a little downplayed, but J Mascis is an incredible drummer and I love songs like “Feel The Pain” where he’s just absolutely showing off on guitar and drums at the same time.
31.
Pavement - "Cut Your Hair" (1994)
I think I’ll always be a proudly casual Pavement fan who thinks very little of their music lives up to the novelty of hearing “Cut Your Hair” or “Stereo” for the first time. But again, I think of 1994 as a very unique moment when what we think of as ‘indie rock’ was all over mainstream radio and things felt a lot more spontaneous and unpolished even compared to the grunge years, and Matador had the Atlantic deal and Pavement and Liz Phair got a big radio push. And then punk pop and kind of alternative stadium rock bands like Live and Bush won out and things started to get a little boring.
32.
Screaming Trees - "Nearly Lost You" (1992)
Mark Lanegan died earlier this year and left behind a really varied and rewarding catalog of music both with Screaming Trees and with other projects. But it makes me a little sad that Lanegan didn’t think much of “Nearly Lost You” and didn’t like it being what he was famous for, because that song rules too.
33. The
Cure - "Pictures of You" (1990)
Disintegration was maybe the last iconic, definitive alternative rock album of the 1980s, so it feels a little wrong to include one of its later singles in a ‘90s list. But “Pictures of You,” man, that’s prime Robert Smith, I needed to show it some love and I don’t really go for “Friday I’m In Love.”
34.
Weezer - "Say It Ain't So" (1995)
There are days when I just hate all things Weezer (for instance, they’ve released multiple songs that interpolate Vivaldi this year, which I shudder just thinking about). But Rivers Cuomo can write a hell of a song sometimes, and “Say It Ain’t So” is probably the one that I’ll never turn off when it comes on the radio.
35.
Pearl Jam - "Yellow Ledbetter" (1994)
Back when “Jeremy” from Ten was an era-defining hit that won Video of the Year at the VMAs, it would be pretty hard to believe that the song’s non-album b-side, a weird laid back thing that sounded like it had scratch vocals with unfinished lyrics, would someday rival it in popularity. But “Yellow Ledbetter,” which first charted in 1994, even though the follow-up album Vs. was still spinning off hits, seems to be everywhere in 2022, in TV shows and TikToks and still in radio rotation as heavily as any of the band’s songs. It was already kind of a running joke that nobody knew what Eddie Vedder was singing, especially on “Evenflow,” but it’s just kind of absurd how incomprehensible he is on “Yellow Ledbetter,” even if there is apparently an actual plot line in there about a guy whose brother died in a war overseas. But really it’s Mike McCready’s gorgeous guitar that makes the song, his finest moment.
36.
Beastie Boys - "Sabotage" (1994)
37.
Jane's Addiction - "Stop!" (1990)
The fact that Jane’s Addiction’s farewell tour before breaking up was the first Lollapalooza allowed them to loom large over ‘90s rock even in their absence. And it’s a hell of a what-if to wonder if they could’ve stayed together and become as big as the Chili Peppers did. But they definitely went out on top and “Stop!” is just an incredible display of the band’s weird ingenious approach to hard rock and Perry Farrell’s one-of-a-kind vocal presence.
38.
Nirvana - "Smells Like Teen Spirit" (1991)
Am I outsmarting myself and trying too hard by putting the most revered rock song of the last 40 years this far down the list? Would I put it at its rightful place if it wasn’t overplayed to the point of being difficult to listen to? I don’t know. But obviously it’s an amazing song, and I think everything on here is great, don’t take it as a diss.
39. The
Proclaimers - "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" (1993)
Movies have an incredible amount of power to launch a song into pop culture. But the funny thing, the movie doesn’t even have to be that big to make that kind of impact – Benny & Joon was a sleeper hit, the 66th biggest box office hit of 1993, something that made less money than Beethoven’s 2nd and Robin Hood: Men In Tights. But it turned a 1988 song by a Scottish folk rock duo into one of the biggest songs of 1993, and this song rules, so once and only once I’ll say Johnny Depp made a positive impact on the music world.
40. The
Sugarcubes - "Hit" (1992)
I feel like it’s been lost to time a little bit that before Bjork was the biggest international recording artist to come out of Iceland, she was in The Sugarcubes, who were at the time the biggest band to ever come out of Iceland. And listen, The Sugarcubes’ music might sound a little quaint compared to the futuristic soundscapes Bjork became known for. And Einar Orn’s vocal interjections like the bridge on “Hit” can be a bit jarring. But this song still rules, and I still think of it fondly as my introduction to Bjork.
I think I’ll always be a proudly casual Pavement fan who thinks very little of their music lives up to the novelty of hearing “Cut Your Hair” or “Stereo” for the first time. But again, I think of 1994 as a very unique moment when what we think of as ‘indie rock’ was all over mainstream radio and things felt a lot more spontaneous and unpolished even compared to the grunge years, and Matador had the Atlantic deal and Pavement and Liz Phair got a big radio push. And then punk pop and kind of alternative stadium rock bands like Live and Bush won out and things started to get a little boring.
Mark Lanegan died earlier this year and left behind a really varied and rewarding catalog of music both with Screaming Trees and with other projects. But it makes me a little sad that Lanegan didn’t think much of “Nearly Lost You” and didn’t like it being what he was famous for, because that song rules too.
Disintegration was maybe the last iconic, definitive alternative rock album of the 1980s, so it feels a little wrong to include one of its later singles in a ‘90s list. But “Pictures of You,” man, that’s prime Robert Smith, I needed to show it some love and I don’t really go for “Friday I’m In Love.”
There are days when I just hate all things Weezer (for instance, they’ve released multiple songs that interpolate Vivaldi this year, which I shudder just thinking about). But Rivers Cuomo can write a hell of a song sometimes, and “Say It Ain’t So” is probably the one that I’ll never turn off when it comes on the radio.
Back when “Jeremy” from Ten was an era-defining hit that won Video of the Year at the VMAs, it would be pretty hard to believe that the song’s non-album b-side, a weird laid back thing that sounded like it had scratch vocals with unfinished lyrics, would someday rival it in popularity. But “Yellow Ledbetter,” which first charted in 1994, even though the follow-up album Vs. was still spinning off hits, seems to be everywhere in 2022, in TV shows and TikToks and still in radio rotation as heavily as any of the band’s songs. It was already kind of a running joke that nobody knew what Eddie Vedder was singing, especially on “Evenflow,” but it’s just kind of absurd how incomprehensible he is on “Yellow Ledbetter,” even if there is apparently an actual plot line in there about a guy whose brother died in a war overseas. But really it’s Mike McCready’s gorgeous guitar that makes the song, his finest moment.
The fact that Jane’s Addiction’s farewell tour before breaking up was the first Lollapalooza allowed them to loom large over ‘90s rock even in their absence. And it’s a hell of a what-if to wonder if they could’ve stayed together and become as big as the Chili Peppers did. But they definitely went out on top and “Stop!” is just an incredible display of the band’s weird ingenious approach to hard rock and Perry Farrell’s one-of-a-kind vocal presence.
Am I outsmarting myself and trying too hard by putting the most revered rock song of the last 40 years this far down the list? Would I put it at its rightful place if it wasn’t overplayed to the point of being difficult to listen to? I don’t know. But obviously it’s an amazing song, and I think everything on here is great, don’t take it as a diss.
Movies have an incredible amount of power to launch a song into pop culture. But the funny thing, the movie doesn’t even have to be that big to make that kind of impact – Benny & Joon was a sleeper hit, the 66th biggest box office hit of 1993, something that made less money than Beethoven’s 2nd and Robin Hood: Men In Tights. But it turned a 1988 song by a Scottish folk rock duo into one of the biggest songs of 1993, and this song rules, so once and only once I’ll say Johnny Depp made a positive impact on the music world.
I feel like it’s been lost to time a little bit that before Bjork was the biggest international recording artist to come out of Iceland, she was in The Sugarcubes, who were at the time the biggest band to ever come out of Iceland. And listen, The Sugarcubes’ music might sound a little quaint compared to the futuristic soundscapes Bjork became known for. And Einar Orn’s vocal interjections like the bridge on “Hit” can be a bit jarring. But this song still rules, and I still think of it fondly as my introduction to Bjork.
41. U2
- "Even Better Than The Real Thing" (1992)
Achtung Baby wasn’t entirely without precedent – in some ways U2 were just following the post-Madchester zeitgeist of where rock was headed on the other side of the Atlantic, and following the “get weird in Berlin with Brian Eno” template of Davie Bowie in the late ‘70s. But it’s still one of the greatest and riskiest reinventions in rock history, and I kind of love Achtung Baby the most when they really leaned into the ironically detached post-modern schtick on songs like “Even Better Than The Real Thing.”
42. Tom
Petty & The Heartbreakers - "Learning To Fly" (1991)
As the youngest Traveling Wilbury, Tom Petty always kind of leaned into identifying more with the generation before him than the one after, but he was never too far off from the elder statesmen of alternative rock – his debut album came out only 4 years before U2’s. Still, it was surprising how long Petty managed to stay relevant, and he arguably added more essential music to his catalog in the ‘90s than any other classic rocker from the ‘70s. Into The Great Wide Open was an interesting experiment in bring the full-band Heartbreakers into the glossy Jeff Lynne production aesthetic of Full Moon Fever, and I love the way Stan Lynch still plays a beautiful loose groove behind that clanking percussion loop that drives the song.
43. The
Black Crowes - "Jealous Again" (1990)
I think it’s a good example of how nobody really knew what ‘90s rock was going to sound like before grunge hit that the biggest breakthough band of 1990 was a group of southern retro rockers who blew up with an Otis Redding cover. The Black Crowes’ version of “Hard To Handle” kind of makes me cringe, but everything else on Shake Your Money Maker is fantastic, such a great set of songs.
44.
Soul Coughing - "Super Bon Bon" (1996)
Soul Coughing kind of got lumped in with the post-Beck glut of acts on alternative radio in the mid-‘90s who took a slacker non-sequitur approach to rapping and sampling. But they always felt a little different to me, a group of Knitting Factory-adjacent guys playing deep grooves inspired by the upright bass on A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory and UK jungle, and Mark De Gli Antoni’s musique concrete approach to sampling deployed in a live band setting was so unique and creative, so much of what they were doing was just miles ahead of their supposed peers.
45.
Counting Crows - "Angels Of The Silences" (1996)
Last year I wrote a piece about how 1996 felt like the moment when the bottom fell out of the alt-rock market and so many established bands’ sales were suddenly chopped in half. But I think what I left of that piece was how much I adored so many of those records. The second episode of Hulu’s “The Bear” recently closed with “Have You Seen Me Lately?” and reminded me how much I love Recovering The Sattelites, and I wish that album’s lead single had gotten more radio airplay.
46. Sarah McLachlan - "Possession" (1993)
Sarah McLachlan became a household name in 1997 with the release of Surfacing and the launch of the first Lilith Fair. But 1993’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was the sleeper hit that really established her outside Canada, slowly selling a couple million copies over two or three years, and “Possession” is still such a haunting song, although the backstory around the song is so disturbing and sad.
47. The Lemonheads - "It's A Shame About
Ray" (1992)
These days The Lemonheads are mostly remembered by their covers. But Evan Dando is such an excellent songwriter, I even sort of saluted him on one of my own songs a couple years ago, I wish “It’s A Shame About Ray” or one of Dando’s other originals still got as much airplay as their “Mrs. Robinson.”
48. Radiohead - "Just" (1995)
Radiohead made this unlikely leap over the course of the ‘90s from making “Creep” and being one of those bands with one hit that loomed over the rest of their catalog to making OK Computer and being revered as perhaps the greatest band of their generation. But in between, they made The Bends and really shocked me with how good they were becoming, and part of me wishes they still made songs that use all 3 of the band’s guitarists as well as “Just” does.
49. Hole - "Violet" (1995)
Courtney Love may have been the single most divisive figure in ‘90s rock, and even today there are people that love to say that Kurt Cobain secretly wrote Live Through This and people who say it’s better than anything Cobain made. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle – Hole were already performing songs from the album in fall 1991 when Love met Cobain, but there is that leaked mix of “Asking For It” with Cobain on backing vocals. In any event, it’s an incredible album and I was really happy when the opening track was released as a single.
50. Guns N’ Roses - "Civil War" (1991)
Guns N’ Roses started out the ‘90s as the coolest, biggest band in the world, and then Axl Rose spent the decade driving his bandmates away and become this sad parody of rock stardom. I still like a lot of the Use Your Illusion records, though, that was the stuff that really made me care about rock music before I heard most of the other band son this list, and when I hear those songs I’m still a 9-year-old kid playing air guitar every time I hear Slash.
Achtung Baby wasn’t entirely without precedent – in some ways U2 were just following the post-Madchester zeitgeist of where rock was headed on the other side of the Atlantic, and following the “get weird in Berlin with Brian Eno” template of Davie Bowie in the late ‘70s. But it’s still one of the greatest and riskiest reinventions in rock history, and I kind of love Achtung Baby the most when they really leaned into the ironically detached post-modern schtick on songs like “Even Better Than The Real Thing.”
As the youngest Traveling Wilbury, Tom Petty always kind of leaned into identifying more with the generation before him than the one after, but he was never too far off from the elder statesmen of alternative rock – his debut album came out only 4 years before U2’s. Still, it was surprising how long Petty managed to stay relevant, and he arguably added more essential music to his catalog in the ‘90s than any other classic rocker from the ‘70s. Into The Great Wide Open was an interesting experiment in bring the full-band Heartbreakers into the glossy Jeff Lynne production aesthetic of Full Moon Fever, and I love the way Stan Lynch still plays a beautiful loose groove behind that clanking percussion loop that drives the song.
I think it’s a good example of how nobody really knew what ‘90s rock was going to sound like before grunge hit that the biggest breakthough band of 1990 was a group of southern retro rockers who blew up with an Otis Redding cover. The Black Crowes’ version of “Hard To Handle” kind of makes me cringe, but everything else on Shake Your Money Maker is fantastic, such a great set of songs.
Soul Coughing kind of got lumped in with the post-Beck glut of acts on alternative radio in the mid-‘90s who took a slacker non-sequitur approach to rapping and sampling. But they always felt a little different to me, a group of Knitting Factory-adjacent guys playing deep grooves inspired by the upright bass on A Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory and UK jungle, and Mark De Gli Antoni’s musique concrete approach to sampling deployed in a live band setting was so unique and creative, so much of what they were doing was just miles ahead of their supposed peers.
Last year I wrote a piece about how 1996 felt like the moment when the bottom fell out of the alt-rock market and so many established bands’ sales were suddenly chopped in half. But I think what I left of that piece was how much I adored so many of those records. The second episode of Hulu’s “The Bear” recently closed with “Have You Seen Me Lately?” and reminded me how much I love Recovering The Sattelites, and I wish that album’s lead single had gotten more radio airplay.
Sarah McLachlan became a household name in 1997 with the release of Surfacing and the launch of the first Lilith Fair. But 1993’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy was the sleeper hit that really established her outside Canada, slowly selling a couple million copies over two or three years, and “Possession” is still such a haunting song, although the backstory around the song is so disturbing and sad.
These days The Lemonheads are mostly remembered by their covers. But Evan Dando is such an excellent songwriter, I even sort of saluted him on one of my own songs a couple years ago, I wish “It’s A Shame About Ray” or one of Dando’s other originals still got as much airplay as their “Mrs. Robinson.”
Radiohead made this unlikely leap over the course of the ‘90s from making “Creep” and being one of those bands with one hit that loomed over the rest of their catalog to making OK Computer and being revered as perhaps the greatest band of their generation. But in between, they made The Bends and really shocked me with how good they were becoming, and part of me wishes they still made songs that use all 3 of the band’s guitarists as well as “Just” does.
Courtney Love may have been the single most divisive figure in ‘90s rock, and even today there are people that love to say that Kurt Cobain secretly wrote Live Through This and people who say it’s better than anything Cobain made. The truth is probably somewhere in the middle – Hole were already performing songs from the album in fall 1991 when Love met Cobain, but there is that leaked mix of “Asking For It” with Cobain on backing vocals. In any event, it’s an incredible album and I was really happy when the opening track was released as a single.
Guns N’ Roses started out the ‘90s as the coolest, biggest band in the world, and then Axl Rose spent the decade driving his bandmates away and become this sad parody of rock stardom. I still like a lot of the Use Your Illusion records, though, that was the stuff that really made me care about rock music before I heard most of the other band son this list, and when I hear those songs I’m still a 9-year-old kid playing air guitar every time I hear Slash.
51. The Toadies - "Possum Kingdom" (1995)
52. System Of A Down - "Sugar" (1999)
53. Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Breaking The Girl" (1992)
54. They Might Be Giants - "Birdhouse In Your Soul" (1990)
55. The Jayhawks - "Blue" (1995)
56. Dave Matthews Band - "Ants Marching" (1995)
57. Soundgarden - "Fell On Black Days" (1994)
58. White Zombie - "More Human Than Human" (1995)
59. The Meat Puppets - "Backwater" (1994)
60. Pearl Jam - "Alive" (1991)
62. Shudder To Think - "X-French Tee Shirt" (1994)
63. Bjork - "Human Behaviour" (1993)
64. Cracker - "Low" (1993)
65. Blur - "Song 2" (1997)
66. Sonic Youth - "Kool Thing" (1990)
67. Nirvana - "Sliver" (1993)
68. Alice In Chains - "Man In the Box" (1991)
69. Smashing Pumpkins - "Muzzle" (1996)
70. R.E.M. - "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" (1994)
72. Temple Of The Dog - "Hunger Strike" (1992)
73. Cake - "The Distance" (1996)
74. Blink 182 - "Dammit" (1997)
75. The Cranberries – “Dreams” (1993)
76. The B-52s - "Roam" (1990)
77. Foo Fighters - "This Is A Call" (1995)
78. Social Distortion - "Ball And Chain" (1990)
79. Metallica - "Enter Sandman" (1991)
80. Semisonic - "Closing Time" (1998)
82. Nine Inch Nails - "March Of The Pigs" (1994)
83. L7 - "Pretend We're Dead" (1992)
84. Pearl Jam - "Better Man" (1995)
85. KoRn - "Falling Away From Me" (1999)
86. Elastica - "Stutter" (1995)
87. R.E.M. - "Losing My Religion" (1991)
88. Nirvana - "Lithium" (1992)
89. The Dambuilders - "Shrine" (1994)
90. Better Than Ezra - "Desperately Wanting" (1997)
91. Garbage - "When I Grow Up" (1999)
92. The Black Crowes - "She Talks To Angels" (1991)
93. The Pretenders - "Night In My Veins" (1994)
94. Liz Phair - "Supernova" (1994)
95. Soundgarden - "Burden In My Hand" (1996)
96. Harvey Danger - "Flagpole Sitta" (1998)
97. Tool - "Sober" (1993)
98. Foo Fighters - "My Hero" (1998)
99. Tears For Fears - "Break It Down Again" (1993)
100. Veruca Salt - "Seether" (1994)
52. System Of A Down - "Sugar" (1999)
53. Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Breaking The Girl" (1992)
54. They Might Be Giants - "Birdhouse In Your Soul" (1990)
55. The Jayhawks - "Blue" (1995)
56. Dave Matthews Band - "Ants Marching" (1995)
57. Soundgarden - "Fell On Black Days" (1994)
58. White Zombie - "More Human Than Human" (1995)
59. The Meat Puppets - "Backwater" (1994)
60. Pearl Jam - "Alive" (1991)
62. Shudder To Think - "X-French Tee Shirt" (1994)
63. Bjork - "Human Behaviour" (1993)
64. Cracker - "Low" (1993)
65. Blur - "Song 2" (1997)
66. Sonic Youth - "Kool Thing" (1990)
67. Nirvana - "Sliver" (1993)
68. Alice In Chains - "Man In the Box" (1991)
69. Smashing Pumpkins - "Muzzle" (1996)
70. R.E.M. - "What's The Frequency, Kenneth?" (1994)
72. Temple Of The Dog - "Hunger Strike" (1992)
73. Cake - "The Distance" (1996)
74. Blink 182 - "Dammit" (1997)
75. The Cranberries – “Dreams” (1993)
76. The B-52s - "Roam" (1990)
77. Foo Fighters - "This Is A Call" (1995)
78. Social Distortion - "Ball And Chain" (1990)
79. Metallica - "Enter Sandman" (1991)
80. Semisonic - "Closing Time" (1998)
82. Nine Inch Nails - "March Of The Pigs" (1994)
83. L7 - "Pretend We're Dead" (1992)
84. Pearl Jam - "Better Man" (1995)
85. KoRn - "Falling Away From Me" (1999)
86. Elastica - "Stutter" (1995)
87. R.E.M. - "Losing My Religion" (1991)
88. Nirvana - "Lithium" (1992)
89. The Dambuilders - "Shrine" (1994)
90. Better Than Ezra - "Desperately Wanting" (1997)
91. Garbage - "When I Grow Up" (1999)
92. The Black Crowes - "She Talks To Angels" (1991)
93. The Pretenders - "Night In My Veins" (1994)
94. Liz Phair - "Supernova" (1994)
95. Soundgarden - "Burden In My Hand" (1996)
96. Harvey Danger - "Flagpole Sitta" (1998)
97. Tool - "Sober" (1993)
98. Foo Fighters - "My Hero" (1998)
99. Tears For Fears - "Break It Down Again" (1993)
100. Veruca Salt - "Seether" (1994)
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