To an impressionable eighth-grader who feared more or less everything, Whale’s 1994 classic Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe sounded like a crazy nonsensical mess.  It also seemed tough and masculine in the way the hot boys liked but which I frankly just didn’t understand.  Little did I realize at the time that the Swedish trio had all the bite of Army Of Lovers.  (Actually, the two groups kinda had a lot in common aesthetically, now that I think about it.)

YouTube uploader ROCKVIDEOMONTHLY, who posted the video above, sent me on a long journey down memory lane last night, though.  Whoever they are–and I’m guessing they’re from New England–they’ve got some really impeccable taste in underground-ish hits of the early-to-mid-nineties:

I first heard Cold Water Flat’s Magnetic North Pole on a mixtape that my friend made me.  They came from Boston–the album this song is on was named after Fort Apache, the recording studio where the Pixies recorded–but back in the mid-nineties bands from Boston were more or less everywhere.  I still really like this song, even if it is largely for sentimental reasons:

Matthew Sweet’s Sick Of Myself marked the period where the phrase “alternative” lost a lot of its edge and just got really catchy.  This was a great song for an era when I wasn’t into Candlebox but I did love the hell out of Squeeze’s Singles 45s and Under.

And here’s PJ Harvey’s Down By The Water, off To Bring You My Love, one of my favorite albums of the nineties if not ever.  I still listen to this album, but I forgot how seductive her dancing is in this video.

Here’s their biggest hit, Female of the Species.  It’s pretty representative of their sound, which had all the drama and feyness of the Divine Comedy but without any of the sexy Neal Hannon vocals:

More after the jump:

They actually did a little better in the UK, breaking the top 10, with the follow-up, Me and You Versus The World, which also appeared on the soundtrack to the dopey-but-lovable romantic comedy Shooting Fish:

Parle left Space in 1998, seemingly annoyed by the group’s success.  We recorded the drums on their second album, Tin Planet, but left before it was released.  Still, that album had two of the group’s best singles.  Here’s Begin Again.

And, of course, there was also the immortal The Ballad Of Tom Jones, featuring guest vocals by the ever-delightful Cerys Matthews:

Funny I should have just admitted to buying a John Mellencamp album, because fifteen years ago this week he topped my weekly singles chart.   I had a weekly countdown (in notebook form) from fall of 1993 (aged 12) to summer of 1997 (aged 16) and it’s kind of hilarious reflecting on what I used to like. At the same time it’s also kind of amazing how all over the place my listening habits were.  I only listened to commercial radio at this point–with the exception of the Milla Jovovich number at #13, which I doubt got any airplay–but listened to every station just about equally.  There’s kind of an alarming number of cheesy slow jams on here, though, of all varieties: cheesy R&B (Gerald LeVert), cheesy country (Garth Brooks), cheesy adult contemporary (Elton John) and cheesy alternative (Counting Crows).

40. Stone Temple Pilots, Big Empty (DEBUT)
39. Gerald LeVert, I’d Give Anything (DEBUT)
38. M People, Movin’ On Up (24)
37. Collective Soul, Shine (25)
36. Soundgarden, Black Home Sun (37)
35. Jon Secada, If You Go (28)
34. Tony Bennett, Steppin’ Out With My Baby (35)
33. Green Day, Basket Case (36)
32. Tevin Campbell, Always In My Heart (27)
31. Aaron Neville and Trisha Yearwood, I Fall To Pieces (34)

30. Frente!, Labor Of Love (40)
29. Crash Test Dummies, Afternoons and Coffeespoons (39)
28. Ace of Base, Don’t Turn Around (22)
27. Janet Jackson, Anytime Anyplace (19)
26. Arrested Development, Ease My Mind (18)
25. Aretha Franklin, Willing To Forgive (31)
24. Des’ree, You Gotta Be (26)
23. Celine Dion, Misled (HIGHEST DEBUT)
22. Martina McBride, Independence Day (30)
21. Bonnie Raitt, You (23)

20. Counting Crows, Round Here (10)
19. Garth Brooks, One Night A Day (12)
18. Babyface, When Can I See You Again (21)
17. Mariah Carey, Anytime You Need A Friend (13)
16. Tracy Lawrence, Renegades Rebels & Rogues (20)
15. Kathy Mattea, Nobody’s Gonna Rain On Our Parade (17)
14. Frente!, Bizarre Love Triangle (8)
13. Milla, The Gentlemen Who Fell (29)
12. Toad The Wet Sprocket, Fall Down (14)
11. Melissa Etheridge, I’m The Only One (16)

10. Spin Doctors, You Let Your Heart Go Too Fast (15)
9. Roxette, Sleeping In My Car (11)
8. Bon Jovi, Good Guys Don’t Always Wear White (2)
7. Lisa Loeb & 9 Stories, Stay (1)
6. Faith Hill, But I Will (3)
5. Maverick Choir, Amazing Grace (4)
4. Seal, Prayer For The Dying (9)
3. Garth Brooks, Hard Luck Woman (7)
2. Can You Feel The Love Tonight, Elton John (5)
1. John Mellencamp, Wild Night (6)

I could write entire posts about the Jon Secada, Frente!, Janet Jackson, Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Roxette and John Mellencamp songs, but for the sake of time/other things to do I’ll just mention that I still like all of them and think they’re all highly underrated in one way or another.  Misled is one of the only Celine songs I can handle, maybe because it’s not a ballad but probably more because in the chorus she rhymes “history” with “mistory.”

I can’t say I still harbor fond feelings for the Maverick Choir, though explaining why might be in the 1000+ word range, so I’ll refrain for now.

I’m really ashamed to say that I had to Google these words to figure out why they sounded so familiar. God, it’s like being white and suburban and in high school in the nineties didn’t really happen to me.

Which, on second thought, might not be such a bad thing….

This is a Mike Monteiro print available through the lovely 20X200. Not one of my favorite editions that they’ve released, although it did just remind me of the existence of this video.

Looking back at this list, it’s easy to recall how much better radio was in 1998, although we shouldn’t forget that at the same time everybody was into the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Sublime and Fuel and Tonic and dumb crap about how every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end. Also, possibly the worst thing to ever happen to the world–One Week by the Barenaked Ladies–happened that year.

Some songs I liked back then (cough#48cough) haven’t aged so well. And I have no idea what the hell Tell Me, the song at #38 is–Googling comes up with a Billie Myers song that came out that year, but I was very anti-Kiss The Rain, so I doubt I would have particularly liked her follow-up single, despite my tendency to like terrible girly folk-rock (ahem#32ahem). The video for Tell Me is here and it’s a decent enough song, I guess, but it doesn’t sound familiar at all and I doubt I would have liked it more than, say, Fantastic Cat at #41.

This list also reflects a number of musical movements that were big at the time, many of which I totally hated. The dreaded swing revival isn’t there, but the dreaded post-Sublime stinky white kids who may or may not like ska are in full force–that part of history’s two best songs are at #17 and #31. And pretty much the only boy band song I like from the nineties is (mysteriously) tied for #37. On a brighter note, 1998 also reminds us that there was a time when Marilyn Manson could sit side-by-side with Beth Orton on the radio (and this countdown!), and when all kinds of pop and rock finally got down with electronic music once and for all (see, uh, Beth Orton and Marilyn Manson’s albums for two excellent examples.) It was also a time when once-loved-but-now-hated big beat and still-loved-today-although-it’s-actually-the-cheesier-sounding-of-the-two trip-hop crossed into the mainstream.

It’s also interesting to note how very rockist this list is. Only three of the songs on this made my Top 100 pop hits of the 90s list. And, a couple of inescapable megahits aside, there’s also no mainstream pop or r&b.

And finally, 1998 marks the year I saw my first-ever concert–The Cardigans and pApAs FritAs did a free show in downtown Providence which, because of a threatening rainstorm that never happened, got moved into a club.

50. Smoke City, Underwater Love (mp3)
49. Rammstein, Du Hast
48. Lisahall, Connection 17
47. Massive Attack, Angel
46. Hooverphonic, Club Montepulciano
45. Manic Street Preachers, If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next
44. PJ Harvey, A Perfect Day Elise
43. Brandy & Monica, The Boy Is Mine
42. The Verve, Sonnet
41. Takako Minekawa, Fantastic Cat (mp3)

40. Lionrock, Pushbutton Cocktail (I can’t find anywhere to get this song. Anybody?)
39. Liz Phair, Polyester Bride
38. Tell Me
37*. Fastball, The Way
37*. 5ive, When The Lights Go Out

(I have no idea why there are two #37s. Maybe to make up for the fact that I don’t know what #38 is. Also, I should mention, my notes for this list include lots of checkmarks and circles and arrows, and I have no idea what any of them might mean.)

36. Eels, Last Stop: This Town
35. Rancid, Bloodclot (mp3)
34. Marilyn Manson, I Don’t Like The Drugs (But The Drugs Like Me)
33. Beth Orton, Stolen Car
32. Natalie Merchant, Kind and Generous
31. The Urge, Jump Right In (mp3)

30. Air, Kelly, Watch The Stars!
29. Janet Jackson, Go Deep
28. Ani DiFranco, Little Plastic Castle
27. Rebekah, Sin So Well
26. Madonna, Ray of Light
25. Rufus Wainwright, April Fools
24. Sarah McLachlan, Adia
23. Saint Etienne, The Bad Photographer [Oddly, this was all I could find.] (mp3)
22. REM, Daysleeper
21. Catatonia, Mulder and Scully

20. Space, Begin Again (mp3)
19. The Cardigans, My Favourite Game
18. Grant Lee Buffalo, Truly Truly
17. Sprung Monkey, Get ‘Em Outta Here (mp3)
16. Pulp, A Little Soul
15. Lauryn Hill, Doo Wop (That Thing)
14. Elliott Smith, Waltz #2 (XO)
13. Tori Amos, Spark
12. Garbage, Push It
11. Beastie Boys, Body Movin’ (Fatboy Slim Remix)

10. Dimitri From Paris, Une Very Stylish Fille (mp3)
9. Guster, The Airport Song
8. Sheryl Crow, My Favorite Mistake
7. The Propellerheads, Velvet Pants (mp3)
6. Soul Coughing, Circles
5. Beck, Tropicalia
4. Pras feat. ODB & Mya, Ghetto Superstar
3. Placebo, Pure Morning (mp3)
2. Hole, Celebrity Skin
1. Fatboy Slim, Rockafella Skank

Since you are reading this on a computer screen I assume you’re already sitting down. But if you’re at a library or somewhere that requires you to stand up to look at the internet, then I suggest you find a chair or maybe a fainting sofa, because I have something very serious and important to tell you:

Smells Like Teen Spirit is not the greatest song of the nineties.

Yes, it’s a great song, and yes, it was a big hit and, most importantly, it did come out in the nineties. But the greatest hit song of the nineties? Sorry, but I’m not buying it.

To explain why, let’s consider a much older song, a #3 hit by Freda Payne called Band of Gold. I don’t think many people would argue that Band of Gold, a sad tale of a wedding night gone horribly awry, is one of the greatest hits of the girl group era. If you caught me on the right day, I might even try to convince you that it was the best, period. And when did this sixties R&B smash hit airwaves?

September 1970, that’s when. After Sgt. Pepper, after Woodstock, and after the Manson family went to trial.

I’m not sure what how Band of Gold sounded in 1970, whether folks thought it sounded dated or loved the Holland-Dozier-Holland production, the kicky drums, and Payne’s vocals, which manage to sound divalike and forlorn at the same time. The song is great. A lot better, I think, than many girl-group hits that came before it, like Chapel of Love or My Boyfriend’s Back or Heat Wave, say. Because no matter what the critical or cultural impact was at the time, whether it sounded like a breath of fresh air or a Supremes knockoff, we are not living in 1970. And over time things change, take on new meanings and lose some of the old ones.

Another example of this is a song that barely missed this countdown, Collage’s I’ll Be Loving You, a very eighties jam that today is one of the crowning moments of freestyle but which must have sounded hopelessly five minutes ago when it came out in 1994. Just because something comes first doesn’t mean it’s the best.

So saying that Smells Like Teen Spirit changed the world doesn’t mean a whole lot to me. (And neither is saying that Kurt Cobain is a genius that died too young, so don’t even go there.) We’ve all heard this song day in and day out for the last sixteen years, and there’s a lot to be said for its enduring qualities. However, there’s some other things that can be argued about it, too:

1) It’s not the best song on Nevermind. Drain You, Breed, and Lounge Act are way better.

2) It’s not even the best single from Nevermind. Lithium, In Bloom, and Come As You Are are all more interesting.

3) The popularity of this song has had a major influence on modern rock and also pop radio since its release. That influence has, among other things, included terrible nonsense like Alice In Chains, Silverchair, and more recently Nickelback and Daughtry. Thanks, Nirvana!

4) Nirvana sure are white and male, huh?

So, that said, let’s get on to my choice for the best pop hit of the nineties.

1. Mary J Blige, Real Love (1992, #7)

According to Rolling Stone, women in rock died around 1990 or so. About 10% of their 2004 list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time is by solo women or girl groups*, and the most recent of them in Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U, a Prince cover from 1990.

I don’t care much of Rolling Stone’s rich hippie reverance for dead and/or almost totally irrelevant male musicians, but the fact is they sell shitloads of magazines and a lot of people accept their word as truth, which is why mainstream media only takes music seriously when it’s made by white guys who write their own songs.** Sometimes a lady like Patti Smith or Joni Mitchell or PJ Harvey can sneak into their good graces, because they’re white and write their own songs, and two out of three is good enough, I guess. But nobody in the mainsteam press can ever seriously praise songs by people that aren’t white, aren’t male, and don’t write their own songs. Sure, they might like a song when it comes out, or even put it on their year-end best-of list, but when it comes to those big epic lists with titles like the 500 Greatest Rock Songs Ever, pop songs by women are nowhere to be found. Wait until the next time a list like that comes out and see if they put Umbrella on it, for instance.

There are one or two notable exceptions to the never-directly-stated rule that great music can only come from white men. There’s Aretha Franklin, who made some genuinely fantastic records in the sixties and whose music is probably associated in Rolling Stone editors’ minds with that time they all went to a civil rights march. Or maybe the time they all burned their draft cards and then engaged in free love with loose hippie women. Who can say? It’s all such a trippy blur…***

But people should remember that the Rolling Stone story is not the whole story. Listening to American Top 40 every Sunday morning, Casey Kasem taught me that the greatest hits didn’t come from groups of white guys who sang songs about despair that they wrote themselves–sometimes, sure, but not always. And for every mopey With Or Without You that got to number one, there was a Kim Wilde cover of You Keep Me Hangin’ On to replace it.

Which brings me, finally, to Real Love.

The second single from Blige’s debut album, Real Love came out in August 1992 and eventually got to #1 on the R&B chart and #7 on the Billboard Hot 100. Written and produced by Mark C Rooney and Mark Morales (aka Prince Markie Dee from the Fat Boys), the song starts with an Audio Two sample, adds a piano, and tops the whole thing off with Blige’s impassioned vocals.

One of the great things about Real Love is the point of view: Woman falls in love with man, man says he’s not as serious about her as she is about him, woman realizes she’s made kind of a shitty investment and realizes she can do better, but also realizes she can only do it if she stays strong. Sung at that moment, Blige can capture the feeling of falling in love, falling out of love, feeling happy and feeling hopeless, all within the course of four minutes or so. And staying strong is hard for our heroine, so she goes back and forth a lot. She asks him to be her inspiration, but only after she’s slowly come to see what he’s made of. She prays to God for someone better, but then tells the guy that she’ll love him through all four seasons anyway.

Poor Mary is desperate as desperate can be, wailing over the chorus in a way that would become standard for her throughout the next fifteen years but which this time sounds like it really means something.

Creatively, Blige’s albums got progressively better through the nineties, peaking with 1999′s Mary. 2001′s No More Drama is also excellent, but things have gone steadily downhill since then, bottoming out with the incredibly stupid (and Grammy-winning!) song Be Without You from two years ago. She put out a new album last month; I haven’t heard it and don’t particularly want to. The single Just Fine is, well, just fine, but it also sounds like what Janet Jackson was doing ten years ago.

Today’s Mary J is, if we’re to believe the hype, a living legend, a diva with an armful of Grammys and millions of adoring fans who have loved her for generations. She is also, lest we forget, thirty-six years old, despite all evidence to the contrary.**** But back in 1992, she was young and unknown. And in the sixteen years hence, she’s yet to make a single as good as this one.

Right now, I don’t think anyone else has, either. Ask me next week, and I might say that Your Woman is better, or A Girl Like You, or any other song in the top 10 or 12 on this countdown. The fact is that things change, feelings change, people change, and songs change. Maybe an appearance in a TV commercial will kill a song for you, or a placement in a movie scene might make it better. Maybe you’ll hear it one too many times on the radio, or it’ll be playing when something really awesome happens to you. That’s fine. It’s all subjective, and there’s nothing to say that things can’t change, Rolling Stone be damned. After all, if you don’t like the song at the top of the charts, there’ll always be another one to replace it.

(*Not including ABBA, The Mamas and the Papas, Fleetwood Mac, Ike and Tina Turner, or any other Behind The Music-ready groups with both men and women in them.)

(**It’s worse in England, judging from the covers of Uncut, Mojo and Q, who won’t talk about anything newer than the Happy Mondays. And if they do, it’s only in terms of how it’s the new best thing ever. But that’s another essay, one that someone else has surely already written.)

(**The other exception is Martha and the Vandellas. If you like, you can reread that last paragraph again but replace the words “Aretha Franklin” with the words “Martha and the Vandellas.”)

(****Not to sound mean, but damn is the woman aging poorly.)

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Isn’t any of these. You’ll have to wait until the weekend for that. But in the meantime, here’s my picks for the 22 worst hit singles of the 90s. The ones that make my skin crawl now, and made my skin crawl even more then, when I actually had to hear them every day. Insincere, evil piles of rancid ass in audio form, from many of the usual suspects as well as some people that came around just to shit on your ears once before dropping into obscurity. A couple are even from normally not-awful bands who also put out some songs on the top 101. Some are forgotten, and some live on, thanks to completely dreadful adult contemporary playlists, so you never know when they’re going to strike, tormenting you while you’re at the drugstore or the dentist’s office.

[nb: I had to shut my speakers off just while I looked for the video clips. So click with caution, if you insist.]

Barenaked Ladies, One Week (1998)
Blessid Union of Souls, I Believe (1995)
Blessid Union of Souls, Hey Leonardo (She Likes Me For Me!) (1999)
Michael Bolton, Said I Loved You…But I Lied (1994)
Eric Clapton, Change The World (1996)
Eminem, My Name Is (1998)
Everlast, What It’s Like (1999)
Firehouse, Love of a Lifetime (1991)
Green Jelly, Three Little Pigs (1992)
Elton John, Candle In The Wind 1997 (1997)
Joey Lawrence, Nothin’ My Love Can’t Fix (1992)
LFO, Summer Girls (1999)
N II U, I Miss You (1995)
Pearl Jam, Last Kiss (1999)
Poison, Unskinny Bop (1990)
Puff Daddy & Faith Evans, I’ll Be Missing You (1997)
Smashmouth, All Star (1999)
Voices That Care, Voices That Care (1991)
Will Smith, Wild Wild West (1999)
Rod Stewart, The Motown Song (1991)
Barbara Streisand and Bryan Adams, I Finally Found Someone (1997)
Tony! Toni! Tone!, Anniversary (1992)

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2. White Town, Your Woman (1997, #7)

The story of Your Woman, White Town’s 1997 hit single, might start with Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective. The TV series, which originally aired in the UK in 1986, features a writer of detective novels with a dreadful skin disease who keeps flashing back and forth between one of his novels and his own childhood. Watching it is akin to being under ether, because you’re constantly trying to figure out what’s happening, and when, and why. Making things more complicated is the fact that all the characters keep breaking out into musical numbers, lip syncing big band numbers from the thirties even when it seems like they don’t want to.

In the mid-eighties, when the show first aired, Hollywood wasn’t really into musicals, and definitely not old-timey song-and-dance ones. But in the mid-nineties, it seemed like people were ready for the return of the old-fashioned musical, and Woody Allen of all people was one of the first to try it. His star-studded Everyone Says I Love You uses songs from the big band era to tell a really happy story of a huge family who go to Paris and all fall in love. Goldie Hawn and Julia Roberts and Natasha McElhone traipsed around the city of light singing hits of the big band era.

And less than a month after Everyone Says I Love You was released, the interwar era returned yet again, this time on modern rock radio. A few months ahead of the Squirrel Nut Zippers’ Hell and dreaded swing revival of 1998, White Town’s Your Woman kicked off with a reedy Al Woolly sample. With vocals processed to sound like a voice from the distant past, one-man band Jyoti Mishra read a letter of apology to an enamored suitor, a kiss-off that was a little bit angry, a little bit sad, and a little bit ambiguous.

The song is told from the point of view of a woman, speaking to a man she’s breaking up with. Until my friends convinced me otherwise, I spent the first fifty or so listens of this song convinced that it was actually sung by a woman. One with a deep voice, like Alison Moyet, maybe, who I feel like was probably a big influence on White Town. In fact, despite about fifteen years’ difference, Your Woman sounds like it could have come out around the same time as songs like Depeche Mode’s Just Can’t Get Enough or Situation, a big hit for Moyet’s band Yaz.
Of course, both of those groups are very popular with the gays, and so was this song, despite the fact that Mishra (and both of the characters in the song) are most likely straight. It’s a man singing from the point of view of a woman, that’s all, a rare but not unheard of occurrence that happens every once in awhile in pop songs–think of Jay and the Americans’ Come A Little Bit Closer. But one of the great things about Your Woman is its ability to take on multiple meanings—listen to the song again and Mishra could just as easily be a man saying that he could never be a woman.
With a poppy piano line that dandies and soccer moms alike could appreciate, the song was all over the place in early 1997, but Mishra really wasn’t. Barely appearing in the song’s video, he never seemed to be interviewed in magazines and I still don’t really know what he looks like.* He parted ways unhappily with his label shortly after the single became a hit and eventually decamped to Parasol before starting his own label a few years ago. He stills makes songs, good ones at that, and tries to keep things lively in his hometown of Essex.

(*Okay, now I know, sort of. Thanks, Google image search!)

Further listening:

Al Bowlly, My Woman
The sample that started it all.

Yaz, Situation
The gay diva.

Soul Coughing, Down To This
Another, very different, use of an old-timey song in the mid-90′s.

White Town, Death In Kettering (link)
His new stuff, you should check it out. You can listen to his whole new album at CDBaby.

Revolution 9, Throughout The World
Sounds a lot like his new stuff. Guys in LA that do fake British accents and try to be Depeche Mode. They’re pretty good, if you’re into that sort of thing.

3. Edwyn Collins, A Girl Like You (1995, #16)

Edwyn Collins is quietly judging you, his hand against his face thoughtfully, probably disapprovingly, like a fashion photographer about to throw a tantrum and tell you that you’re getting it all wrong. At least, that’s what it looks like on the cover of Gorgeous George, his third solo album (and first to be released in the US.)

A somber affair, the record opens with the epic The Campaign for Real Rock, wherein Collins sings for six minutes about rotting carcasses and putrifying brains. Fifty or so minutes later, the album concludes with a hidden track telling you that the music won’t take you higher unless you’re a moron.

In between there are glum but pretty-sounding songs like North of Heaven and the title track, cynical and sad tunes sung thoughtfully in a brooding sort of snot-filled way. But nothing else on the record compares to A Girl Like You. An obscenely booty-shaking blast of guitar fuzz and retro vibraphone, the song became his only American top 40 single thanks to its appearance on the Empire Records soundtrack.

Nobody saw Empire Records when it was released in 1995, and the few people that did see it all hated it. Years later it would become a minor cult hit, but the only thing it had going for it in 1995 was its soundtrack. The CD went gold, largely because of the Gin Blossoms’ hit single ‘Til I Hear It From You. Comprised of decent-enough songs by decent-enough alternative acts like Evan Dando and Cracker (both of whom were on pretty much every compilation to be released that decade), two songs in particular made the CD stand out from other soundtracks of the era.

The Innocence Mission’s Bright As Yellow, which first appeared on their Glow album, is pretty much the polar opposite of A Girl Like You. One is a dream-pop ballad by a married couple from western Pennsylvania and the other is a scorching northern soul dance number by a generally mopey guy from Scotland. I’ve never seen Empire Records so I’m not sure how either song is used in the movie, but it’s hard to imagine a critically-hated slacker comedy being pretty enough or fun enough to require two songs as good as these. (Not that I don’t like Liv Tyler or Anthony LaPaglia or Debi Mazar or the young Renee Zellweger, mind you.)

A Girl Like You would tie for second for Best Single in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop Poll for 1995, but possibly the truest thing I’ve heard about the song comes from an uncharacteristically astute Betty Boop-loving Canadian Youtube commenter named Stirner123, who wrote about the song just yesterday: “This song gives me an erection. Seriously.”

It’s shiny, it’s sexy, it’s sweaty, it’s draped in purple velvet, and it makes you move. From Swingers to the Austin Powers movies, mid-nineties America (and Britain, I guess) was cheesy, sleazy, masculine and smoky, and a guy who looked like one of the girl-getters singing about spell-casting devil-women* made for the perfect theme song.

Lots of people that bought Gorgeous George were probably disappointed that it didn’t all sound like the single–they’d have to wait for Smashmouth’s record two years later to get that–and Collins was written off by the public. Even The Magic Piper (Of Love), which appeared on the first Austin Powers soundtrack, didn’t give him a second round of airtime.

He just put out his sixth solo album this past September; it’s his first release since a series of awful-sounding brain hemorrhages in 2005. Pop radio won’t play it, but that’s fine; the moment for hit songs like this has passed. I think Collins is too cynical, too British, and his songs are too intellectual for Americans to really get, anyway.

(*And protest singers, which is the one line of the song that really sticks out.)

Further listening:

You know where to find it.

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4. Fiona Apple, Criminal (1997, #21)

My favorite female vocalist of the nineties, Fiona Apple hit the Billboard Hot 100 for the only time with the third single from her debut album Tidal. Torchy and heartbroken, Apple won an MTV award for Best New Artist, beating out competition like Meredith Brooks and the Wallflowers. At the awards ceremony she unironically quoted Maya Angelou and then told everybody that the world was bullshit. Two weeks later, her label released a new single. Accompanied by a Mark Romanek video allegedly inspired by Gregg Araki movies, many people just saw it as the super-skinny Apple parading around in her underwear and cavorting in a bathtub with an anonymous guy. An anonymous guy who had really hot legs, for the record.

If you didn’t like her to begin with, I can see how the timing of the awards and the Criminal video would have made her seem kind of annoying, but at the time I don’t think I actually noticed, teenaged boy that I was. Apple herself was only twenty, but she looked more like a wounded fifteen, with pigtails, a tiny frame, and sad, smoky eyes.

Almost six minutes long, Criminal is the closest Tidal gets to rocking out. Its narrator is a bad, bad girl, asking for penance from God (or
someone) for being careless with a delicate man. We don’t really know what that means, but from the way she’s singing it sounds pretty bad.
She doesn’t want to keep fucking things up but she knows she’s going to anyway. The hopelessness of seeing self-destruction before it happens is one of the saddest feelings of all, and it’s made for a number of great songs–Cat Power’s Good Woman is another one that springs to mind right away. But the less Fiona tells God (or us, the listener) the more likely we are to relate, and she knows that; maybe that’s why she stops singing a whole minute-and-a-half before the song ends, leaving us with a long sad haze of carnival rhythms while we try to figure out why it is that she’d want to drive her man away.

Further listening:

Aimee Mann, Amateur
My favorite production of Apple collaborator Jon Brion, who played the keyboards on Criminal (but didn’t actually produce Tidal)

Fiona Apple, Sally’s Song
Fiona Apple, Please Send Me Someone To Love
Two soundtrack songs, one from The Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D and one from Pleasantville, one of the worst movies ever.

Cat Power, Good Woman
Another take on the Criminal storyline.

Fiona Apple, Paper Bag (video)
Fiona Apple, Fast As You Can (video)

When you’re pretty and talented and your boyfriend is an awesome director like Paul Thomas Anderson, your videos get a lot better. Paper Bag is amazingly wonderful. Also, as we learn from the Fast As You Can video, “New Wave-inspired” is a lot more fun than “Gregg Araki-inspired.”

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