CHRIS: If you could go back in time either to the 50s or the 60s and you could bring a CD of songs from the 90s -- burn a CD...
ME: They don't have CD players...
CHRIS: You bring a CD player...
ME (thinking but not saying): People would be fascinated to see such a device.
CHRIS: And the goal is to to demonstrate what the 90s were about and that the 90s were a great decade musically. Because I think the 90s were one of the best decades. Better than now or the 80s or the 70s.
ME (aloud again): But you specifically want to prove this to people in the 50s and 60s.
CHRIS: Yes.
ME: Because you think people are always acting like music from the 50s and 60s is the best? Or are you just trying to prove it to me?
CHRIS: Why do you think it's about you?
ME: Because I'm always acting like the music from the 50s and 60s is the best.
CHRIS: It's not about you, okay? Anyway, you've got to burn a CD or make a tape or whatever. You can pick 10 to 12 songs -- and they all have to be by different artists -- and the point is to prove the 90s are the best. So what would the songs be?
ME: Let me ask my readers to help us.
Readers?
Posts
31 comments:
George Strait - Check Yes or No.
George Strait - I Cross My Heart
..whaat? You mean there was music outside of Country & Western?
I'm still hung up on Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix to be of any help..
bonnie raitt - i can't make you love me
But,... the 90s aren't the best!
Let's see...
Jazz:
Pat Metheny Group - We Live Here
Norman Brown - That's the Way Love Goes
Zachary Breaux - Comin' Home Baby
Pat Metheny - Finding and Believing (if you have never heard this song, listen to it! I hated it at first but later fell in love with it.)
Acoustic Alchemy - Against the Grain
Spyro Gyra - Shaker Song - Live Version
Rock:
Chris Isaak - Forever Blue
Duran Duran - Ordinary World
U2 - One
Rush - Bravado
REM - Man on the Moon
Country:
Dwight Yoakam - Thousand Miles from Nowhere
Those are mine.
JLP
AllThingsFinancial
Songs that prove 90's music was the best? (Sounds of crickets chirping.) I've actually been thinking of making a Nineties compilation, but haven't been quite inspired enough to work that hard, yet. Coming up with 70 minutes of really great stuff from that decade may not be a task I'm actually qualified for. (Nirvana, obviously, did not make the soundtrack to my adolescence.) The idea that you could take really great stuff from any decade and convince a music lover 30 to 40 years earlier that it's even music seems fatally flawed. A Buddy Holly fan in 1959 might "get" a recent John Fogerty album, but that isn't really the point either. Radiohead would sound like crap to a rock and roll fan from that era, and I hardly think even U2 or REM would convince anyone. Sure, Tom Petty would sound okay to a Byrds fan, but "better"? Nah.
Almost by definition, music that is characteristic of the '90s is music that people in the '50s and '60s are "not ready for."
And yes, I'm thinking of the scene in Back to the Future where the Michael J. Fox character wins over an audience of '50s teens by playing Chuck Berry (one year in the future) and then loses them by segueing into Jimi Hendrix (ten years in the future).
I 'm prettyu sure the point of the post was to come up with songs from the 90s, not repeatedly post about how the 90s sucked or that the 50s and 60s were far superior. While you're most likely correct, it gets old really quickly.
My List with a lil help from the other lists
____________
Radiohead- Paranoid Android
RHCP- Under the Bridge
Nirvana- Smells Like Teen Spirit
Dr. Dre ft Snoop Dogg- Ain't Nuthin' But a G Thang
Tupac- Only God Can Judge Me
Notorious B.I.G.- Juicy
Erykah Badu- On & On
Beck- Where It's At
Dave Matthews- What Would You Say
Blind Melon- No Rain
Outkast- Rosa Parks
Warren G- Regulate
Marilyn Manson- Beautiful People
___________
On a more personal note I'd add these songs
The Roots- The Next Movement
Bone Thugs-N-Harmony- 1st of tha Month
Prodigy- Breathe
Alice In Chains- Man in the Box
Beastie Boys- Root Down (beat from jazz great jimmy smith's song circa 1972)
Tool- Aenima
Jane's Addiction- Jane Says
this is too much fun... getting carried away
I'd take:
Kristin Hersh "Your Ghost", 1994
Lisa Germano "Cry Wolf" 1994
the Innocence Mission "The Lakes of Canada" 1999 (could this be the most beautiful song ever?)
Sarah McLachlan "Adia" 1997
Annie Lennox "Why?" 1992
Tori Amos "China" 1992
Fiona Apple "Criminal" 1996
Aimee Mann "Wise Up" 1999
Alanis Morissette "Thank You" 1998
The 90's were a great decade for country music...
Cake's "Going the Distance" would be on the list.
I don't know what song, but ska should represented, probably by Reel Big Fish.
both cake- going the distance and fiona apple- criminal definitely belong on the list
as far as ska.. i'd recommend Mighty Mighty Bosstones- impression that I get
Tom Petty's Full Moon Fever was 1989, so I guess I can't include Free Fallin', even though it was my #1 song for the early 90s. Here's my list, pared down a little from the 25 I had at first:
R.E.M. - Losing My Religion
The Sundays - Here's Where the Story Ends
Tom Petty - Wildflowers
Bare Naked Ladies - Brian Wilson (that'd be a bit of a trip, eh?)
Natalie Merchant - Jealousy
Toad the Wet Sprocket - Fly From Heaven
Green Day - Longview
Counting Crows - 'Round Here
The Cranberries - Linger
Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend
Creed - One
Live - Lightning Crashes
Squirrel Nut Zippers - Hell
Gin Blossoms - Hey Jealousy
Sarah McLachlan - The Path of Thorns (Terms)
Freedy Johnston - Bad Reputation
Dave Matthews - Satellite
They Might Be Giants - Birdhouse in Your Soul
And one more that means 90s to me:
Angelo Badalamenti - Theme to Twin Peaks
How many songs from the 90s are titled "One"? So far, I'm seeing 3.
I'm a 60s person who loved a lot of 80s music (probably because I had my second adolescence around 40) and I observe that a lot of what people praise as 90s music is really a continuation of 80s music. The decade boundary cannot be so clearly drawn. I truly loved Nirvana, strange as that may seem. (I loved "Free Fallin'" too, but that's 80s.) I consistently like Natalie Merchant (that burnt-sugar voice) and like some Sara MacLachlan. But "90s music" has no decade-identity for me. And I stopped being able to hear much in new music -- probably because I'm no longer in the proper adolescent or faux-adolescent state to appreciate rock'n'roll.
50's, 60's 90's? Please.
Sinatra. Period.
Gotta agree with that comment about the high school years, regardless of when they were, being the best music time period for anyone.
For 90's music I'd mix some D-Lite with some Sara Mclachlin and throw in some Hawaiin music- Bruddah Iz and Keali'i Rachel. Good decade for Hawaiian music.
If you want to judge general musical talent more objectively maybe you need to compare television and/or tv theme songs....
80's you have Cheers and Taxi- Hill Street Blues? (or is that 70's?) 70's you have Baretta, the Jeffersons, Good Times (remember that? Just lookin' out of the window, watching the asphalt grow...) - 60's... what? Dream of Genie? Gilligan's Island?
Looks like the 70's win to me.
Cheers!
here's a good site to compare tv themse songs:
http://www.barbneal.com/tvthemes.asp
Love is Blindness -- U2
Delia's Gone -- Johnny Cash
Jeremy -- Pearl Jam
Life By The Drop -- Stevie Ray Vaughn
God Moving Over the Face of the Waters -- Moby (and a decent Philip Glass ripoff)
Oh Boy! -- Joe Ely (just to show them we appreciate the 1950s)
I Can't Make You Love Me -- Bonnie Raitt
Bleed to Love Her -- Lindsay Buckingham
Give it Away -- Red Hot CP
Everlong -- Foo Fighters
All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down -- The Mavericks
I Need Love -- Sam Phillips
Flood -- Jars of Clay
Even though I'm sure no one is reading this far down the list I have to add The London Sinfonietta's 1992 release of Henryk Gorecki's Symphony No. 3: Sorrowful Songs. It was written in the mid-70s, but the 1992 recording is one of the best.
Gorecki, Arvo Part...
Nothing that would scare off a 50s or 60s person, which you don't want to do if you're trying to make the point that the 90s had great music.
I say the point is more to represent the decade than to prove its greatness. and songs like 'Nuthin' but a G Thang' and 'smells like teen spirit' are representative of the cultural changes for sure. Any sort of rap would scare a person from the 50s. period. and yet its central to the decade and the changes in music during it.
While the 90s had some great music, it was not a decade of epic or unique creations like both the 50s or the 60s were. Rather, it was like the post-romantic period in the early 1920s: and end of a musical thread. For us, it was the last great sigh before the stylistic drought that has plagued the last 5 or so years, and for which we are all waiting for a next pop Stravinsky or somebody like that.
As far as music by Gorecki or Arvo Part are concerned, that is by no means 90s music. That is early 70s music that it took people 20 to discover.
While the 90s had some great music, it was not a decade of epic or unique creations like both the 50s or the 60s were. Rather, it was like the post-romantic period in the early 1920s: and end of a musical thread. For us, it was the last great sigh before the stylistic drought that has plagued the last 5 or so years, and for which we are all waiting for a next pop Stravinsky or somebody like that.
As far as music by Gorecki or Arvo Part are concerned, that is by no means 90s music. That is early 70s music that it took people 20 to discover.
On the subject of whether the choices would scare or shock the people of the 50s and 60s, I'm assuming Chrs was referring to the people who loved the rock music of their time, so don't forget that that music always shocked our parents. We of the 60s assumed the great music in future generations would shock us in a similar way and wondered what could do that. If you came from the future to the 60s and played "Wonderwall" and "Losing My Religion," I think we would have enjoyed these songs but wondered what happened to the idea of making everything different and new (and shocking the old people).
(And re TV in the 60s, let me just say: "The Twilight Zone.")
Ha! You gotta love that Chris.
Answer: "It's not about you, okay?"
Question: What is the perfect five-word sentence every Baby Boomer needs to hear - at least one time before dying - from his/her offspring?
---------------
All eleven songs from Dylan's Time Out of Mind album, omitting Make You Feel My Love would have given me hope in 1969.
Lmeade: Chris has also had some harsh words for the commenters who aren't following the instructions!
Also, people from the 60s would not be impressed by the 90s if all the 90s had was more Bob Dylan!
Instructions? Puh! What can I say - I'm a Boomer - we wrote the book on not following instructions.
How would you determine that any decade's music is "better"? It's an expression of a certain place and time. But here are some favorites:
Blues Traveler - Run Around
En Vogue - My Lovin' (Never Gonna Get It)
Spin Doctors - Two Princes
Jars of Clay - Flood
Barenaked Ladies - One Week
Susan Tedeschi - Hurts So Bad
If you've covering the 90s, you do have to have Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit." But if you want to help people in the 50s get it, play them Weird Al's "Smells Like Nirvana"
For discussion, you could look at Rolling Stone's top 500 songs of all time list. Here's what they consider qualifies from the 90s in order of release year (the first number is their rank in the 500 songs list):
162 - Nothing Compares 2 U - Sinead O'Connor - 1990
399 - Enter Sandman - Metallica - 1991
9 - Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana - 1991
445 - Come As You Are - Nirvana - 1991
407 - In Bloom - Nirvana - 1991
331 - I Can't Make You Love Me - Bonnie Raitt - 1991
169 - Losing My Religion - R.E.M. - 1991
36 - One - U2 - 1991
353 - Tears In Heaven - Eric Clapton - 1992
286 - Summer Babe (Winter Version) - Pavement - 1992
200 - Loser - Beck - 1993
419 - Nuthin' But A "G" Thang - Dr. Dre - 1993
455- All Apologies - Nirvana - 1993
475 - Sabotage - Beastie Boys - 1994
259 - Hallelujah - Jeff Buckley - 1994
497 - Buddy Holly - Weezer - 1994
376 - Fake Plastic Trees - Radiohead- 1995
406 - I Believe I Can Fly - R. Kelly - 1996
346 - California Love - Tupac Shakur - 1996
256 - Paranoid Android - Radiohead- 1997
382 - Bitter Sweet Symphony - The Verve - 1997
You'd have to pick one from the multitude of Nirvana and on efrom the two Radiohead songs to meet Chris' criteria for your CD.
I appreciate the ingenuity and novelty of Nirvana's debut album, but do they really deserve 4 spots on this list?
Well, from Geezerville, you've got your Steve Earle, your John Hiatt, your Lucinda Williams. Something from Pat Metheny's "Secret Story." Joshua Redman. Robbie Roberston's "Storyville" album. Something from Nanci Griffith. Los Lobos's "Kiko."
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