#3 Modern Rock Hits: The mid-90's heyday

Voted Landslide, but so many good choices here (next in line would've been Molly, Big Me, Perfect, Trippin' on a Hole)

Still ubiquitous, not sure how they didn't hit #1: Santeria, Wrong Way, Flagpole Sitta, Everlong, Brain Stew

Pearl Jam ("I Got Id") or Hole or Harvey Danger.

what a tumble after 1997

1998 is when I stopped caring as much about new music.

1994 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Landslide"
1998 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Ava Adore"
1998 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Perfect"
1999 - Hole, "Malibu"

i wonder if Billy Corgan ever finished a track and thought "man, this is going straight to #3!"

lol

it's possible that no 5 years can seem longer than the years you went from 12 to 17, but this list still carves such a big narrative arc, you can see the whole rise and fall of several mini-epochs of alt-rock.

"Given to Fly."

I'm pretty sure I've heard that Love Spit Love track.

that Love Spit Love track was my first and only exposure to anything Psychedelic Furs-related until i started catching up on Molly Ringwald movies in college

I'm shocked that Tonic only got to #3 - that track was everywhere.

Songs that I like:
1994 - Mazzy Star, "Fade Into You"
1994 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Landslide"
1995 - Green Day, "Geek Stink Breath"
1996 - Stone Temple Pilots, "Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart"
1997 - Sarah McLachlan, "Building A Mystery"
1997 - Foo Fighters, "Everlong"
1998 - Offspring, "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)"
1999 - Hole, "Malibu"

Malibu for being a refreshing slice of jangle pop in a horrible year for the MR charts.

i wonder if Billy Corgan ever finished a track and thought "man, this is going straight to #3!"

Funniest thing I've read here in a while.

Look at this amazing Smashing Pumpkins run, with only one #1:
#7 Cherub Rock
#8 Disarm
#4 Today
#3 Landslide
#2 Bullet With Butterfly Wings
#1 1979
#9 Zero
#5 Tonight, Tonight
#8 Muzzle
#2 Thirty-Three
#8 Eye
#4 The End Is The Beginning Is The End
#3 Ava Adore
#3 Perfect
#4 The Everlasting Gaze
#2 Stand Inside Your Love
#2 Tarantula

fade into you

oh shit i could have voted for everlong : ( : ( : (

I've Been the star of many plays.

"Brain Stew" from Green Day was definitely my favorite at the time. Wow, I had forgotten about that Offspring song. Sort of a scary portent of things to come.

"Brain Stew" is an unpleasant slog, exhibit #1 in my 'quality of Green Day songs has direct relationship to the BPM' theory.

xp: Yah, I was thinking about Offspring the other day in regards to today's racism rock.

some dude OTM re: 12 to 17, kind of obvious by my participation in threads like this I guess.

anyway there's lots of great shit here, in fact these are all pretty cool:

1994 - Mazzy Star, "Fade Into You"
1994 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Landslide"
1995 - Pearl Jam, "I Got Id"
1996 - Green Day, "Brain Stew"
1996 - Foo Fighters, "Big Me"
1996 - Stone Temple Pilots, "Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart"
1996 - Counting Crows, "Angels Of The Silences"
1997 - Bush, "Greedy Fly"
1997 - Sublime, "Santeria"
1997 - Foo Fighters, "Everlong"
1998 - Pearl Jam, "Given To Fly"
1998 - Smashing Pumpkins, "Ava Adore"
1998 - Harvey Danger, "Flagpole Sitta"
1999 - Hole, "Malibu"

...but it's a pretty quick trim down from those to the actual contenders, I mean when you have "Fade Into You" and "Everlong" then a lot of this starts to look like filler fast. I actually am one of those who will rep for "Brian Stew" as being a kind of cool, unexpected twist move with a good head-nodding buildup, ditto the dissonant aggro "Greedy Fly" and the sort of shapeless but grand "I Got Id."

Another great thing is that #3 modern rock status is apparently enough to attract the attention of karaoke companies, as you'll find many or all of these in lots of otherwise really bland binders full of crap. No one ever sings them.

er, "Brain Stew"

Actually now I feel silly cos I should have voted "Big Me". That music video was so much fun!

Hazy memory of "Kurt & Courtney." Nick Broomfield somehow snuck into the studio where Courtney Love was recording what turned out to be the "Celebrity Skin" album. Before he questions if she had anything to do with Kurt's death, he asks her what she's working on. He says, "I could hear that song you were recording. What's it about -- something with the beach and Southern California?" Turned out to be "Malibu."

I will rep for those Love Spit Love albums! Richard Butler was far more successful jumping on the grunge bandwagon than Ian McCulloch with Electrafixion.

Given To Fly

it's very tempting to vote for either of the Jack Irons-era Pearl Jam tracks or the Counting Crows rocker that was better than it had a right to be, but i can't bring myself to vote for anything other than "Everlong," legit song of the decade contender.

this is so easily "Fade Into You" but want to vote for "Trippin' On A Hole In A Paper Heart" as i feel it won't get any love.

oh wait "Flagpole Sitta" is on here.

voted for "Molly", 16 candles down the drain, E-I-E-I-O

sort of a lol vote, sort of not; hey, it's the 90s

I like Weird Al's Nirvana song, but I love "Flagpole Sitta."

i got id over everlong and trippin' on a hole

"Santeria" wasn't #1?! I wish someone had told Southern California that.

i've dropped this factoid here before i'm sure, but i've seen airplay stats for the entire alt-rock format for a couple different 21st century years where "Santeria" is the #1 most played recurrent track from the '90s (and "What I Got" is #2, and "Smells Like Teen Spirit" is #3 iirc). that Sublime album has a frighteningly dominant legacy on alternative radio.

clearly, nobody ever told them it's the wrong way

Yes, if there's two albums from this era I see most often at bro-bar jukeboxes it's Sublime and So Much For the Afterglow.

voting for i got id almost seems unfair. they brought in a ringer!

So Much For The Afterglow has some good songs, but "I Will Buy You A New Life" has to be the most annoying, and the one that most clearly proclaimed "hey, this guy really can only write one song," Uh-YEAH (yeah)! Aw (aw)! Whereas, I've always felt like "Father of Mine" had a genuine emotional punch, and "One Hit Wonder" had a cool positive-life-coach singalong ending. "I Will Buy You A New Life" and "Everything To Everyone" both felt like automatic "this is a hit because it's an Everclear song that's on the radio."

"Everything To Everyone" was dope, though

everclear was a horrible band imo

I only got SMFTA last year after ignoring it all this time and was impressed by its hooks.

I didn't know "Wonderful" peaked at #11!

please don't tell me anything about "Wonderful" now

it's not Adam Ant's.

ok this is 'everlong' obv but alot of love for 'malibu' and 'tripping on a hole blah blah blah'

really loathe art alexakis for no particular reason

everclear were a weirdly severely overrated band at the time in some circles (spin, the more popist rolling stone ppl). 'santa monica' is a classic obv and i was 'ok' w/ there other lesser santa monican hits but some of the crit talk at the time is pretty hilarious, lotta ppl thought they'd found some cobain-springsteen hybrid or something. i think alot of rock critics were ecstatic about the alt revolution but by the late 90s reaching for any liferaft they could that the dream wasn't over.

really loathe art alexakis for no particular reason

― mookieproof, Monday, January 6, 2014 11:08 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i have reasons! his songs were cynical, calculated, and bloodless.

also smfta is a horrible-sounding record

aw fuck just saw 'fade into you'; woulda voted 'everlong' anyway but it would've been more of a race. crazy that 'given to fly' peaked at 3 - altrock radio had sooooo much staked on that pearl jam album, so many hopes. they're finally giving us what we want! etc. the big altrock station in atlanta (that had just a few years earlier advertised themselves w/ billboards that just said 'PEARL JAM' and then '99x' in smaller letters in the corner) devoted the weekend before yield came out to a strictly pearl jam playlist (the last time i can remember a radio station doing this for a contemporary act). a couple of years prior their listeners would've eaten it up but by 98 alot of those ppl had cut bait and yield wasn't anyone's savior.

yeah from what i recall modern rock radio wasn't quite sure what to do with yield. given to fly is a great song but it faded fast.

I still think "Awful" is the best thing to come out of Celebrity Skin but it always seems to get overlooked...

― Doctor Casino, Tuesday, January 7, 2014 3:05 PM (3 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

"Awful" has always been my favorite song from that album!

4. Sublime - Bad Fish
12. Save Ferris - Goodbye
15. 311 - Beautiful Disaster

^^^ the hell? I heard "Beautiful Disaster" a few times, but there were bigger songs on that album, and I don't think I ever heard those other two. I guess KROQ is kind of its own thing.

Heard "Father of Mine" in the coffee shop yesterday. Still hits pretty hard IMO, I think it's his most successful attempt to do that kind of therapy grunge rock catharsis thing.

Reception

Consequence of Sound commented that "Beautiful Disaster" may be 311's greatest hit and states that it has one of most recognizable intro in any song.[2]

Nah I live on the east coast and hear "Beautiful Disaster" weekly, it's kinda gradually become one of their biggest songs, whereas I haven't heard "Transistor" or "Come Original" or any of their other late 90s singles in years.

I ... hear "Beautiful Disaster" weekly

I feel bad for you...

I got 311 problems

I should clarify, I hear its Most Recognizable Intro and then change the station weekly. I try to be not like that, some songs really suck.

I was a sophomore in high school when "Beautiful Disaster" came out, and IIRC it had a slow-build into its (very relative) success. Granted none of the singles off "Transistor" were anywhere near as successful or ubiquitous as the big two from the previous 311 album. "Beautiful Disaster" was third single, and it just kind of stuck around, got played a lot on 120 Minutes, got covered by at least two high school bands in my hometown in rural Illinois.

Obviously small town Illinois high school cover bands is a pretty crucial litmus test

I got 311 problems

lol

Huh, never really noticed "Beautiful Disaster" having an afterlife. Always thought "Prisoner" should have been a little bigger, but then I also kinda liked "Transistor" which is sort of measurably stupid and lousy.

latter day 311 is lol, real heads step for "Freak Out"

Live 105 in San Francisco (where I grew up) played "Beautiful Disaster" much more than the other Transistor singles. Months and months on end.

There is nothing on this list I like and a lot I actively dislike.

how sad is it that "Beautiful Disaster" may be the closest thing 90s radio rock got to a Thin Lizzy-style twin lead guitar line

OK so this is the first time I hear "Flagpole Sitta." So this is how "A Horse with No Name" was translated for the Fastball era.

no idea how you can go the last 15 years without hearing that song, or what that comparison means

Didn't listen to modern rock radio in '99 or watch the shows in which the song appeared, and the song has an impressive lift from that America song.

*is

Hear the plants and rocks and things
I swear to god it sounds like they're snoring

I've been through the desert on a horse with no name
They cut off my legs now I'm an amputee goddamn you

flagpole sitta owns

In the desert, you cannot publish a zine
Cause there ain't no one raging a-gainst machines

I don't get Flagpole Sitta either, but Sad Sweetheart of the Radio is one of my favorite songs of all time.

So what exactly is the distinguishing feature of Modern Rock that makes it 'modern'? Like, what exactly makes Matchbox 20 more modern than the non-modern ('mainstream' in Billboard parlance) rock acts of its era?

Singing that sounds like you are on a toilet having a difficult time.

For better or worse Billboard scrapped the term "modern rock" a few years ago in favor of calling the chart "alternative songs"

My top songs from this selection: "Fade Into You", "Geek Stink Breath", "Brain Stew", "If You Could Only See", "Santeria", "Everlong", and "Flagpole Sitta". Torn between Mazzy or the Foos for my vote.

Looking at the list of modern rock #2 hits for this era I kinda wish they'd also been given their own poll, lots of gems there as well

I think I read somewhere that '97-'98 was right around the time when radio completely changed the rules on how songs became hits and as a result you got these incredibly generic shitsongs like "3 A.M." and that Everclear crap, neither of which would have ever gotten big in the early 90s.

For better or worse Billboard scrapped the term "modern rock" a few years ago in favor of calling the chart "alternative songs"

― some dude, Sunday, January 12, 2014 11:33 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

These songs are even less "alternative" than they're "modern"....

Voted for "I Got Id"

Pretty sure it charted higher than #3 on hot 100

it got to #7 on the Hot 100, mainly because the Merkin Ball EP was essentially a surprise non-album single by the biggest band in the world and went gold.

Pearl Jam's biggest Hot 100 hit: "Last Kiss" at #2 in 1999.

and those are their only two top 10 hits. the only Ten single that scraped the Hot 100 was "Jeremy" at #79, which gives you an idea of how little the chart reflected the popularity of rock bands in the '90s.

That's insane.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

iirc "jeremy" charted a few years after Ten when a bunch of the maxisingle imports were reissued stateside... prolly around the same time as Merkin Ball.

I recall getting a little frustrated because I spent $9.99 on the import Jeremy single to hear "Footsteps" ... I didn't know "Yellow Ledbetter" before buying it. And then a year or 2 later it wasn't very difficult to find for $4.99 at Circuit City.

yeah the '90s was a painful time to be obsessed with bands and look for rarities on absurdly overpriced import singles and bootlegs. one of the things i'm most happy that file-sharing killed off.

yeah but it built character

Mazzy Star by a country mile.

"Worst 90s import/rare/ripoff maxi-single buying experience" might be a good thread.

not a one

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/35/Voodoo_People_02.jpg

not worth it fyi

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

1995 - Sponge, "Molly" 6

six voters down the.........draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaain

So someone aside from me also voted for Citizen King.

Yay, I voted for the winner! Much as I love reminiscing about Everclear, it really is the song here with the most staying power. Just lovely. Kind of surprised that "Perfect" and "Wrong Way" could get votes but not "Angels of the Silences" - not that there's anything that special about the latter either.

my Recovering The Satellites fandom is powerful, but not as powerful as my The Colour And The Shape fandom

The most sought after import of my childhood was the Smashing Pumpkins' Rocket -- it had their cover of Depeche Mode's Never Let Me Down.

Wow, lots of love for Flagpole Sitta. That one was just too played out both at the time and then throughout college.

When I first got Limewire I had a ball getting all the stray B-sides and compilation appearances that would have cost a fortune to collect on CD or vinyl - that Smashing Pumpkins cover being one of them.