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

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.

man that tonic may have only gotten to #3 but that thing must've lingered on the chart for forever, easily the track that provokes the most dread for me here.

i've heard that song about a billion times and it never gets better.

xp - yeah i remember the first time i heard 'wishlist' thinking 'wait - i thought this was back to the formula hits hits hits, the fuck is this? how is this the second single???', it got airplay on the altrock stations but it was that kinda obligatory airplay, you could tell they weren't enthused about it, similar to the airplay springsteen's 'one step up' or madonna's 'bad girl' got, sheer momentum.

It was kind of funny watching radio jump on each successive single like "oh, THIS one will..." Like, I remember "In Hiding" getting a real buildup. Balls is on the money about that countdown though. The all-Pearl-Jam playlist included such highlights as a live teamup with Young on "Rockin' in the Free World" where the CD started skipping in the guitar solo, playing the same 40-second chunk for about eight or nine minutes before someone noticed. They also played "Pilate" off Yield, spawning an ongoing feud between myself and DJ Axel, who refused to ever play it again.

balls is OTM about Everclear's press hype at the time - the very first line of this article brings up Springsteen!

Tonic song got crossover pop-rock/AC play, that's why it's so ubiquitous. #11 on the Hot 100! We've gone over this relatively recently, but I do think they had better modern-rock songs: "Open Up Your Eyes," "Mean To Me"...

from what i remember pearl jam bailed out the radio by releasing the last kiss cover in '99 and that thing totally got played to death

http://usedwigs.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/everclear.jpg

^^^ the "heyday," ladies and gentlemen

and then following up yield's failure you had smashing pumpkins underwhelming later that year. not judging the actual musical merit of the albums here - i could care less about yield tbh and everytime i'm tempted by ilm to finally check out adore i remember that billy corgan sings on it iirc. just that the followup rot that had hit acts like live or counting crows or hootie before this was now kinda hitting the blue chip acts. green day's the only one who ever really shook it - pj and corgan retreated, offspring and kinda counting crows went goofy for cash, live became just another faceless band stuck in the altradio ghetto instead of 'the american u2' or 'the pennsylvanian rem' or whatever that dude was dreaming of.

'98 was def the beginning of the sea change--i think follow the leader coming out that year and getting radio play told me everything i needed to know

btw it's not going to get votes or anything but i feel obligated to point out that turn my head is a nice lil song that i always enjoyed

oh fine twist my arm i'll link my favorite thread again: commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996

lol at the everclear headline - 'we're a good rock band, nothing more nothing less' - WHAT MORE DID PPL POSSIBLY BELIEVE EVERCLEAR COULD BE???

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.