But ‘Longview’ is hardly some tortured dirge. Slacker ennui was de rigueur in the ‘90s, of course, but ‘Longview’, the song that brought Green Day to the world, put it in terms suburban teenagers could understand: nothing’s on the tube, no one’s calling and the only thing that feels good is starting to lose its fun. Kurt Cobain’s mumbled poetic fragments certainly felt meaningful, but for kids who were in junior high the year pop-punk broke, Billie Joe Armstrong whining about having nothing better to do than wank himself into oblivion proved far more relatable. The Alternative Era had more than one voice of a generation. No wonder kids all over the world aspired to live in this version of inner city Los Angeles - and for a few years, the whole world did. Lyrically, it contains none of Straight Outta Compton ’s fury, nor the casual nihilism found elsewhere on Dre’s solo breakout, The Chronic it just sounds like two guys trading rhymes at a backyard barbecue, a vibe underscored by the chill-as-hell video.
But ‘“G” Thang’ still resonated as an introduction, simply because it sounded unlike anything hip-hop had heard before - a meticulously crafted gangsta symphony, built from smokey wah guitar, whistling synths and creeping bass, all flowing smoother than a river of Courvoisier.
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Neither was truly a stranger to the public: Dre had already shaken the rap world - and the nerves of white America - as a member of NWA, and Snoop’s actual-factual debut occurred months earlier on the soundtrack to the movie Deep Cover. If ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ didn’t invent the ‘90s so much as put an end to the ‘80s, then the decade didn’t really start until Snoop Doggy Dogg and Dr. Everyone knew they would never forget it.
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His lo-fi, sepia-saturated take on a school concert that descends into madness – complete with slo-mo cheerleaders, smashed up guitars and smoke and fire in a sports hall full of sweaty headbanging teens – was as disturbing and anarchic as the song itself. There’s one more thing that makes ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ the song of the decade, and that’s Samuel Bayer’s now iconic video. Anger, despondency, pain and chaos ripped through a million bedrooms as we listened to Cobain wail, scream and howl lyrics that were as confusing as they were powerful: “A mulatto, an albino, a mosquito, my libido… hey.” What the fuck? A generation of disaffected youth had found an anthem like no other. This was like nothing we’d ever heard before: the sound of Seattle’s grunge scene coming out of the garage like a ravenous monster. Many words have been written about ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ and we’re about to add a few more, but it’s almost impossible to overstate the sonic earthquake that this song caused around the world in 1991. Like everyone else, they got into Nirvana the moment they heard the first ten seconds of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ on the radio: Kurt Cobain’s dirty Boston-aping guitar riff exploding as Dave Grohl’s kit and Krist Novoselic’s bass smashed their way into the song and our collective consciousness. Whether the ‘90s was the greatest decade for music is mostly a generational debate, but as you’ll hear, one thing’s for sure: it was never boring.Īll the cool kids will tell you that they were into Nirvana back in ’89 when they released Bleach on Sub Pop.
Given the crowded field, we’ve been ultra-selective in compiling this all-bangers, no-clangers playlist and limited it to one song per artist. Remember when electronica looked like the future? Where do mischief makers like Pavement, Beastie Boys and A Tribe Called Quest fit in? And that’s to say nothing of the totally random ska and swing revivals…although that’s all you’ll hear about it here. Hip-hop took over the world, and seemed to change shape every few months. In England, Oasis and the rest of the Britpop lot left nearly as big a mark as Nirvana and the other Seattleites. History has boiled it down to grunge and gangsta rap on one end, boy bands and Britney Spears at the other, but it’s the stuff in the middle and on the fringes that makes the period difficult to sum up. No decade is a musical monolith, but seeing the best songs of the ‘90s listed all in one place, the era seems especially scattered.
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