Insanely Great Nineties Songs You Aren't Sick Of: 1991

Before the Deluge...

It's no easy task finding great 90s songs you aren't sick of when it comes to 1991. Pretty much every blockbuster-- the records people think of first when they think of 90s rock-- was released that year. Nevermind, Ten, Blood Sugar Sex Magik, Use Your Illusion, Out of Time, Achtung Baby, the "Black Album," For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, and Badmotorfinger all coughed up huge hits, which can still be heard every day on every classic rock or alternative radio station.

I still remember the first time I heard "Smells Like Teen Spirit." It was at Pier Platters in Hoboken. The bald-ginger owner-guy put the vinyl on and everyone in the store just stopped in their tracks and listened. I guess this was a pretty common experience. 

I also guess we were all hearing the future, because that damn song still gets played several times a day on rock radio.

Me, I was Team Pumpkin. Gish came out around the same time, and for my money, shreds the living motherfuck out of Nevermind. Sure, Dave Grohl's a great rock drummer but Jimmy Chamberlin is a top candidate for greatest rock drummer of all time. And Kurt and Krist may have had their finer points, but shit-hot chops wasn't one of them, even if Kurt was a much better vocalist than Billy Corgan. 

It doesn't matter-- I'd rather listen to this flame-throwing live version of "Bury Me" than the entire Nirvana and Foo Fighters catalogs. This is a top five 90s happy-place for me. Except when I find myself crushing on D'Arcy (then the GenX ice princess to end all GenX ice princesses) and then remember how that turned out.

Badmotorfinger is a great album, but you're sick of all the best songs on it. So here's the lesser-known single from the Temple of the Dog album, which is a Soundgarden classic in all but name. And in retrospect sounds like a sneak preview of Superunknown. 

Quick question: can we finally be grownups and admit that Cornell and Andy Wood were lovers? I mean, you know the guy for a little over a year and then you make a big-deal major label album as a tribute to him when he dies? That make sense to you? It doesn't make sense to me. 

And don't get me started with him and Jeff Buckley.

BEHOLD, A PALE SHOE

1991 was the banner year for Shoegaze. I bought all these albums on account of all these groups were huge Cocteau Twins fans like me. The problem was that they got that great Twins shimmery guitar sound, but not so much the great Twins songwriting. Sadly 

Ride is a great example: "Vapour Trail" is one of the greatest songs of the 90s, but there wasn't anything else of its caliber on the album. It was all very nice and pleasant and instantly forgettable.

It doesn't matter: if you make a single as great as "Vapour Trail," you've made your contribution to the culture.

Catherine Wheel made some pretty great singles too, even if they could all stand to be at least 45 seconds shorter than they are. The chap with the intense stare is Rob Dickinson, cousin to Iron Maiden's Bruce Dickinson. I have great memories attached to this song.

And of course the Big Kahuna, the Citizen Kane of Shoegaze was released in '91. This is the Great Grail of Gaze to which all lesser bands aspire to. It also cost a fortune to record and nearly bankrupted the record company, but sometimes greatness requires great sacrifices.

I've never really been all that into Scarlett Johansson, but show me the GenXer that didn't fall hopelessly in love with her watching Lost in Translation and I will show you a dirty, filthy liar.

Every time I hear what a genius The Weeknd is for merging Shoegaze and Hip Hop, I die a little inside. Why? Because PM Dawn was doing the same damn thing 30 years ago. I used to blast some gage, slap on the headphones and just bliss the fuck out to this song. I'm getting a contact high just hearing it now.

It wasn't just the Shoegazers raiding the Cocteau cabinet for ideas: Cranes (no "the," like Swans or, um, Cocteau Twins) decided to home in on the Twins' '84/'85 sound, then toss in a little early Dead Can Dance and a lot of 70s Italian horror movie theme music. Maybe a bit of the theme to Rosemary's Baby too.

I remember when I first heard "Adoration." It was same Saturday morning I first heard "Man in a Box." When it was over I just stared at the radio and asked myself, "what the fuck did I just listen to?" I kind of still get that feeling today. Interesting vocalist.

Scotland's Teenage Fanclub weren't really Shoegazers but caucused with them. This is a phenomenal power pop song, even if the lyrics basically take the piss out of my entire life.

Curve were a couple studio pros who'd been kicking around for a while and decided that Shoegaze was a good jumping-on point. More or less, they were a little too old-- and Toni Halladay was a little too Paulina Porizkova-looking -- to really pull it off. 

I woke up for work around 5:30 AM one morning and heard this on WFMU and thought I'd hallucinated it. Probably because I was in a hypnogogic state. I called the DJ, asked who it was, then went down to Bleecker Bob's after work and bought that EP. Bonus factoid: that's Jaz Coleman's little brother doing the rap.

It was around this time that my wife began to call Shoegaze "Chris music." A little while back I was listening to Slowdive and she came by and said, "What's this band called, The Chrises?"

Throwing Muses were a 4AD band who didn't shoe gaze. I was resistant to their charms until this song came out. Probably because it was actually a song, and not just a bunch of random riffs played a bunch of times with Yokoesque stream of consciousness babbling over it. 

This album also featured "Not Too Soon," which was essentially the first Belly single.

Industrial was very big in the pre-Nirvana days. For some reason a lot of Jersey cugines and jocks were into it and things could get pretty dicey at the industrial disco in Newark whose name totally escapes me at the moment. On account of being old.

I'm including this video not because this is a good song -- it's generic blippity-beep frippery -- but because I saw this video on some late night show when I was stoned out of my head and IT SERIOUSLY FUCKED MY SHIT UP.  

Don't watch it if you don't want your shit to get fucked up.

Indie Rock was finally outgrowing the Feelies-REM late-Boomer-nerd reign of terror and was growing a bit of GenX balls. This is actually a cover of an old Hot Chocolate song that I spent a lot of time pondering when I was a wee wane. Poor Emmaline, her dreams of appearing on the silver screen were dashed. Nash Kato nails the vocal.

Bowie was still well into his suck period in 1991, but he managed to sneak a smoker past the gods of suck, just like he'd done with "Pretty Pink Rose" the year before. 

Don't be fooled though: Tin Machine were fucking dreadful. I foolishly bought both of those albums and they redefined the concept of "this shit sucks."

Matthew Sweet went from someone I always wanted to punch for being so milquetoast to putting out a genuinely good record in 1991. This is a smoking reading of one of the better songs on it.

Speaking of wanting to punch musicians, I very much wanted to punch all of these guys when I saw them live. I think you can figure out why watching this video. Which is a shame because I had high hopes they'd carry on where The Replacements left off, since I so violently hated what the Twin Cities legends had become by this point. 

"There You Are" is like the favorite song you never heard on Pleased to Meet Me. The kind of song the actual Replacements should have been recording in 1991. Even if this actually came out in late 1990.

By the way, I didn't punch Johnny Reznik when I met him after the show. I gave him some Clash bootlegs on cassette and his face lit up like a little kid at Christmas. This is aeons before Dime.

So what are your favorite hidden hits of 1991? What songs do you believe didn't get their fair shake?

Tell us in the comments below.

Don't forget The Secret Sun Institute of Advanced Synchromysticism, now holding classes in the highly strange. There's a ton of exclusive material up already and so much more on the way. 

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