Insanely Great 90s Songs You're Not Sick of: 1995

I'm not ashamed to admit I got a bit choked up assembling this list. 1995 was a seminal time in my life for many different reasons, but all the great music unleashed on the world that year is near the top of the list.

In that light, I'm going to bend the rules just a bit. A few of the songs here will be big hits off big albums by big acts, but they're all songs I can never get sick of.

Before I get started, I should note there was a huge omission from the 1994 list. The onstage shooting death of Dimebag Darrell during a Damageplan show in Ohio in 2004 was in fact the initial inspiration behind He Will Live Up in the Sky, as seen in the opening chapter and touched on throughout the story. Being an obsessive nutcase, I had obsessed a bit on the case at the time, even though I wasn't really a fan of Dimebag's music. I am, however, a huge fan of OG Sabbath, so I very much grokked this cover.

I'm also not ashamed to admit I think The Bends is a much better album than OK Computer. I do love the latter, but I will breathe my last breath secure in the knowledge that the former is objectively superior but wasn't blessed with the same full-court publicity push its sister album got. One of the best albums of the 90s IMO. Amazing to contemplate how later Radiohead albums would sound like a tape loop of a sick cat yowling along with a smoke detector that needs its battery changed.

Smashing Pumpkins dropped their magnum opus in 1995 titled I refuse to type that silly title. Here's yet another 10 megaton version of one of the album's more obscure tracks. They really turned into a ferocious live unit once D'arcy and James got their chops together. When I saw the Pump's in 1992? Not so much.

The Goog's continued to ask the musical question, "what if The Replacements didn't become a boring, corny, Boomer-bait pile of warmed-over Robbie Robertson outtakes?" Some great TwinTone-era 'Mats analogs emerged from their efforts. That would soon change, mind you.

This is another band that soon wore out their welcome with me, but that is an absolute motherfucker of a riff. I love riffs that sound like some giant, rusty machine grinding glass in a salvage yard.

Richard Patrick perfected that art when he was an indentured servant guitarist for Skinflint Reznor. Given the choice of delivering pizzas to pay his rent while in NIN or striking out on his own, he chose the latter. You all know the hit, but this is my jam off Short Bus. I often sing the chorus to myself while scrolling through Twitter.

From Goo to Foo: Dave Grohl would release his one-man band debut Foo Fighters in 1995, ultimately setting the stage for Bono-like ubiquity as the socially-acceptable rock guy for people who hate rock music. I'm a bit sick of the album but it's impossible to get sick of this video.

Primus caused a stir with some Karens when this video was played before some movie or other. The video caused such a stir with me that I contemplated suing Primus for false advertising. I wanted to like Primus more than I did because I just never felt the guitar work was up to par with the bass and drums. It's pretty good here though.

Deciding one Curve was one too few, superstar producer Butch Vig formed Curve II (later named Garbage) in 1995 with Bene Frasserit High Priestess Shirley Manson (no relation to Charles or Marilyn). Their material would get a little INXS-styled fake rock for me, but I still love this one.

Collective Soul often skirted the fake-rock frontiers and often weirdly exuded a Christian Contemporary Music aura, but were just as often redeemed by some top-tier hooks and riffs. Good tunes to drive in your Saturn SL2 (I miss that car) on a sunny day (every day was sunny in 1995).

Apparently White Zombie were so happy with "Thunder Kiss '65" that they decided to rewrite it with a little more crunch. I can't hear this song without thinking of the pilot for Millennium. Now you can't either.

Catherine Wheel unleashed another great track that should have been a bigger hit. Unfortunately, the rest of the album? Well, let's just say it wasn't their most scintillating work, which probably hampered "Way Down's" success.

David Bowie finally took the train from Suck City to the 1.Outside. It helps that stopped trying to suck up to industry scuzzbottles and got his freak back on. Brian Eno dropped by to help. This entire record is camp as fuck, as silly and pretentious as it gets, way too long and not a little cringey. In other words, it's a great return to peak Bowie form.

Trip Hop reached its high water mark with Tricky's epochal Maxinquaye. I just realized that all these female singers these days who all sound the same are knocking off Martina Copley-Bird, only without the innate smoldering eroticism. This is definitely one of my favorite 90s albums.

ONE-HIT MORE THAN YOU HAD

I look at one-hit wonders more in a metaphysical than a commercial or artistic context. There's something mystical about summoning all that energy into THAT ONE SONG that more successful artists can't match. Especially when THAT ONE SONG is an artist's only truly good song.

"In the Meantime" isn't Spacehog's only good song, but it's most definitely the only good song on Resident Alien. At least that's the impression I got after a few spins. Maybe I should give it another chance. But this one is so good they really didn't need to record anything else, did they?

Lou Barlow from Dinosaur Jr formed the Folk Implosion and had a hit with this moody morsel, on the strength of it being used in the skeeve-fest Kids, written and directed by the Skeevemaster General, Larry Clark.

Some more of that great ground-glass guitar from 1995. Great song, but nothing else they did made any kind of impression on me. But does it really need to? This is enough.

Poe did a really boring grunge version of this to wheedle some airplay, but this version is way better. She did some song with a bunch of slang from William Gibson's Sprawl era, but that just induced high levels of wince in me.

I think Cornershop did pretty well with "Brimful of Asha," but I don't like that song. However, I fucking love this song, so let's go with this instead. I first heard this on an early Sunday morning while driving the fam to see my mom in Pennsylvania. In my Saturn SL2. God, I miss that car.

These cats may have had another hit but nothing as good as this. This is actually a really good album, by the by. You can tell these guys were an old-school hard rock band blindsided by grunge. They scanned the new landscape, spotted Stone Temple Pilots over yonder and said, "Those guys. We could pull off something like what those guys are doing." 

These guys are no-hit wonders. What's more, no one ever heard of them. But it's still a great 90s rock album leavened with old-school flavoring like Alex Lifeson guitar tones and Queen-worthy backup vocals. As far as I know they were a bunch of college guys who made this album during their gap year then went off to pull down big dollars at NGOs or wherever.

Oh, and they were called F O S S I L. Maybe they would have been more successful if they just called themselves "Fossil."

Proving my theory that inside every 80s hardcore roughneck lurked a closet Adam and the Ants devotee, NYCHC icon Civ gives us this insidiously catchy song and video.

YES, YES, YES. BUT WHAT ABOUT THE SIREN?

Glad you asked. The Sibyl was so heartbroken when the Buckley kicked her to the curb that she essentially made the Twins' first unplugged project and their first long-form video her very elaborate post-breakup letters. You can actually see the hurt and despair -- practically feel it --which just makes you want to cradle her tiny frame in your arms and tell her it will be OK. Plus, the eerie prophesying, which is just business as usual.

I don't know if this is the Mandela Effect or the Shimmer or whatever, but apparently PJ Harvey might have been getting wet 'n squishy with the Buckley the same time as the Sibyl. The initiates and I are poring through the paper trail like Medieval exegetes, but it seems maybe like PJ got the boot first, shot some very nasty musical daggers at the Sibyl, and as one initiate has pointed out, may have laid a death curse down on the Buckley. 

A pretty explicit curse, at that.

Did I miss any of your favorite musical daggers or explicit death curses from 1995? Hit the comments and drop some links.

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. 

And don't forget the all-night 90s lotus party over at SHRR...

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