Nick's Top 256 Songs of 1996 (Remastered)

[a Nick O!]

Probably the greatest year for music ever in my life. If not that, then definitely the year of music with the greatest nostalgic value for me. Let's just call it both. So this being the case, I jumped the gun and extended the chart to 256 this year; there were just too many great songs that were going to be left off. (Also, you can tell how much of a landmark year it was for me by how much I ended up writing.)

NICK’S TOP 256 SONGS OF 1996
(Extended and Remastered)

Chart finished April 6, 2009
Commentary abandoned completely for 3 months, finally finished September 20, 2009

1. Rage Against the Machine “Bulls on Parade”
(I was all over Evil Empire the day it came out. From buying their first album in January or February and then this, plus their SNL performance on the same show that Republican presidential hopeful Steve Forbes hosted (!! ), 1996 belonged to Rage. But, uh, you'll also see that it belonged to Marilyn Manson, Garbage, and the Foo Fighters. Also seeds were planted for Tool, Korn, and 311.)
2. Marilyn Manson “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”
(Hot Eurythmics remake! Narrowly missed #1. Imagine, if you can, a time when "Marilyn Manson" was known more as a band rather than just its singer. Imagine, if you can, them not being famous, still under Trent Reznor's wing, before he/they became a mainstream cultural lightning rod and the scapegoats of offended Christian parents. So basically, all you knew was the shocking themes and lyrics on your brother's copy of their first album (i.e., if you're me) and little else. There was such an amazing sinister overtone of mystery and danger to them, still evident during this hit cover of the Eurythmics classic. Still the greatest Manson video ever and one of my favorite videos. If only I could have "1996" Marilyn Manson preserved in a bottle or time capsule. Memories are just so bittersweet, considering how different everything became barely two years later.)
3. Foo Fighters “Big Me”
(I was absolutely thrilled this was a #1 and crossed over to Pop radio to become a Top 10 hit. The brilliant music video hilariously sent up 3 of those campy (almost creepy) mid-'90's Mentos commercials and it remains my favorite music video of all-time.)
4. Garbage “Stupid Girl”
(Their first #1 on my chart, though I easily prefer "Only Happy When It Rains," and their first crossover Pop hit.)
5. Smashing Pumpkins “1979”
(Smashing Pumpkins have a long list of amazing videos, but for my money, this is the standout. Their biggest hit on my chart, too. The colorful video showed a gang of four teenage friends being delinquents, which, to a kid a couple years younger than them, was the coolest thing in the world. It was like watching a tape of the older brother you still idolized have fun with his friends, even if your own older brother never did anything remotely this irresponsible or cool.)
6. Garbage “Only Happy When It Rains”
(The song and video that got me into Garbage, though I was aware of "Vow" and "Queer" the previous year. Here's another case of a video being my favorite from a band and an all-time favorite, too. Plus, this began my years-long crush on Shirley Manson. A hot, made-up girl in a hot-pink vinyl dress, fishnet stockings, and black boots? And integrity? Stop it. I'm not gonna lie: that fall I bought a Garbage poster, put it over my bed in one of those 4-piece plastic frames, and actually used to kiss Shirley good night, being careful not leave lip prints on the plastic cover-piece. Hey man, I was 15, and while I pined over a year for this friend of mine at school, she got new boyfriends before I even realized she and the old ones had broken up.)
7. Bush “Comedown” (1995: #7)
8. Rage Against the Machine “Freedom” (1995: #106)
(Not one even remotely sub-par song on this album.)
9. Rage Against the Machine “People of the Sun”
10. Marilyn Manson “The Beautiful People”
(It was amazing hearing this first single from their proper second album on my Alternative radio station, seeing the video for it premiere on MTV, and walking to my local independent record store after school and buying Antichrist Superstar the day it came out.)
11. Sponge “Plowed”
(Was aware of it in the spring of '95, but didn't get to hear it until taping it off MTV's Top 100 of 1995 countdown. It was #86. Too bad this and "Molly" were hands down the best songs Sponge ever recorded.)
12. Garbage “Vow”
(Was aware of its existence in the summer of '95, but didn't really hear it until buying their album this spring. Then, as big as Garbage were becoming, I don't think I ever got to see the "Vow" video, now that I wanted to (very frustrating), until my brother got me the VHS of the 5 videos from this album for Christmas.)
13. Marilyn Manson “Dope Hat”
(I don't think my brother got Portrait of an American Family until this year, or at least I didn't hear it until '96. This had a video completely based on the boat ride from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, but I frustratingly never got to see it until at least 1997. Heck, the album intro, I later realized, is dialogue from the book/movie read in a demented, evil tone.)
14. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Warped” (1995: #15)
("Warped" died the previous fall, but I loved it so much it was still my highest charting One Hot Minute single the following year.)
15. Foo Fighters “I’ll Stick Around” (1995: #31)
16. Tool “Sober”
(Didn't buy Undertow until 1996.)
17. Korn “Blind”
(Though I remember "Blind" from the fall of '95 (the album came out in the fall of '94), I didn't buy the album until '96.)
18. Tool “Prison Sex”
(See #16.)
19. Sponge “Molly” (1995: #46)
20. 311 “Don’t Stay Home”
(Based on an old school friend visiting town again in February, and his copy of this album. I vaguely recall seeing this video in the fall of '95, but I didn't officially acknowledge it because I wasn't hearing it on the radio and had never heard of them before. He played this song for a group of us that night and I took to it right away, as well as the whole album, which I played through at least twice. I finally got around to buying this (along with Korn, and Alice in Chains' Facelift on the same Columbia House order) once "Down" came out and started moving up the charts.)
21. 311 “Down”
22. Tool “Stinkfist”
(Didn't have enough money to buy both Nirvana's From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah and Ænima the day they came out on October 1st (and still have enough money for Manson's Antichrist Superstar the next week), so I had to wait until Halloween to buy it after school. Even then, it took until seeing them at Lollapalooza in '97 and beyond in order for this album to become my favorite of all-time.)
23. Oasis “Wonderwall”
24. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Aeroplane”
(Yet another fine video from the One Hot Minute album. I think MTV premiered this, "Big Me," and Alice in Chains' "Heaven Beside You" (with maybe 1 or 2 others) all in the same week.)
25. Gravity Kills “Enough”
(The second and better single from their self-titled debut album. I should say second St. Louis single, because this hit radio at the end of '95 or January '96.)
26. Rage Against the Machine “Killing in the Name”
(I can never listen to a second of this on the radio anymore, though. Actually that goes for any single or album cut from the self-titled.)
27. Red Hot Chili Peppers “My Friends” (1995: #36)
28. Stone Temple Pilots “Big Bang Baby”
(I guess this went for the whole album as well, but this song was way softer and inspired by psychedelic '60's pop than I was expecting. I really liked the song, obviously, but it threw me for a loop.)
29. Soundgarden “Pretty Noose”
30. Folk Implosion “Natural One”
(The vocals were mumbled, I don't know what instrument or guitar effect makes that hypnotic spiraling low note at the beginning, the guitar line after each chorus is serene, the backbeat was ridiculously heavy and loud, and the video had astronauts in the desert, plus wind-up toys. Everything about this song was amazing. I had no idea at the time that Lou Barlow was better known for his work in early Dinosaur Jr. and Sebadoh.)
31. Alice in Chains “Grind” (1995: #97)
32. Stone Temple Pilots “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart”
33. Veruca Salt “Shimmer Like a Girl”
(They put out a four-song EP in '96 called Blow It Out Your Ass, It's Veruca Salt. (The cover was all four band members creatively dressed in toilet paper.) This is the little-promoted single that my Alt station played a little bit that spring. It's pretty much the loudest, heaviest, screamiest song the band ever recorded while Nina Gordon was still a member. And praise the lord, I actually have that CD with me, because I really want to hear that song again right now. Excuse me. Wow, no wonder it sounds like In Utero, which I can't believe I never noticed before: Steve Albini produced this.)
34. Foo Fighters “This Is a Call” (1995: #12)
35. Marilyn Manson “Get Your Gunn”
36. Marilyn Manson “Lunchbox”
(Didn't hear-->buy Portrait of an American Family until 1996, which explains the appearance of its first two singles here. Don't think I saw their full videos (Only got to see clips on 120 Minutes the week Manson and Twiggy were guests) until 1999, when Marilyn Manson's video collection came out on VHS.)
37. Alice in Chains “Heaven Beside You”
38. Stabbing Westward “Shame”
(Not only did this song smoke "What Do I Have to Do," but the video was great, too. It was a closed-captioned tale of an escaped mental patient stalking his ex-girlfriend. For humor, the band, performing the song in a huge empty room, excuse themselves one by one (leaving Christopher finishing the song by himself), to go up to the roof to watch the narrative play out like a movie, with 3-D glasses and buckets of popcorn, even booing the villain and throwing popcorn at him when he first appears on the rooftop. You can probably guess how the video ends if you've never seen it.)
39. Garbage “Supervixen”
(Fantastic lead track and near-single from Garbage's album. My brand new commercial-free, secondary Alternative station even played this. And "Not My Idea"!)
40. Korn “No Place to Hide”
(Awesome lead single from Korn's second album. If you can believe this, they didn't make a video for it because they didn't see the point in throwing money away on something MTV was just going to play a couple of times at three in the morning. This was still two years before "Got the Life," keep in mind. And when MTV still played a ton of videos!)
41. Beck “Where It’s At”
(After "Loser" essentially made him a one-hit wonder in '94, it didn't occur to me, for whatever reason, that he could come back with an album as universally acclaimed and high profile as Odelay. I learned of its existence noticing its perfect ranking in Spin magazine, I believe, in a Musicland one day. I said to myself, "Beck? 'Loser'-Beck? And then this song and video were amazing and everything worked itself out for him better than ever expected.)
42. Oasis “Champagne Supernova”
(Extraordinary follow-up to "Wonderwall.")
43. Foo Fighters “Alone + Easy Target”
44. Foo Fighters “Good Grief”
(Hot album cuts. Didn't really start appreciating how awesome all the Foo Fighters album cuts were until my brother taped it off of me and played it in his car a lot when we went places. "Alone" was the expected 4th single, if for no other reason than the singles so far had been sequential starting with track 1. But it never materialized. I believe it received a little bit of unsolicited airplay, though not on my stations.)
45. Garbage “Queer”
(Didn't think the song was great at first (obviously I changed my mind after loving "Only Happy When It Rains"), and the video, frankly, was a little unsettling, back in 1995. The juxtaposition of the lyrics and a largely one-take video, with Shirley demanding the camera focused on her face the entire time. Then, inexplicably, at the very end, the black & white video opens up into color, revealing a Hare Krishna looking, barefoot guy, stumbling down a residential street, looking up into the trees and leaping occasionally, while birds chirped. Come to find out it was Stephane Sednaoui, the video's director, who also did the Chili Peppers' "Give It Away" video, off the top of my head.)
46. Gin Blossoms “Til I Hear It From You” (1995: #21)
47. Gravity Kills “Guilty”
(Debut single I had been hearing way before the rest of America, due to St. Louis radio.)
48. Gin Blossoms “Follow You Down”
(Terrific lead single from their second album.)
49. Goo Goo Dolls “Name” (1995: #76)
50. Smashing Pumpkins “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” (1995: #91)
51. Bush “Glycerine” (1995: #163)
(I was thrilled when this crossed over, giving Bush their lone Pop hit, minor though it may have been.)
52. Toad the Wet Sprocket “Good Intentions” (1995: #63)
(The band said at one point that one of the best interpretations of the often misheard lyric "give us reprieve" was "burrito supreme." )
53. Foo Fighters “Floaty”
(Hot album cut.)
54. Collective Soul “The World I Know” (1995: #133)
55. Face to Face “I Won’t Lie Down”
(Holy damn was this a badass song. A one-hit wonder on my chart (#2 peak), but I got the album for Christmas and it was real solid. I listened to it regularly and it still finds occasional play every once in a while, which is more than I can say for a lot of my albums. They were a fairly underground punk band, but one of the most popular in the mid-to-late '90's. Their longtime bassist Scott Shiflett is the brother of Foo Fighter Chris Shiflett.)
56. Marilyn Manson “Cake and Sodomy”
(Hot album cut. First song off their 1994 debut album. Repeated intro phrase "I am the god of f**k" and a chorus that goes "White trash get down on your knees/Time for cake and sodomy" pretty much laid the groundwork for what you were in for, though nothing for me was as shocking as this first song. More importantly though, it kicked ass.)
57. The Cranberries “Salvation”
(Surprised by the almost punk rock quality of this not even two-and-a-half minute lead single. The video was pretty wild, too, with a nightmarish clown and lots of quick cuts.)
58. R.E.M. (featuring Patti Smith) “E-bow the Letter”
(Totally underrated song, despite its huge chart debut. Obviously it doesn't sound like a "radio hit," so I understand why it didn't stick around long, even though I didn't like that. To this day, though, this is probably my first or second favorite R.E.M. single, "Strange Currencies" being its rival.)
59. Rage Against the Machine “Vietnow”
(Hot album cut. A buddy of mine was singing the chorus at school one day, cracking us up by censoring himself with, "Turn on the radio/Nah, f*** it let's not /Turn it off/Fear is your only god on the radio...", etc.)
60. Alice in Chains “Again”
(Such a throwaway song, lyrically, that I was disappointed when this became the third single. However, after hearing it on the radio/TV, it really grew on me.)
61. Porno for Pyros “Tahitian Moon”
(This song was so alternately driving and ethereal. Perfectly timed for that summer. Shame that Good God's Urge didn't do too well, as it was pretty sharp.)
62. Soundgarden “Burden in My Hand”
63. Rage Against the Machine “Bombtrack”
64. Rage Against the Machine “Bullet in the Head”
(Above two from their s/t debut, not Evil Empire.)
65. 311 “Hive”
(Hot album cut. So hot that I memorized all of its rapped lyrics, which I rarely go out of my way to do.)
66. No Doubt “Spiderwebs”
(They played a couple of songs during MTV's Spring Break and I can't remember if they played this or "Just a Girl" last, but the second they hit their last note, Adrian immediately ran from his drums and cannonballed into the nearby swimming pool. It was an awesome, funny surprise.)
67. Smashing Pumpkins “Tonight, Tonight”
(Yes, the song is pretty and the video was fantastic. Clearly this won them lots of new fans. But I never thought neither song nor video were better than the songs/videos for "1979" and "Thirty-Three.")
68. Foo Fighters “Oh, George”
69. Foo Fighters “For All the Cows”
(Hot album cuts.)
70. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Love Rollercoaster”
(Hot Ohio Players remake! The animated video with Beavis and Butt-head was a total blast, too. Well done.)
71. Rage Against the Machine “Revolver”
(Hot album cut.)
72. Radiohead “Just” (1995: #119)
73. No Doubt “Don’t Speak”
(But this song and No Doubt's new-found fans ultimately burned me out on them for years until Return of Saturn came around.)
74. R.E.M. “Bittersweet Me”
75. Tori Amos “Caught a Lite Sneeze”
(I'm a sucker for the harpsichord, so this was the first Tori song I really rallied behind. Boys for Pele was the first album of hers I bought.)
76. Everclear “Santa Monica”
(This was such a sleeper Alternative hit and I didn't really get into it until it was in full swing.)
77. Garbage “Milk”
(The video for this was shot for the similar "Siren Mix" of the song, however. I was hoping the video would be sexier ( ), but it was a Garbage video, so it was very easy to love anyway.)
78. The Urge “Brainless”
(The rest of America just never knew how awesome this band was (aside from their 1998 Top 10 hit "Jump Right In"). Eclectic, high-energy, hook-stuffed ska-core with soulful vocals, courtesy of their African-American singer Steve Ewing. A St. Louis treasure, several of their songs, including this one (which actually had a music video played on 120 Minutes when their album Receiving the Gift of Flavor was picked up and re-released by Epic/Immortal), still get gold radio play. More so than Gravity Kills.)
79. Metallica “Until It Sleeps”
(The first Metallica song released after I was a full blown pop music addict. This is the song that got me into Metallica, backward though that may seem. The video was great, and for my money, Kirk Hammett never looked better than in this clip, when he had his labret piercing and wore his hair short, tucked into a hairnet. The CD-maxing album (which I didn't end up buying for another 3 years), had too much filler for me to truly love, but I was a huge fan of its 3 main radio singles.)
80. Coolio featuring L.V. “Gangsta’s Paradise” (1995: #13)
81. Dishwalla “Counting Blue Cars”
(A friend of mine was all about these guys at the time.)
82. New Edition “Hit Me Off”
(I enjoyed this song so much, and my long-awaited return of Bobby Brown(!), that I bought the CD single for this.)
83. Green Day “Geek Stink Breath” (1995: #47)
84. Madonna “You’ll See” (1995: #88)
85. Oasis “Morning Glory” (1995: #118)
86. Toadies “Possum Kingdom” (1995: #131)
(Perhaps the "Sometime Around Midnight" of its day.)
87. Eric Clapton “Change the World”
(One of my favorite Clapton singles, if not the favorite. Wasn't about to buy the Phenomenon soundtrack (great movie, though), but I bought the CD single.)
88. LL Cool J featuring Total “Loungin’ (Who Do Ya Luv Mix)”
(Since it was the remix, I had to buy this one on CD single as well. I actually like the album version (completely different song) just as well. Though I wasn't familiar with the album version's Al B. Sure "Nite and Day" sample, the melody was so killer I eventually thought to track the song down back in the good ol' days of Napster, Kazaa, et al.)
89. Lush “Ladykillers”
90. Lush “500”
(Though I missed their heyday three years prior, I love both of these singles from their '96 album Lovelife. Equally, in fact, though they are very different. "Ladykillers" is a driving rocker about vain men in clubs and "500" is actually an easy-going, lovely ode to a car.)
91. Smashing Pumpkins “Zero”
(Kind of a weak third single, and it showed, as it was overshadowed by both "1979" and then "Tonight, Tonight.")
92. Bush “Machinehead”
(A fine fifth single, but they were really starting to get overexposed by this point.)
93. 311 “All Mixed Up”
(It was years before I discovered that this was the dud second single off the album, later re-released as the fourth.)
94. Filter “Jurassitol”
(A fine stopgap soundtrack single, as soundtrack songs go.)
95. Smashing Pumpkins “Thirty-Three”
(Came out toward the end of '96, which is why it isn't higher, but it had a beautiful, stop-motion video, filled with tons of actresses and actors in 1920's fashions and related imagery.)
96. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony “Tha Crossroads”
(Nice job with the huge crossover single.)
97. Local H “Bound for the Floor”
98. Fiona Apple “Shadowboxer”
(As far as I'm concerned, she's never matched her debut single. That Chamberlin (the huge, sweeping, retro sounding keyboard) and the vibraphone absolutely made that song.)
99. The Wonders “That Thing You Do!”
(How fun was it that the fictitious huge hit song from the movie became a quick, decent sized Pop hit that fall.)
100. 311 “Loco”
(Hot, not-even-two-minute album cut that was just getting started on its way to glory on my chart.)
101. Goo Goo Dolls “Naked”
102. No Doubt “Just a Girl”
103. Beck “Devils Haircut”
104. Alice in Chains “Them Bones”
105. Alice in Chains “Down in a Hole”
(Didn't buy Dirt until '95, and believe it or not, its singles weren't overplayed on the radio at the time, so they were still plenty fresh for me.)
106. 311 “Guns (Are for Pussies)”
(Hot album cut.)
107. Radiohead “High and Dry”
(I remember in 7th period 8th grade art class, my best friend in the class and I, early in '96, at least a few times, would sing the chorus to each other in a call and response way in these ludicrous English accents. The first one would, out of nowhere, sing "Don't leave me high," and the other would respond, naturally, with "Don't leave me dry." We just left it at one time through; we didn't repeat it like the song does. Maybe you just had to be there. )
108. Garbage “As Heaven Is Wide”
(Hot album cut. Seriously this could've been a single.)
109. Sheryl Crow “If It Makes You Happy”
(To this day, my favorite Sheryl Crow song. Favorite video of hers, too (Dig those cherry lips!). This and "Everyday Is a Winding Road," to a slightly lesser extent, give me some amazing feelings of nostalgia for this exact time in my life.)
110. Korn “Shoots and Ladders”
(Hot public domain nursery rhymes! Didn't get to see the video I knew existed until buying their home video that came out the following year.)
111. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Suck My Kiss”
(Wasn't brave enough to buy Blood Sugar Sex Magik, due to its Parental Advisory sticker and title, until '95, and so I never got to hear this second single (long presumed to have been the fourth!), until more recently, and like the Dirt singles, it wasn't all over Alternative radio as a gold (recurrent?) at the time.)
112. The Cranberries “Free to Decide”
(Great song and video from that summer.)
113. Alice in Chains “Man in the Box”
(Didn't get Facelift until '96, so, while "Man in the Box" was more familiar to me than most of the Dirt singles before buying that one, save "Rooster," it was still fresh enough for me to have not "missed" charting it.)
114. Tool “Swamp Song”
(Hot album cut. The steady stream of lyrics and the riffs to the pre-chorus and chorus absolutely make this my favorite Undertow album cut.)
115. Korn featuring Chino Moreno “Wicked”
(Hot Ice Cube remake/album cut! This was a fantastic surprise upon purchasing Life Is Peachy, finally having the money for it one month after it came out...)
116. Stabbing Westward “What Do I Have to Do?”
117. Matthew Sweet “Devil with the Green Eyes”
(Hot album cut (I think ), from his 1993 Altered Beast album.)
118. Amber “This Is Your Night”
(Such good production and melodies.)
119. Garbage “A Stroke of Luck”
(Hot album cut.)
120. Merril Bainbridge “Mouth”
121. Alice in Chains “Over Now”
122. Marilyn Manson “Tourniquet”
(Favorite Antichrist Superstar album cut and it ends up being the 2nd single. Count it!)
123. Social Distortion “I Was Wrong”
(Had never heard of Social D previously, but this was the song that started it all for me.)
124. Nas featuring Lauryn Hill “If I Ruled the World (Imagine That)”
(Such a killer song! Come to find out, though, years and years later, that Lauryn's bridge melody was lifted from the Delfonics and that the production in the second half of the verses that I love so much was sampled from an old Whodini song. Anyway I remember that summer when It Was Written debuted at #1 and stayed there for 4 weeks. Shocked me at the time, because I didn't realize how big of a deal Nas and Illmatic were at the time.)
125. Korn “A.D.I.D.A.S.”
(Fun, throwaway song built on the stale acronym I first heard 3 years earlier in 6th grade. For some reason it became the second single early in '97.)
126. Primitive Radio Gods “Standing Outside a Broken Phone Booth with Money in My Hand”
(I'm not sure people gave this song quite enough credit for how incredible the production was.)
127. Garbage “#1 Crush (Nellee Hooper Remix)”
(The version heard on the radio from the Romeo + Juliet soundtrack. The original was an imported "Vow" b-side.)
128. Green Day “Brain Stew/Jaded”
(The fact that this stop-start, simple, repetitive song ended up becoming one of their time-tested classics irritates me.)
129. The Heads featuring Johnette Napolitano “Damage I’ve Done”
(Totally underrated, overlooked minor hit from 3/4 of the Talking Heads. The album featured a revolving door cast of vocalists to fill in for David Byrne. I didn't realize at first that Johnette was a member of Concrete Blonde. I further became acquainted with her in '97 when I realized she did backing vocals on my favorite song on my newly beloved Bad Religion's Recipe for Hate album.)
130. Spacehog “In the Meantime”
(Lots of cool songs and bands with outer-space themes around this time. From Spacehog to the Foo Fighters, to Folk Implosion's "Natural One" video.)
131. Green Day “Walking Contradiction”
(Video for this was hilarious, with each of the guys obliviously creating absolute disasters in their wake.)
132. Better Than Ezra “King of New Orleans”
133. Garbage “Not My Idea”
(Hot album cut.)
134. Sublime “What I Got”
(Was only vaguely familiar with the name before Brad's death, but this was a fantastic song. Even though I wound up liking all 3 of the subsequent singles more than this one.)
135. Stone Temple Pilots “Lady Picture Show”
136. Celine Dion “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now”
(Loved this Celine song and video. She was still cool at this point, as far as I was concerned.)
137. 2Pac featuring Dr. Dre “California Love”
(Never loved this one as much as MTV and the public seemed to.)
138. Deftones “7 Words”
(Ah, the year late night radio introduced me to the Deftones. Didn't hear this one until after "Bored," though.)
139. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Coffee Shop”
(The little known 4th single from One Hot Minute. MTV played this a few times on 120 Minutes that summer. Possibly their weakest video, the studio recording was just played over a live concert performance.)
140. Oasis “Hello”
(Hot album cut.)
141. Red Hot Chili Peppers “Deep Kick”
(Hot album cut.)
142. Suicidal Tendencies “Institutionalized”
(Year I was introduced to this '80's punk/hardcore classic.)
143. Oasis “Don’t Look Back in Anger”
144. Republica “Ready to Go”
145. Radiohead “Street Spirit (Fade Out)”
(4th Bends single that summer, with an amazing B&W video 120 Minutes gave quite a bit of play to.)
146. Gretchen “Pictorial of a Tunafish”
(Hot local band album cut. Schoolmates-turned good friend with their drummer.)
147. R.E.M. “Leave”
(Hot album cut. Seriously, it's amazing. Seven minutes of absolute glory. Easily one of my Top 2 or 3 R.E.M. songs ever.)
148. John Mellencamp “Key West Intermezzo (I Saw You First)”
(Favorite lyric: "You just made that story up/There ain't no girl like that.")
149. Deftones “Bored”
150. Keith Sweat featuring Kut Klose “Twisted”
(First Keith Sweat song I ever heard, having known who he was for well over 5 years. Love this song so much.)
151. Donna Lewis “I Love You Always Forever”
(I think it's awesome that this lovely, unassuming song still holds the record for most weeks at #1 on the R&R/Mediabase Pop chart.)
152. Porno for Pyros “100 Ways”
(Lovely, underrated second single from exotic, underrated second PFP album.)
153. Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers “Walls”
154. Soundgarden “Blow Up the Outside World”
155. Poe “Angry Johnny”
156. No Mercy “Where Do You Go”
157. LL Cool J “Doin’ It”
(Love the production, which, come to find out is totally built on an old Grace Jones track.)
158. Alanis Morissette “Hand in My Pocket” (1995: #94)
159. Alanis Morissette “Ironic”
160. Jewel “Who Will Save Your Soul”
161. Toni Braxton “You’re Makin’ Me High”
(First two Secrets singles absolutely measured up to the bulk of the singles off her debut album.)
162. Butthole Surfers “Pepper”
(Thought this was Beck and/or Tripping Daisy before I heard this identified. Didn't think the "Who Was in My Room Last Night" guys were capable of making such a radio-friendly smash.)
163. Rage Against the Machine “Darkness”
(Hot album cut. From The Crow soundtrack 2 years earlier.)
164. The Cranberries “When You’re Gone”
(Underrated 3rd To the Faithful Departed single.)
165. Gravity Kills “Down”
(Third St. Louis single from this album, since "we" were already familiar with both "Guilty" and "Enough" by this point.)
166. Goldfinger “Here in Your Bedroom”
167. Mariah Carey & Boyz II Men “One Sweet Day” (1995: #99)
168. Rage Against the Machine “Down Rodeo”
169. Bad Religion “A Walk”
(First memorable exposure to Bad Religion. This song set the stage for my Gray Race purchase the following year.)
170. Garbage “Fix Me Now”
171. Garbage “Dog New Tricks”
(Hot album cuts.)
172. Fugees “Killing Me Softly with His Song”
(Hot Roberta Flack remake! )
173. Dave Matthews Band “Too Much”
174. Korn “Clown”
(Was aware of its springtime third single status, but didn't get wide exposure to it until buying the album at the end of summer.)
175. Goo Goo Dolls “Long Way Down”
176. Dave Matthews Band “So Much to Say”
177. Hootie & the Blowfish “Old Man & Me”
(Always felt this underperformed.)
178. Garbage “My Lover’s Box”
(Hot album cut.)
179. Def Leppard “When Love & Hate Collide”
(This CD single was my first musical purchase of 1996.)
180. Mariah Carey “Fantasy” (1995: #98)
181. Tracy Chapman “Give Me One Reason”
182. Bloodhound Gang “Fire Water Burn”
(Video's intro was hilarious, with Jimmy Pop spoofing Matt Pinfield and 120 Minutes. "Pat Minfield from 120 Midgets.")
183. La Bouche “Sweet Dreams”
(The first 2 La Bouche singles were awesome.)
184. Nada Surf “Popular”
(Video was amazing.)
185. Beck “Pay No Mind”
(Was aware it had a video, thanks to Beavis and Butt-head, but didn't hear it until getting Mellow Gold this year. The second verse is stream of conscious genius: "Give the finger to the rock & roll singer/As he's dancing upon your paycheck/The sales climb high through the garbage-pail sky/Like a giant dildo crushing the sun." Wow. )
186. En Vogue “Don’t Let Go (Love)”
(Fine return, after a too-long 3-year absence. Too bad it was also the last significant hit they ever had. )
187. Blackstreet featuring Dr. Dre & Queen Pen “No Diggity”
(The chorus and bridge were so ridiculous they made the song totally endearing.)
188. Better Than Ezra “Desperately Wanting”
(Yet another fine single from Better Than Ezra. Surprisingly, I was never interested in their albums, though.)
189. Everything But the Girl “Missing (Todd Terry Remix)”
(It took me a very long time to concede that, yes, this was a terrific song.)
190. Celine Dion “Because You Loved Me”
191. George Michael “Fastlove”
(Didn't even realize for years, long after hearing Will Smith's "Men in Black" the next year, and then Patrice Rushen's "Forget Me Nots" a year later, that this song samples "Forget Me Nots" in the coda. I had to read it in the credits of his GH album.)
192. Everclear “You Make Me Feel Like a Whore”
(Fun fact: I heard that year that they performed at a pre-school or kindergarten or something and modified this song to turn it into "You Make Me Feel Like I'm Four."
193. Matthew Sweet “Sick of Myself” (1995: #20)
194. Matthew Sweet “We’re the Same” (1995: #62)
195. David Bowie “The Heart’s Filthy Lesson” (1995: 102)
196. Edwyn Collins “A Girl Like You” (1995: #80)
197. Tool “Forty Six & 2”
(Hot album cut.)
198. La Bouche “Be My Lover”
199. TLC “Diggin’ on You”
200. Candlebox “Simple Lessons” (1995: #109)
201. Gravity Kills “Blame”
(I guess the Escape from L.A. remix was the second single that summer, but it was the 4th "St. Louis" single.)
202. Better Than Ezra “In the Blood” (1995: #49)
203. Dr. Dre “Been There, Done That”
(Not quite up to his glory hits from The Chronic, but the intro and outro to the video were hilarious.)
204. Green Day “When I Come Around” (1995: #1)
205. The Chemical Brothers (featuring Noel Gallagher) “Setting Sun”
(Such a good song.)
206. Mariah Carey “Always Be My Baby”
207. Fugees “Ready or Not”
(The unlicensed Enya sample really enhanced the song. The submarine video was pretty bitchin' too.)
208. Toni Braxton “Un-break My Heart”
(The video to this was really similar to Celine's "It's All Coming Back to Me Now," as I recall. Both were the ladies' simultaneous second singles from their respective albums.)
209. Blind Melon “Toes Across the Floor”
210. John Mellencamp “Just Another Day”
(Favorite lyric: "Watching girls on the street/Yeah, that's all right with me/And it's just another day.")
211. Madonna “You Must Love Me”
(Lovely Madonna ballad. A "You Must Love Me"/"Don't Cry for Me Argentina" medley was the last song in my high school marching band's show the following fall.)
212. Korn “Sean Olsen”
(Hot album cut. From The Crow: City of Angels soundtrack.)
213. Goldfinger “Mabel”
(Such a catchy little tune.)
214. Gin Blossoms “As Long as It Matters”
(Lovely ballad from these guys. Overlooked 3rd single, too.)
215. Rancid “Ruby Soho”
216. Ozzy Osbourne “I Just Want You”
(Kick-ass power-ballad third single from Ozzmosis. Surprisingly, MTV played this video quite a bit in regular rotation after seemingly completely ignoring the first two.)
217. Adam Clayton & Larry Mullen “Theme from Mission: Impossible”
(Hot Lalo Schifrin remake! )
218. Ace of Base “Beautiful Life” (1995: #122)
219. Metallica “Hero of the Day”
(For some reason, I kind of ignored this single for the first month or so it was out. Which is weird, because I enjoyed "Until It Sleeps" so much.)
220. Hootie & the Blowfish “Tucker’s Town”
(Another overlooked Hootie single that was just as good as any of the mega-hits from Cracked Rear View.)
221. Bryan Adams “Let’s Make a Night to Remember”
(This was a fine Bryan Adams ballad.)
222. Eels “Novocaine for the Soul”
(Plenty of memorable lines and couplets from this song:
1. "Life is hard/And so am I"
2. "Life is white/And I am black/Jesus and his lawyer/Are coming back"
3. "Life is good/And I feel great/'Cause mother says I was/A great mistake")
223. Björk “Hyper-ballad”
(Fantastic single/video from Post.)
224. The Wallflowers “6th Avenue Heartache”
(Fine "introduction" to the Wallflowers. You could totally hear Adam Duritz providing background vocals without even knowing it for sure.)
225. The Verve Pipe “Photograph”
(Always preferred this to "The Freshmen.")
226. Live “All Over You” (1995: #81)
227. Alice in Chains “Brush Away”
(Hot album cut.)
228. Bush “Swallowed”
(Little bit of a disappointing lead single, if you ask me. "Greedy Fly" was quite a bit better.)
229. Screaming Trees “All I Know”
(Aware of them for awhile, but this was the first Screaming Trees song I ever heard. Then I looked into "Nearly Lost You" and Sweet Oblivion the following year.)
230. Pure “Anna”
(This song deserved so much better. The main guitar hook was so hypnotic.)
231. Cake “The Distance”
(Yeah, it had some cool lyrics and a good sound, but this is a band that all my friends were way more into than I ever was. Most of 'em bought at least this album and the next one, whereas I was never interested in a full-length by these guys.)
232. Hole “Gold Dust Woman”
(Hot Fleetwood Mac remake! )
233. Seal “Don’t Cry”
234. “Weird Al” Yankovic “Amish Paradise”
(Hot Coolio parody! )
235. Salt “Bluster”
(Yet another little-known band with a cruelly underrated minor radio/video hit from this year.)
236. Ace of Base “Lucky Love”
(Good, but not quite as sharp as all their previous singles.)
237. Tori Amos “Talula”
(This and "Caught a Lite Sneeze" inspired my Boys for Pele purchase.)
238. Everclear “Heartspark Dollarsign”
239. Elton John “Blessed”
(I think he had something like a 25-year streak of hitting the Top 40, until this third Made in England single stalled in the 40's at the beginning of '96. )
240. Dog’s Eye View “Everything Falls Apart”
241. Failure “Stuck on You”
(Love that high-pitched guitar line that runs throughout the song. Had no idea at the time how highly esteemed by their peers they were/would become. How could anyone know they'd be anything but just another one-hit wonder?)
242. Prince “Betcha By Golly, Wow!”
(Hot Stylistics (version) remake! This song was fantastic.)
243. Busta Rhymes “Woo-Hah!! Got You All in Check”
(Favorite lyric: "Yo! Which muthaf***a stole my flow?/Eenie, meenie, meinie, mo.")
244. Monica “Before You Walk Out of My Life”
(Always preferred this by a mile to "Don't Take It Personal.")
245. Kula Shaker “Tattva”
(What a great song. If you didn't know, actress Hayley Mills' son, Crispin, was the frontman.)
246. Tracy Bonham “Mother, Mother”
(A little overrated, but a cool song, nonetheless. If I remember correctly, she only appeared on a TV set in the video, with her real mother playing the maid/cleaning lady that cleaned the room.)
247. D’Angelo “Lady”
(Such a cool, smooth, romantic song.)
248. The Cure “Mint Car”
(A little overlooked, in my opinion. The video was great, though.)
249. Paul Westerberg “Love Untold”
(Didn't know yet that he was the frontman of the Replacements. This was a great song.)
250. Selena “Dreaming of You”
251. The Tony Rich Project “Nobody Knows”
252. Hootie & the Blowfish “Time”
253. Gretchen “Center Stage”
(Hot album cut.)
254. Groove Theory “Tell Me”
(Like D'Angelo's "Lady" above, this was such a cool, smooth song. More of a contemporary beat to this one, though.)
255. Orbital “The Box”
(Amazing still-frame animated video for this hypnotizing electronic instrumental. Played frequently on 120 Minutes.)
256. Prince “Dinner with Delores”
(From his album that summer, Chaos and Disorder. Favorite lyric, from the bridge: "Dancin' like a white girl.")

Whew!

[WotUNeed]

This list is probably the most nostalgic for me of the ones you've posted, because, in large part, what we were hearing this year seems to overlap. Now, in some cases, our perceptions were different (e.g., I heard Manson's singles and didn't particularly want to do so again), but in large part, I think that perspective is easily explained by age.

Regardless, awesome. Thanks for continuing to share these.

[crash46]

I don't have time to address every single thought from this whole list right now (I'm kind of typing this from an iPod), but I'll grind off a few of these.

I think I remember some right wing nut blasting the dems on sticking forbes into a "The Machine Rages On" concert. Whatever that was I thought it was absolutely hysterical just that he got the name of the band wrong without me understanding why it was even an issue.

The portrait of manson's breakthrough era in #2 was painted beautifully. I was never able to see them that way; to me they were always just some band that all the "look at me Im rebellious" kids at school were into.

I was not aware even today of a lot of the sampling that was going on in several o the rhythmic tracks, such as "if I ruled the world" and "ready or not".

Interesting that you cited lyrics on the two Mellencamp songs, which were good lyrics; I just never had paid any attention to them whatsoever yet still liking the songs comparbly as much as you did.

I liked "hit me off" a lot as well and was floored that it missed the top 40 as much as it was played here. When its followup debuted on at40, Casey was telling the new edition story all the whlie I was thinking "finally, hit me off made it on".

Hope these keep coming, even If we have to wait another 6 months for '97 to arrive. .

[a Nick O!]

Thanks for weighing in, guys. It's always great to get feedback on this stuff from my chart-obsessed peers.