*5 Songs*

Jesse Isleib
Guest Reporter

Music of the 90’s so rapidly changed to fit the smashed-together crazy fast cultural changes of the decade that it caused a burn out in pop music, resulting in what we have today. Out of the wide range of music, the following songs caught the most attention as “really 90s”:

No Rain-Blind Melon
No Rain is all about the “there’s nothing to do anymore” feeling and consequently doing nothing. Really ambient use of electric guitar and synthed out voice gives the overly relaxed feeling of the era. This is fall asleep music.

Overindulgence in Semi-Charmed Kinda Life-Smash Mouth
In this song, Smash Mouth targets various obscene topics of day-to-day life with promiscuous acquaintances and the degeneration of moral value. Almost the fastest paced sound of the decade, the quick lyrics are comprised of quite obscene topics that are spoken of so comfortably, they are almost hidden.

Tubthumping-Chumbawumba
The “Never give up!” 90s attitude is screamed by Chumbawumba’s most famous hit. Really in your face, it’s definitely the fastest attitude of the times (except Bone Thugs). Screaming “I get knocked down, but I get up again” most of the song gives great testament to pop culture’s move into an attitude of “repeat until it breaks or works!”

Steal My Sunshine-LEN
Who can forget this sunny/beach/Canadian 90s classic? The peppy song marked the end of the decade with Canadian siblings who cheerily sang and rode their mopeds with their buddies. Out of the five, this song is definitely the happiest; pop synthesizers and sound effects make up the whole song, revolving heavily around the voice, a method that would come to be extremely popular in the following years.

All that She Wants-Ace of Base
Ace of Base’s hit is all about a girl who wakes up, goes to the beach and tries to procreate a child using you (but will shortly run off). Even more techno pop than Steal my Sunshine, All That She Wants hit the tops of billboards in Denmark, Australia, the United Kingdom and #2 platinum in the United States when it came out in ‘92. The synthed out voice stays stuck in your head forever. I still can’t quite tell if they can sing at all, or if they began the pitch-perfection use of computers, but they can definitely make catchy music.