Awfully Delightful 90's: Songs 30 - 21

#30 Gangsta's Paradise (Coolio). Possible THE Definitive Popular 1990's rap song. Stop me if you've heard this once or a hundred times before: Gangsta in his young 20's gets all philosophical about his old age and how his days are numbered. For some reason we were expected to take Coolio seriously and forget that he debuted with "Fantastic Voyage". But of course, this is most associated with the film "Dangerous Minds" which inspired millions of white kids to go to college and become teachers so they could save the troubled inner city youth. Except somewhere along the way, they decided they'd be much better served cajoling their way into a higher paying suburban job instead.



#29 Closer (Nine Inch Nails). And this ladies and gentlemen, is when we finally decided to bury innuendo altogether. What started almost a half-century earlier with "Wake Up Little Susie"evolved into "I Wanna Fuck You Like An Animal".



#28 Sex And Candy (Marcy Playground) They don't get more generically 90's than this tune. Let's sing about being alone and lost in contemplation. Let's be as repetitive as possible. And let's use adjectives like "disco" to show how cool we are. When this came out I absolutely could not stand it, you couldn't go anywhere without hearing it. But much like "Jesse's Girl", the stock in it's camp value has skyrocketed.



#27. Good (Better Than Ezra). Catchy. Simple. Generic. Nothing special. But I have my reasons. Primarily the line "Maybe we'll see on the 4th of July". Where I'm from, the 4th of July is a big deal. And by big deal, I mean, the entire town is one massive shitstorm. I think I had a stretch from 1996 - 2002 where every single 4th of July I really, really, really pissed off my then-girlfriend/then-fiance/now-wife. Yup, our entire relationship from high school sweethearts to old and boring married couple. There was one calendar day where you could being bank on me droppin' the mustard. And every time this song came on the radio it was quite the reminder that despite this warm and cuddly demeanor, I could be quite the asshole.



#26. The Humpty Dance (Digital Underground). Now we're talking. There was a stretch between 1991 and 1995 where I couldn't go into the john at a Burger King without thinking about this song. So bad it's good. This song was released at just the right time. If this came out 5 years later, it'd have gotten the "Eminem Treatement" and you'd have Weight Watchers Fascists protesting the line "Yo Fat Girl, Come'ere are ya tickilish" and M.A.D.D. protesting the claim that one would drink a bottle of Hennessey.



#25. Smooth (Carlos Santana with Rob Thomas). I love me some Carlos Santana. In fact, if I had an iPod for the entire decade, Santana would probably rank in the top 20 of artists I played the most. But somewhere along the line, he found you-know-who and like so many others who find the same dude, his career pretty much bit the big one. So what do you do to get back on track? You find yourself the singer of a popular boy-band and create a hit single. I was working in a day camp for rich kids during the summers of 98 and 99, and after a long day I'd stop in to Company B's, a local bar, for a pint of Beck's on more occasions than I'd like to admit. There was a stretch that year (not sure which one) where I couldn't be there for more than 10 minutes without hearing this song. Still pompous enough to criticize it's pop-ness at the time, I now admit that yeah, I kinda do like it.

#24. All-Star (Smashmouth). So unbelievably bad that you just gotta tip your cap to it. One of the beauties of capitalism is the sheer joy you can get by watching someone blatantly sellout. It's as if a couple of meat heads got together and said "Hey, let's write a song with a chorus custom-built for sporting events and commercials for sporting equipment!"

#23. 3:00 AM (Matchbox 20). And Rob Thomas rears his ugly head once again. There might not be a more over-the-top song in the 90's as far as vocals are concerned. But that's not the kicker. No. It turns out the inspiration for this song was a young Bobby Thomas' anger over the fact that his mother, after beating cancer, would go out and celebrate in bars. Walk a mile in the shoes pal. If you stare death in the face and walk away victorious the first thing you should wanna do is live it up. Carpe Diem asshole!

#22. Killing Me Softly (the Fugees). It's ok that Lauren Hill hates white people. I've grown to hate them as well. At least the ones who love humus and/or Toby Keith (yeah, very, very broad range). But there's something to be said about how awfully delightful this remake is. It's basically sounds exactly the same as Roberta Flack's original, save for a few spoken lines by Wycleff Jean. And people ate this the F up! This song was everywhere. I remember the winter of 07, I was in London with school for a couple of weeks, this was on every single damn jukebox of every damn pub. (So was Glenn Campbell's Rhinestone Cowboy, so make of that what you will). If I'm Roberta Flack, I'm thankful for the residuals, but pretty damn pissed that I was so blatantly copied. No original twist at all. If I sat at my desk and retyped The DaVinci code, do you think it could sell it as my own?

#21. Jump Around (House of Pain). Shout out for the Irish. And another Shout-Out for a music video that has a "Freddy Sez" sighting in it. But let's not pretend that this is even remotely a "good" song. As noted one of my biggest pet peeves with lyrics is rhyming for the sake of rhyming and Jump Around takes the cake in that department. However, I can't deny the fact that this was the one and only song that I was able to successfully dance to in my entire life. For aiding the rhythmically challenged, I salute thee, Oh House of Pain.