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Episode 40ish: 90 Percent Prince

It's been 2ish years and 15 days since we took the time to release a 90 Percent Hits podcast, but we're back, for a special episode, to pick out our favourite tunes by Prince. After all, Prince is most associated with the 1980s, but for anyone around in the early 1990s, he was as big as he'd ever been. Back when we were a regular podcast covering the #1 singles of the 1990s, we discussed 'Cream' by Prince and 'The Most Beautiful Girl In The RoomWorld' by Prince Symbol The Artist For Squiggly, along with Prince-written songs like Sinead O'Connor's 'Nothing Compares 2 U' and Martika's 'Love...Thy Will Be Done'. To love pop music in the early 1990s is to have been exposed to Prince Rogers Nelson.

So (sadly) this is a commemoration of the life of our dearly beloved Squiggly (as he was known for much of the 1990s).

Episode ...40ish: 90 Percent Prince!

In terms of what songs we each picked...well, you'll just have to listen, won't you?

#podcast #podcasts #prince #90 percent hits

Hello - I've posted my list of top 10 records for 2014. Coincidentally, the top three are by four men who all had their biggest success in the 90s. - DY

julygdiaz

90percenthits-blog

Don't go making phony calls.

jimllpaintit

National Geographic asked me to summarise the 1990s in one image. This is what I came up with.

lonepilgrim-deactivated20221101

the 1990s was heralded beforehand as ‘the spiritual decade’, an antidote to the materialist ’80s

musicfromjune-blog

#pusa presidentsoftheusa

my90sposters

Episode 39

In this 'final episode' of 90 Percent Hits, we look back on the experience of having to discuss these #1s. We ended up covering over a hundred of the things, all up, and we wondered what, if anything, we learned in the process (we make jokes, too).

Episode 39: The Final Episode

But don't worry, we're not done. It's not really final final. This is more John Farnham announcing his 'last' tour final. Plans are afoot to cover other aspects of the musical 1990s in the usual us-talking-on-a-podcast form. After all, the #1 singles are just one way of looking at what's going on...so stay tuned!

#podcast 39 #podcast #final episode

Episode 38

In this ‘Choose Your Own Adventure’ episode, we each pick one song that was amongst the top 100 best selling singles of 1999!

As ever, make sure to check the tumblr over the next week as we’ll be posting more stuff about these songs and related things. Feel free to comment underneath the podcast tumblr post to tell us about your experiences with the songs, or to drop us a line at twitter, Facebook or the gmail (all of which have the username 90percenthits, of course). And it looks good if you rate us or review us on iTunes. And we’re always keen to hear other people’s experiences with these songs!

Episode 38: Garbage, New Radicals, Killing Heidi, & Lauryn Hill

Featuring:

‘When I Grow Up’ by Garbage (#22 in August 1999)

‘You Get What You Give’ by New Radicals (#13 in May 1999)

‘Weir’ by Killing Heidi (#6 in December 1999)

'Doo Wop (That Thing)' by Lauryn Hill (#8 in March 1999, as a double a-side with 'Can't Take My Eyes Off You')

Enjoy!

#podcast 38 #podcast #1999 #when i grow up #garbage #you get what you give #new radicals #weir #killing heidi #doo wop (that thing)#lauryn hill

Eiffel 65 - Blue

This is the way the 90s ends, not with a bang but a song from an album called Europop. It was, of course, the kind of silly novelty song that had a sort of logic to its success - it's catchy and there's a blue dude in its video! - but it's definitely aggressively unmusical in a Crazy Frog kind of way. There's little on offer here for someone who likes songs with ninth chords in them, or lyrics with a sense of internal structure, or intriguing sonics. I'm sure it's fun to dance to.

We have, of course, already chosen our songs for the 1999 Choose Your Own Adventure episode of the podcast, and you'll find out about them tomorrow, but one thing that was very clear was that 1999 seems like a pretty barren year for pop to us in general. There were some pretty outstanding things, and those things definitely showed a way forward (e.g., 'Baby One More Time' and 'No Scrubs') but there's also a bunch more bland cookie-cutter stuff. As a group, we were invested in alternative music at the time, and that noticeably dried up on the charts in 1999.

It's hard to tell how much of that barren-ness is related to us being on the cusp of adulthood by the end of the 1990s; perhaps we would have responded more charitably to the Vengaboys and their ilk if were 12 at the time. But there just seems to be an emptiness of what I had pegged as 'authentic' sentiment about much of pop music in 1999. Everything's either massive sentiment - the Shania Twains of the world - or the sentiment is very secondary to the dance beat. 'Blue' is a good example of that in a way - the Eiffel 65 guys are probably trying to make some sort of statement about the world in some hamfisted kind of way with all the blue stuff, but nobody's really paying attention to that at all. At least, that stuff doesn't tug at heartstrings quite the way that, say, 'Stop' by the Spice Girls does. Instead, it's no more and no less than a catchy song with which to experience the euphoria of dance. 'Blue', in the end, was pretty much what it was like to party like it's 1999. It sounded more fun in the Prince song.

-TB

#podcast 37 #1999 #eiffel 65 #blue

wolframalpha

It did not rain on Alanis Morissette’s wedding day.

#alanis morissette #ironic #1996 #1995

Lou Bega - Mambo #5

In the immortal words of Sideshow Bob Terwilliger, 'oh cousin Merle!'

Novelty songs have always been with us. From the moment the Big Bopper annoyed the living shit out of everyone but a small subset of psychotically deranged teenagers in the 50's, it really has been a steady stream of stupid. We just choose not to see it so many years down the track. But the thing is, your novelty hits are probably more defining in some ways that the ones people actually took seriously. So it is here: what were the 90's? A sheeny-shiny yet lazy pile of half-baked dance beats, electronic burps and farts and some arsehole with pseudo-World Music stylings protesting far too much about how awesome he is with women.

It's no surprise that novelty hits like this struck gold in Australia either: we're the country that yammers on about how laid back we are and how our sense of humour encompasses everything because we're so laid back braaah. If some jackass is pumping guff like this out and plainly intending it as a joke, then we're in on it, because we're laid back don't take anything too seriously and have a great sense of humour. Brah. Part of the success of this song here is about people buying into that self-image. It's also why dross like this gets played at weddings (multiple times at some ...): it's cultivating the image that everyone there is relaxed and intent on making the occasion a 'good time' and aren't too proud to make themselves look stupid for the benefit of the bride and groom and family.

This is typical lowest-common denominator stuff - see we're none of us above groovin' out to 'Mambo #5'! It assumes that bonding between people has to remove the critical faculty altogether and not dwell on tasteful things (people disagree on those matters, and heavens forfend they do that), because pure pap is so dreadful and laughable that at least everyone's on the same page. There's some merit to this, but not much.

The thing is, this song doesn't flatter the record buying public in any way. And not just in a 'it's shit' way either. It's obnoxious, cultural tourism and a colossal event horizon beyond which all our accomplishments with respect to gender and sexuality retreat into barely concealed barbarity, misogyny and general fuckwittery. We're always served up the lowest common denominator as some kind of necessary evil to help us all stick together and to project the most fun, least complicated and unthreatening version of ourselves. At the end of it all, that really is just a crutch to lean on as we give rein to our worst impulses and indulge the douchey and vapid that still lurk among us. It's a classic Trojan Horse planted at the door on behalf of dickheads everywhere, and lo, how they come streaming out of the landscape when this fills the air. The refrain of 'oh don't take it so seriously, be laid back braaaah!' is just the usual classic rationalisation that everyone really is like them.

Don't ever let them think that for a moment more: proclaim loudly that this eats donkey turds and has soundtracked more unscrupulous transmission of chlamydia than even 'Paradise by the Dashboard Light' and is therefore a humanitarian disaster.

-TC

#podcast 37 #number 1 #Mambo no. 5 #lou bega #kill it with fire

Pearl Jam - Leaving Here

It's a measure of how big Pearl Jam were in the mid-1990s that a song like 'Leaving Here' got hammered on Triple J at the time; Triple J was happy to play b-sides and rarities from compilations because the demand was just huge.

Mind you, if Pearl Jam covering a 60s song for a charity compilation was going to be a thing that gets to the top of the charts (which, clearly, it became), why not Zoidberg 'Leaving Here'? It's got the energy and spark, and it's a ferocious performance of an old Motown number from the early 1960s, sung by one of the Hollands in that Holland-Dozier-Holland songwriting bunch who wrote all those Motown songs. And of course, with that HDH imprimatur, it's just a better song. And the band are clearly having a ball. (Also see the High Numbers' version, which this is pretty clearly based on, rather than the Eddie Holland original. The High Numbers would go on to change their name to The Who, by the way.)

-TB

#pearl jam #leaving here #1999 #1996 #podcast 37

J Frank Wilson & The Cavaliers - Last Kiss (#76 on the Australian charts in 1964)

The original. 'Last Kiss' was what was called a 'death disc' at the time; along with stuff like 'Leader Of The Pack', 'Dead Man's Curve' and 'Teen Angel'. There was a real fad for it; this stuff was considered vulgar and morbid at the time by adults, but the Capital-R Romantic in the mindset of many teens at the time responded to it.

The Cavaliers' version wasn't actually the original (that was by Wayne Cochran) but it was the hit in the US (and a more minor hit in Australia, where the big hits internationally sometimes failed to make much of a dent - e.g., 'California Girls' by the Beach Boys barely charted, presumably for parochial reasons). It's fairly clear that Pearl Jam based their version off the Cavaliers' one; the Wayne Cochran version is a bit too upbeat, and there's an appealing echoey reverb to J Frank Wilson's vocals here that the wild-and-woolly Eddie Vedder vocal is aiming for.

As an adult in 2014 who has seen Twin Peaks, it's not hard to make the connection. I mean, that combination of straight-laced wholesomeness (which the early 1960s sort of inevitably sounds like to us in the post-Jefferson Airship, post-Sex Pistols, post-Black Eyed Peas era) with weird morbid death imagery! The owls are not what they seem. I wonder if this was Pearl Jam's reaction to the song, too, when Vedder found the song on a 7" second-hand.

-TB

#pearl jam #j frank wilson and the cavaliers #last kiss #episode 37 #1999 #1964

Pearl Jam - Last Kiss

Pearl Jam, of course, weren't known for their videos - they famously refused to make them after quite early in their career. And so there's no official video for 'Last Kiss', but there is this footage of them from the Bridge School Benefit in 1999.

It's still kind of weird that something like 'Last Kiss' even got to #1. It just doesn't sound like one. But clearly it was appealing to something in the collective unconscious, something in the Zeitgeist. I mean, this is tossed-off to the max. I'm sure it was a one-take wonder, and it was originally recorded for a fan club 7" single if I remember right; it's not the kind of thing that sounds obviously like a #1. Perhaps there's something intriguing in the combination of the morbid lyrics and the fun Pearl Jam appear to be having? I dunno.

There was a point in Pearl Jam's career when the energy, the spark seemed to go right out of it. And for all the guitar solos and all the Eddie Vedder wannabes out there, maybe Pearl Jam's success was all about that energy, that spark. The energy's still there on, say, 'Spin The Black Circle' or 'Corduroy' from 1994's Vitalogy, and it's still there on some of 1996's No Code - try 'Habit' or 'In My Tree'. But on 1998's Yield, the band start to sound a bit tired, a bit too in-their-box. There's nothing wrong with 'Given To Fly' or 'Do The Evolution', but the spark isn't there in quite the same way. It's safe, in a way, and the sound of the record is very crafted rather than the kind of live-sounding noise they were so good at in the mid-1990s. Maybe the success of 'Last Kiss' is purely because it has that spark (if nothing else).

-TB

#pearl jam #last kiss #1999 #podcast 37

Jennifer Lopez - If You Had My Love

J-Lo is still a megastar, at least in some parts of the world. She was last on top of the charts in Australia in 2011, with the song 'On The Floor' with Pitbull (which has a whopping three quarters of a billion views on YouTube), and pretty much each of her recent singles has over 100,000,000 views on YouTube.

And, music charts-wise, at least, 'If You Had My Love' was where it all started. Of course, J-Lo had a whole career in movies before this (and after this); in terms of combined singing and acting career all-rounders, the only person who really competes is Will Smith.

And Will Smith isn't a bad comparison to Lopez, in a way; there's a similar anodyneness to both the music of Smith and Lopez, because their fans are half-listening to the music, and half talking all they know about Smith or Lopez and filling in the gaps in the music with the attitude and background. One Direction fans do this too, and so do Radiohead fans; we don't listen to music in a vacuum.

But that lack of vacuum is pretty clear in 'If You Had My Love'; Lopez's voice is oddly bland here, and it was musically about what you'd expect from an R&B singer 1999. It feels workmanlike, and it's Lopez's charisma and stardom, I think, that probably pulls it through.

-TB

#1999 #episode 37 #jennifer lopez #j-lo #if you had my love

Episode 37

In this episode we discuss the last four #1 singles of 1999.

Episode 37: Jennifer Lopez, Pearl Jam, Lou Bega, & Eiffel 65

Featuring:

‘If You Want My Love’ by Jennifer Lopez (#1 for 3 weeks, 11th July 1999)

‘Last Kiss’ by Pearl Jam (#1 for 7 weeks, 1st August 1999)

‘Mambo No. 5’ by Lou Bega (#1 for 8 weeks, 19th September 1999)

'Blue (Da Ba Dee)’ by Eiffel 65 (#1 for 9 weeks, 14th November 1999)

Enjoy!

#podcast #if you want my love #jennifer lopez #last kiss #pearl jam #mambo no. 5 #lou bega #blue (da ba dee)#blue (i would beat off a guy)#eiffel 65 #podcast 37 #1999

Summertime - The Sundays

Any opportunity to press the merits of The Sundays must be taken. The guitar tone and vocal style that Sixpence None the Richer were going for are pretty obvious here. 'Kiss Me' doesn't quite scale these heights, but how could it?: 'Summertime' is one of the best singles of the 90's period. It's also the kind of flooring vocal performance that you wish you could replicate hearing for the first time ever over and over again. Harriet Wheeler is just magnificent here, sighing and soaring in equal measures and bringing that A-grade melody spinning giddily out of the song.

They should base entire courses around this song about how the perfect pop song comes together. And then go on to teach the yoof of today that that's how you look indifferent and unimpressed at lip-synching and pretend-strumming your way through a video clip.

-TC

#podcast 36 #1997 #the sundays #summertime

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