This is the fifth in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. You can find the previous mixes here.

I think 1994 may be the best year for popular music ever, or at least the best year for music in my lifetime. The sheer density of all-time classic records that came out in 1994 is staggering, and even aside from all of those breakthroughs and blockbusters, there’s also the early phases of scenes and sub-genres like emo, IDM, and post-rock that would be more important later on in the decade. Even the shitty and schlocky music of 1994 is above average! It’s crazy, and the overall quality is all the more impressive when you consider the quantity of notable music from the year. I try to keep these surveys to 8 “discs,” but this one sprawls out to 10, and I still left some songs out for space. It is by far the longest survey I’ve ever compiled, and clocks in at a little under 22 hours. God help you if you try to listen to this all in one sitting.

As I said in the first ’90s survey post, I think of the music of the ’90s as being a trilogy in which each act ends in tragedy – the suicide of Kurt Cobain, the murders of Tupac and Biggie, and the chaos of Woodstock ’99. So with this in mind, 1994 is the end of the first act and the beginning of the second.

Thanks to Rob Sheffield, Eric Harvey, Sean T. Collins, Jen Appel, and especially Paul Cox for their valuable assistance in putting this set together.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

The Notorious B.I.G. “Juicy” / Nas “The World Is Yours” / Wu-Tang Clan “C.R.E.A.M.” / Craig Mack feat. The Notorious B.I.G., Rampage, LL Cool J, and Busta Rhymes “Flava In Ya Ear (Remix)” / Outkast “Git Up, Git Out” / Gravediggaz “Nowhere to Run, Nowhere to Hide” / Portishead “Sour Times” / Nine Inch Nails “March of the Pigs” / Hole “Violet” / Sonic Youth “Bull in the Heather” / Beastie Boys “Sabotage” / Beck “Loser” / Pavement “Cut Your Hair” / R.E.M. “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” / Pearl Jam “Not for You” / Dave Matthews Band “Ants Marching” / Tori Amos “Cornflake Girl” / Oasis “Live Forever” / Green Day “Basket Case” / Veruca Salt “Seether” / Sebadoh “Rebound” / Velocity Girl “Tripping Wires” / Liz Phair “Nashville” / Helium “XXX” / TLC “Creep” / R. Kelly “Bump N Grind” / Mary J. Blige “I’m Goin’ Down” / Da Brat “Funkdafied” / Stone Temple Pilots “Big Empty” / Weezer “Undone – The Sweater Song” / Nirvana “All Apologies (Unplugged)”

DOWNLOAD DISC 2

Blur “Girls & Boys” / Elastica “Connection” / Pulp “Do You Remember the First Time?” / Radiohead “My Iron Lung” / Toadies “Possum Kingdom” / Alice In Chains “No Excuses” / Soundgarden “The Day I Tried To Live” / Sunny Day Real Estate “The Blankets Were the Stairs” / Grant Lee Buffalo “Mockingbirds” / The Tragically Hip “Grace, Too” / Toad the Wet Sprocket “Fall Down” / The Jesus and Mary Chain featuring Hope Sandoval “Sometimes Always” / Lisa Loeb “Stay (I Missed You)” / The Cranberries “Ode to My Family” / Counting Crows “Round Here” / Madonna “Take A Bow” / Seal “Prayer for the Dying” / Boyz II Men “I’ll Make Love to You” / Janet Jackson “Any Time, Any Place” / Tricky “Ponderosa” / Method Man “All I Need” / Fugees “Nappy Heads (Remix)” / Snoop Dogg “Gin and Juice” / A Tribe Called Quest “Oh My God” / Ween “Freedom of ’76” / Frank Black “Headache” / Stereolab “Ping Pong” / Air Miami “Airplane Rider” / Guided by Voices “I Am A Scientist”

DOWNLOAD DISC 3

Digable Planets “Dial 7 (Axioms of Creamy Spies)” / Jeru the Damaja “Come Clean” / Massive Attack “Karmacoma” / 20 Fingers “Short Dick Man” / Crystal Waters “100% Pure Love” / Salt N Pepa “Whatta Man” / Warren G “Regulate” / Bone Thugs N Harmony “Thuggish Ruggish Bone” / Jodeci “Cry for You” / Enigma “Return to Innocence” / Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds “Red Right Hand” / The Smashing Pumpkins “Frail and Bedazzled” / Soul Asylum “Can’t Even Tell” / Sloan “Penpals” / Sugar “Your Favorite Thing” / Meat Puppets “Backwater” / The Black Crowes “Cursed Diamond” / Travis Tritt “Foolish Pride” / Tim McGraw “Don’t Take the Girl” / Morrissey “The More You Ignore Me, The Closer I Get” / James “Say Something” / Luna “California (All the Way)” / Rollins Band “Liar” / Rage Against the Machine “Freedom” / Shellac “My Black Ass” / Girls Against Boys “Kill the Sexplayer” / Tool “Prison Sex” / Jeff Buckley “Last Goodbye”

DOWNLOAD DISC 4

Sheryl Crow “All I Wanna Do” / Des’ree “You Gotta Be” / Brand New Heavies “Dream On Dreamer” / Aaliyah “Back and Forth” / SWV “Anything” / The Roots “Distortion to Static” / 2Pac “Papa’z Song” / Common “I Used to Love H.E.R.” / Bonnie Raitt “Love Sneakin’ Up On You” / They Might Be Giants “Snail Shell” / Phish “Down with Disease” / G. Love and Special Sauce “Cold Beverage” / Lucas “Lucas with the Lid Off” / Maggie Estep “Hey Baby” / Ani DiFranco “Letter to a John” / Trisha Yearwood “XXX’s and OOO’s (An American Girl)” / Rusted Root “Send Me On My Way” / Blues Traveler “Run-Around” / The Mavericks “What A Crying Shame” / Ass Ponys “Little Bastard” / Alan Jackson “Summertime Blues” / The Juliana Hatfield Three “Spin the Bottle” / Superchunk “Like A Fool” / Live “Lightning Crashes” / Pink Floyd “High Hopes” / Slint “Glenn” / Group Home “Supa Star” / Gang Starr “Mass Appeal” / The Beatnuts “Props Over Here” / Artifacts featuring Busta Rhymes “C’mon Wit Da Git Down (Remix)” / DJ Shadow “What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4)” / Tortoise “Ry Cooder”

DOWNLOAD DISC 5

Mariah Carey “All I Want for Christmas Is You” / Ace of Base “The Sign” / Selina “Amor Prohibido” / Toni Braxton “Breathe Again” / Faith Hill “Wild One” / Hootie and the Blowfish “Hold My Hand” / Freedy Johnston “”This Perfect World” / Garth Brooks “Callin’ Baton Rouge” / Tom Petty “You Don’t Know How It Feels” / Edwyn Collins “A Girl Like You” / MC 900 Ft. Jesus “If I Only Had A Brain” / Pizzicato Five “Twiggy Vs. James Bond” / Jon Spencer Blues Explosion “Bellbottoms” / Luscious Jackson “Citysong” / Scarface “I Seen A Man Die” / Redman “Rockafella” / Black Moon “I Got Cha Opin’ (Remix)” / 69 Boyz “Tootsee Roll” / Goldie “Inner City Life” / Everything But the Girl “Missing” / Saint Etienne “Like A Motorway” / Manic Street Preachers “Faster” / Helmet “Milquetoast” / The Loud Family “Marcia and Etrusca” / Underground Lovers “Dream It Down” / Built to Spill “Car” / Mary Chapin Carpenter “Shut Up and Kiss Me” / Tony Bennet “Steppin’ Out with My Baby” / John Michael Montgomery “I Swear” / Aphex Twin “#3”

DOWNLOAD DISC 6

The Breeders “Saints (Head to Toe version)” / Archers of Loaf “Lowest Part Is Free” / Letters to Cleo “Here and Now” / Bush “Everything Zen” / The Jesus Lizard “Fly on the Wall” / L7 “Andres” / Bad Religion “Stranger Than Fiction” / Rancid “Salvation” / Lush “Hypocrite” / Jawbox “Savory” / Gin Blossoms “Allison Road” / Lisa Germano “Geek the Girl” / Codeine “Ides” / Polvo “Tragic Carpet Ride” / Brainiac “Sexual Frustration” / Drive Like Jehu “New Math” / East River Pipe “Ah, Dictaphone” / The Afghan Whigs “What Jail Is Like” / Dinosaur Jr “Feel the Pain” / Magnapop “Slowly, Slowly” / Madder Rose “Car Song” / Kathy McCarty “Rocket Ship” / Dump “Secret Blood” / Elliott Smith “Roman Candle” / The Magnetic Fields “Born On A Train” / Gastr del Sol “The C In Cake” / The Sea and Cake “Jacking the Ball” / Eric’s Trip “Girlfriend” / That Dog “Old Timer” / The Grifters “Felt-Tipped Over” / Urge Overkill “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” / Soul Coughing “Down to This” / Cake “Rock N Roll Lifestyle” / Silkworm “Couldn’t You Wait?” / Laika “Let Me Sleep” / Neil Young & Crazy Horse “Sleeps with Angels” / Victoria Williams “Crazy Mary”

DOWNLOAD DISC 7

The Prodigy “Voodoo People” / Prong “Snap Your Fingers, Snap Your Neck” / Pop Will Eat Itself “Ich Bin Ein Auslander” / My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult “Blue Buddha (Bomb Gang Girls Remix)” / Mouse on Mars “Uah” / Real McCoy “Another Night” / La Bouche “Sweet Dreams” / M People “Movin’ On Up” / Rozalla “I Love Music” / MK featuring Alana “Love Changes” / Orbital “Kein Trink Wasser” / Zhané “Groove Thang” / Brandy “I Wanna Be Down” / Xscape “Understanding” / Doop “Doop” / Juliet Roberts “I Want You” / CeCe Peniston “Hit By Love” / Jamiroquai “Space Cowboy” / Dink “Green Mind” / Marilyn Manson “Get Your Gunn” / Korn “Blind” / Angelfish “Suffocate Me” / Moonshake “Ghosts of Good Intention” / Disco Inferno “A Crash At Every Speed” / μ-Ziq “Twangle Frent” / Plastikman “Plastique (Video Mix)” / Autechre “Glitch” / Yanna “Santorini”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

Ini Kamoze “Here Comes the Hotstepper” / The Coup “Fat Cats, Bigga Fish” / E-40 “Captain Save A Hoe” / Sam Sneed featuring Dr. Dre “U Better Recognize” / UGK “Front, Back, and Side to Side” / Prince Rahiem “Cop One, Smoke One” / Brand Nubian “Word Is Bond” / Keith Murray “The Most Beautifullest Thing In This World (Green-Eyed Remix)” / Pete Rock & CL Smooth “The Main Ingredient” / Organized Konfusion “Black Sunday” / De La Soul featuring A Tribe Called Quest “She Fe MC’s” / Mic Geronimo “Shit’s Real” / Saafir “Hype Shit” / Channel Live featuring KRS-One “Mad Izm” / Fu-Schnickens “Breakdown” / Coolio “Fantastic Voyage” / Queen Latifah “U.N.I.T.Y.” / 5th Ward Boyz “Once Again It’s On” / Lady of Rage “Afro Puffs” / Casual “We Got It Like That” / Lords of the Underground “Tic Toc” / MC Eiht “Goin’ Out Like Geez” / Future Sounds of London “Lifeforms” / Gescom “Sciew Spoc” / Underworld “Cowgirl” / Danielle Brisebois “What If God Fell From the Sky” / Heather Nova “Sugar” / Willie Nelson “December Day”

DOWNLOAD DISC 9

Todd Snider “Talkin’ Seattle Grunge Rock Blues” / Sponge “Plowed” / Primal Scream “Rocks” / Sleeper “Delicious” / Echobelly “Insomniac” / Supergrass “Caught by the Fuzz” / The Auteurs “New French Girlfriend” / Silver Jews “Tide to the Oceans” / Gary Young “Plantman” / Bratmobile “The Real Janelle” / 7 Year Bitch “M.I.A.” / Indigo Girls “Least Complicated” / Cranes “Shining Road” / Love Spit Love “Am I Wrong” / Kristin Hersh “Your Ghost” / Team Dresch “Hand Grenade” / Bedhead “Powder” / Lambchop “Soaky in the Pooper” / Low “Lullaby” / Take That “Love Ain’t Here Anymore” / Wet Wet Wet “Love Is All Around” / Kylie Minogue “Confide In Me” / Keith Sweat “How Do You Like It” / The Alkaholiks “Mary Jane” / Ill Al Skratch “Where My Homiez?” / Prince “LetItGo” / Sinead O’Connor “Fire On Babylon” / Celine Dion “Think Twice” / Big Mountain “Baby, I Love Your Way” / John Mellencamp featuring Me’Shell NdegeOcello “Wild Night” / Widespread Panic “Can’t Get High” / Ida “Accidents”

DOWNLOAD DISC 10

Our Lady Peace “Starseed” / The Stone Roses “Love Spreads” / Suede “Stay Together” / Ash “Petrol” / Therapy? “Die Laughing” / NOFX “Leave It Alone” / The Offspring “Come Out and Play” / Rednex “Cotton Eye Joe” / Bruce Springsteen “The Streets of Philadelphia” / Insane Clown Posse “Chicken Huntin’” / The Divine Comedy “The Booklovers” / The Charlatans “Can’t Get Out of Bed” / The Fall “Hey! Student” / Pram “Life in the Clouds” / Palace Songs “Agnes, Queen of Sorrow” / Johnny Cash “Delia’s Gone” / Vince Gill “Tryin’ to Get Over You” / Iris DeMent “No Time to Cry” / Jawbreaker “Boxcar” / Thee Headcoatees “It’s Bad” / Latin Playboys “Chinese Surprize” / American Music Club “How Many Six Packs Does It Take To Screw In A Lightbulb” / Domino “Ghetto Jam” / Thug Life “Cradle to the Grave” / Ahmad Lewis “Back in the Day” / Brooks & Dunn “She’s Not the Cheatin’ Kind” / Ben Harper “The Three of Us” / Neal McCoy “Wink” / Shenandoah “If Bubba Can Dance (I Can Too)” / Joe Diffie “Third Rock from the Sun” / Beaumont Hannant & Lida Husik “Now I’m Older, Silver Girl” / Luther Vandross & Mariah Carey “Endless Love” / All-4-One “I Swear” / Elton John “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?”

Superorganism “It’s All Good”

The Twitter bio for Superorganism proclaims “WE ARE DIY,” and yet they’re hooked up with Rough Trade, featured by Apple Music, and pushed heavily on what remains of the music blogosphere. The whole thing makes me nostalgic for the old mp3 blog days, right on down to the mid-00s twee peppiness of the track. I wouldn’t be surprised if nostalgia for that era – over ten years ago now, I am very old – is part of what inspired this group. “It’s All Good” is light and fun, but also a bit screwy and strange, so it’s riding this very appealing line between super accessible and genuinely alt. It’s undeniable, but I am obviously the mark for this sort of tune. I say that like I’m certain that this is some sort of scam, but I really don’t think so. I think this is sincere music. Just forgive me if I’m skeptical of the “WE ARE DIY” thing.

You can’t actually buy Superorganism’s music anywhere, but it’s streaming on all your major platforms. They’re DIY like that, y’know?

Annie Hardy “Want”

Annie Hardy’s music in Giant Drag was usually quite playful, and at times overtly silly in a bratty, stoner-ish sort of way. Her first solo record has a very different tone, a direct result of her experiencing some truly awful trauma – the death of her infant son, and a year later, the death of that son’s father. She sounds shell-shocked and anguished in this music, and her words are direct and plain spoken. On “Want” she wails “I want my baby back, what else can I do?,” and sometimes sounds like she’s on the verge of tears. The music, which falls somewhere in the space between the most ragged and desolate Neil Young stuff and Beck’s Sea Change aesthetic, feels both intimate and epic. There are moments of catharsis in this song, but it mostly sounds lost and crestfallen. It’s a song begging for answers or release or some kind of sign, but all it can offer in return is raw, undiluted grief.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Filthy Friends “Any Kind of Crowd”

Filthy Friends is essentially the touring version of R.E.M. minus Michael Stipe and Mike Mills, but with Corin Tucker from Sleater-Kinney on lead vocals and Kurt Bloch from the Fastbacks on guitar. It sounds almost exactly like what you’d expect, but… even more so. “Any Kind of Crowd” sounds as though Corin specifically requested Peter Buck to go full-on Reckoning, and he graciously obliged. I’m pretty sure even a layperson could identify Buck’s playing on this song – it sounds like the platonic ideal of himself, like a perfect early ‘80s R.E.M. song that we all know but never actually existed. Tucker sounds fabulous in this context, and the jangling, easygoing vibe brings out out the warmth in her voice, and files down the sharper edges that get highlighted in Sleater-Kinney’s more jagged and urgent style. They’re so simpatico that this song, which would’ve felt light and summery no matter what, comes out feeling especially fun and relaxed.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Gorillaz featuring De La Soul “Momentz”

If you could go back in time and tell me as a teenager in the ‘90s that Damon Albarn from Blur would one day find even greater success as a respected rap producer, I never would have believed you. But here we are 20 years after “Song 2” and Albarn has been doing Gorillaz so long that it’s not even a novelty anymore. “Momentz” is his third collaboration with De La Soul, and it might be the best so far – obviously “Feel Good Inc” is a classic and “Superfast Jellyfish” has its surreal charms, but I love the way these guys sound rapping over the ecstatic pogo bounce of this track. The music is so hyper and supercharged that it sounds like it could break apart at any moment. It makes perfect sense that the De La guys would hear this track and decided it had to express a “carpe diem!” sentiment. It’s basically “1999” all over again: “We could all die any day, but before I’ll let that happen I’ll dance my life away.” The thrill in this song is in how close it comes to crashing and burning, and hearing these guys rap as if they’re trying to make the thing go even faster and harder.

Buy it from Amazon.

Depeche Mode “So Much Love”

It is fun to think about how at one point in their career Depeche Mode could be dismissed as a faddish thing for teenagers. They were so far ahead of the curve of mainstream music culture that even their corniest early stuff now sounds like it could be contemporary, if sorta deliberately retro ‘80s. The band essentially found its final form in the early ‘90s and have been in something of a creative holding pattern ever since – some elements shift, the technology advances, but a Depeche Mode record sounds like Depeche Mode. And this time around, Depeche Mode sounds very current.

It certainly helps that Spirit is largely a record about political anxieties and disillusionment, and the harsh electronic ambience of their default sound feels very right in this dreadful historical moment. Some of Martin Gore’s more obviously political lyrics come off a bit clumsy, but when he merges a defiant socially conscious message with classic Depeche Mode themes of guilt, compulsion, and desire on a song like “So Much Love,” it’s rather compelling. I like the way this takes the self-involvement of their usual music and says to the audience “yeah, this is me, this is the damage I’m dealing with, but that doesn’t get in the way of feeling empathy and love for others. So what’s your excuse?”

Buy it from Amazon.

Casey Dienel “High Times”

“High Times” is a story about a woman having a one night stand with a hot dude at a hotel in Palm Springs, and it plays out lyrically and musically like a hazy memory of something you’re vaguely surprised actually happened. Casey Dienel sounds bemused throughout, and describes the encounter with a droll, critical tone. “He said some things that seemed borderline basic, but when he took off his shirt, I acquit him,” she sings, striking a perfect tonal balance of humor and sexiness. It’s kinda Prince-esque that way; this isn’t far off from the sort of witty erotic fantasies he shared in a lot of his best ‘80s material. The difference is that while Prince always presented himself as an intensely desirable person, the subtext of “High Times” is that the character is slightly confused that she’s hooking up with this tan, clean cut, all-American hunk, but is going along with it because, hey, why not? She compares the situation to splurging on cake after a juice cleanse, and it’s hard not to root for her as you listen: Get that cake, girl!

The most immediately striking musical element of “High Times” is the bent, sped-up string part that opens the track and loops throughout. It sets the tone for the piece very nicely – graceful and confident, but also a bit warped. That feeling gets twisted at the song’s climax, when Dienel’s character hands the dude her key and invites him back to her room. At this point, the bass shifts so it feels as though it’s moving against the tide of the song, and the cathartic vocal hook – “in 103, in 103, if you wanna get lost find me in 103” – sounds slurred and psychedelic. The reality of the song changes in this moment, snapping out of a sunny fantasy and into a scene that’s more grounded in physical reality but distorted by lust and booze. It’s “this is really happening!” and “what the fuck is happening?” at the same time.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

2 Chainz featuring Ty Dolla $ign, Trey Songz & Jhené Aiko “It’s A Vibe”

I can’t say I’ve given a lot of thought to 2 Chainz over the years despite liking a lot of songs he’s on, but I’m still vaguely surprised he’s so great on a genuinely sexy slow jam like this. But I guess any talented rapper would rise to the occasion of a track as gorgeous and elegant as this G Koop and Murda production. 2 Chainz’s lyrics are blunt and occasionally sorta clumsy, but his delivery is smooth and the ample negative space in the music and lets your ears linger on the slurred curves of his Atlanta accent. I spend more time focusing on the guitar, though, and the way the chords hover over a beat that’s two parts reggae, one part trap. The vibe is incredibly strong, so I’m not shocked that 2 Chainz and company heard the music and decided the best thing to do would be to nod their heads and mutter “it’s a vibe” over and over.

Buy it from Amazon.

Kendrick Lamar “Fear.”

The flashiest bits Kendrick Lamar’s new album Damn. are confrontational and menacing, but in context, that’s all a defensive front. As bold as he can get, Kendrick is introverted and introspective above all other things, and the majority of these songs are paranoid ruminations on a world where even a best case scenario like becoming one of the world’s most popular rappers feels like the losing end of a game that’s been rigged against you from the start. Lamar borrows the narrative structure of Barry Jenkins’ Moonlight in “Fear.” to reflect on his anxieties at three stages of his life – childhood, teenage, young adult. The teen sequence is the most bleak, with him running down a litany of ways he’ll probably die in the near future, every one of them very plausible and entirely senseless. Alchemist’s track is sparse and melancholy, and subtly moves between clipped minimalism and cinematic melodrama like RZA at his mid-‘90s peak. The music feels like a depressive loop, and emphasizes Kendrick’s words about feeling trapped and isolated. His vocal tone shifts with each age jump – defiant as a child, dejected as a teen, frustrated as a man – but the track implies a world that remains static as he keeps changing.

Buy it from Amazon.

Harry Styles “Sign of the Times”

“Sign of the Times,” Harry Styles from One Direction’s first solo single, starts off in a tasteful but sorta dull place that sounds like someone trying to hack the piano part from John Lennon’s “Imagine” the way Noel Gallagher did for “Don’t Look Back In Anger” without also plagiarizing that song. And then it shifts into something a little more Coldplay-ish. But then the drums kick in, and it evolves into a full-on rock power ballad. It’s an incredibly effective song, and I felt like I needed to wave a lighter around and scream along by the fourth minute of it the first time I heard it. It helps that this song is full of fabulous drum fills that ramp up the drama at every opportunity.

Styles is wearing his influences on his sleeve here, big time – in addition to the aforementioned artists, there’s traces of The Verve, Queen, David Bowie, and Guns N’ Roses in its melody and structure. Styles is making it very clear that he intends to be a rock star, and a very theatrical one at that. This is a wise move: He looks the part, he was always good in this mode in One Direction (a rock band more often than not), and he’s emotive and vulnerable enough to make the cheesiest power ballad moves feel completely sincere. People love rock power ballads, and since more “legit” rock acts seem generally uninterested in going there out of fear of appearing soft and pandering to women, it makes sense that a guy like Harry Styles who has no hang ups whatsoever about pleasing a mostly female audience would embrace the form.

Buy it from Amazon.

She-Devils “Hey Boy”

It would be so easy for this song to be a fast garage rock thing, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it actually started out in that mode. The genre conventions are all right there, but She-Devils opt to play it mid-tempo and spacey so it comes out sounding very sensual and psychedelic. A faster tempo would imply a very different type of lust – manic, messy, urgent – but at this speed, it’s more seductive and confident in the projection of desire. “Hey Boy” sounds readymade for burlesque or go-go dancers – the tone is just right, and has just enough campiness to feel light, fun, and entertaining without getting in the way of its lusty sentiment.

Buy it from Amazon.

Babaganoüj “Hoping That It’s You”

Power pop is basically rock music about loving rock music, and wanting to turn everything about ordinary life into glamorous, catchy, fun rock music. It’s about wanting action and romance and fun, and having complete faith that riffs and “doo-doo-doos” and hooks and zippy solos is a fast track to feeling those things. “Hoping That It’s You” is an exceptional example of the genre, and I was sucked into this band’s rock fantasy the second the guitar chords kicked in after the first line. I love the way this song is produced – it sounds like they did everything they could to get a Mutt Lange vibe on a budget, to the point that it sometimes resembles Shania Twain at her most rocking. That said, I can’t imagine Mutt being OK with having the flat, mumbly Charles Sale shadow Harriette Pilbeam’s lead vocal like that, but I like the contrast of her assertive, earnest voice and his sorta shy and stoned vibe.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

The Magnetic Fields “’66: Wonder Where I’m From”

“Wonder Where I’m From” is the first song on Stephin Merritt’s 50 Song Memoir, a record with a song for each year of his life up through the age of 50. This is the one that is ostensibly about the first year of his life, but since he can’t possibly have any memory of that time and probably didn’t have much interest in literally singing about being a newborn baby, the song is written more as an intro to the project. The song, which sounds like a luau as imagined by Paul McCartney circa Revolver*, is a meditation on the idea of being “from” a place. Merritt’s family moved so often when he was a child that he doesn’t feel rooted to any particular place other than generally being from the United States and the Northern Hemisphere. But it’s not entirely literal. He’s also wondering about how and why he exists, and what places and things meaningfully contributed to the construction of his identity. As a discrete song, it’s an open-ended thought, but in the larger context of the project, it’s essentially setting up the “plot” for the story of his life.

* Please note that Revolver came out in 1966, the year this song is set. I wonder if Merritt deliberately intended the bass melody to be so Beatles, but either way, I love that it strongly resembles the squarest aspects of the band in that time.

Buy it from Amazon.

The New Pornographers “Darling Shade”

Whiteout Conditions is the first New Pornographers album without two key founding members of the band. Most obviously, it’s the first without any songs written or sung by Dan Bejar. You’d think this would be a big deal, but it’s kinda…not? Bejar typically serves as a foil for Carl Newman – the Han Solo to Carl’s Luke Skywalker, if you will – but this record benefits musically and thematically from a more unified aesthetic, and finds Carl moving into emotional and tonal spaces previously occupied by Bejar on their records.

The bigger change is that the band’s original drummer Kurt Dahle left the group before they toured for Brill Bruisers, and Whiteout Conditions features his replacement, Joe Seiders. They’re both excellent drummers, but Seiders has a tighter groove and an approach to fills that’s more crisply mechanical and less fluid. Seiders presence is the foundation for the aesthetic changes on this record – the chilly synths and spiky guitars, a persistent sense of sublimated panic, rhythms that seem to be endlessly moving forward to nowhere in particular.

Newman has said that they were deliberately drawing on the influence of krautrock “motorik” beats on this record, and finding a way to graft their usual harmonic maximalism to that sort of focused, propulsive tempo. I think that’s most obvious and successful on “Darling Shade,” particularly in the way the music seems to coast on the groove in the chorus. The song resembles some previous Newman songs – most notably “Dancehall Domine” from Brill Bruisers and “Secretarial” from The Slow Wonder – but the rhythmic approach shifts where the emphasis usually falls in his melodies. The beat is more robotic, but the vocal feels less heroic and more vulnerable.

The cryptic paranoia and cynicism in the lyrics seem to have different stakes. In “Darling Shade,” and in most of the others, Carl sounds genuinely rattled by the outside world, whereas he’d come off as merely dismissive or entirely inscrutable in the past. Other songs on the record focus on coping, or escaping, or just finding a way to survive. It’s much darker than the other New Pornos albums, but it’s a welcome shift, and a lot more resonant and relevant to this moment in time than most people would expect from a band that’s been around for nearly two decades.

Buy it from Amazon.

Band Practice “I Want You”

This song is barely over a minute but it’s an incredibly vivid and nuanced portrait of an ephemeral but intense relationship at a specific moment in time. There’s a bit of manic desperation, and a little naiveté, and awkward but genuine lust, and the looming weight of cultural expectations, and the implication of an uneven age dynamic. Best of all, there’s the way the song conveys anxiety in fidgety, increasingly agitated strums, as if playing the guitar was a nervous tic about the same as pulling your hair, shaking your foot, or grinding your teeth.

Buy it from Bandcamp.

Salami Rose Joe Louis “Cyanotype of Blue”

Salami Rose Joe Louis composes her records as suites made up of short song vignettes, sorta like Robert Pollard when he’s in collage-rock mode, so the individual tracks can feel a bit abrupt out of context. I mean, I definitely wish “Cyanotype of Blue” was longer – the mood is so strong and the way it springs out of a sleepy mode into something a bit more swinging and bright could sustain at least another minute or two. But at the same time, there is something very compelling to me about songs that resolve themselves rather quickly, and records that are so full of musical ideas they don’t slow down to reiterate their own hooks.

Buy it from Amazon.

This is the fourth in the 1990s survey mix series, which will come out monthly in chronological order through this year. You can find the previous mixes here.

We’re in the thick of it now! This year, along with the next two, are unquestionably the most formative time for me as a young music fan and virtually all of my taste as an adult can be traced to something you can hear in this set. There’s a lot going on here, but there’s basically two dominant narratives here that will carry over into 1994 and 1995 – the explosion of alt-rock and indie rock on one hand, and a renaissance in hip-hop on the other. Younger listeners should keep in mind that a crucial difference between then and now is that alt-rock is very much the mainstream at this point, and Pearl Jam and Nirvana were popular on a level on par with – or greatly exceeding – that of major contemporary stars like Taylor Swift, Rihanna, and Drake. They were very much the center of pop culture, though the vibrant rap and R&B scenes were also pretty crucial. I think it’s fair to say that this period of time from about 92-95 is as consistently cool as the mainstream has ever been, or at least as cool as it’s been in my lifetime.

Thanks to Paul Cox, Rob Sheffield, Sean T. Collins, Steve Kandell, Dan Kois, and Chris Conroy for their valuable assistance in putting this together.

DOWNLOAD DISC 1

The Smashing Pumpkins “Cherub Rock” / Pearl Jam “Animal” / Nirvana “Scentless Apprentice” / PJ Harvey “Man Size” / Liz Phair “Help Me Mary” / James “Laid” / The Cranberries “Linger” / Sarah McLachlan “Possession” / Janet Jackson “That’s the Way Love Goes” / Salt N Pepa “Shoop” / 2Pac “I Get Around” / Biggie Smalls “Party & Bullshit” / Cypress Hill “Insane in the Brain” / Wu-Tang Clan “7th Chamber Part II” / The Breeders “Cannonball” / Frank Black “Ten Percenter” / Stone Temple Pilots “Plush” / Red Hot Chili Peppers “Soul to Squeeze” / Porno for Pyros “Pets” / Belly “Feed the Tree” / Radiohead “Creep” / R.E.M. “Everybody Hurts” / Mazzy Star “Fade Into You” / New Order “Regret” / Annie Lennox “Little Bird” / Björk “Big Time Sensuality” / A Tribe Called Quest “Award Tour” / Dr. Dre & Snoop Doggy Dogg “Fuck With Dre Day (And Everybody’s Celebratin’)” / Tears for Fears “Break It Down Again” / U2 “Stay (Faraway, So Close!)”

DOWNLOAD DISC 2

Shudder to Think “X French T-Shirt” / The Flaming Lips “Pilot Can at the Queer of God” / Stereolab “Crest” / Onyx “Slam” / Outkast “Player’s Ball” / Black Moon “Who Got the Props?” / DJ Shadow & Asia Born “Send Them” / Snoop Dogg “Who Am I (What’s My Name)?” / KRS-One “Sound of Da Police” / Mary J. Blige featuring The Notorious B.I.G. “What’s the 411? (Remix)” / Mariah Carey “Dreamlover” / Aerosmith “Cryin’” / Counting Crows “Mr. Jones” / Gin Blossoms “Hey Jealousy” / Blur “For Tomorrow” / Pulp “Lipgloss” / Alice In Chains “Rooster” / Tool “Sober” / Aphex Twin “On” / Moby “Move” / Whitney Houston “I’m Every Woman” / Tag Team “Whoomp! There It Is” / Naughty by Nature “Hip Hop Hooray” / The Pharcyde “Passin’ Me By” / Archers of Loaf “Web In Front” / Guided by Voices “Shocker in Gloomtown” / M.O.T.O. “It Tastes Just Like A Milkshake” / Sebadoh “Soul and Fire” / Letters to Cleo “Rim Shack”

DOWNLOAD DISC 3

Fugazi “Facet Squared” / Bikini Kill “Rebel Girl” / Huggy Bear “Her Jazz” / Bratmobile “Love Thing” / Yo La Tengo “From A Motel 6” / Pavement “Shoot the Singer” / Straitjacket Fits “Brittle” / Royal Trux “Back to School” / Velocity Girl “Here Comes” / Unrest “Make Out Club” / The Lemonheads “Into Your Arms” / Cracker “Low” / Faith Hill “Wild One” / Alan Jackson “Chattahoochee” / Garth Brooks “Ain’t Going Down (’Til the Sun Comes Up)” / Melissa Etheridge “Come To My Window” / Babyface “When Can I See You” / Toni Braxton “Another Sad Love Song” / Ace of Base “All That She Wants” / Robin S. “Show Me Love” / Haddaway “What Is Love?” / De La Soul “Breakadawn” / Me’Shell Ndegeocello “If That’s Your Boyfriend (He Wasn’t Last Night)” / 95 South “Whoot, There It Is” / Duice “Dazzy Duks” / Silk “Freak Me” / H-Town “Knockin’ Da Boots” / D.R.S. “Gangsta Lean” / Positive K “I Got A Man” / Arrested Development “Mr. Wendal” / Michael Jackson “Will You Be There”

DOWNLOAD DISC 4

Depeche Mode “I Feel You” / Type O Negative “Black No. 1 (Little Miss Scare-All)” / The Afghan Whigs “Gentlemen” / Lenny Kravitz “Are You Gonna Go My Way?” / One Dove “White Love (Guitar Paradise Edit)” / Sunscreem “Love U More” / RuPaul “Supermodel (You Better Work)” / Geto Boys “Six Feet Deep” / Billy Joel “The River of Dreams” / Phish “The Wedge” / Spin Doctors “Two Princes” / Collective Soul “Shine” / Dwight Yoakum “A Thousand Miles from Nowhere” / Matthew Sweet “Time Capsule” / George Strait “Easy Come, Easy Go” / Rosanne Cash “The Wheel” / Jodeci “Lately” / Meat Loaf “I’d Do Anything for Love (But I Won’t Do That)” / Rod Stewart “Have I Told You Lately” / Crash Test Dummies “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm” / The Verve “Slide Away” / Suede “Animal Nitrate” / Rage Against the Machine “Bombtrack” / Candlebox “Far Behind” / Shai “Baby I’m Yours” / Tony! Toni! Toné! “If I Had No Loot” / Lords of the Underground “Chief Rocka” / UB40 “(I Can’t Help) Falling In Love with You”

DOWNLOAD DISC 5

The Roots “The Session (Longest Posse Cut In History)” / Guru “Trust Me” / KMD “What A Nigga Know?” / Tricky “Aftermath (Version 1)” / Cupid Car Club “Grace Juice Plus” / Jon Spencer Blues Explosion “Afro” / FU-Schnickens “What’s Up Doc? (Can We Rock?)” / Digable Planets “Where I’m From” / St. Etienne “You’re In A Bad Way” / The Loud Family “Inverness” / 10,000 Maniacs “Stockton Gala Days” / Helium “Lucy” / The Juliana Hatfield Three “My Sister” / Grant Lee Buffalo “Fuzzy” / Randy Travis “Look Heart, No Hands” / Doug Supernaw “I Don’t Call Him Daddy” / Frenté! “Bizarre Love Triangle” / Lorrie Morgan “What Part of No?” / Buffalo Tom “Sodajerk” / Dig “Believe” / Melvins “Honey Bucket” / Superchunk “Precision Auto” / Sunny Day Real Estate “8” / Sepultura “Refuse/Resist” / Luscious Jackson “Daughters of the Kaos” / Boss “Recipe of a Hoe” / US3 “Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia)” / Sting “If I Ever Lose My Faith In You” / Duran Duran “Ordinary World”

DOWNLOAD DISC 6

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers “Mary Jane’s Last Dance” / Mary Lou Lord “Some Jingle Jangle Morning” / Urge Overkill “Sister Havana” / Primus “My Name Is Mud” / Green Jelly “Three Little Pigs” / Slowdive “Alison” / Cowboy Junkies “Anniversary Song” / Morphine “Buena” / Everclear “Your Genius Hands” / Heatmiser “Candyland” / Fastbacks “Gone to the Moon” / Chug “Flowers” / Pet Shop Boys “Go West” / Leftfield “Open Up” / Underworld “Mmm…Skyscraper I Love You” / Pete Rock “Lots of Lovin’” / Jade “Don’t Walk Away” / Kirsty MacColl “Angel” / INXS “Beautiful Girl” / Dinosaur Jr “Start Choppin’” / American Music Club “All Your Jeans Were Too Tight” / Joe Diffie “John Deere Green” / Denis Leary “Asshole” / Mercury Rev “Bronx Cheer” / Boss Hog “Ruby” / Don Caballero “For Respect” / Manic Street Preachers “La Tristesse Durera (Scream to a Sigh)” / The Ocean Blue “Sublime” / Elvis Costello & The Brodsky Quartet “For Other Eyes” / Donald Fagan “Snowbound” / Prince “Pink Cashmere”

DOWNLOAD DISC 7

Zhane “Hey Mr. DJ” / Usher “Call Me A Mack” / Portrait “Here We Go Again” / Original Flavor “Can I Get Open” / Shaggy “Oh Carolina” / Madonna “Rain” / Take That “Pray” / Xscape “Just Kickin’ It” / The Auteurs “American Guitars” / Swervedriver “Duel” / The Boo Radleys “Lazarus” / Polvo “Tilebreaker” / Medicine “Never Click” / P.M. Dawn “Looking Through Patient Eyes” / Redman “Time 4 Sum Aksion” / Smooth “You Been Played” / Smooth Touch “House of Love” / Autechre “Bike” / Atari Teenage Riot “Kids Are United” / Curve “Superblaster” / The Catherine Wheel “Crank” / The Verlaines “Heavy 33” / Elastica “Stutter” / Teenage Fanclub “Hang On” / The Posies “Dream All Day” / The The “Love Is Stronger Than Death” / Tracy Lawrence “Alibis” / Coverdale Page “Pride and Joy” / Ethyl Meatplow “Devil’s Johnson” / The Alkaholiks “Only When I’m Drunk” / Butthole Surfers “Who Was In My Room Last Night?”

DOWNLOAD DISC 8

The Proclaimers “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” / 4 Non Blondes “What’s Up” / Inner Circle “Bad Boys” / Snow “Informer” / Boy Krazy “That’s What Love Can Do” / Mr. Blobby “Mr. Blobby” / Cannibal Corpse “Hammer Smashed Face” / Reba McEntire “The Heart Won’t Lie” / John Michael Montgomery “I Love the Way You Love Me” / Brian McKnight “One Last Cry” / David Bowie “Jump They Say” / The Fall “Why Are People Grudgeful?” / Fishbone “Swim” / Big Head Todd and the Monsters “Bittersweet” / Sugar “Tilted” / Paul Westerberg “World Class Fad” / Noise Addict “I Wish I Was Him” / Sheryl Crow “Run, Baby, Run” / Jeremy Jordan “The Right Kind of Love” / µ-Ziq “Iesope” / Illegal feat. Eric Sermon “We Getz Buzy” / Compulsion “Basketcase” / House of Pain & Helmet “Just Another Victim” / Freestyle Fellowship “Inner City Boundaries” / S.O.U.L. S.Y.S.T.E.M. “It’s Gonna Be A Lovely Day” / MC Lyte “Ruffneck” / Ned’s Atomic Dustbin “Not Sleeping Around” / The Connells “’74-’75” / Smog “37 Push Ups” / Palace Brothers “Idle Hands Are the Devil’s Plaything” / Israel Kamakawiwo’ole “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World”

Living “Glory”

Chillwave happened long enough ago that there are many young musicians for whom Washed Out and Toro Y Moi could be formative influences. Which is funny, because it doesn’t feel so long ago to me, but I was already in my late 20s and many years into doing this site when that went down. I can’t say for sure that Living are directly influenced by all of that stuff, but it seems like a very reasonable bet going on their music, which draws on a lot of the same aesthetics and effects but is a bit more early Britpop when it comes to melody. (Which is to say: they write better hooks.) The psychedelic vibe in “Glory” is so strong and seductive that I hardly noticed how strong the melodies were at first – that’s something that became more apparent with repeat listening. Now it’s not totally necessary to actually listen to the thing, since the chorus is lodged in my brain and shows up any time it goes clear. Pretty sure I was dreaming about it last night.

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Raekwon “Nothing”

The best compliment I can pay to Frank G, the guy who produced this track, is that when I first heard it I thought “wow, is Raekwon back with the RZA?” “Nothing” reminds me a lot of the eerie barebones minimalism of RZA’s work The W, especially the Raekwon showcase “Hollow Bones.” Both songs focus in on one particularly pained vocal moment from another song and loop it through the track, establishing an emotional baseline that contrasts nicely with Rae’s tough, throaty voice. The “I have nothing” sample is cut up in irregular patterns – it gets extended into a ghostly trill, stuttered or cut off, and sometimes looped in a more symmetrical meter. Even with Raekwon’s presence on the mic, the sample is the focus of the track. To some extent, that’s just the power of treble, but it’s also far more emotional than Raekwon’s sober, gruff rhymes, and the only element that resonates as much is a piano sample that gets dropped in occasionally for punctuation.

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Father John Misty “Pure Comedy”

If you’ve ever been lucky enough to karaoke with Rob Sheffield, you may have seen his take on John Lennon’s “God.” If you’re not familiar with the song, it’s this ballad in which Lennon runs down a list of people and concepts he doesn’t believe in, some of which he pronounces in rather dubious ways. He denounces the Bible, Jesus, Hitler, and Buddha before getting to the big thing in the climax: Holy shit, John Lennon doesn’t believe in BEATLES!!! It’s a good song, but also one that is unintentionally funny in its overeagerness to be provocative. Rob performs the song as if he’s doing stand up comedy, and draws on the spirit of a “truth teller” like Lenny Bruce deliberately trying to rile up a crowd. Rob plays it like someone delighting in a heel turn while having a smug confidence that they’re the one who is right about everything. It’s hilarious.

I think Father John Misty is coming from a pretty similar place with “Pure Comedy.” It’s a similar sort of piano-centric ballad, and though FJM is considerably less self-absorbed and solipsistic in his lyrics than John Lennon, he’s going for the same sort of TRUTH BOMBS in his words. Everything in “Pure Comedy” casts the human condition as a joke, including the fact that it’s a straight white guy from America who’s letting you in on the joke. Even if you’re inclined to think FJM is a douche, his case for the absurdity of humanity is pretty tight and surprisingly subtle for a song that’s expressing a deep alienation from society at large. A lot of what makes this song work both musically and lyrically is that the song is always giving you an indication that Misty isn’t getting much pleasure from this nihilistic outlook, and genuinely wants people to be better than this. Seeing all of this as a big joke is a coping strategy and a defense mechanism against all the horror and idiocy in the world, and you only need to do that if you sincerely care.

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Quelle Chris “Popeye”

Quelle Chris’ Being You Is Great, I Wish I Could Be You More Often opens with “Buddies,” a slightly tongue-in-cheek song about self-love that simultaneously pokes fun at narcissism while embracing a healthy self-esteem. I mention this because I’m not writing about that song, but rather the track immediately after it. “Popeye” is the reverse sentiment, with Chris muttering about failure and frustration. He isn’t beating himself up, but he is looking at his life and his art with clear, unsympathetic eyes and questioning a commitment to something that hasn’t resulted in that much. All of this is set against a track built around a vocal loop that feels melancholy but also kinda heroic, like something you’d play in a flashback to leaner times in the life of someone who later became a big deal. Maybe that’s exactly what Chris is trying to get across here.

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