If one song started the 90s as we remember them, it’s Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit (1991). Released on Nevermind , it didn’t invent grunge, but it murdered the excess of 80s rock overnight. Within a year, lists of the greatest songs had to make room for Pearl Jam’s Alive , Soundgarden’s Black Hole Sun , and Alice in Chains’ Rooster . But grunge wasn’t alone. Dr. Dre’s Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang (1992) introduced G-funk, proving that West Coast hip-hop would define the decade’s street sound. Meanwhile, Sinead O’Connor’s Nothing Compares 2 U (1990) showed that a bald Irish woman with a Prince-penned ballad could break everyone’s heart.
No list of 100 can satisfy everyone. Angry letters are always written over omissions: Beck’s Loser (1993), My Bloody Valentine’s Only Shallow (1991), and even the macarena-despising critics admit that Smells Like Teen Spirit ’s dominance overshadows PJ Harvey’s Rid of Me or A Tribe Called Quest’s Scenario . 100 greatest 90s songs
Ultimately, the 100 greatest 90s songs tell one clear story: the 90s was the last decade where radio, MTV, and word-of-mouth could crown a single song as a universal hit. Today, streaming fragments taste. But in the 90s, for better or worse, 100 songs really did sound like the whole world. If one song started the 90s as we
Then came Macarena (Los del Río, 1995)—a song critics loved to hate, but which spent 14 weeks at #1. Any credible list of the 100 greatest 90s songs must include it, not for artistry, but as a monument to the decade’s love of goofy, unifying dance crazes. But grunge wasn’t alone
In 1999, as the clock ticked toward Y2K, music critics and fans began a ritual that would only grow more obsessive with time: arguing about the best songs of the 1990s. Unlike the clear-cut narratives of the 60s (Beatlemania) or 70s (disco vs. rock), the 90s refused to sit still. Any list of the “100 greatest” is less a ranking and more a map of a decade that began with hair metal’s last gasp and ended with Britney Spears’ schoolgirl uniform.