Twenty Favorite Songs of the 1990s
(In one of my usual fits of obsessive pointlessness, I filled out Pitchfork’s readers’ poll to determine the best songs of the 1990s. Crowd-sourced lists such as this are normative by design, and the results are almost always pedestrian, but I couldn’t help myself. I’ve marked the songs that I think might actually have a shot at making their aggregated top 250 with an asterisk. I’ll bold the ones that actually do.)
The Divine Comedy: Tonight We Fly
Richard Shindell: On a Sea of Fleur de Lis
Iris DeMent: No Time to Cry
James: Lullaby
Tindersticks: Raindrops
Luxuria: Against the Past
David Sylvian: Darkest Dreaming
Bonnie Prince Billy: I See a Darkness * [#114]
Sinéad O'Connor: Nothing Compares 2 U * [#19]
Björk: Hyperballad * [#2]
David Massengill: Don Quixote's Lullaby
Jeff Buckley: Hallelujah *
Prince & the NPG: Gett Off *
Sidsel Endresen and Bugge Wesseltoft: Okay
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole: Somewhere Over the Rainbow/what a Wonderful World
Dar Williams: After All
Ted Hawkins: The Good and the Bad
New Model Army: These Words
Depeche Mode: Waiting for the Night
Greg Brown: Lord, I Have Made you a Place in My Heart
— September 14, 2022