My Favorite Song from Every Year I’ve Been Alive (Part Three: 1990–1999)

It was an odd decade for many reasons

We have reached Part Three of my trip down memory lane picking my favorite song from every year I have roamed this big blue rock. In this installment, we dive headlong into the 1990s, a decade that was as weird for me personally as it was musically, which is saying something. If you’re coming late to the party, you can read Part One and Part Two before reading further, otherwise let’s get started.

If you were alive during the 1990s, you know I’m not kidding when I said it was a weird decade. Record stores stopped selling records and started selling CDs, a dude from Arkansas got elected president and then got into a lot of trouble, and we all thought Y2K was going to be the end of the world as we knew it; somehow, we survived all three of these things.

For me, it was weird personally for multiple reasons. In 1990, life had reached the point where joining the Army at the start of the First Gulf War seemed like my best option, in 1996 I suddenly became optimistic enough to believe getting married was a smart idea, and in 1998 I welcomed the arrival of the first of two Springsteen-loving daughters. Going one-for-three is good in baseball, so maybe I actually did ok.

Musically, it was even worse, in no small part because it is the only decade between the 1980s and 2020s that I did not see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band live. To be fair, most people didn’t; for reasons known only to himself and God, Bruce dissolved the best band in the world for a ten-year stretch from 1989 to 1999, going so completely insane that he thought it a fair trade swapping The Tennessee Terror, Garry W. Tallent, on bass for American Idol/Name That Tune alum Randy Jackson (seriously, that happened). It was such a strange decade that I wrote a piece last year questioning whether rock actually died in 1995, and though the answer is no, the picks from here on are considerably more difficult for me than for the ’70s and ’80s.

Despite this, the show must go on. I will say again that this list contains my personal favorite song for each year of the ’90s. For a couple of the years I had a lengthy debate with myself, so it’s inevitable that your favorite will differ from mine at several (and perhaps all) points.

Now on to the songs.

1990: “Ball and Chain” — Social Distortion. When you’ve reached the point in your life that potentially dying in the desert to liberate a country you can’t find on a map is your best option, you naturally gravitate toward music that reflects that state of mind. This was how I first found Social Distortion’s self-titled third album, and man was all that suffering worth it. This song, the band, and especially lead singer Mike Ness perfectly encapsulate the “it just can’t get any worse, so the hell with it” mindset I found myself in on August 2, 1990 when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait. The album has multiple great songs, from “Story of My Life” to a scorching version of “Ring of Fire,” but “Ball and Chain” will always be my favorite. Runners-up: the Scorpions’ classic “Wind of Change” and Pantera’s “Cemetery Gates.”

1991: “Black” — Pearl Jam. 1991 was a seriously good year for music, with the arrival of Nirvana’s Nevermind album, Metallica’s Black album, and Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion I and II. For me, however, none of those compare to Pearl Jam’s Ten (Eddie Vedder is in my Holy Trinity of rock voices along with Bruce and Bono) and my favorite from that masterpiece is “Black.” It was released during my first year in the Army, and my barracks roommate believed that if he played it loud enough, I would not be distracted by his girlfriend’s cries of passion (his words) when she visited from Georgia Southern University. His fears were unfounded, as there was no chance of him ever generating enough heat to overcome Eddie’s vocals. He gets points for trying, though. Runners-up: Metallica’s “Enter Sandman” and Guns N’ Roses’ “November Rain.”

1992: “Allison Road” — Gin Blossoms. 1992 was almost as good as 1991, music-wise, with 10,000 Maniacs’ Our Time in Eden, The Lemonheads It’s a Shame About Ray, Dr. Dre’s The Chronic, and yes, two albums from Springsteen without the E Street Band (Human Touch and Lucky Town) all released that year. My favorite song for the year, however, comes from none of those, but rather from my favorite album of ’92, Gin Blossoms’ New Miserable Experience. Most would assume that the ubiquitous “Hey Jealousy” would be my favorite, but “Allison Road” is even better. Runners-up: The Cure’s “Friday I’m in Love,” Ice Cube’s “It Was a Good Day,” Springsteen’s “Roll of the Dice,” and Melissa Etheridge’s “Ain’t It Heavy.” I told you it was a solid year.

1993: “Mr. Jones” — Counting Crows. This was one of the hardest picks for me so far in this series. I love this song, and I consider Counting Crows’ August and Everything After perhaps the best debut album since The Doors in 1967, but not giving this spot to Mazzy Star’s “Fade Into You” is a decision I will debate with myself well past Christmas. I would have called it a tie, but you would have mocked me in the comments (though I am including “Fade Into You” in the playlist at the end just because). Runner-up: “Silver Threads and Golden Needles” by the Honky Tonk Angels (Tammy Wynette, Loretta Lynn, and Dolly Parton).

1994: “Stones in the Road” — Mary Chapin Carpenter. I hate that no song from Mary Chapin Carpenter’s superb 1992 album Come On Come On even got an honorable mention for that year, but I made up for it with this one, which is not just my favorite of 1994 but my favorite of hers, period. I started to give this spot to any song not on the inexplicably massive Cracked Rear View album from Hootie & the Blowfish, a record I despise with a passion that is surely unhealthy. Forget the 2016 election and the January 6th insurrection; the year that people voluntarily chose to buy this record was when the American experiment in democracy died.

1995: “Til I Hear It From You” — Gin Blossoms. Yes, it’s another by the boys from Tempe, Arizona. And before you protest that this song was on their 1996 album Congratulations, I’m Sorry, it first appeared on the Empire Records soundtrack in 1995. The runners-up are pretty much any song from No Doubt’s Tragic Kingdom album or from Alanis Morrissette’s stellar Jagged Little Pill. The main reason the angry little Canadian didn’t win out is because I simply could not choose a favorite from a list that includes “Hand in My Pocket,” “Ironic,” “You Oughta Know,” and “Head Over Feet.”

1996: “Follow You Down” — Gin Blossoms. It is clear looking at this list that during Springsteen’s absence in the 1990s, Gin Blossoms dominated my musical universe. It was always going to be hard to follow an album like New Miserable Experience, but they did an admirable job; sadly, there would not be another Gin Blossoms album for ten years after this. Runner-up: none (’96 was not a great year).

1997: “Dry the Rain” — The Beta Band. This song is proof of the power of film, because I had never heard of it or The Beta Band before a snippet appeared in the John Cusack film High Fidelity. It’s a good thing the movie pointed me to it, because 1997 was a crap year for music. Here’s the scene from the film:

1998: “Right in Time” — Lucinda Williams. Lucinda Williams is awesome, and you should listen to everything she’s recorded. Even so, I surprised myself a little with this pick; it meant consigning both Natalie Merchant’s “Kind & Generous” and the Goo Goo Dolls’ classic “Slide” to runner-up status.

1999: “Smooth” — Santana (featuring Rob Thomas). I think one reason we believed 1999 would be the last year of the planet’s existence was that the Billboard charts were dominated by Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca,” which certainly seemed like a sign of the Apocalypse. Fortunately, as he has done for more than half a century, Carlos Santana arrived to save the day. And make no mistake, it is his guitar and not Rob Thomas that is the star of this song. Runner up: “All the Small Things” by Blink-182.

That’s my favorite song from each year of the 1990s, and good riddance to the decade that I still tend to think was only ten years ago; a ten-year span where no Springsteen song was my favorite is a Dark Age I never want to experience again. That gets corrected in our next installment, when he reunites the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, hard-rocking, booty-shaking, love-making, earth-quaking, Viagra-taking, justifying, death-defying, legendary E Street Band. Just as God intended.

Let me know your favorites in the comments, and keep on rockin’.

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