Yikes. I can only identify one of those songs (Sinead) but I was listening to a lot of alternative rock and house music in the '90s. I couldn’t vote in this poll.
You know, I had never actually gotten around to listening to “Nothing Compares 2 U” until this afternoon, because I found it was leading in this poll and figured I ought to.
I was not expecting an uninspired, emotionless ripoff of “One More Try”.
I am disappoint.
California Love gets my vote, because Inglewood-- Inglewood always up to no good.
Sinead O’Connor aside, this is a pathetic list. Nirvana, REM and Pearl Jam had throwaway songs better than these hits. I know, I’ll have to wait for the Alternative poll.
Great decade for music, but I can’t quite vote for any of these.
California Love
Yeah, “Nothing Compares 2 U” was first released about three years prior to “One More Try”. “One More Try” was so iconic that Prince felt its awesomeness a full three years before it actually was released, and decided to ape it as soon as he felt its vibrations (or something) waaaay back in 1985. Apparently.
Are you saying you don’t believe Prince has access to a time machine?
The biggest thing I personally learned from this whole Smapti project is how the 90s is the decade where I thought my favorite music* was also very popular, but now I realize it wasn’t.
(I already knew my tastes diverged from the mainstream in the 2000s.)
It’s the 80s where my personal tastes did converge most consistently with Billboard’s, even though I don’t think of its most famous artists – Michael Jackson, Madonna, Duran Duran – as music I much like listening to.
The 60s came in second in this regard (while I wasn’t alive then, I happened to be something of a 60s rock (and folk) music devotee since about age eight).
In sum, I love rock’n’roll, and don’t mind tasteful, musically creative pop (or even cleverly worded hip-hop). The 1960s had a lot of good rock, overall and in Billboard. The 70s had a lot of good rock, but Billboard was partly ontaminated with horrendous schlock. The 80s had some good rock (in general and on Billboard), but more importantly it had lots of creative pop (including on Billboard). The 90s had plenty of both, but now I see that neither was super-popular, especially not the rock. By the 2000s, for me, even the rock sucked (95% of it, anyway), most pop was derivative or worse (and had mainly evolved into “R and B”), and the only chance of my tastes and Billboard coinciding were with the occasional cleverly-worded hip-hop.
(*Beck, RHCP, Radiohead, Nirvana, Natalie Merchant, Cafe Tacuba…okay, fine, I didn’t expect the last one to be popular in the US…)
Also Phish, just to give another representative example of acts I thought were great and generally popular in the 90s, when it turns out they were certainly not the latter.
Copy that on Natalie Merchant and Café Tacuba.
For me also, Melissa Etheridge, Indigo Girls, Joan Osborne, Tracy Chapman, Tori Amos, Loreena McKennitt, Shawn Colvin, Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow, Patty Griffin, Dixie Chicks, Jill Sobule, Rage Against the Machine. I experienced the music of the 1990s as a thrilling artistic renaissance and felt lucky to be around to hear it happening. Almost none of which was reflected in the charts, of course.
Thanks, Johanna…I’ll check out Patty Griffin and Jill Sobule – I’m not familiar with either.
Agreed, but I knew it wouldn’t win; I’m glad my close second choice (Sinead) is out in front.
I’m a huge fan of Carlos Santana so I voted for Smooth. I really don’t care for Sinead O’Connor.
Jill Sobule kissed a girl before it was popular 
I have to agree with Johanna – all the music I thought was good in the 90’s completely missed the charts. I like some of songs on the poll; have a couple on my iPod, but I wouldn’t consider any of them great, much less song-of-decade great.