The year is now 1994. We’re on the eve of the explosion of hip-hop/R&B that defined '90s pop, and for this year, with Mariah carrying over, we have ten singles to choose from. This year also marks the first time since 1964 that an act replaced itself as #1.
It’s also interesting to note how many of these #1 songs from the early 90s were from the soundtracks to movies: Hotstepper from Pret-a-Porter, All for One I assume is from that execrable Three Musketeers movie, the UB40 one from the last poll was from Sliver. I wonder if the non-stop promotion of the movies combined with movie-tie-in music video was what pushed some of these stinkers to #1.
The only one I actually like is “Here Comes the Hotstepper,” so that gets my vote. “The Sign” is the only other one I can even tolerate.
All the fun seems to have been sucked out of pop music at this point (with the exception of Here Comes the Hotstepper and The Sign). The rest of these songs are dreadful love ballads.
For the first time since the 70s, there is a multi-song tie for dead-ass last place: “All for Love,” “The Power of Love,” “Stay,” “I’ll Make Love to You,” and “On Bended Knee.” The music video for “All for Love” made Beavis and Butt-head vomit.
I enjoyed “Here Comes the Hotstepper” until, at about the 1 minute mark, I realized I was less that a quarter of the way through the song. Other than that, Lisa Loeb is the only one I could listen to. I don’t feel too bad voting for it, because I do actually like the song, but it makes me sad that this is the ‘best’ song of the year.
I find the man reprehensible, but musically this year is easy for me. Chalk me up for R. Kelly. Great album, too. Shame he turned out to be a creep/child pornographer.
I voted for “Hero”, because it was one of our sixth-grade graduation songs (“The Circle of Life” by Elton John, which peaked at #18, was the other), I like the message in it, and Meat Loaf compelled me not to vote for it last year.
I wasn’t listening to contemporary music at all at this time, but I can at least remember the hooks of most of these songs. “Stay” was one I never knew by name, but upon looking it up on Youtube it took me about half a second to say “Oh, it’s that song”.
I’m pretty sure that this is the year I stopped listening to pop radio stations on my own, but I got so much more exposure to these songs than I wanted just by listening to what everyone else had on.
I’ll give Ace of Base the win - my best buddy in high school loved them - but if I had that song in my iTunes playlist, it would only be rated at 2 stars. That should tell you what I think of the rest of the songs this year.
I recognize all the songs, I just can’t work up the interest in any of them to vote. I can nearly pinpoint the moment that the “breathy singing girl” movement started with the Lisa Loeb song. No thanks.
Somehow I missed out on Lisa Loeb, although she’s the kind of singer I should have been into at the time. I voted Ace Of Base. I remember hearing The Sign, and thinking it was actually pretty good, despite being a vacuous pop song. I even considered buying the album a few years later when I saw it in a used CD store in a section simply labeled, “Shame”.
This list is, um, better than 1993. Then again, there’s stuff on the bottom of my shoe that’s better than the 1993 list.
It also gives me one of my last chances to vote against Bryan Adams (the last one, Og willing, comes in 1995.) Wow, he sucks.
Other than that, I’m struggling to figure out my vote. I’m not going to vote for the Lisa Loeb song because it literally cost me $1500. (At a pub trivia final, we did not know that she was the first artist to have a song go to #1 while still unsigned to a record label.) The only ones I would even consider are Ace Of Base, “I Swear”, and Ini Kamoze. Probably go with the Hotstepper.