Aw, 1995 was the year I graduated from high school. I have fond memories of cruising around with my friends listening to TLC’s “Waterfalls,” so that gets my vote.
Alternative songs were always theoretically capable of reaching #1 on the Hot 100 - the Modern Rock chart works/worked on an entirely different basis than the Hot 100 did and relied exclusively on airplay data from stations that identified themselves as playing alternative. (The only song I’d really call “alternative” that ever did actually reach #1 is “One Week” by Barenaked Ladies, which in 1998 topped the charts for, amusingly enough, one week.)
The big factor here is the state the singles market was in. Prior to 1998, songs were not eligible to chart on the Hot 100 unless they had been issued as a single. By 1995, the 7" single was dead, and record companies didn’t like cutting CD singles because they could produce an album for the exact same cost and sell it for a lot more. (Remember, record companies were heavily engaged in price-fixing back then and they were gouging out the ass for CDs - $17.99 for a one-disc album and $35.98 for a double disc were the going rates well into the early 2000s when Napster and iTunes started to demolish the CD market.) Many songs that got heavy airplay in the mid-'90s were ineligible for the Hot 100 either because they never got a single release, or because they were only sold through alternative retailers that Nielsen SoundScan didn’t cover. “I’ll Be There For You” by the Rembrandts (i.e. the theme song from Friends) was #1 in airplay for 8 weeks in 1995, but didn’t chart because it didn’t have a single. In many cases, the labels at this time would wait until a song achieved peak airplay, then cut a limited release single and sell it for one week just in the hopes of it charting high in that one week; as such, the only songs that really chart high in this period are the ones that the labels were extremely confident in, or which had heavy cross-marketing (thus the glut of songs from movie soundtracks).
The policy didn’t change until late 1998, when Billboard decided to start tracking album cuts regardless of whether they had a single or not, and shortly thereafter we’ll see a few songs that made it to #1 purely on airplay. Today, digital sales have become more significant and largely filled the vacuum in the chart that the collapse of the singles market left, but this is really a period where the chart had yet to catch up to the changing technology.
Coolio. Easy one.
Stupid story that probably no one but me will find interesting: I graduated college in 1998, and my first job was overseas at the Budapest Business Journal. I moved there late July of that year, and I moved in with a classmate of mine, but he left within a day or two on a European vacation with his parents. So here I was, alone, in a foreign land with a language that was completely foreign to me and I had no linguistic reference for, and I got very sick. Fever, body aches, the whole thing. I’m lying on the couch, trying to make sense of my surroundings, looking up the Hungarian word for pharmacy in my dictionary (and, no, it’s not some sane Latin cognate like “apoteka” or anything, but “gyógyszertár”) with some Hungarian TV channel on in the background. On comes up a video of the Smurfs. Singing in Hungarian. Over Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise.”. (Cannot find the video, just the song). Words cannot explain just how much that was fucking with my reality.
I just love the song “Waterfalls.” My daughter was a devotee of Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and was devastated when she died so tragically and so young. Thanks to my daughter’s fandom I got to hear “Waterfalls” and fell in love with the song.
I was so happy to see something gangsta on the list I voted for Coolio. Although I could have gone from Seal, that’s a beautiful song. Weird Al’s “Phony Calls” ruined “Waterfalls” for me.
That is a great song.
Much harder than 1993 and 1994, I like “Fantasy” by Mariah Carey, both TLC entries, Coolio, Montell Jordan, and Seal.
I will decide later on which one to vote for. I agree with what others said, “You Are Not Alone” is one of Michael Jackson’s weakest hits, and it is his last #1 in the U.S. After this the sun pretty much set on MJ’s career, and his best years were behind him. Same with Whitney Houston, though both had more top ten hits. Bryan Adams’ had his last #1 this year also. I see 1995 as the great killer, the year where artists who had their biggest success in the 1980’s pretty much vanished for the most part by this point in time. Prince also had his last top 10 in 1995 with “Most Beautiful Girl” also.
*Kiss from a Rose *takes it for me. Literally the only enjoyable aspect of Batman Forever.
Seal and Coolio are both fabulous songs. The dealbreaker is that Gangsta’s Paradise ushered the aesthetic and anguish of gangster rap into the mainstream (see: White America).
I went with Seal. He was actually doing something a little different from what everyone else was doing at the time and I always like it when such an approach actually succeeds in drawing a mass audience.
U2’s “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me” was also used in Batman Forever. So there are two enjoyable aspects to that movie…'s soundtrack.
Wasn’t this the year that Radiohead released their own “Creep” song?
Wow, aside from Gangsta’s Paradise, I would say 1995 gives any year in the 70’s a run for its money.
No. Radiohead’s “Creep” was released twice, in 1992 and 1993. By 1995 they had already released their second album.
There was also a Stone Temple Pilots “Creep” song right around the same time as Radiohead’s. Maybe that’s where the confusion was.
I almost voted for Creep, because I was thinking of the Radiohead song of the same name. Think I just have to pass on this one.
First year in a while in which I didn’t have to hold my nose and pick the least bad song.
I went with Seal.
Madonna’s song is good too, shame her 90s material are forgotten. But I decided on Seal just ahead of TLC , bringing him ahead of Coolio in number of votes. First time I voted with majority since 1979’s Blondie “Heart of Glass”.
I went with Amish, er, Gangster’s Paradise.
Finally— a year where I don’t recognize a single song by its title.