The MOST 90s song? - updated

Ah, fuck! I can't believe I've done this. The answer was right in front of me all along... THIS is the most 90s song:

We've got Chumbawamba performing a song that uses Microsoft's slogan from the time while hand-wringing about this whole "internet" thing. It's close to peak 90s.

Daddy DJ is 2000, but still very 90's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otCpCn0l4Wo

ultimate 90's song cuz it started 90's

I posted Lisa Loeb earlier in this thread, but after seeing a different suggestion, I'll all aboard for Ace of Base - All That She Wants.

I change my answer to this because of the 90s were all about boy bands and NSYNC was arguably the biggest. It also introduced the world to the musical treasure that is Justin Timberlake who would go on to basically be my generation's Michael Jackson.

Since this is now a competition i think my original post wins hands down, I would also add Kriss Kross- Jump.

To me the 90s was all about Dance and Rave.

The 90s were weirder than most decades when it comes to music, as it probably contains the most (and most popular) instances of new genres (or little known ones from the 80s) blowing up only to all but burn out of the general consciousness within a few years, with grunge at the forefront (it technically started in the mid-80s, but didn't hit the mainstream until the early 90s, but whatever). That makes it kinda hard to nail down a "most 90s" song, as you can get very different answers depending on what part of the 90s you decide to pull from.

Seems like grunge is already covered, but who could forget the swing revival of the late 90s? Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Lou Bega, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy played the fucking Super Bowl halftime show, etc. Actually, most of that is terrible, so I don't blame you for forgetting it.

90s Eurodance/beat was a real staple in my group (a lot of my friends were wayyyyy into rhythm games), so that's probably my go-to for immediate 90s nostalgia. Besides the ones already mentioned (and a big high five to @themanwithnoplan for Running In The 90s and @fisk0 for the 2 Unlimited - No Limit shout out, that one always makes me laugh uncontrollably when I hear it now), I've got a ton of personal favorites (and personal "favorites"). Hope you like Initial D!

But when it really comes down to it, there's only one song that deserves the title of most 90s that hasn't bee/n mentioned yet:

Right from the bong rip, you know you are getting two minutes and fifty three seconds of pure 90s.

(Actually, I'd argue that Alien Ant Farm's cover of Smooth Criminal is the most 90s song/video ever made, but it came out in 2001. Here's a refresher anyway:

Its is impossible to say what is the most 90s. At what intersection of music and culture do you want to ponder?

Is that answer a downer? No, because any reductionism of a time when all intersections of society were gaining a voice is in fact uplifting.

Man I've got to say Giantbomb users have pretty much nailed this. Only 3 pages in and it basically feels like the answer is somewhere in here, haha. Sorry if someone mentioned this, I skimmed through so I might of missed it, but the answer the the Friends theme song unfortunately, right? Maybe something Boys 2 Men since they seemed to set record after record for most weeks at #1.

Has anyone mentioned "Nate Dog(g)? & Warren G - Regulate" yet? I don't know if it's just because I'm west coast or not, but that song was inescapable for a while. I'm not even the biggest hip hop fan.

While they may not be the MOST 90's, both of these impacted me due to the movie they were in.

@ben_h: Weren't these only really popular in Canada though? Whenever I talk about this stuff to friends from the US they have no idea about any of the Eurodance/Candance songs that were popular in the late 90s except maybe Barbie Girl and The Vengabus.

Nope. Now if you're talking 80s I'm in

Bomfunk: never knew if this was big outside of Finland
Cardigans: song was in Gran Turismo 2 intro
Chumbawookiewnpa: song was big during 1998 world cup of soccer

That appears to be some later edit (Starsplash timeframe perhaps?). Here is the one that was a smash hit around here and which sounds a bit more 90s:

@emphulio: I think the single for Freestyler didn't come out until 2000, which is when everyone actually heard it. It does have that 1990s spirit though.

@agentoharah: Those are two more really good suggestions, especially with the references in the second song.

One more from me:

Best use of the Atari ST.

Insert Mr. Six here

The most 90s? Probably not but I wanted to give this song some love and remind people that No Doubt put ska on the map for America (while not even being a full on ska band).

Surely I mean 'The Impression That I Get' right? That's the song most people probably associate with the MMBT but I'm choosing Someday I suppose for one reason: it was in Clueless and you can't get much more 90s than Clueless.

Despite being massively successful in the UK and throughout Europe, Take That may actually be fairly obscure to a lot of Americans but you can't deny the 90s cheese on display here

We were all clearly having way too much fun in the 90s and the early 2000s. That just seems like a common theme throughout these songs regardless of the songs subject matter. These songs just couldn't be made today because no fun allowed.

Because this is a video game site about video games... I humbly submit MORTAL KOMBAT!

https://youtu.be/EAwWPadFsOA

fixed for the lazy.

@mems1224 said:

Absolutely, boy bands were representative of the 90s and the combination of homogeneous mass media and CD industry. But by no metric were NSYNC the biggest, this dubious honor probably belongs to either Take That or the Backstreet Boys, but I don't want to debate this. I was sort of disgusted by the pretense and the pandering going on there.

Anyways I saw the remake recently and was reminded of this, also an example of how through dance culture and this music video the anime became popular or at least culturally present.

I can't stop thinking about this thread. I've gone a 90s binge and it's all your fault, @captain_insano!

We already had one Savage Garden song, but this one feels even more 90s to me:

I forgot all about jam bands and just how big they became in the 90s. The Grateful Dead and their ilk had been around for years, but the 90s saw a whole new generation of jam bands break into the mainstream:

(or Run Around, whatever one you were more exposed to.)

I think The Offspring takes the crown for "most consecutive 90's-ass 90's albums" with their run of Smash, Ixnay on the Hombre, and Americana. We already had Pretty Fly for a White guy listed, which is probably the most 90s thing they ever did, but Come Out and Play's video is just as "good".

You better shut this thread down by the end of the week, as the bracket is going to be enormous. The 90s was simply a clusterfuck and you probably could pull "yep, that only could have happened in the 90s" songs for months.

@mirado: Haha, glad I'm not the only one addicted to this thread. Even with all the songs I've mentioned, I have 100+ more in mind. :P

Actually, I screwed up. This is the right answer. It might mean absolutely nothing to an english-speaking audience, but if you asked a hundred french-canadians what song better encapsulates the 90's, all hundred of them would chose this.

"Bientôt disponible bientôt, Kuwait/Irak en Nintendo!"

No, wait, hang on a second.

I need to rescind my previous post. This, THIS is the most 90s song ever:

Good heavens, I never knew that the full edit of the song was 12 minutes long.

Thought I'd threw in a few that I believe deserve consideration to be in the running of this most 90's-ness of music contest:

This one got a lot of radio play for what felt like half the decade. It's a pretty easy going song and a little more joyfully to listen to than say: Losing My Religion by R.E.M.

(For the record: I like the R.E.M. song better)

I fell like one-hit-wonders almost have a larger impact on how we view an era of music, compared to the more successful bands of the time.

Machinehead also deserves a mention, but this somber song is just so distinctive of the time. I don't think a song like this could really be made outside that decade.

I'm pretty sure the bomb crew have mentioned this song and how people confuse it with being by Pearl Jam.

You know what was popular in the 90s? Skateboarding You know what went well with skateboarding? Punk Rock You know what was a big puck rock song at the time skateboarding was popular? Check Above

I don't remember this one getting as much radio play as some of the others, but it certainly got its MTV play. You can argue that the video is what made this song so popular at the time, but you can't deny what decade this song belongs in.

As soon as this one hit, it was just everywhere. This one maybe a little of a stretch as I feel this type of song could work beyond the decade, but it was big in 98-99 so there.

Alright that's enough for one evening. I'll try my best not to add to this already stacked thread.

I think you meant this. Seriously, is this or is this not a gaming forum?

My vote still goes to All That She Wants, though. Early 90s Swedish pop masterpiece.

Of all the invasive melodies to get stuck in your head, this has to be a top contender. Apologies.

Slowly turning music videos into tease/softcore. Certainly a formative experience for some.

When I saw this poll was a thing this was the first song that came to mind. The second is Two Princes by spin doctors, followed by "Life is a Highway" by Tom Cochrane.

@ben_h: Prozzak absolutely belongs on this list, their 98 album Hot Show has some iconic 90s songs.

Also, you Getting Jiggy with it fans are all picking the wrong Will Smith era:

Just looking for some glaring omissions now, needs more PotUSA:

I....I can't dispute this. It's 90s as fuck. There were more popular and much better songs, but this cheesy/catchy song is quite possibly the best snapshot in time for the 90s as a decade. It has off-the-charts levels of "oh, this song". I never even liked it much, but its presence was/is undeniable, and I think anyone who lived through the 90s knows most of the words to it, whether they wanted to or not. It bored its way into your head via sheer osmosis because it was simply that ubiquitous. If you went to a mall, you fucking heard this song.

TLC - Waterfalls is also a pretty solid answer. There was roughly a 95% chance of that music video being played if you flipped on MTV, and that only increased when MTV later incessantly poured one out for Left Eye like she was Mother Teresa. I like that Seal's Kiss from a Rose is being acknowledged here as well. It is fittingly the sole thing that endures from an era of awful Batman movies. The same goes for Coolio's Gangster's Paradise, which deservedly overshadowed another insufferable "white person saves minority community" movie.

I didn't care much for Spin Doctors, TLC, Counting Crows, et al., and a lot of shit like Hanson, Chumbawamba, the Macarena, Mambo #5, Spice Girls, NSYNC, Backstreet Boys, et al. is indefensible (and was even in its heyday), but some 90s songs are still my motherfucking jams. I loved bands like Soundgarden, Nirvana, AIC, Third Eye Blind, Sublime, Green Day, The Offspring, etc. (and mostly still do), 90s rap/hip hop is still far and away the peak of that genre, and there were so many awesome one-hit wonders like Blind Melon, Harvey Danger, Everlast, etc.

Say what you will about 90s music, but they fucking went for it. There was an enthusiasm to it that I still really appreciate. Even fairly terrible shit like Smashmouth kinda owned their crappiness and jammed the fuck out anyway. It all felt so random, too, like music was more open to various bullshit than any other time period in history. Seriously, when people like Alanis Morissette rose to the top out of nowhere, it was a goddamned free-for-all, and it became this glorious shitshow that I still largely have a real soft spot for.

Great thread. All the nostalgia.

This nearly made me do a spit-take. And yes, would they stop making that movie?!

It's weird that some 90s songs, like "Good Riddance - Time of Your Life by Greenday", I really identify more with the 2000s (maybe because every high school graduation ever used it).

Whereas Blink 182, while they straddle the threshold, have some 90s songs such as

This one I'm not 100% sure on - the album came out in 1999, but the single was released separately in 2000:

@spaceinsomniac said:

The irony here is that Mother Teresa is a foreign (Albanian) person who went to the poor districts in India not to help people but preside over death houses, and watch people "suffer like Jesus suffered". While the donations her Order received mostly went to recruit and proliferate the mission. At least Michelle Pfeiffer's character brought education and not Raptorjesus. From what I can glean from Gangsters' Paradise, I haven't seen Dangerous Minds.

What these bottom-feeding for-a-laugh comedians don't tell you, is that the Origin of this "person goes to save minority" tale is mostly (Christian) religious mission, that they the comedians somehow twisted into a racist thing against "white" people.

The nineties were of course the time of the multiculturalism lie extended to its furthest. Ethnic mixing was all the rage, hip-hop wasn't just for minorities. Gangster rap and basketball peaked in their popularity. We were all just a big happy colorful family (at least on the TV), then came the age of terrorist attacks and war on terror. People realized that cultures aren't quite as open and welcoming as their restaurants!

The nineties were objectively terrible, we were all subject to the mass media delusion, the lowest common denominator pop culture and people knew it at the time. Nobody felt like music is breaking new ground and those who spoke out or were different were presumably simply excluded. Meanwhile we got shit that is just catchy, harmless or on message. This doesn't change my fondness for the music because of the memories associated with it, but we live in a better more grounded society or at least now there are choices.

When I think about the 90's, one song at immediately pops in my mind is 1990's Jesus Jones Right Here, Right Now. I was in college at the time when it started climbing the charts, so it brings me back to those days when everything felt like it was changing like never before.

The 90's are mostly about all of the alternative music and rap I listened to in the 80's going mainstream. These might not be the most iconic of the decade but they're some of my favorites.

Beastie Boys - So What'cha Want (1992)

Halcyon On and On - Orbital (1993)

Hip Hop Hooray - Naughty By Nature (1993)

Big Empty - Stone Temple Pilots (1994)

Toadies - Possum Kingdom (1994)

No Diggity - Blackstreet (1996)

Criminal - Fiona Apple (1996)

The Crossroads - Bone Thugs-n-Harmony (1996)

Blink 182 - Adam's Song (1999)

Finally, has any high school graduation since 1999 commenced without Vitamin C?

OK, has anyone post Ginuwine's "Pony"? If not, here it is:

Also Pearl Jam's Alive, only if somebody hasn't mentioned it yet:

don't know if it's come up yet, but The Cranberries - Zombie, and Linger

This a 1000 times

I cannot believe this hasn't been posted yet. This is my vote.