90s Modern Rock Ranked!

The wikipedia page for Our Lady Peace singer Raine Maida describes his “unique countertenor nasal falsetto singing voice, as well as his cryptic and poetry-influenced song lyrics.” This is another way to say that his voice can be rather irritating, especially when the “cryptic” lyrics are:

And ow, a-woo, ow, a-woo, ow, a-woo
And ow, a-woo, ow, a-woo, ow, a-woo
And ow, a-woo, ow, a-woo, ow, a-woo
And ow, a-woo, ow, a-woo, ow, a-woo
Why-ee-I-ee-I-ee, yeah
Why-ee-I-ee-I-I
Why-ee-I-ee-I-ee, yeah
Why-ee-I-ee-I-I

One of my favorite covers of the early 90s is the Anthrax version of Joe Jackson’s “Got The Time.” I remember being absolutely shocked to find out that it was a Joe Jackson song, since as an MTV child of the 80s, the only Jackson song I knew of was the schmaltzy, Broadway-adjacent “Steppin’ Out.” While I’ve come to appreciate Jackson’s first couple of albums, I can’t say I’ve dug much since then, including this Fleetwood Mac cover which sounds like it was recorded after Joe emerged from the audience during Sting’s Bring on the Night tour and asked the band to play it from memory.

Some of my friends in high school had a band called Lunch. When I asked one of them why they called their band Lunch, he said, matter of factly: “Everybody likes lunch.” Black Labs? Everybody likes Black Labs! Unfortunately, Black Lab is not the Black Labs of bands. Just look at the above still from the “Time Ago” video and you can imagine the sound of a song meant to soundtrack an especially weepy/angsty moment on a show like One Tree Hill. Bad dog!

Another inessential Smash Mouth cover. Not that any of their covers should be considered “essential” to anyone who isn’t disturbingly attached to the Shrek franchise.

I had assumed that this live rendition of “Brian Wilson” came out after “One Week” to cash in on its freak success, but turns out it came out six months before. Either way, the crowd singing along to the lyrics doesn’t help, nor does that super crisp acoustic guitar that screams 1998.

Imagine if instead of getting into European club sounds in the early 90s, U2 simply decided they wanted to sound like The Cult. Also features the lyrics from “Wild Horses” for no apparent reason.

I would say that my tolerance for this band has fluctuated like crazy over the last 40 years, but really I thought they were tremendously cool up until 1992, and then didn’t listen to them much at all until my son became a teenager and went through his Chili Pepper phase, which seems to have replaced a Rush phase for all 13-year-olds discovering rock music. That phase didn’t include this tune, as it seems like even new school Chili Pepper fans don’t need to hear Anthony Keidis’ megaphoning in an O’Jays cover.

First of all, credit to U2 for contributing a song to a Cole Porter tribute album created to benefit AIDS research. Red Hot + Blue sold over a million copies and started an entire series of benefit albums, something that likely would not have happened had one of the largest bands in the world not been a part of it. Also interesting is that this is the first example of U2 messing with the electronic sounds that would define them in the 90s. Too bad that this song is pretty painful to listen to. The keyboards sound oddly sinister, Bono’s vocals don’t always match what the band is doing, and it’s twice as long as it needs to be. It’s good they got it out, but seems like their achtung was elsewhere.

Admittedly this sort of danceable industrial rock isn’t my bag baby, but this one is particularly irksome. It starts off like Depeche Mode’s “World in my Eyes” (fine), then adds chintzy fake horns (annoying) and a guy yelling, “Baby, come to daddy! Daddy’s come to baby!” (creepy).

As the singer on of two of the three most played Clash songs (at least on these shores), and two massively popular Big Audio Dynamite tunes, Mick Jones had a huge hand, and key voice, in what Modern Rock radio sounded like in the early 90s.

But instead of doubling down on his punk bonafides in 1994, Jones dropped the “Dynamite” from his band’s name and returned with an incredibly unmemorable song about how hard it is to write a memorable one: “Looking for a song/About 3:30 long/A song that I can sing/It don’t need no complicating theme…It ain’t as easy as it looks/Coming up with all these hooks/Remember that it has to swing/It don’t need no complicating theme.”

As anyone who ever listened to the Clash can tell you, sometimes it do need a complicating theme.