Blur’s send-up of American grunge became their biggest stateside hit. While singer Damon Albarn’s arch wittiness had elevated the band to the top of the Brit-pop class, it was guitarist Graham Coxon who gave the band a new audience, and a new lease on life, by cranking the distortion loud enough to rattle the teeth in your skull. “Woo-hoo!” indeed. Body Count – Body Count’s in the House (1992) When “Mo Money Mo Problems” arrived in the summer of 1997, Diana Ross’ hiccupping sample and Kelly Price’s sashaying lamentation as ubiquitous as a heat wave, Biggie Smalls had been dead for four months. Mase and Puff Daddy—then nearing the release of their respective debuts—took the lead, playfully plodding through opening verses and goofing on Tiger Woods and Bryant Gumbel in a paradoxically ostentatious video. In that life-after-death context, it was impossible not to hear the song’s tragic irony, like a warning by and for B.I.G. about the fate that may await such a contentious and ostentatious superstar. But the anthem’s enduring power stems from its moral simplicity, epitomized by Biggie’s monstrous minute-long verse, buried in the second half: Stay true to your roots and crew, even as you aspire for the cover of Fortune. This was never a song about dying or problems, really; it was a song about living through a moment’s madness, of making it out intact and sane. –Grayson Haver Currin On “Doll Parts,” singer, guitarist, and songwriter Courtney Love dissects herself into slivers. Fake eyes, legs, and arms all fall at odd angles, their connective elastic snapped. When some men want women, they divide them in this way: reduce them to anatomical segments, seize upon a part, and throw away the rest. If only every song about unrequited love sounded as upbeat as Blues Traveler’s Grammy-winning smash. “Run-Around.” is a breezy, jammy gem of a pop song that scratches the same itch as Van Morrison’s “Brown Eyed Girl” and the Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey.” Blur – Song 2 (1997)

Built on a mandolin riff, the song was the unlikely hit single from their album Out Of Time (1991). Its success was largely due to the critically acclaimed music video, which earned it airplay on both MTV and VH1 (and probably drew my attention to it). I loved the song initially as I was already at the age where I was questioning religion, and I took the lyrics at face value. More than 20 years after its initial release, “It’s Friday night and the weekend’s here, I need to unwind” remain some of the most resonant words in R&B history. With a swinging beat and soft, lush production, Zhané’s “Hey Mr. DJ,” from the duo’s debut album, Pronounced Jah-Nay, is the perfect representation of R&B’s prime objective: to be the sonic expression of the soul of the everyman and everywoman. 4: Montell Jordan: This Is How We Do It

OMC – How Bizarre (1995)

Art Alexakis got personal on Everclear’s sophomore record, Sparkle and Fade, channeling his traumatic upbringing into tunes that were either explicitly autobiographical (“Heroin Girl”) or fictionalized versions that were detailed enough to be someone else’s truth (“Pale Green Stars”). Even “Santa Monica” can’t fully escape the drugs and death that haunt the album, but it at least offers the possibility of a life beyond them. Fastball – The Way (1998) This extremely upbeat cover of Ready For The World’s 1986 tune took the airwaves by storm 11 years later in 1997. INOJ’s rework of the song and her cover of Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time”, was less a slow jam or ballad than a song to be blasted at your cardio funk class. 52: Queen Latifah – Weekend Love No, that isn’t “The Imperial March” that you hear at the beginning of White Town’s fluke hit, “Your Woman” – it’s actually taken from an old jazz tune. (You can hear the same sample in Dua Lipa’s “Love Again.”) If anything, “Your Woman” sounds like lo-fi Prince – and yes, the song is as great as that sounds. Yo La Tengo – Autumn Sweater (1997)

There is an excellent episode of Netflix’s Song Exploder featuring the band that discusses the song in detail. The single reached number 5 in Ireland.

Oasis’ most famous song has become something of a punchline, owing to countless amateur guitarists fumbling their way through it at coffeehouses and parties. However, “Wonderwall” itself is timeless. “There are many things that I would like to say to you / But I don’t know how,” Liam Gallagher sings, tapping into a lovelorn sincerity as everlasting as Kurt Cobain’s teenage angst. The Offspring – Come Out and Play (1994) Neneh Cherry’s feminist credentials were never in doubt – quaint as it seems now, her performance on Top of the Pops while seven months pregnant raised some eyebrows – and “Woman” was her sharpest statement of female empowerment. “Woman” flips James Brown’s “It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World” on its head, boasting “This is a woman’s world… / There ain’t a woman in this world, not a woman or a little girl / That can’t deliver love in a man’s world.” New Radicals – You Get What You Give (1998) R&B meets bubblegum pop in Soul IV Real’s bouncy debut single “Candy Rain.” Powered by the youthful voice of the youngest brother Jason “Jase” Dalyrimple of their family band, the single still slapped thanks to production by their mentor and Uptown labelmate Heavy D. 25: Usher – You Make Me Wanna Given the crowded field, we’ve been ultra-selective in compiling this all-bangers, no-clangers playlist and limited it to one song per artist. Whether the ‘90s was the greatest decade for music is mostly a generational debate, but as you’ll hear, one thing’s for sure: it was never boring.