The 1990s was a weird decade for music. It was the home to grunge and Britpop, but also a bunch of bad pop. One cannot be perfect, it seems.
Like every decade, the music was so vast that it's easy to miss some unsung gems. Well, I guess someone sung them, but maybe not enough people heard them. That's quite sad.
Half of the bands below were extremely well known. The two others had a more cult following. Each of them churned out a number of great songs.
These four songs from the 1990s deserve more love
Grant Lee Buffalo - "Honey Don't Think" (1994)
Of the extremely underrated album, Mighty Joe Moon, "Honey Don't Think" is one of a duo of beautiful tunes near the end of the album. The tracklisting somehow works for the record, even though it is a bit inconsistent. That allows one to understand each song as its own instead of something like a concept album.
The song has some absolutely brilliant lyrics spread over an acoustic bed and aching vocals. Lines include, "Something wrong in my stars/Could you look at my chart/Help me healing these scars/Could you learn to read minds/In the case of mine/Do you read in the dark." That has about three ideas that are all better than 99 percent of the songs you will hear on the radio.
Cracker - "Movie Star" (1993)
Speeding it up a bit with Cracker, a band possibly best known for songs such as "Teen Angst (What the World Needs Now)," "Movie Star" is a punk-fueled country-rock song about decadance and hollowness. One of the lines is "Well the movie star, well she crashed her car/But everyone said she was beautiful even without her head." Funny, right? And biting at the same time.
Cracker could do a number of things and never got the kind of appreciation they deserved. You want something sweetly slowly and lyrics that stretch the imagination but also hit close to the bone, they are the band for you. But one of the styles the band does best is blazingly fast bits of pop excellence. You might have this song stuck happily in your head for days.
R.E.M. - "Find the River" (1993)
This is one of the rare R.E.M. tunes that does not involve guitarist Peter Buck. Instead, Mike Mills conceives the music, plays most of the instruments, sings harmony along with drummer Bill Berry, while Michael Stipe adds the kind of words few others can. They are nonsensical and touching and the music will break your heart.
And it's all worth it. The final track on the brilliant Automatic for the People, the tune somehow wraps up an album that features the slow burn of "Drive" and the fullness of "Sweetness Follows." Automatic is not the happiest of R.E.M albums, but it might be the bands most gorgeous. "Find the River" included in that.
Pulp - "Sorted for E's & Wizz"
No one turns out songs quite like Jarvis Cocker and Pulp. The song was inspired by a comment a woman once made to Cocker when he asked her about what she remembers about being at a musical festival. She did not remember much other than "sorted for E's and whizz" was something told her. Cocker turns the statement into a song about drug culture.
But is Cocker saying the culture is good or bad? The brilliance of the track comes in that the band lets you decide what you think. Cocker does a stream-of-consciousness during the song, brings it all back around, and makes it all wonderfully listenable. The genius of Pulp.