Five overplayed songs from the 1990s that continue to rot our brains

"I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" - Aerosmith

Among the many sins Aerosmith unleashed upon the music-loving public was this tripe that the band did not even write. Diane Warren wrote it and hoped NSYNC might record it, allegedly. The tune was based on James Brolin saying he missed Barbara Streisand even when they were asleep (which seems creepy, but you know...love!) and then Aerosmith ended up with it to record a song for the film Armageddon.

One can assume that Aerosmith had run out of any decent ideas by this time and even Steven Tyler didn't want to record the song. He then saw a snippet of his daughter, Liv Tyler, being in the film and being distressed because her father was passing away (if you haven't seen the movie, it's worth a watch) and then Tyler was like, "I'll do it!" That makes the original inspiration kind of creepy.

"The Freshmen" - The Verve Pipe

There are several bits wrong about this song, and yes...some of them are trivial. For one, that the Verve Pipe should ever be confused with the Verve is a travesty. The Verve were an excellent English band that produced a large number of songs that should be on your future playlists, and much of them better than "Bitter Sweet Symphony." The Verve Pipe were from somewhere and had one popular tune.

Another aspect of this impersonal track that the band wrote about a "pregnant girlfriend that got an abortion" is that the band wrote the song based on someone they knew, not something they had a real connection to. Maybe listen to Ben Folds' "Brick" instead.

Ultimately, the song is whitewashed by its attempt to be something better than the band should ever wish to do. "The Freshmen" isn't actually unlistenable. It should be, though, based on the falsehood of what the band was trying to sell us.

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