Ten worst number-one songs of the 1990s

Musically speaking, in the 1990s, several things became abundantly clear. First and foremost – rock and roll was dead. At least as a popular genre, it simply no longer mattered. It’s true that upstart sub-genres like grunge and punk and whatever your understanding of “indie” entails, injected life into the wider genre. But rock’s days of being the dominant musical influence in the Western world had come and gone.

On the rare occasion that a rock and roll act climbed to the top of the charts during the 1990s, it was invariably when they stepped outside their chosen genre and released an often-sappy, sentimental ballad. That’s how Extreme got there with “More Than Words, (as opposed to, say, the more representative “Get the Funk Out”).

Blond gods Nelson went softer on “Love and Affection,” and got their number one. The rare blips of genuine alt-rock – like Lisa Loeb’s “Stay” or Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week”  - lingered in some type of pop rock middle-world. They were anomalies.

Ten worst number-one songs of the 1990s

There was one rock and roll artist who had great popular success in the 1990s, and we’ll get to him by the end. He, in many ways, is the poster child for the diminution of rock as a dominant cultural trend. (How’s that for a teaser?)

There were other fascinating developments that roared to life during the ‘90s. For one thing, there were fewer number-one hits, by a wide margin, than there had been in previous decades. That’s because the 1990s were the decade of monster-long runs for popular songs at the top of the charts. Before the decade, a run of more than four weeks atop the pop chart was considered exceptional. In the ‘90s, there were more than ten songs that had weeks atop the charts that extended into double digits.

This seemed counterintuitive at first glance. Production and distribution avenues were actually becoming more accessible to all artists. As Wired Magazine’s Chris Anderson wrote in 2004, the “long tail” was supposed to open up the recording industry to everyone.

But in hindsight, all it did was flood the market with so much product that it became even more important to be affiliated with a deep pocketed label. That’s the only way artists could rise above the din. And that, at least in part, led to more power actually being concentrated in fewer hands.

Still, each week, some song had to be number one, and if rock and roll was not going to supply its fair share of product, who would? By the end of the decade, hip-hop had begun filling the gap. Rap had its first big moment in the mid-‘90s when Tupac, Biggie, and Puff Daddy (as he was known at the time) took over the charts for a while. The death of two of those artists slowed the ascendency for a little while, but hip-hop was clearly on the rise.

And so were the ladies. It’s not as if women were invisible prior to the ‘90s. Whitney Houston emerged in the mid-‘80s and was followed by Janet Jackson later in the decade. Both scored major chart-topping singles in the 1980s and continued that trend into the new decade. They were joined by two of the best-selling recording artists the pop charts have ever seen – Celine Dion and Mariah Carey.

Carey alone released fifteen songs in the 1990s that would eventually rise to the top of the charts. Those songs accounted for 73 weeks at the top, though those weeks weren’t necessarily confined to the 1990s. Even if you eliminate Carey’s ’90s recordings that made it to number one in later decades, she still accounted for more than a full year’s worth of number-one songs in the 1990s.

And it wasn’t simply a handful of big-name women scoring chart-toppers. Toni Braxton, Brandy Norwood and Monica Arnold all had multiple number ones in the ‘90s. Monica and Brandy’s duet “The Boy is Mine” was THE song of the summer of ’98, staying on top for 13 weeks.

Nor was it merely the solo females. TLC had a string of top-flight singles that made it to number one. Another female trio rose to prominence late in the decade with a couple of chart-toppers. Destiny’s Child didn’t have quite as many number ones as TLC, but they had something that proved even more important. They had Beyonce Knowles.

So, there was a lot of good, innovative popular music in the 1990s. But there also a lot of – how shall I put it? – less appealing fare. If you read my last piece on the worst number-ones of the 1980s, you know that I consider that decade to be the absolute nadir of pop music. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the lion’s share of awful ‘90s number ones comes very early in the decade. 1990-1992 were still trapped in an ‘80s hangover, where maudlin big ballads were smothered by strings and tinny, lifeless synths. And for some reason, people snapped it up.

I could easily create a ten-worst list from 1990 alone, but in the interest of diversity, I will spread things out just a bit. And by “a bit,” I mean just a couple of songs from later in the decade. The early ‘90s remain well-represented.

And I will eschew any kind of honorable mentions since I’ve waxed synthetic too long already. So let’s dive right in on the ten worst songs to reach number one in the 1990s.