20. Portishead – “Sour Times” (1994)
“Sour Times” is late-night music for a smoky, dimly lit back-alley club, with Beth Gibbons clutching the mic like it’s her only tether to sanity as she pours out her sorrow to a sparse and uncaring crowd drowning their troubles in strong drink.
Portishead’s eerily cinematic soundscapes incorporate elements of jazz, blues, ambient, and electronic textures into a midnight fusion that wisps in and around the listener’s consciousness like a ghostly apparition that slips just beyond the fingertips the closer it comes to being touched. They build their atmospheric mix over a trippy rhythm that injects a modern feel into a sound that could otherwise have originated from just about anytime in the last 50 years.
“Sour Times” could easily be the theme for a shadowy noir thriller or an erotic art film that disturbs as much as it titillates. Perhaps it’s not surprising that it also sounds like it could be featured in a spy movie — the guitar is a sample from Argentine composer Lalo Schifrin’s “Danube Incident”, originally used in the television series Mission Impossible.
There is a gothic loveliness to Gibbons’ passionate yearning. Her vocals are beautiful but haunted, like Billie Holiday trapped in a dank underground cell, singing woeful blues to the cold cement walls encasing her. “Sour Times” has a doomed quality, the claustrophobic feeling of someone trapped in a gauze of impenetrable mist. The lyrics appear to touch upon a woman in a forbidden relationship, forced to operate in secrecy and deal in deception. Although the situation brings nothing but shame and sorrow, she seems unable to or unwilling to extricate herself from it.
“Sour Times” is the second single from the British trio’s debut album Dummy, winner of the 1995 Mercury Music Prize. The track earned Portishead their only appearance on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart, where it reached #5.
19. Depeche Mode – “Enjoy the Silence” (1990)
After a long string of synthpop hits in the 1980s, British electronic pioneers Depeche Mode reached their artistic and commercial zenith with their seventh album Violator, released just as the decades turned in March 1990. The first single “Personal Jesus” had been released months earlier, building anticipation, and when the full album appeared it didn’t disappoint. Violator is loaded with top-notch songwriting and incorporates a precise, stark, stripped-down sound that suits the material well.
“Enjoy the Silence” was released as a single on 16 January 1990, making it the earliest song eligible for this list. It eventually became by far the band’s biggest crossover hit in America. It hit #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart and reached #8 on the pop chart, helping Violator sell over three million copies in the US alone.
David Gahan’s smooth baritone is precise and almost clinical as it flows over the brooding electronic rhythm and layers of keyboard. The main riff is a simple guitar pattern that rings over the synth pulses. Martin Gore adds a high harmony part that doesn’t jump out at first but adds drive and color. “Enjoy the Silence” seems stately and restrained until you begin to feel the immensity and depth of human emotion coursing through its electronic circuitry.
The lyrics involve the human capacity to hurt each other with words. Instead, we should trust in feeling and emotion to maintain an unbreakable connection with the person we love. Thoughts are fleeting and words can wound before they can be taken back. The tongue can be a finely honed razor. It’s true; just imagine holding your loved one in your arms, laying back, staring at the ceiling, feeling the love emanate through that physical bond.
There is nothing to be added by speaking — words are imperfect, anyway. They’ve never been able to express what we humans are feeling adequately, and never will… and they too often cause problems that were never meant to be caused. “Vows are spoken / to be broken / feelings are intense / words are trivial.” Or, stated another way, “Words are useless / especially sentences / they don’t stand for anything / how could they explain how I feel?” — Madonna via Björk.
18. PJ Harvey – “Down By the Water” (1995)
PJ Harvey has always been able to portray the tormented and demented with startling conviction and veracity. “Down By the Water” is a twisted gothic blues narrated by a deranged woman who intentionally drowns her daughter. Harvey’s vocals are tightly controlled, but madness’s strong current is palpable.
“Down By the Water” borrows from the traditional folk song “Salty Dog Blues”, with Harvey echoing its chorus of “Lil’ fish, big fish, swimmin’ in the water / come on here and give me my quarter / you salty dog / you salty dog.” Harvey interpolates this macabre refrain in a chilling whisper. She changes “quarter” to “daughter” and creates a menacing nightmare that allows us to peer into a deeply disturbed mind.
It’s clear that Harvey’s narrator really doesn’t understand what is happening, but is swept up in her hallucinatory visions and feelings, inspired at least in part by religious delusions. She is untethered from reality, and Harvey inhabits that role with a genuine sense of dire lunacy. Of course, with a songwriter of Harvey’s talent and dexterity, it’s also possible that the song is not meant to be taken at face value, but could have another meaning entirely. It’s certainly open to speculation and interpretation.
Harvey worked on her triumphant third album To Bring You My Love with long-time collaborator John Parish and renowned British producer Flood, and the end result is much more polished than Harvey’s first two albums Dry and Rid of Me. Musically, “Down By the Water” is a malevolent, sensual sway. A synthesized distorted organ, which sounds just like a fuzz-toned bass, fills much of the song’s sonic space. Icy synths, skeletal percussion, faint plucks of string, and chilling sound effects all fuse to create the sinister frame of mind in which the narrator is trapped.
As the lead single from To Bring You My Love, “Down By the Water” received substantial MTV and alternative radio airplay, leading it to reach #2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart, by far PJ Harvey’s highest ever placement on that survey.
17. Jeff Buckley – “Last Goodbye” (1994)
With opening curves of slide guitar and then a driving acoustic-rock beat, “Last Goodbye” is, in retrospect, what Jeff Buckley said it is. Like his late father Tim Buckley, Buckley’s voice was a remarkable instrument: supple and sweet, shining with sincerity, infused with beautiful melancholy. Grace was the only album he’d complete before his heartbreaking death. One minute he was alive and smiling, singing Led Zeppelin and swimming in the Wolf River Harbor in Memphis, and the next he was gone. Obviously Grace took on a new significance in the aftermath of Buckley’s death.
“Last Goodbye” is a song of solemn regret about an ending relationship. It has an overarching feel of sadness and inevitability. There’s no question that love is there, but it isn’t enough. It often isn’t when it comes to things like this. Buckley’s narrator readily admits to being at fault in the relationship’s demise, positing that the girl is better off: “You know it makes me so angry ’cause I know that in time, I’ll only make you cry,” he tells her.
Buckley also recounts a troubling episode that may have been violent in nature: “Did you say, ‘No, this can’t happen to me’ / and did you rush to the phone to call / was there a voice unkind in the back of your mind / saying maybe you didn’t know him at all?” Despite the warm and romantic nature of the song, with its lilting melody and slurring strings, the song is a reminder that things are not always what they seem, and that it’s hard to really know someone, especially in love’s first bloom.
Even though the love was doomed, Buckley says to his lover, “Just hear this and then I’ll go; you gave me more to live for / more than you’ll ever know.” Almost exactly two years later, Buckley was gone. “Well, the bells out in the church tower chime / Burning clues into this heart of mine / Thinking so hard on her soft eyes and the memories / Offer signs that it’s over… it’s over”.
As the second single from Grace, “Last Goodbye” reached #19 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart. It was his final chart hit in America.
16. Alanis Morissette – “You Oughta Know” (1995)
Alanis Morissette went from the saccharine pop of two teenybopper Canadian albums (Alanis (1991) and Now is the Time (1992)) to the deluge of angst known as Jagged Little Pill. It was a remarkable transformation that lifted her to iconic status among ’90s’ artists. Her rise was aided by producer Glen Ballard, who collaborated with Morissette on an album that became a cultural phenomenon, selling well over 30 million copies worldwide and yielding several major hits, including “Head Over Feet”, “You Learn”, “Ironic” and “Hand in My Pocket”.
It all started with “You Oughta Know”, the album’s most jagged little pill, portraying emotional wreckage left behind after the dissolution of a relationship. It opens with a singularly insincere couplet: “I want you to know / that I am happy for you / I wish nothing but the best for you both”. Uh-huh. Right. Morissette doesn’t cling to dignity or sanguinity; she seethes with rage and confrontation. The song is instantly relatable and accessible, raw emotion over edgy rock with an epic chorus that ends with Morissette yelping with fury: “You… you… you… oughta know!”
“You Oughta Know” is brash, obsessive, and a bit stalkerish (“I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner”), but then, human feelings are not always neat and logical, and Morissette doesn’t hold back in lashing out at the man who cast her aside. She’s not swallowing her pride and slinking off into a corner like one is evidently supposed to do in these situations. No, she’s pointing a finger in harsh repudiation, standing up for herself and heaving scorn upon the object of her ire. Under the fiery denunciations, a touch of vulnerability also peaks through (“I’m not quite as well / I thought you should know”.)
It’s a catharsis that feels genuine, and is certainly relatable to the millions of fans who snatched up the album. Depending on your point of view, it’s the queen of all crazy ex-girlfriend songs, or perhaps an epic rant aimed at the king of all douchebag ex-boyfriends. Either way, it’s a riveting drama spiked with genuine fury. “You Oughta Know” spent five weeks at #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart during the summer of 1995, and remains one of the decade’s cultural cornerstones.
15. Alice in Chains – “Angry Chair” (1992)
Opening with a grim, stately triplet rhythm and a portentous guitar pattern, “Angry Chair” is a viscerally brutal gaze into a life scarred by neglect and nightmarish addiction. “Angry Chair” is as heartbreaking as anything you’ll hear in rock, especially considering we know the sad ending to the story. Vocalist Layne Staley would eventually succumb to his demons and die of a drug overdose a decade after “Angry Chair” rode high on alternative radio and MTV.
“Angry Chair” is one of multiple harrowing tracks on Alice in Chains’ unrelentingly bleak second album Dirt, which should be required listening for all high school students as part of a curriculum designed to keep them away from hard drugs. The album grabs you roughly by the skull and hauls you through a hallucinatory nightmare of anguish and despair, of watching your life circle inexorably into a dank hole that’s filled with mud while you stand at the bottom, feeling the dirt dribble down your face, trying with all your might to claw your way back up. It can be done, but it’s achingly hard. The best solution is to avoid those holes in the first place.
At his best, Layne Staley was a vocalist of remarkable soul and power. The harmonies he creates with guitarist Jerry Cantrell are tight and forceful. His lyrics on “Angry Chair” are based on Staley’s childhood memories of his father sitting him in a chair in front of a mirror as a “time out” when he got in trouble. Consider this torturous verse: “Shadows dancing everywhere / burning on the angry chair / little boy made a mistake / pink cloud has now turned to gray / all that I want is to play / get on your knees, time to pray.” There is no tenderness or understanding, and painful childhood memories cling like bruising shadows that burrow deeper and deeper into the soul through adulthood.
This verse tells the story of Layne Staley like a compact and hellish diary entry: “Loneliness is not a phase / field of pain is where I graze / serenity is far away / saw my reflection and cried / so little hope that I died / feed me your lies, open wide / weight of my heart, not the size.” Staley was reportedly high on heroin, marijuana and oxycodone during the recording of “Angry Chair”.
The band surrounds his anguished lines with waves of acid-soaked guitars, ominous and unflinching in the face of the horrors being expressed. It’s all the more powerful because it speaks of simple, unbearable truth. Producer Dave Jerden should be credited for helping create the stunning combination of complex harmony vocals and molten guitar rivers.
Listening to Alice in Chains is like diving into another man’s inner demons and taking a long swim through a lake of fire. It’s compelling and piercingly intense, but the pain and the addiction made the art possible. On some level, it’s voyeurism at its most twisted, and yet it’s impossible to turn away. At their best — and “Angry Chair” represents that level — Alice in Chains, and Layne Staley, were just too damn great. We should have known the toll would come due eventually.
14. Red Hot Chili Peppers – “Under the Bridge” (1991)
The wild hybrid musical machine Red Hot Chili Peppers have been purveyors of funk, soul, rock, punk, and hip-hop since they formed in Los Angeles in 1983. They slowly built a fanbase over the course of several albums and tours, finally scoring a substantial hit with 1989’s Mother’s Milk and the singles “Knock Me Down” and “Higher Ground”. The big payoff came two years later.
After the hyperactive funk-rock freak-out “Give It Away”, the lead single from their landmark Rick Rubin-produced fifth album Blood Sugar Sex Magik, ripped its way to #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart, the Chili Peppers were bigger than ever. Who would have thought a heartfelt ballad would elevate them to international stardom?
“Under the Bridge” peers within, examining Anthony Kiedis’ soul and providing some context to the manic and thunderous world the Chili Peppers usually occupy. The song started as a poem that Kiedis showed to producer Rick Rubin, who convinced the frontman to present it to his bandmates. Despite being such a radical departure from their usual style, his colleagues rose to the occasion and developed the musical arrangement that perfectly complements the lyrics.
Kiedis lays himself bare and eloquently speaks to his struggles with addiction — a desperate need that took complete charge of his life — and the resulting isolation and shame. The brash hyper-kinetic beats aren’t here to hide behind and there’s no wild strut around the stage. Just a somber, stripped-down ballad that shows a different side of an artist brave enough to open up his closet and let the skeletons out for the world to examine. Kiedis reflects on the lowest points of his life, when he would hang out under a bridge in Los Angeles to shoot up. Looking back a few years later, as a sober man surrounded by people who don’t follow his abstention, he still feels disconnected in many ways but never regrets for a moment leaving that Hell behind.
Kiedis sure does it convincingly for someone not used to singing poignant ballads. The song speaks to loneliness and solitude, an inability to connect or trust — and of his special affection for the city of Los Angeles, which has seen him at his best and his worst. It’s a change for Kiedis and the band, who were forced to take a different musical approach for the poignant and personal song, but they rise to the occasion and treat the song with the gravitas and dignity it requires.
“Under the Bridge” is a moment of growth and changed perceptions of what the Chili Peppers could be both within the band and among their fans. The pivot allowed Red Hot Chili Peppers to become the type of supergroup capable of still going strong over 20 years later.
“Under the Bridge” reached #6 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart and crossed over to substantial success at Top 40, going all the way to #2, unable to dislodge the chart-topping novelty rap number “Jump” by Kriss Kross; another stark reminder that chart positions don’t tell the whole story.
13. Smashing Pumpkins – “Bullet With Butterfly Wings” (1995)
Billy Corgan snarls “the world is a vampire” to open “Bullet With Butterfly Wings”, the first single from Smashing Pumpkins’ two-CD opus Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. That old cliché “taking blood from a stone” is apt. Like a vampire, the world sucks and sucks, takes and takes, until there is nothing left but a shriveled coil of rage lashing out, as Corgan does like a rat in a cage.
Mellon Collie is a Pandora’s box of beauty and nightmare, raging guitars and soaring strings. It’s a vast sonic universe that hurls the listener through Corgan’s elaborate and tortured fantasy world of fragility and desolation. Is it self-indulgent? Most double albums are to a degree, but who cares? It’s crammed full of great material, and “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” is one of the album’s cornerstones.
Corgan snarls like a feral cat stalking through a wasteland wrought by humanity’s innate destructive tendencies. The song alternates between the sullen verses with Corgan singing mostly in his lower register over rumbling bass, to the blistering repetition of “in spite of all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage!” It’s a meditation on the human condition, the pain we must endure, which seems mystifying, meaningless and completely at odds with the notion that there is an all-knowing, all-powerful and benevolent deity.
“And what do I get, for my pain?” Corgan asks. Later, he compares himself to the mythological biblical figure Job, who, according to legend, was inflicted with endless miseries but whose faith in his God never wavered. Corgan doesn’t seem quite so sanguine.
Part of the song is the existential rage of recognition that humans are on the same plane as a rat or any other animal. There is nothing to be saved, nowhere to escape but the vampiric world that engulfs us in abject pain, and then at some point death takes us. It’s a denial of the divine, the angst of being lost and disconnected from a higher power while wishing there was a benevolent presence to save us all at the end and give our lives meaning. Wishing, but not quite being able to believe. Humanity is one animal raging against another, every dog for himself. The song ends with a manic repetition, “And I still believe that I cannot be saved! / and I still believe that I cannot be saved!”
That’s not the only thread running through the track, though. “Bullet with Butterfly Wings” can also be seen as a rumination on life in the music industry, how one gets on the hamster wheel of the record industry machinery that can be hard to escape. Corgan reflects on how fakery and malaise sets in, and how a performer can feel like a caged animal doing tricks for the applause of humans watching from outside the cage: “Now I’m naked / nothing but an animal / but can you fake it / for just one more show?”
“Bullet with Butterfly Wings” spent six long weeks at #2 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart, bizarrely unable to overtake three different songs that jumped ahead of it into the top spot: “Name” by the Goo Goo Dolls, “My Friends” by Red Hot Chili Peppers, and “Glycerine” by Bush. Yeah, it’s still true and probably always will be — the world is a motherfucking vampire.
12. Sinéad O’Connor – “Nothing Compares 2 U” (1990)
Irish firebrand and powerhouse vocalist Sinéad O’Connor swept to massive success with her cover of an old Prince song that she elevates far beyond the original and completely owns. “Nothing Compares 2 U” first appeared on the 1985 album by the Prince side-project The Family, and like most of the tracks on that album, Prince wrote, produced, and performed most of the instruments himself.
Paul Peterson sings the soulful lead vocal and the venerable Clare Fischer, who would become a frequent Prince collaborator, handles the orchestral accompaniment. “Nothing Compares 2 U” by the Family wasn’t even released as a single, and was quickly forgotten except by the most ardent Prince aficionados. It wouldn’t remain an obscurity for long, though. O’Connor unearthed it five years later for her second album I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got, and delivers a jaw-dropping vocal performance over a haunting, stripped-down arrangement.
A solemn hymnal accompaniment, with mournful church organ, melancholy strings and a skeletal, trip-hop rhythm, allows O’Connor’s voice to be front and center where it belongs. O’Connor shows her usual impressive vocal dexterity, veering from a full-throated wail to a tremulous whisper to convey meaning and raw emotion, and jumping octaves with remarkable ease. Her tearful performance in the song’s iconic video (winner of three MTV Video Music Awards, including Best Video) helped cement the song’s massive success.
Sinéad O’Connor takes a pretty but hardly earth-shattering R&B ballad and turns it into an electrifying hymn seething with the palpable pain and the vulnerability of a broken relationship. “Nothing Compares 2 U” would turn out to be O’Connor’s only crossover pop hit in America, as most of her material is firmly outside the mainstream. “Nothing Compares 2 U” beguiled Top 40 radio programmers who’d never dream of playing O’Connor classics like “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance”, “Troy”, “Mandinka” or “I Am Stretched on Your Grave”. “Nothing Compares 2 U” reached #1 on the Billboard Modern Rock Chart in March 1990, and was also a #1 pop hit.
Of course, after O’Connor turned the song into a chart-topping hit, Prince quickly reclaimed it, performing it live and issuing a duet with Rosie Gaines on his 1993 hits collection. It’s hard to blame him for trying, and he certainly showed himself to be more than capable of turning out knockout performances of the song.
However, it’s O’Connor’s cover that packs the most emotional power. Her version is one of transcendent beauty and transparent anguish. You can feel her voice’s heartbreak and the accompaniment’s graceful elegance. It’s one of those magical recordings in which all the elements combine with sheer perfection to create something timeless.
11. Tori Amos – “Spark” (1998)
Classically trained pianist and songwriter Tori Amos first rose to prominence with her solo debut, 1992’s Little Earthquakes, and singles like “Silent All These Years” and “Crucify”. Her arresting piano-based confessionals, especially her a cappella retelling of a savage rape in “Me and a Gun”, are startlingly personal. Amos released two more influential albums heavily reliant on her prowess with the piano: 1994’s Under the Pink (featuring alternative radio staples “God” and “Cornflake Girl”) and the brilliant quixotic odyssey of fire Boys for Pele (highlighted by “Caught a Lite Sneeze” and “Talula”) two years later.
For 1998’s epic From The Choirgirl Hotel, Amos plugs in, brings in the band, and suddenly sparks of electricity light up the night. It’s a dramatic shift from songs that were largely stripped down and stark to full-throttle arrangements with quavery electronics, hard-edged guitars and synths. Despite the presence of other instruments, the piano still weaves through the chaos like a hand reaching up from the murk in desperation to grasp hold of something concrete. It’s an electric dreamscape where nightmares and wonders overlap in a stream of evocative imagery. From The Choirgirl Hotel is a radical departure from her prior sound, but Amos nails it, hard.
The lead single and opening track is “Spark”, a fierce and penetrating piano freakout with a wildly passionate vocal and a pulse-gripping, hyper-dramatic climax. It’s music for letting your emotions get the better of you; it’s not an escape, like some music is, but a shared human experience. The song’s wrenching emotion is borne from a traumatic miscarriage that Amos suffered; several songs on Choirgirl Hotel deal directly with this tragedy, especially “Spark”, “iieee” and “Playboy Mommy”.
“Spark” is a torrent of bitterness, doubt and shame. If only she could have done something, been somehow better or more worthy: “She’s convinced she could hold back a glacier / but she couldn’t keep Baby alive / doubting if there’s a woman in there somewhere”. When she’s not blaming herself, she’s blaming God — who doesn’t always come through, as we know from a song not so long before: “If the divine master plan is perfection / maybe next time I’ll give Judas a try / trusting my soul to the ice cream assassin,” she sings with palpable rancor, while in the background there’s a faint, mournful counter-melody, “swing low / swing low sweet chariot”.
As usual, Amos’ lyrics veer from sharply direct to obtuse and metaphoric, sometimes within the span of the same verse. The epic heart of the song is the frantic and desperate segment that begins “How many fates turn around in the overtime? / ballerinas that have fins that you’ll never find”. Amos slams the piano keys with as much power and fury as she can summon, playing not just with her hands but with the full force of her body, a barrage of heavy drums crashing behind her.
Every facade is swept away, all defenses are withdrawn, her rage and agony laid bare for all to hear. “You thought that you were the bomb, yeah, well, so did I,” she sings, dripping with scorn. It’s a vocal performance of staggering power and complexity, wrought with despondency ripped from the heart. It’s as real as rock and roll gets.
“Spark” ends where it begins, Amos alone in the dark, staring at the clock, wondering where the life that had been growing inside her has gone. There is no resolution, no happy ending, just silence. About 28 months after “Spark” was released as a single, a new light encroached on the darkness, as Tori Amos gave birth to her daughter Natashya. The ice cream assassin came through after all.