Picked this one up from Matt Y. Go to Music Outfitters, and type the year you graduated from high school into their search function. It should return a file with the Top 100 songs from that year. The trick then is to note, by way of boldface, those you liked, slash out those you hated, and underline the song(s) you consider the Crème de la Crème. In my case, the songs that are left in normal typeface are those I had no strong feelings about or (more commonly) those I have no memory of whatsoever.
1. (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Bryan Adams
2. I Wanna Sex You Up, Color Me Badd
3. Gonna Make You Sweat, C+C Music Factory
4. Rush Rush, Paula Abdul
5. One More Try, Timmy T
6. Unbelievable, EMF
7. More Than Words, Extreme
8. I Like The Way (The Kissing Game), Hi-Five
9. The First Time, Surface
10. Baby, Baby, Amy Grant
11. Motownphilly, Boyz II Men
12. Because I Love You (The Postman Song), Stevie B
13. Someday, Mariah Carey
14. High Enough, Damn Yankees
15. From A Distance, Bette Midler
16. All The Man That I Need, Whitney Houston
17. Right Here, Right Now, Jesus Jones
18. I Adore Mi Amor, Color Me Badd
19. Love Will Never Do (Without You), Janet Jackson
20. Good Vibrations, Marky Mark and The Funky Bunch
21. Justify My Love, Madonna
22. Emotions, Mariah Carey
23. Joyride, Roxette
24. Romantic, Karyn White
25. I Don't Wanna Cry, Mariah Carey
26. Hold You Tight, Tara Kemp
27. You're In Love, Wilson Phillips
28. Every Heartbeat, Amy Grant
29. Sensitivity, Ralph Tresvant
30. Touch Me (All Night Long), Cathy Dennis
31. I've Been Thinking About You, Londonbeat
32. Do Anything, Natural Selection
33. Losing My Religion, R.E.M.
34. Coming Out Of The Dark. Gloria Estefan
35. Here We Go. C+C Music Factory
36. It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over, Lenny Kravitz
37. Where Does My Heart Beat Now, Celine Dion
38. Summertime, D.J. Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince
39. Wind Of Change, Scorpions
40. P.A.S.S.I.O.N., Rhythm Syndicate
41. The Promise Of A New Day, Paula Abdul
42. I'm Your Baby Tonight, Whitney Houston
43. Love Of A Lifetime, Firehouse
44. Fading Like A Flower (Every Time You Leave), Roxette
45. This House, Tracie Spencer
46. Hole Hearted, Extreme
47. Power Of Love-Love Power, Luther Vandross
48. Impulsive, Wilson Phillips
49. Love Is A Wonderful Thing, Michael Bolton
50. Rhythm Of My Heart, Rod Stewart
51. Things That Make You Go Hmmmm..., C+C Music Factory
52. I Touch Myself, Divinyls
53. Tom's Diner, DMA
54. Iesha, Another Bad Creation
55. Something To Talk About, Bonnie Raitt
56. After The Rain, Nelson
57. Play That Funky Music, Vanilla Ice
58. Temptation, Corina
59. Can't Stop This Thing We Started, Bryan Adams
60. I Can't Wait Another Minute, Hi-Five
61. 3 A.M. Eternal, The KLF
62. Time, Love and Tenderness, Michael Bolton
63. Saideness Part I, Enigrna
64. Around The Way Girl, LL Cool J
65. I'll Be There, Escape Club
66. Cream, Prince and The N.P.G.
67. Now That We Found Love, Heavy D. and The Boyz
68. Show Me The Way, Styx
69. Love Takes Time, Mariah Carey
70. Cry For Help, Rick Astley
71. The Way You Do The Things You Do, UB40
72. Here I Am (Come and Take Me), UB40
73. Signs, Tesla
74. Too Many Walls, Cathy Dennis
75. Crazy, Seal
76. I'll Give All My Love To You, Keith Sweat
77. Place In This World, Michael W. Smith
78. Something To Believe In, Poison
79. Wicked Game, Chris Issak
80. Get Here, Oleta Adams
81. Round and Round, Tevin Campbell
82. Silent Lucidity, Queensryche
83. I'm Not In Love, Will To Power
84. Piece Of My Heart, Tara Kemp
85. Real Real Real, Jesus Jones
87. Just Another Dream, Cathy Dennis
88. Everybody Plays The Fool, Aaron Neville
88. Strike It Up, Black Box
89. Rico Suave, Gerardo
90. Disappear, INXS
91. Groove Is In The Heart, Deee-Lite
92. All This Time, Sting
93. The One and Only, Chesney Hawkes
94. O.P.P., Naughty By Nature
95. Freedom 90, George Michael
96. I Saw Red, Warrent
97. Miles Away, Winger
98. Do You Want Me, Salt-N-Pepa
99. The Motown Song, Rod Stewart
100. Shiny Happy People, R.E.M.
The slashed-out songs were those I did (and do) despise. The songs in bold were those I remember enjoying at the time, trying carefully not to exercise the sort of revisionist history that might lead some to disown the likes of "Unbelievable" or "More Than Words," which have become frequent targets of scorn, parody, and just general derision in the intervening years.
Other songs I can still embrace with fewer qualifications. George Michael's "Freedom 90" is as perfect a piece of pure pop as one is going to find this side of Michael Jackson's work with Quincy Jones. The Lenny Kravitz-penned "Justify My Love" likely marked the absolute last moment when Madonna could still be considered bold and dangerous without slipping into complete self-parody. And though it sounds like an arch-pun to say it, Jesus Jones' "Right Here Right Now" -- my choice for best of the bunch -- really did capture a moment in time in a way that a million Francis Fukuyamas never could. In those heady days after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the rise of the kleptocrats, there was this beautiful sense of hope and optimism that the world had fully and firmly changed for the better, and I can't think of a cultural artifact that better demonstrates it than this one.
Nonetheless, like Matt with his 1999 list, I sense a true disconnect between what I recall as the popular music of the time, and what was actually getting played on pop radio. L.L. Cool J's "Mamma Said Knock You Out" was unquestionably the biggest song of my senior year in high school. It seemed ubiquitious, blasting from every radio for months. Yet, it doesn't even chart here.
The disconnect grows even wider when I think back to late 1991, which coincides with my going off to start at Syracuse University. It's impossible to think of that time without conjuring up images of a huge slew of great albums all released within what seemed like a few weeks of each other in the early fall, when I was just getting started as a college radio D.J. Nirvana's Nevermind, Pearl Jam's Ten, Soundgarden's Badmotorfinger, U2's Achtung Baby, Metallica's Black Album, A Tribe Called Quest's Low End Theory, Phish's A Picture of Nectar, Massive Attack's Blue Lines, Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque, Blues Traveler's Travelers and Thieves, the Red Hot Chili Peppers' Blood Sugar Sex Magik...all of these were to become not only the soundtrack of my freshman year, but lasting cultural touchstones for my whole generation. And yet, none of them produced even a single song to crack the top 100 for the year. That blows my mind.
Wow...the year I graduated (1999) was a pretty bad year. The only songs on there I remember enjoying without irony are "Last Kiss", "Fly Away" and "What It's Like", and "What It's Like" is the *only* one I own on CD or have listened to in the last two years.
Posted by: shonk | September 06, 2005 at 01:10 AM
1999 was a particularly weak year for pop music, although that is somewhat compensated by it being such a strong year for films.
The Matrix, Three Kings, The Blair Witch Project, Go, Election, American Pie, Boys Don't Cry, Magnolia, Being John Malkovich, Fight Club, South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut, The Sixth Sense, Iron Giant, American Beauty, Office Space...years like that don't come around too often.
Posted by: R.J. Lehmann | September 06, 2005 at 03:58 PM
RJ, We're the same year. Blows my mind, too.
Posted by: Will Wilkinson | September 09, 2005 at 01:25 PM
"1999 was a particularly weak year for pop music, although that is somewhat compensated by it being such a strong year for films."
Good point. I hadn't thought about that.
Posted by: shonk | September 09, 2005 at 05:41 PM
Blows your mind that you're the same age as an old fart like me, you mean?
I'm still recovering from the realization that Matt Yglecias graduated high school the same year that my "little" brother graduated college.
Posted by: R.J. Lehmann | September 09, 2005 at 05:42 PM