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101 Best Songs of 1990 - #1 George Michael - Freedom '90 (1 Viewer)

#10 Bell Biv Devoe - Poison
#9 Nine Inch Nails - Head Like a Hole
#8 A Tribe Called Quest - Can I Kick It?
#7 Faith No More - Epic
#6 Deee-Lite - Groove is in the Heart
#5 Depeche Mode - Enjoy the Silence
#4 Jane's Addiction - Three Days
#3 The Cure - Pictures of You
Not sure what I was doing in 1990 but it wasn't listening to music. or at least not the same as you. I recognize 1 of these songs by title and after listening there is one more that I know. :lol:
 
Not sure what I was doing in 1990 but it wasn't listening to music. or at least not the same as you. I recognize 1 of these songs by title and after listening there is one more that I know. :lol:
Interesting. Age thing, maybe? I get a bit the same way in Tim's 70s countdowns because I was a little kid and no doubt would be lost in a 2010 retrospective.
 
Not sure what I was doing in 1990 but it wasn't listening to music. or at least not the same as you. I recognize 1 of these songs by title and after listening there is one more that I know. :lol:
Interesting. Age thing, maybe? I get a bit the same way in Tim's 70s countdowns because I was a little kid and no doubt would be lost in a 2010 retrospective.

I'm borderline that way in this thread. For the majority of 1990, I was 14 years old, turning 15 late in the year. I liked music then, but that was when most of my listening was top 40 stuff. It wasn't until a couple of years later that I began to find my own taste beyond current pop.
 
#42 Concrete Blonde - Joey

Bloodletting is another of my favorite albums from 1990, but unlike Violator, I'm probably a lot more on my own in that opinion. Except for @otb_lifer, who asked earlier if we would be getting some Concrete Blonde in the countdown. Lots of great choices that maybe otb would have preferred (The Vampire Song, Caroline, Tomorrow Wendy) but Joey was both the hit (#1 Modern Rock, #19 Hot 100) and the one with most personal meaning for me.

Late to the party. Concur that Bloodletting is a fantastic album. For me, only beaten out in 1990 by Disintegration.
 
Not sure what I was doing in 1990 but it wasn't listening to music. or at least not the same as you. I recognize 1 of these songs by title and after listening there is one more that I know. :lol:
Interesting. Age thing, maybe? I get a bit the same way in Tim's 70s countdowns because I was a little kid and no doubt would be lost in a 2010 retrospective.
I was 25 in 1990.
 
Interlude - How many of these Billboard #1s do you even recognize, much less like?

Lots of talk earlier about 1990 being a "lull" year in terms of good music. I hope this thread has dispensed with that a bit, but I also can't argue that, overall, it's not a particularly strong year either, especially when it comes to pop. Compared to other years in the 86-96 timeframe, 1990 will likely have the lowest percentage of Billboard #1s represented (29 percent, or just 8 out of 28). What's especially odd to me, as someone who up until the early 2000s was pretty aware of pop music, is the number of songs that I literally did not recognize - not just by title but even after I played the song. So with only a single #1 still to be revealed, I figured now was a good time to breakdown just how dire the situation was:

To refresh, the #1s we've seen so far are Blaze of Glory by JBJ; Someday by Mariah; Vogue by Madonna; Black Velvet by Allanah Myles; Love Will Never Do (Without You) by JJ; Hold On by Wilson Phillips; Praying for Time by George Michael; and one more to come.

Billboard #1s That I Considered But Ultimately Left Off (4)

Roxette - It Must Have Been Love: First 5 out. Worth watching the video just for Marie Fredrikkson
Maxi Priest - Close to You: Not my jam, but inoffensive.
Janet Jackson - Escapade: Good, but lost out to Love Will Never Do.
Whitney Houston - I'm Your Baby Tonight: Definitely not peak Whitney

Wait, What the Hell are These Songs? They Hit #1? (5)

Tommy Page - I’ll Be Your Everything
Glen Medeiros - She Ain’t Worth It
James Ingram - I Don’t Have the Heart: James Ingram isn't terrible or anything but this song really topped the charts?
Steve B - Because I Love You (The Postman Song)
Surface - The First Time

Romantic Schmaltz - Which of These Did You Slow Dance To in HS? (4)

Taylor Dayne - Love Will Lead You Back: I like early Taylor Dayne. Not this.
Sweet Sensation - If Wishes Came True: Proof (along with Expose) that even Latin Freestyle acts sold out to make terrible pop radio hits.
Mariah Carey - Vision of Love and Love Takes Time - not a Mariah ballads guy, though Vision... is way better than Love Takes TIme.

Flat Out Awful (5)

New Kids on the Block - Step by Step: Ugh. I give you the Lemonheads cover.
Nelson - Love and Affection: already discussed. I know it's a guilty pleasure for some of you, and I'm not one to talk because...
Vanilla Ice - Ice Ice Baby: this has grown into a guilty pleasure for me, but I do recognize that it sucks.
C + C Music Factory - Gonna Make You Sweat: Freedom Williams can't rap. Martha Wash got jobbed. Fun at first, but ultimately pretty bad.
Janet Jackson - Black Cat: Hairmetal wannabe crap.

Much Lesser Also-Rans to Previous #1s (2)

Wilson Phillips - Release Me: same song as Hold On, just the opposite sentiment and without the hook?
Madonna - Justify My Love: Maybe watch the video on mute?
I was going to reply to this but i disappeared down a Mariah Careys sister wormhole that kept getting darker and darker.

Anyway on pure impact, from this list I would have included
Justify My Love
Gonna Make You Sweat
Vision of Love

Justify My Love was Madonna at her chameleon best. Lots of interesting stories about the writing, recording, film clip and release of the song.
Gonna Make You Sweat had some great remixes and alternate takes with extreme graphic lyrics. Fun at first, revolting on repeat.

Now the lovely Mariah…..The trainwreck came later, but when this was released I was hooked. Loved her voice, the sound and her look. Very impressive. Bought her first five singles but then again so did a lot of people.
At some stage early on i found out her sister Alison was a hooker who funded Mariahs early demo and start to her career before Tommy Mattolo fell in love with her and took over. Mariah did help her sister for awhile, but like a lot of troubled people it was never enough. Alison always needed more help and money. Mariah cut her off in the mid 90s. Alison got arrested in 2016 or something in her mid 50s still hooking, on substances and homeless. Quite sad really. No blame on Mariah. She can only do so much. Mariah herself earned the diva reputation but she had just a tough a upringing, but Alison was being pimped out by a family friend at the age pf 10, so wins the hardship contest. The family recognised Mariahs talent and she was seen as the ticket out. Thats a lot of pressure for a troubled kid.
Its hard to find internet proof of all these stories, but i read them in the 90s from what seemed a reliable source, but who knows?

For comedic value i would have added Vanilla Ice, Stevie B and Glenn Medeiros
Ice Ice Baby is such a ludicrous monster hit that we as a society were so desperate to find a white rapping superstar, we settled on this…..the Beastie Boys had been recording for years people.

Stevie B. I once met a huge fan of his in North Queensland Australia. He was devastated when this became a hit. Its nothing like his other material apparently. He demanded i stop the car and he got out in the middle of nowhere when i put it on lol.

Glenn Medeiros. Ok, Nothings gonna Change My love was a huge international hit. On this UK tv show they were playing the new releases, one of which was his follow up single. The panel took the absolute piss out of him, his look, his sound. Emasculating stuff. The whole nine yards. Then the host revealed that Medeiros was backstage and introduced him to come to the audience. Everyone one was mortified and its one of the most cringe worthy moments of TV ever. Poor Glenn looked a shattered shell as people tried to cheer him up. Glad he could come back for at least one more hit.
 
#2 Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U

I have so much to write about Sinead but no idea on where to start. Anyone who, like me, has watched the docs or read her bio knows all about the unimaginable abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and then through the church - no need to repeat here. SInead was complicated and damaged and angry, but (maybe until the end), she was never broken. She was just 20 when she wrote and recorded her Grammy-nominated debut and 23 when she achieved her first and only #1 single. She reached the top and then decided she didn't want it. The backlash over ripping up a picture of the pope seems like something that wouldn't happen today. First of all, history has shown she was right. But getting banned by SNL, booed off stage at a freaking Bob Dylan tribute concert in NYC, mocked by Madonna, threatened with violence by Joe Pesci... When asked about the SNL protest derailing her career, Sinead famously responded: "They're talking about the career they had in mind for me. I ####ed up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I ####ed up their career, not mine."

Enough from me. Here's one of my favorite music critic's (Rob Harvilla's) take on Nothing Compares 2 U:

But Sinéad O’Connor doing “Nothing Compares 2 U” on her second album, 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got—this is different. However cordial the initial business transaction here—the process by which Prince allowed her to record and release his song—forget all that. This is a hostile takeover. Sinéad embodies this song on a molecular level. She changes the fundamental meaning of this song. She owns this song. She steals this song. Just the audacity of that. The greatness and the fearlessness required of her to do that. Sinéad O’Connor saying, “I’m gonna steal a song from Prince,” is like Nicolas Cage saying, “I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence.”

The single reached #1 on the Hot 100 in spring 1990 and stayed there for four weeks. Billboard ranked it as the #1 song of 1990 and the #77th best single of all time. Rolling Stone lists it at #165. Sinead though, thanks to a bad run in with Prince, basically stopped playing it:

She [Sinead] gets to his [Prince's] house. It’s weird, it’s awkward, it’s creepy. She’s alone with him. First they talk in his kitchen. He tells her she doesn’t like the foul language she uses in her interviews. She tells him, “I don’t work for you. If you don’t like it, you can go #### yourself.” He walks off. She is summoned to a dining room. He tries to serve her soup. He gets really aggro when she refuses the soup. He hassles the assistant who brought out the soup because she won’t eat the soup: This assistant turns out to be Prince’s brother, Duane. Prince leaves again, and returns with pillows, and announces he’d like to have a pillow fight, and hits her with a pillow, and clearly he’s stuffed some sort of heavy object into his pillow case. She runs out the front door. He chases her. It’s nighttime, she’s alone, has no idea where she is, she has no way to get back to her own place other than to run. She runs into the woods. Eventually she makes it to a road, and to some other houses, but then Prince shows up driving a car, and gets out, and they chase each other for a brief spell, and then she runs to one of the nearby houses and rings the doorbell frantically, and finally he drives off. This chapter ends with her writing, “I never want to see that devil again. But I think of Duane fondly, quite often.”
 
I was going to reply to this but i disappeared down a Mariah Careys sister wormhole that kept getting darker and darker.

Anyway on pure impact, from this list I would have included
Justify My Love
Gonna Make You Sweat
Vision of Love

Justify My Love was Madonna at her chameleon best. Lots of interesting stories about the writing, recording, film clip and release of the song.
Gonna Make You Sweat had some great remixes and alternate takes with extreme graphic lyrics. Fun at first, revolting on repeat.

Now the lovely Mariah…..The trainwreck came later, but when this was released I was hooked. Loved her voice, the sound and her look. Very impressive. Bought her first five singles but then again so did a lot of people.
At some stage early on i found out her sister Alison was a hooker who funded Mariahs early demo and start to her career before Tommy Mattolo fell in love with her and took over. Mariah did help her sister for awhile, but like a lot of troubled people it was never enough. Alison always needed more help and money. Mariah cut her off in the mid 90s. Alison got arrested in 2016 or something in her mid 50s still hooking, on substances and homeless. Quite sad really. No blame on Mariah. She can only do so much. Mariah herself earned the diva reputation but she had just a tough a upringing, but Alison was being pimped out by a family friend at the age pf 10, so wins the hardship contest. The family recognised Mariahs talent and she was seen as the ticket out. Thats a lot of pressure for a troubled kid.
Its hard to find internet proof of all these stories, but i read them in the 90s from what seemed a reliable source, but who knows?

For comedic value i would have added Vanilla Ice, Stevie B and Glenn Medeiros
Ice Ice Baby is such a ludicrous monster hit that we as a society were so desperate to find a white rapping superstar, we settled on this…..the Beastie Boys had been recording for years people.

Stevie B. I once met a huge fan of his in North Queensland Australia. He was devastated when this became a hit. Its nothing like his other material apparently. He demanded i stop the car and he got out in the middle of nowhere when i put it on lol.

Glenn Medeiros. Ok, Nothings gonna Change My love was a huge international hit. On this UK tv show they were playing the new releases, one of which was his follow up single. The panel took the absolute piss out of him, his look, his sound. Emasculating stuff. The whole nine yards. Then the host revealed that Medeiros was backstage and introduced him to come to the audience. Everyone one was mortified and its one of the most cringe worthy moments of TV ever. Poor Glenn looked a shattered shell as people tried to cheer him up. Glad he could come back for at least one more hit.
The ♥️ was for the entire knowledge-drop, definitely not for the Mariah/sister/hooker story. For the record though, I kind of prefer trainwreck Mariah, but then again, I'm a Courtney Love fan too.
 
#2 Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U

I have so much to write about Sinead but no idea on where to start. Anyone who, like me, has watched the docs or read her bio knows all about the unimaginable abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and then through the church - no need to repeat here. SInead was complicated and damaged and angry, but (maybe until the end), she was never broken. She was just 20 when she wrote and recorded her Grammy-nominated debut and 23 when she achieved her first and only #1 single. She reached the top and then decided she didn't want it. The backlash over ripping up a picture of the pope seems like something that wouldn't happen today. First of all, history has shown she was right. But getting banned by SNL, booed off stage at a freaking Bob Dylan tribute concert in NYC, mocked by Madonna, threatened with violence by Joe Pesci... When asked about the SNL protest derailing her career, Sinead famously responded: "They're talking about the career they had in mind for me. I ####ed up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I ####ed up their career, not mine."

Enough from me. Here's one of my favorite music critic's (Rob Harvilla's) take on Nothing Compares 2 U:

But Sinéad O’Connor doing “Nothing Compares 2 U” on her second album, 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got—this is different. However cordial the initial business transaction here—the process by which Prince allowed her to record and release his song—forget all that. This is a hostile takeover. Sinéad embodies this song on a molecular level. She changes the fundamental meaning of this song. She owns this song. She steals this song. Just the audacity of that. The greatness and the fearlessness required of her to do that. Sinéad O’Connor saying, “I’m gonna steal a song from Prince,” is like Nicolas Cage saying, “I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence.”

The single reached #1 on the Hot 100 in spring 1990 and stayed there for four weeks. Billboard ranked it as the #1 song of 1990 and the #77th best single of all time. Rolling Stone lists it at #165. Sinead though, thanks to a bad run in with Prince, basically stopped playing it:

She [Sinead] gets to his [Prince's] house. It’s weird, it’s awkward, it’s creepy. She’s alone with him. First they talk in his kitchen. He tells her she doesn’t like the foul language she uses in her interviews. She tells him, “I don’t work for you. If you don’t like it, you can go #### yourself.” He walks off. She is summoned to a dining room. He tries to serve her soup. He gets really aggro when she refuses the soup. He hassles the assistant who brought out the soup because she won’t eat the soup: This assistant turns out to be Prince’s brother, Duane. Prince leaves again, and returns with pillows, and announces he’d like to have a pillow fight, and hits her with a pillow, and clearly he’s stuffed some sort of heavy object into his pillow case. She runs out the front door. He chases her. It’s nighttime, she’s alone, has no idea where she is, she has no way to get back to her own place other than to run. She runs into the woods. Eventually she makes it to a road, and to some other houses, but then Prince shows up driving a car, and gets out, and they chase each other for a brief spell, and then she runs to one of the nearby houses and rings the doorbell frantically, and finally he drives off. This chapter ends with her writing, “I never want to see that devil again. But I think of Duane fondly, quite often.”

Man WTF
 
#2 Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U

I have so much to write about Sinead but no idea on where to start. Anyone who, like me, has watched the docs or read her bio knows all about the unimaginable abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and then through the church - no need to repeat here. SInead was complicated and damaged and angry, but (maybe until the end), she was never broken. She was just 20 when she wrote and recorded her Grammy-nominated debut and 23 when she achieved her first and only #1 single. She reached the top and then decided she didn't want it. The backlash over ripping up a picture of the pope seems like something that wouldn't happen today. First of all, history has shown she was right. But getting banned by SNL, booed off stage at a freaking Bob Dylan tribute concert in NYC, mocked by Madonna, threatened with violence by Joe Pesci... When asked about the SNL protest derailing her career, Sinead famously responded: "They're talking about the career they had in mind for me. I ####ed up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I ####ed up their career, not mine."

Enough from me. Here's one of my favorite music critic's (Rob Harvilla's) take on Nothing Compares 2 U:

But Sinéad O’Connor doing “Nothing Compares 2 U” on her second album, 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got—this is different. However cordial the initial business transaction here—the process by which Prince allowed her to record and release his song—forget all that. This is a hostile takeover. Sinéad embodies this song on a molecular level. She changes the fundamental meaning of this song. She owns this song. She steals this song. Just the audacity of that. The greatness and the fearlessness required of her to do that. Sinéad O’Connor saying, “I’m gonna steal a song from Prince,” is like Nicolas Cage saying, “I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence.”

The single reached #1 on the Hot 100 in spring 1990 and stayed there for four weeks. Billboard ranked it as the #1 song of 1990 and the #77th best single of all time. Rolling Stone lists it at #165. Sinead though, thanks to a bad run in with Prince, basically stopped playing it:

She [Sinead] gets to his [Prince's] house. It’s weird, it’s awkward, it’s creepy. She’s alone with him. First they talk in his kitchen. He tells her she doesn’t like the foul language she uses in her interviews. She tells him, “I don’t work for you. If you don’t like it, you can go #### yourself.” He walks off. She is summoned to a dining room. He tries to serve her soup. He gets really aggro when she refuses the soup. He hassles the assistant who brought out the soup because she won’t eat the soup: This assistant turns out to be Prince’s brother, Duane. Prince leaves again, and returns with pillows, and announces he’d like to have a pillow fight, and hits her with a pillow, and clearly he’s stuffed some sort of heavy object into his pillow case. She runs out the front door. He chases her. It’s nighttime, she’s alone, has no idea where she is, she has no way to get back to her own place other than to run. She runs into the woods. Eventually she makes it to a road, and to some other houses, but then Prince shows up driving a car, and gets out, and they chase each other for a brief spell, and then she runs to one of the nearby houses and rings the doorbell frantically, and finally he drives off. This chapter ends with her writing, “I never want to see that devil again. But I think of Duane fondly, quite often.”
I know this one. 😄
 
#2 Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U

I have so much to write about Sinead but no idea on where to start. Anyone who, like me, has watched the docs or read her bio knows all about the unimaginable abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and then through the church - no need to repeat here. SInead was complicated and damaged and angry, but (maybe until the end), she was never broken. She was just 20 when she wrote and recorded her Grammy-nominated debut and 23 when she achieved her first and only #1 single. She reached the top and then decided she didn't want it. The backlash over ripping up a picture of the pope seems like something that wouldn't happen today. First of all, history has shown she was right. But getting banned by SNL, booed off stage at a freaking Bob Dylan tribute concert in NYC, mocked by Madonna, threatened with violence by Joe Pesci... When asked about the SNL protest derailing her career, Sinead famously responded: "They're talking about the career they had in mind for me. I ####ed up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I ####ed up their career, not mine."

Enough from me. Here's one of my favorite music critic's (Rob Harvilla's) take on Nothing Compares 2 U:

But Sinéad O’Connor doing “Nothing Compares 2 U” on her second album, 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got—this is different. However cordial the initial business transaction here—the process by which Prince allowed her to record and release his song—forget all that. This is a hostile takeover. Sinéad embodies this song on a molecular level. She changes the fundamental meaning of this song. She owns this song. She steals this song. Just the audacity of that. The greatness and the fearlessness required of her to do that. Sinéad O’Connor saying, “I’m gonna steal a song from Prince,” is like Nicolas Cage saying, “I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence.”

The single reached #1 on the Hot 100 in spring 1990 and stayed there for four weeks. Billboard ranked it as the #1 song of 1990 and the #77th best single of all time. Rolling Stone lists it at #165. Sinead though, thanks to a bad run in with Prince, basically stopped playing it:

She [Sinead] gets to his [Prince's] house. It’s weird, it’s awkward, it’s creepy. She’s alone with him. First they talk in his kitchen. He tells her she doesn’t like the foul language she uses in her interviews. She tells him, “I don’t work for you. If you don’t like it, you can go #### yourself.” He walks off. She is summoned to a dining room. He tries to serve her soup. He gets really aggro when she refuses the soup. He hassles the assistant who brought out the soup because she won’t eat the soup: This assistant turns out to be Prince’s brother, Duane. Prince leaves again, and returns with pillows, and announces he’d like to have a pillow fight, and hits her with a pillow, and clearly he’s stuffed some sort of heavy object into his pillow case. She runs out the front door. He chases her. It’s nighttime, she’s alone, has no idea where she is, she has no way to get back to her own place other than to run. She runs into the woods. Eventually she makes it to a road, and to some other houses, but then Prince shows up driving a car, and gets out, and they chase each other for a brief spell, and then she runs to one of the nearby houses and rings the doorbell frantically, and finally he drives off. This chapter ends with her writing, “I never want to see that devil again. But I think of Duane fondly, quite often.”
Its sad that it took her death for people to finally have some empathy.

I know I talk of Bono occasionally, but he went out of his way to encourage her as an artist and be there for her as a person.
She repeatedly lashed out at him and he never lashed back. He always knew the pain she was in.

She said that one of her reasons for getting up in the morning was so that Bono wouldnt eulogise at her funeral.
She dreaded the concept of Bono saying nice things. She HAD to outlive him
Sadly she didnt or way too early anyway.

I dont think Bono has said anything publicly after her death. He genuinely had a soft spot for her.
They worked together a few times. Look at the “Ballad of Ronnie Drew” film clip from an allstar Irish cast that was number one in ireland for weeks, dedicated to the Dublineers singer, where both are near each other.
You can tell Sinead admired him a lot.

As for this song, if ever there was a case for a superior cover to the original, this is it.
 
Not sure what I was doing in 1990 but it wasn't listening to music. or at least not the same as you. I recognize 1 of these songs by title and after listening there is one more that I know. :lol:
Interesting. Age thing, maybe? I get a bit the same way in Tim's 70s countdowns because I was a little kid and no doubt would be lost in a 2010 retrospective.

I'm borderline that way in this thread. For the majority of 1990, I was 14 years old, turning 15 late in the year. I liked music then, but that was when most of my listening was top 40 stuff. It wasn't until a couple of years later that I began to find my own taste beyond current pop.
I had a friend that was turning what would now be called Goth - at the time, they called themselves "alternative" in our town. I got to hear less mainstreamy stuff through him.

Pictures of You is so great. My daughter got to see The Cure a couple of months ago and spent the months leading up to it listening to their music a ton (and branching out into other similar music from the era). It was cool to go back and listen to Disintegration, an album I heard many times but never owned. All I had was a greatest hits album of theirs called Standing on the Beach, Staring at the Sun (I think).
 
Standing on the Beach, Staring at the Sun (I think).

Standing On A Beach/Staring at the Sea

It's a great compilation, and one that got me into The Cure. It's still probably the be-all end-all for me and the Cure. Just a great memory. Just a great comp.
 

It's a great compilation, and one that got me into The Cure. It's still probably the be-all end-all for me and the Cure. Just a great memory. Just a great comp.
Oh, Hugsy. Timely comment because you remind me of my favorite song from that compilation. You always seem to show up out of nowhere then vanish just as quickly. :crying:

Go on, go on, just walk away
Go on, go on, your choice is made
Go on, go on, and disappear
Go on, go on away from here
 
It's kind of weird to talk about Prince's "original" version of Nothing Compare 2 U because nobody had heard it until it was released in 2018. Before Sinead, the only version available was the version recorded by The Family. And then Prince started doing it in concerts after Sinead hit. In any case, Sinead's version is lovely. Obviously, the video was also striking. And I certainly believe her story. Prince was a genius but also a real son of a *****. There are similar stories from Kim Basinger, Mayte, you name it.
 
#2 Sinead O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U

I have so much to write about Sinead but no idea on where to start. Anyone who, like me, has watched the docs or read her bio knows all about the unimaginable abuse she suffered at the hands of her mother and then through the church - no need to repeat here. SInead was complicated and damaged and angry, but (maybe until the end), she was never broken. She was just 20 when she wrote and recorded her Grammy-nominated debut and 23 when she achieved her first and only #1 single. She reached the top and then decided she didn't want it. The backlash over ripping up a picture of the pope seems like something that wouldn't happen today. First of all, history has shown she was right. But getting banned by SNL, booed off stage at a freaking Bob Dylan tribute concert in NYC, mocked by Madonna, threatened with violence by Joe Pesci... When asked about the SNL protest derailing her career, Sinead famously responded: "They're talking about the career they had in mind for me. I ####ed up the house in Antigua that the record company dudes wanted to buy. I ####ed up their career, not mine."

Enough from me. Here's one of my favorite music critic's (Rob Harvilla's) take on Nothing Compares 2 U:

But Sinéad O’Connor doing “Nothing Compares 2 U” on her second album, 1990’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got—this is different. However cordial the initial business transaction here—the process by which Prince allowed her to record and release his song—forget all that. This is a hostile takeover. Sinéad embodies this song on a molecular level. She changes the fundamental meaning of this song. She owns this song. She steals this song. Just the audacity of that. The greatness and the fearlessness required of her to do that. Sinéad O’Connor saying, “I’m gonna steal a song from Prince,” is like Nicolas Cage saying, “I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence.”

The single reached #1 on the Hot 100 in spring 1990 and stayed there for four weeks. Billboard ranked it as the #1 song of 1990 and the #77th best single of all time. Rolling Stone lists it at #165. Sinead though, thanks to a bad run in with Prince, basically stopped playing it:

She [Sinead] gets to his [Prince's] house. It’s weird, it’s awkward, it’s creepy. She’s alone with him. First they talk in his kitchen. He tells her she doesn’t like the foul language she uses in her interviews. She tells him, “I don’t work for you. If you don’t like it, you can go #### yourself.” He walks off. She is summoned to a dining room. He tries to serve her soup. He gets really aggro when she refuses the soup. He hassles the assistant who brought out the soup because she won’t eat the soup: This assistant turns out to be Prince’s brother, Duane. Prince leaves again, and returns with pillows, and announces he’d like to have a pillow fight, and hits her with a pillow, and clearly he’s stuffed some sort of heavy object into his pillow case. She runs out the front door. He chases her. It’s nighttime, she’s alone, has no idea where she is, she has no way to get back to her own place other than to run. She runs into the woods. Eventually she makes it to a road, and to some other houses, but then Prince shows up driving a car, and gets out, and they chase each other for a brief spell, and then she runs to one of the nearby houses and rings the doorbell frantically, and finally he drives off. This chapter ends with her writing, “I never want to see that devil again. But I think of Duane fondly, quite often.”
Living Colour covered this song when I saw them a few weeks back at Sea Hear Now festival.
 
#1 George Michael - Freedom '90

In the MAD31 British Isles countdown, I picked Freedom '90 as my second favorite UK (plus Ireland) song ever, trailing only Bad by U2. Still, in formulating the 1990 list, I was waffling as to which of the top 4 songs should be my #1. Listening to the playlist in the car with my son cemented that I should go with my heart - even as an 18-year old "regular dude" with very little taste for rock or pop, he expressed shock that I would consider anything other than George Michael. He claims that of all the songs that frequently show up on my Spotify playlists, Freedom '90 was his second favorite behind only Rocket Queen (1987) by GnR. Even relatively hip sources though (i.e., not just @Ramsay Hunt Experience) embrace its awesomeness:

From Vulture, writing about this live performance that still gives me goosebumps:

“Heaven knows I was just a young boy,” go the lyrics, “didn’t know what I wanted to be.” I was in seventh grade, and I could relate. I didn’t know anything about Wham!, or that “Freedom ‘90” was a not-so-subtle coming-out anthem. But if you take an inch from Michael, he’ll give you a mile in return. “Freedom ‘90” is a power song — one of those things that can get you out of bed, shake you out of a depression, take you from good to great, from inspired to exalted. Some songs like this show up in your life and disappear quickly, but a handful stick with you. “Freedom ‘90” stuck with me, in large part because of this video. I’ve always wanted to feel something as much as George Michael seems to feel the music here, absorbing the energy from the musicians around him.

From Stereogum:

The most obviously commercial song on Listen Without Prejudice was the one where Michael directly addressed his own disillusionment. “Freedom ’90” is a glorious pop anthem, equal parts house and gospel and Madchester shuffle, and it’s also the one where Michael announces that he no longer wants to come up with a brand new face for the boys at MTV. Instead, the boys at MTV got a masterpiece. George Michael didn’t appear in the “Freedom ’90” video, but David Fincher filmed the world’s most famous supermodels as they lip-synced to the song. Fincher’s camera also lingered on the artifacts from the Faith era being destroyed — the leather jacket burning, the jukebox exploding. “Freedom ’90” was a hit, but it wasn’t the hit that it deserved to be. The song peaked at #8. (It’s a 10.)

From Pitchfork, who rated it as the 16th best song of the decade:

George Michael’s subdued and pensive sophomore solo album Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1 showed a different side of the frequently bubblegummy superstar, and “Freedom! ’90” laid bare its mission statement: Sometimes the clothes do not make the man. Perhaps to the chagrin of every hungry schoolgirl, the star’s image never graced Prejudice, neither on its cover nor its videos. The music was to speak for itself, and on “Freedom!” it did so using a “Funky Drummer” break and Madchester-y piano riff. The song’s strut mounts until an ebullient choir detonates, repeatedly harmonizing the song’s title.

Finally, Rolling Stone, which ranked Freedom '90 as the 126th best song of all time (the highest entry from 1990)

Fed up with life as a pin-up idol, Michael poured his frustrations into “Freedom! ’90,” which nodded to hip-hop with its sample of James Brown’s 1970 classic “Funky Drummer.” “Went back home, got a brand-new face for the boys on MTV,” he sang. “But today the way I play the game has got to change/Now I’m gonna get myself happy.” To drive the point home, he refused to appear in the video (hiring supermodels Naomi Campbell, Linda Evangelista, Tatjana Patitz, Christy Turlington, and Cindy Crawford to lip-sync his part) and literally torched the iconic leather jacket, jukebox, and guitar from his Faith period.

So there you have it. I proudly own my opinion that Freedom '90 was the best song of the year.
 
It's kind of weird to talk about Prince's "original" version of Nothing Compare 2 U because nobody had heard it until it was released in 2018. Before Sinead, the only version available was the version recorded by The Family. And then Prince started doing it in concerts after Sinead hit. In any case, Sinead's version is lovely. Obviously, the video was also striking. And I certainly believe her story. Prince was a genius but also a real son of a *****. There are similar stories from Kim Basinger, Mayte, you name it.
Kevin Smith tells the funniest Prince stories in his dvds.
I wonder who would win in a weird off between Prince and Michael Jackson?
 
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I remember hearing his album was called "Listen Without Prejudice" and I thought: That's impossible. Turns out I really liked it. I never would have guessed.
Of course that was also a great video, huge Fincher fan, uh and the supermodels.
Yeah i liked Wham and the Faith LP but despite the obvious pop hooks and fun material they were like eating McDonalds.
Listen Without Prejudice hit me like a ton of bricks. It still has the great pop instincts and hooks, but theres heart, pain and emotion being poured out. Not sure if it ws a pleasant shock or just amazement at what i was listening too, but this LP is one of the few I can remember listening to for the first time vividly.

Well done Scorchy
 
As I mentioned, Neil Young put out one of his best albums in 1990. Ragged Glory was every bit as raucous as the records with Crazy Horse that he put out in the '70s.

In my Neil countdown https://forums.footballguys.com/thr...02-204-notable-covers-and-other-stuff.786493/ I ranked the RG songs thusly:

11. F#*!n Up
31. Love to Burn
40. Love and Only Love
64. Days That Used to Be
89. White Line
93. Mansion on the Hill
113. Over and Over
119. Country Home

I did not rank covers but Farmer John would have been in the lower reaches of my top 204. I don't really care for Mother Earth (Natural Anthem).

I ranked the RG outtake Born to Run (not the Springsteen song) at #166. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhx87Xfvs_k
 
Where was U Cant Touch This? When I think of 1990 I think of that song. Of course I was 13 at the time.
Mentioned it earlier when I discussed Vanilla Ice:

I change the station immediately if MC Hammer's U Can't Touch This (also from 1990) comes on, but today, I'll ride with Ice and rap right along with him. Yeah, I know, it still sucks though.

Please Scoresman, don't hurt me.
 
In the spirit of the Cure and 1990, I give you, a decade later . . .

Best Song From The Year 2000 Named After A Cure Album Shouted Out During A South Park Show

Okay, it's a short list.

Disintegration (Is The Best Album, Ever) - The Impossibles
I'll see your Impossibles and raise you with a bunch of slack mother####ers from this countdown covering the song I quoted to you:

Superchunk - In Between Days
I was all prepared to say that Superchunk doing Cure covers <<<<<<<<<< Superchunk doing Destiny's Child covers, but that was pretty good.
 
Ok, just had a listen again after years. Great tune! Better than I remembered, and a worthy #1. But ... if I were to rank these by my own taste, Jane's Three Days would be first. My God that is a good. I can't believe I didn't know it well before now.
 
In my opinion, "Three Days" was the best song of 1990. Our generation's dysfunctional Led Zeppelin (I'm copping that from wikkidpissah of board fame), they were on to something with that song but never could follow through. Bands have a certain kind of inertia and youth is important in rock and roll (it's not an old man's game), so getting back together never had the effect that stalwart fans hoped it would.

This was the best we would ever get from Jane's, and it's one of the -- if not the -- best alt/mainstream guitar songs of the decade. A sprawling, self-indulgent attempt at some sort of religious and sexual liberation, Dave Navarro's guitar work while the rest of the band is totally in the pocket make the song extraordinary.

I've seen Jane's hit that camaraderie pocket before. When I saw them in Springfield, MA in 1990/91, they pulled out four beer coolers with microphones on them, and proceeded to have a drum circle to "Chip Away" (one of the songs off of the XXX album), which blew my young mind.
 
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I've seen Jane's hit that camaraderie pocket before. When I saw them in Springfield, MA in 1990/91, they pulled out four beer coolers with microphones on them, and proceeded to have a drum circle to "Chip Away" (one of the songs off of the XXX album), which blew my young mind.
Wish I had the same experience - saw them three times and they were middling to poor each one. First time was 1990 when me and a buddy road-tripped to Orlando and we were so disappointed. At least for the last two I kind of went in with tempered expectations. :crying:
 
I've seen Jane's hit that camaraderie pocket before. When I saw them in Springfield, MA in 1990/91, they pulled out four beer coolers with microphones on them, and proceeded to have a drum circle to "Chip Away" (one of the songs off of the XXX album), which blew my young mind.
Wish I had the same experience - saw them three times and they were middling to poor each one. First time was 1990 when me and a buddy road-tripped to Orlando and we were so disappointed. At least for the last two I kind of went in with tempered expectations. :crying:

Wow. They flat-out destroyed when I saw them. Thing I'll never forget. A bunch of skinheads had worked their way up in General Admission and were seig heiling the stage while Jane's was playing. (This was wont to happen in my area back then. It was the white power/hardcore scene run amok in bad ways -- lots of areas that supported hardcore and punk music at the time had this problem with Neo-Nazis at their shows. Ask Boston and the FSU crew that basically became an anti-Nazi gang replete with its own problems.) Anyway, Farrell looks out at the crowd and says, like he's a duck in water, "Hey! I'm a skinny little Jew -- just like you!" Band immediately launches into song.

Totally diffused the situation as the crowd was getting both scared and ornery at the scene. They quieted down for some reason after he did that.

Contrast that with a bunch of situations at hardcore shows I'd been at where there was just a fight as a result of garbage like that. The Nazis would start seig heiling and the band would just stop and lecture, and that never went anywhere. When a crowd gets like that, you apparently need to cut it down quickly and go on with the act instead of giving attention to the would-be depraved and violent circus that just came to town.

Anyway, they put on an absolute banger of a show. Kudos to them for all of that. Perry Farrell is a hell of a lot smarter, quicker, and sharper than people gave (and still give) him credit for.
 
A great job here, thanks for all the memories and conversation. And I know it's not your flavor, I just wanted to toss in Megadeth's Rust In Peace, the best metal album in a year that also featured Slayers Seasons In The Abyss and Judas Priest's Painkiller, two albums that are also impressive but wouldn't hold much broad appeal. This is Megadeth's best record and I didn't appreciate it as much as I should have at the time, as nobody from their generation would do anything this good again, and they wouldn't either. Iron Maiden went into over the hill mode. Metallica's 1991 self-titled was certainly a game-changer in hard rock but, similar to the 'ryche's Empire, it's not metal like this is (no digging at Metallica here, I respect the hell out of their music and their right to do whatever they felt good doing).

All the way through the mid-nineties Megadeth and Metallica were about even in my book, all told, and I even had a well worn mixtape of the two. This is Megadeth's peak.

Holy Wars
Hangar 18
Tornado of Souls

A quick aside, maybe being younger when I first started listening to them, I was conditioned to the Mustaine vocals and kinda silly lyrics, but they never bothered me. A lot of worse metal vox out there. And the musicianship here is impeccable.

Metal would live on, Pantera was a big deal though the anger generally eluded me, also a few years later Sepultura hit hard in a narrower sense, TOOL in a much larger sense. Anthrax would rebound somewhat, and some grungers had metal appeal, but really, to me, Rust In Peace put the exclamation point on this whole big era of metal as we knew it. ("O.G." Sabbathy metal found new life in Kyuss as we'll hear in the M.A.D. countdown, and you can draw a line from that to bands that are even still making music today)

One more non-metal 1990 honorable mention to come from me.
 
I just wanted to toss in Megadeth's Rust In Peace, the best metal album in a year that also featured Slayers Seasons In The Abyss

Seasons in the Abyss destroys this album, IMO. I believe Rust In Peace had the lyrics "military intelligence/two words combined that don't make sense" and insinuated that the government had been hiding aliens in a song called "Hangar 18," IIRC. They also had a lot of technically proficient but unappealing guitar solos that were far from their Peace Sells days

Whereas Seasons in the Abyss had the ever-punishing war lament "War Ensemble" with the more-accurate lyrics

Propaganda war ensemble
Burial to be
Bones, shining by the night
In blood-laced misery
Campaign of elimination
Twisted psychology
When victory is to survive
And death is defeat

Sport the war
War support

The sport is war, total war
When the end is a slaughter
The final swing is not a drill
It's how many people I can kill


Plus you have Kerry King solos and Dave Lombardo drumming. Perhaps Megadeth is more technically adept than Slayer (though Slayer could give anybody in thrash a run for their money), but Slayer's crunch, intelligence, and power outshone the guys from Megadeth that year.
 
Anyway, I say that not to be a contrarian, but to show my love for that damn Slayer album. That thing was heavy. Rick Rubin, when he gets a project and the artist gets him, does some wonderful things with artists. His was slowing Slayer down a little and making them sound more like Sabbath than like sped-up Reign In Blood-era Bay Area/L.A. thrash metal.
 
But I'd like to voice an opinion that the countdown was a labor of love and something great, but missed one or two instrumental hardcore bands.

Youth Of Today came out with their eponymous 7" on Revelation Records which included songs "Disengage," "Modern Love Story," and "Envy" on it.


Inside Out, whose frontman Zach de la Rocha would go on to lead Rage Against the Machine, also came out with a 7" on Revelation Records that year. Their No Spiritual Surrender EP included the bombtrack "Undertone"


If this post is any indication, Revelation Records would continue its relevance in the hardcore/punk world by embracing straight edge hardcore and metal-sounding bands with punk consciousness. Breakdowns would abound everywhere in 1990, culminating in Rage's and Quicksand's later popularity.
 
Anyway, I say that not to be a contrarian, but to show my love for that damn Slayer album. That thing was heavy. Rick Rubin, when he gets a project and the artist gets him, does some wonderful things with artists. His was slowing Slayer down a little and making them sound more like Sabbath than like sped-up Reign In Blood-era Bay Area/L.A. thrash metal.
You'll get no argument from me, it's a great album, I mentioned it because it's so good it felt weird not to. I have a higher reverence for Rust In Peace, and especially in a more conventional setting like this one, and I mentioned, and am sure have demonstrated many times, I have a higher tolerance for silly lyrics. That is a hard art. I couldn't say whether Dave really thought there were aliens or was just having fun with it, though I'm sure I could figure it out if I cared to. He's a nut but can also be plenty tongue in cheek.

"Holy Wars" would have been a more apt comparison with "War Ensemble", no? (a little silly in places as well, for sure. Slayer didn't do silly).

I never had much luck getting people who didn't already love metal, into Slayer at all. So I don't often go there.
 

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