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 The 15 best ’90s songs

It seems that '90s nostalgia is here to stay, as Charli XCX and Troye Sivan climb the charts with a single that sings the praises of 1999. Although you're unlikely to go back to dial-up internet or MiniDisc players anytime soon, the music of the age is still energizing and thrilling. Our list of highlights contains everything from house to hip-hop, Britpop to R&B, but unfortunately not 'Cotton Eye Joe.' Apols. Why not feel even more nostalgic by watching one of our favorite teen movies after you've treated your ears to an hour or two of retro-pop perfection?

15. ‘Loser’ – Beck

Beck Hansen had already had a failed folk career and fled to LA to live in a shed full of rats when Kanye West was just a geeky 15-year-old playing around with his first sampler in suburban Chicago in 1993. He'd released ‘Loser' with rap producer Carl Stephenson as a one-off project the previous year, and when an independent label proposed releasing it as a single, he reluctantly accepted. The song went on to become a massive sleeper hit and an anthem for the slacker generation, propelling Beck out of the shed and establishing himself as one of his generation's most creative musicians – which we think is a win. 

14. ‘Deceptacon’ – Le Tigre

Kathleen Hanna, the frontwoman for Le Tigre, swapped spray-paint slogans and guitar thrash for girl-group chants and day-glo synths after transforming the face of music with riot grrrl pioneers Bikini Kill. Le Tigre's newfound pop intellect helped them to smuggle progressive ideas into the mainstream, and their outspoken stance inspired noughties rock icons like Beth Ditto and Karen O, giving ‘Deceptacon' a remarkably long afterlife for a band with lyrics like ‘Your disco dick is sucking my heart out of my mind.' 

13. ‘Big Time Sensuality’ – Björk

Despite stiff competition from a half-dozen other excellent Björk songs, ‘Big Time Sensuality' makes this list for its groundbreaking sonics (which did for house music what Donna Summer's ‘I Feel Love' had done for disco), the iconic video (which instantly elevated Björk to the world's most interesting pop star), and its sheer effervescent joy in the face of life's chaos: ‘I have no idea what my future holds after this weekend, and I don't want to find out.' Dance music, too, can be smart! 

12. ‘Paranoid Android’ – Radiohead

On A Friday, Thom Yorke's merry men formed in the 1990s as a crunchy, Americanized alt rock band. They spent the last year of the decade recording the ultra-moody, sparse, esoteric electronic tracks that would eventually appear on ‘Kid A.' With its strange time signatures and futuristic lyrics, ‘Paranoid Android' reflects the exact fulcrum of the transition, foreshadowing Radiohead's future but also harkening back to the band's early days when they weren't too hip and sophisticated to write a killer riff.

11. ‘Live Forever’ – Oasis

It's difficult to comprehend Oasis' full-spectrum supremacy in the mid-'90s in today's fractured musical environment. It was all over the news, the radio, and the schoolyard. Under flimsy sun hats, hordes of swaggering adolescent boys strutted their things. What went wrong? Since Noel Gallagher's smash-and-grab assault on the 1960s pop canon yielded stunning results for a brief time. Oasis were at their best when they were daydreaming about riches, drugs, and, well, living forever. Close your eyes and try to forget what a dreadful load of crap they finally are by listening to the soaring melody and hearing Liam's soaring voice (Liam never sounded better).

10. ‘Beetlebum’ – Blur

We did say 'Beetlebum.' If you want a campfire sing along, ‘Tender' is the way to go; if you just want to break shit up, ‘Song 2' is the way to go; if you want your Britpop beery, ‘Parklife' is the way to go; but if you want Blur doing what they do best – fusing classic British songwriting with weirdo alt rock – ‘Beetlebum' is the way to go. This is Britpop's best band at their world beating height, with Damon's heroin-chic drawing and Graham's slumping riff and killer solo. 

9. ‘Soon’ – My Bloody Valentine

Shoegaze was never a great term for the hazy, noisy, deafeningly loud sound pegged out by My Bloody Valentine in the late 1980s. It was inspired by a crop of bands who allegedly preferred staring at their guitar effects pedals to interacting with the audience. Ride, Slowdive, Lush, Chapterhouse, and The Telescopes, among others, did some amazing things with noise and melody. But ‘Soon' (the climax of MBV's one-of-a-kind album ‘Loveless'), a seven-minute confection of breakbeats, blushing and blooming guitar tones, and vocal coos sweet enough to hurt, was the glorious apex of the movement's ‘sonic cathedral.' Whatever you call it, it still sounds unfathomably wonderful.

8. ‘Common People’ – Pulp

Does the fact that the song's subject – a Greek girl with a thirst for knowledge – allegedly married Marxist economist and maverick finance minister Yanis Varoufakis devalue this scathing Britpop anthem? In no way, shape, or form. With its sly social message delivered to a stonking disco beat and an immortal riff, ‘Common People' will always be more universal than that. It is, without a doubt, the greatest sociopolitical filler of all time. And wouldn't it be fantastic if some lanky Yorkshire singer had influenced the Eurozone's economic fate two decades later in some small, tangential way? 

7. ‘Never Forget’ – Take That

Some of Take That's early '90s hits haven't aged as well as Gary Barlow's, but 'Never Forget,' their penultimate single before their 1997 breakup, still sounds fantastic. It's a bombastic yet poignant pop anthem with uncommonly self-aware lyrics, co-produced by Meat Loaf collaborator Jim Steinman and featuring a relatively rare lead vocal from Howard Donald. 'Someday soon, this will all be someone else's dream,' Donald sings on the chorus, perhaps sensing the arrival of Westlife... Nick Levine is a singer and songwriter.

6. ‘Glory Box’ – Portishead

Bristol was, without a doubt, one of the most musically significant cities on the planet in the 1990s. Portishead, whose dark, brooding, and sometimes oppressive sound was a conspiracy of contradictions that characterized ‘trip hop,' were at the core of it all. The music was good, but Beth Gibbons' vocals were outstanding. It combined heavy hip hop beats and throbbing basslines with jazz and soul samples. The shining example is ‘Glory Box,' a soul-searching love song performed over a smoky backing track of jazz drums, tinkling pianos, and wistful strings that effortlessly transitions from delicate downtempo moments to ear-shredding guitar crescendos.

5. ‘Da Funk’ – Daft Punk

Years before DP started jamming with Pharrell and soundtracking catwalk shows, they released ‘Homework,' a whole album of blissful, banging house, the jewel in the crown of which was ‘Da Funk.' It was influenced by generations of dance music (the winding, acid synths, the stomping drums punchy enough to floor Godzilla), but it also had something new and incredible – it had da funk.

4. ‘Unfinished Sympathy’ – Massive Attack

Years before DP started jamming with Pharrell and soundtracking catwalk shows, they released ‘Homework,' a whole album of blissful, banging house, the jewel in the crown of which was ‘Da Funk.' It was influenced by generations of dance music (the winding, acid synths, the stomping drums punchy enough to floor Godzilla), but it also had something new and incredible – it had da funk. 

3. ‘Rid of Me’ – PJ Harvey

Nirvana weren't the first band from the 1990s to turn their back on the mainstream after releasing a hit album. Dorset's very own Polly, like the Seattle superstars on 'In Utero,' For her second album, ‘Rid of Me,' Jean Harvey turned to punk rock recording engineer Steve Albini (known for his raw, unadulterated sound). The title track, a primal howl of electrified blues-rock that's equal parts lovesick wail and feminist stomp, encapsulates it all. It turns out that MC Hammer was mistaken: you can't touch this. 

2. ‘Waterfalls’ – TLC

TLC, a badass R&B group, were all over it twenty years before Kanye West realized Paul McCartney's enduring genius. They took a 1980 Macca song about the risky sport of waterfall jumping and turned it into a heartbreaking urban drama with a killer chorus. Lisa ‘Left Eye' Lopez's verses address life's tragedies with insight, patience, and spirit, before preaching the strength of optimism and self-belief in her rap. 

1. ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ – Nirvana

All the cool kids will tell you that when Nirvana launched ‘Bleach' on Sub Pop in 1989, they were big fans. The cool kids are just liars. They, like everybody else, were hooked on Nirvana from the first ten seconds of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit' on the radio: Kurt Cobain's filthy guitar riff bursting as Dave Grohl's drum kit and Krist Novoselic's bass smashed their way into the song and our collective consciousness.

Many words have been written about ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,' and we're about to add a couple more, but it's almost impossible to overstate the global sonic earthquake that this song triggered in 1991. The sound of Seattle was unlike anything we'd ever experienced before.