51 items
MTV's late-night alternative-music show, two hours of videos the daytime rotation wouldn't touch, from Hüsker Dü and Morrissey to the world premiere of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." For a generation that stayed up for it, the 1990s hosts Lewis Largent and the encyclopedic Matt Pinfield were the gatekeepers of what counted as cool.
Linda Perry wailing "what's going on?" over a strummed anthem the whole planet sang along to in 1993 — titled "What's Up?" because Marvin Gaye had already claimed the obvious name. It hit number fourteen in the US, topped charts across Europe, and then got the strangest second life in pop history: as the internet's beloved He-Man meme.
The Canadian teen-pop star who reinvented herself as the voice of 90s female rage. Raw, oversharing, absolutely unapologetic about her feelings—she gave the decade permission to be a mess and call it art.
The Seattle band whose "Man in the Box" broke through on MTV with a talk-box guitar and a wordless howl. Rooted in heavy metal and built on Layne Staley and Jerry Cantrell's eerie harmonies, they were one of the darkest bands of the grunge boom. In 1994 their Jar of Flies became the first EP ever to debut at No. 1.
The jangly 1992 single that turned a Santa Barbara high-school band with a Monty Python name into a Top 40 act. "All I Want" went to number 15 on the Hot 100 and finally put Fear on the album chart, a year after it came out to almost no notice.
The song that bottled the dread of white-collar routine—people driving in on the highway, all going through identical motions like ants. Boyd Tinsley's violin circled and circled in hypnotic patterns, and every live show stretched it past the studio blueprint.
The 1997 single that dared radio to say its title, and radio mostly did. Meredith Brooks' one big hit sat at number two on the Hot 100 for four weeks, earned two Grammy nominations, and spent the year being compared to Alanis Morissette.
Wes Scantlin, alone in a Hollywood Boulevard hotel room and missing his son, reworked an old Kansas City song into "Blurry." Fred Durst's label had signed him and replaced his entire band; the result was 2002's biggest rock song in America, number five on the Hot 100, with a video of Wes watching his boy get driven away.
A couple with nothing left in common grasps for one shared thing and lands on the Audrey Hepburn movie — "we both kinda liked it." The kicker: Todd Pipes actually wrote it about a different Hepburn film entirely. Earnest, hook-driven, and the only thing the world remembers Deep Blue Something for.
Dan Wilson wrote "Closing Time" so Semisonic would have something new to end their shows with, and realized partway through that it was also about the baby his girlfriend was carrying. It topped the modern rock chart in 1998, earned a Grammy nomination, and became the song radio stations play right before they change formats.
The Georgia band that went from a basement demo to "Shine," eight weeks at No. 1 on rock radio in 1994. Ed Roland sang its "yeah" into an empty toilet-paper tube, and the "heaven" in its chorus got them mistaken for a Christian band. "December," "The World I Know" and "Heavy" kept them on rock radio for the rest of the decade.
Adam Duritz's dreadlocked, wordy, openly wounded alt-rock band — one of the definitive sounds of 90s radio. Their 1993 debut sold over seven million copies, and Duritz spent years dismantling the very song that made them famous, recanting "Mr. Jones" and its hunger for stardom after getting exactly what he wished for.
The slow-dance ballad that sounded gorgeous until you learned the narrator is watching through a window—a Peeping Tom confessing over a dreamy groove. Radio ate it up anyway, and it became the default prom song for an entire generation.
The muted-strum guitar riff and the growled chorus that owned rock radio in the winter of 1995–96: a college band from Williamsburg, Virginia, named after a CHiPs call sign, with a song about a relationship gone heavy. It hit number one on Billboard's Album Rock chart and number 39 on the Hot 100, carried American Standard to platinum, and then, by the drummer's own account, became "a blessing and a curse."
The song that began as a guitar finger exercise—a delicate, circular picking pattern Dave Matthews practiced until it turned into a melody. Quiet, hypnotic proof that the band could hold a room without a single big chorus.
The 18-year-old with the piano and the Mark Romanek video that scandalized MTV. Fiona Apple's Tidal sold nearly three million copies, "Criminal" won a Grammy, and her 1997 VMA acceptance speech, which opened with "This world is bullshit," outlived the award.
"I'm not sick but I'm not well": a college-newspaper band's answer to the Seattle scene, from a group weighing whether to quit when one DJ started playing it. Rolling Stone later called it the best song of 1998.
Three Madison, Wisconsin, producers, one Scottish singer, and the bad-mood pop that MTV could not stop playing. Garbage's "Only Happy When It Rains" and "Stupid Girl" made Shirley Manson the alt-rock frontwoman of 1996, Version 2.0 went to number one in Britain, and they even sang a Bond theme.
The Tempe, Arizona band behind "Hey Jealousy" and "Found Out About You," chiming guitar pop that Rolling Stone said married "world-weary lyrics with ebullient melodies." Both of those hits were written by guitarist Doug Hopkins, who had been pushed out of the band before either one made it big.
![Video thumbnail — Goo Goo Dolls – Iris [Official Music Video] [4K Remaster]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NdYWuo9OFAw/maxresdefault.jpg)
Buffalo bar-band punks turned the kings of the late-90s radio ballad: Johnny Rzeznik and Robby Takac spent a decade in the van before "Name" and then "Iris" made them one of the biggest acts in America — and "Iris" sat on top of the airplay chart so long it set a record that stood for over two decades.
![Video thumbnail — Goo Goo Dolls - Slide [Official Music Video]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/yP4qdefD2To/hqdefault.jpg)
"May-ayy, do you wanna get married, or run away?" — the jangliest, sunniest radio monster of late 1998 was secretly a song about two scared teenagers facing a pregnancy. It topped four different airplay charts, and most people singing along never noticed what it was about.
The song that leaked before it was ever released, spreading across Napster as fans organized a campaign to free the shelved album it came from. A fan uprising before fan uprisings were a standard industry crisis—dark, brooding, and worth the fight.
![Video thumbnail — Hootie & The Blowfish - Only Wanna Be with You (Official Music Video) [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Ln6WQqRDrCo/maxresdefault.jpg)
The band everyone owned, played to death, and then pretended never to like. Hootie & the Blowfish's Cracked Rear View was the best-selling album of 1995 — eventually certified 22× platinum — before total saturation curdled into backlash.
The post-grunge confession that owned rock radio in 2001: Aaron Lewis's slow-burning inventory of a wasted year, a then-record sixteen weeks atop the Modern Rock chart, and a Fred Durst-directed video that ends with a dropped cigarette burning the apartment down. It carried Staind from Springfield, Massachusetts clubs to a number-one album.
The Nirvana singer and songwriter whose Nevermind knocked Michael Jackson off the top of the Billboard chart in January 1992 and pulled grunge and Aberdeen, Washington, into the mainstream. He was called the voice of his generation and never made peace with it, and his death in April 1994, at 27, is the line a lot of people draw under their adolescence.
![Video thumbnail — Matchbox Twenty - 3AM (Official Video) [HD Remaster]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/C-Naa1HXeDQ/maxresdefault.jpg)
The Orlando band behind "Push," "3AM," and "Real World," whose slow-building debut album was eventually certified diamond. Singer Rob Thomas then co-wrote and sang Santana's "Smooth," and the band's third album kept them on the radio into 2003.
The breakthrough single that launched Counting Crows from small-club acoustics into MTV ubiquity — two struggling musicians daydreaming that being rock stars would make everything easier. Its central confession, "when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely," became the 90s' great be-careful-what-you-wish-for lyric: Duritz got the fame and spent years walking the song back.
The stool, the acoustic guitar, the candles: the MTV series that had rock stars strip their hits down to wood and strings, and turned a few of those nights into era-defining albums. Eric Clapton's 1992 set became the best-selling live album ever, and Nirvana's November 1993 session, staged with lilies and black candles "like a funeral," became the band's farewell.
Trent Reznor's one-man industrial-rock project that put "Head Like a Hole" on MTV, rented the Manson murder house to make The Downward Spiral, and played Woodstock '94 caked in mud. Nine Inch Nails made the mid-90s loud, bleak and strangely catchy, and the censored "Closer" became one of the decade's signature singles.
Gwen Stefani's bindi, bleached-blonde hair, and midriff on full display, fronting a bouncy ska-punk band out of Anaheim. "Just a Girl" and the aching "Don't Speak" made Tragic Kingdom one of the decade's defining albums.
A lazy, sun-warmed guitar line and a video that became bigger than the song: the Bee Girl, a kid in a homemade bee costume and big glasses, tap-dancing for a world that doesn't get her until she finds a field full of people just like her. MTV played it constantly, and it still lands.
The melancholy glow of 1997 radio: Jakob Dylan—yes, that Dylan—singing about the death of ideas over the year's most inescapable groove. It topped every rock format at once, won two Grammys, and never even appeared on the Hot 100.
A goofy three-piece from Seattle armed with a two-string "basitar" and a three-string "guitbass"—and no apologies. The 1996 single off their triple-platinum debut hit No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 and charted around the world. The video put them in an orchard where the trees grow cans of peaches, until ninjas ambush the band mid-song. "Movin' to the country, gonna eat a lot of peaches" has lived in heads rent-free ever since.
From college-radio cult band to the thinking fan's arena colossus — R.E.M. was the bridge between the 1980s underground and the 1990s alternative explosion. "Losing My Religion" and "Everybody Hurts" became anthems for a generation, and the Athens, Georgia quartet proved that you could be smart, cryptic, and absolutely massive all at once.
The haunting album opener and second single, with the unforgettable first line — "step out the front door like a ghost" — and a chorus of hollow childhood mantras. A slow folk-rock rethinking of a song from Duritz's earlier band The Himalayans, it became the live centerpiece that never played the same way twice.
![Video thumbnail — Third Eye Blind - Semi-Charmed Life (Official Music Video) [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/beINamVRGy4/maxresdefault.jpg)
"Doo doo doo, doo doo-doo doo..." — the sunniest-sounding smash of 1997 was a song about crystal meth, and the radio edit made sure you couldn't tell. The hook that soundtracked every summer barbecue was hiding one of the darkest lyrics on the dial.
The slow, drawled, two-minute-fifty-two-second oddity about "disco lemonade" and "platform double-suede" that held number one on Billboard's Modern Rock chart for a then-record 15 weeks. It was Marcy Playground's only hit, and plenty of people mistake it for Nirvana.
Billy Corgan's Chicago four-piece: shaved head, a black ZERO shirt, and a voice that could go from a whisper to a howl inside one bar. Between Gish and Machina they were a defining act of 90s alternative rock — a #1 double album, two Grammys, and seven VMAs in a single night — and then they ended it themselves, on stage at the same Chicago club where they'd started.
Seattle's heaviest export: Chris Cornell's wail over Kim Thayil's detuned riffs, years before anyone said "grunge." Soundgarden signed to a major label first, hit number one with Superunknown in 1994, and turned "Black Hole Sun" into the melting-suburbia video every 90s kid remembers.
A hypnotic loop of B.B. King singing "I've been downhearted baby" over a slow beat, recorded on a 16-track in a friend's garage — with a title borrowed off a Bruce Cockburn record because Chris O'Connor couldn't think of a name. Labels passed. Then The Cable Guy happened.
The San Diego band behind "Plush," "Interstate Love Song" and "Vasoline." Some critics called them grunge imitators, and one Rolling Stone poll named them the critics' worst new band and the readers' best. They became one of the biggest-selling rock bands of the '90s.
A Limerick band fronted by Dolores O'Riordan's unmistakable keening wail, The Cranberries seemed to come out of nowhere in 1993 and then were impossible to escape — "Linger," "Dreams," and then "Zombie," the stadium-sized protest song that outlived the decade.
"For the life of me, I cannot remember..." — the guilt-stricken confession ballad that all of 1997 alt-radio screamed along to without quite knowing what it was confessing. Rooted in something real, mostly made up, and somehow everyone's story at once. (The Verve Pipe, from Michigan — no relation to The Verve of "Bitter Sweet Symphony" fame, same year, different ocean.)
The horn-blasting 1997 single that took Boston's plaid-suited ska-core veterans to No. 1 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart, 14 years after they formed. It made Let's Face It their only album to crack the top 50.
The Orange County lifers who took punk from the underground to total radio domination in one 1994 stroke. Smash became one of the best-selling albums ever released on an independent label, with "Come Out and Play" and "Self Esteem" detonating on modern-rock radio. A second, goofier peak followed with Americana and "Pretty Fly (for a White Guy)." Decades later, frontman Dexter Holland finished a PhD in molecular biology—and the band never stopped touring.
Five New Yorkers who met through prep schools and made guitar rock sound urgent again. Is This It, cut in an East Village basement in 2001 to sound like "a band from the past that took a time trip into the future," set off the garage-rock revival, had its cover and tracklist changed for America after 9/11, and topped NME's list of the decade.
![Video thumbnail — Third Eye Blind - Jumper (Official Music Video) [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gRYZijLZR-Q/maxresdefault.jpg)
Stephan Jenkins' San Francisco hit machine: one self-titled 1997 debut that just would not stop producing singles — "Semi-Charmed Life," "Jumper," "How's It Going to Be," "Graduate" — all sunshine on the surface and something much darker underneath.
Three guys from Norwood, Ontario whose demo of "I Hate Everything About You" got them a Jive deal and then never left rock radio: 45 weeks on the Modern Rock chart, nine-times platinum, a billion Spotify streams. Three Days Grace turned Adam Gontier's rehab notebooks into One-X and became the angst band of every mid-2000s locker.
"Just go ahead now": the jangly riff every '90s kid can hum and the band name most of them can't produce. It made VH1's greatest-songs-of-the-'90s list and Blender's worst-songs-ever list — and honestly, both lists have a point.
Sublime's defining hit reached radio one week before the album — and two months after Bradley Nowell's fatal heroin overdose. It went to #1 on Billboard's Modern Rock chart, the band's biggest song sung by a frontman who was already gone, its shrugging "lovin' is what I got" warmth forever shadowed by the tragedy behind it.
The one-hit wonder that was one hit by choice: eight months after this song exploded, Gregg Alexander dissolved the New Radicals by press release and walked away at the absolute top. The celebrity-slam verse? A deliberate trap for the media—and the media walked right into it.