18 items
The Omaha band that fused alt-rock, reggae, funk, and rap into a laid-back sound built for summer. Their 1995 self-titled "Blue Album" broke them nationwide on the strength of "Down" and "All Mixed Up," and their two-vocalist lineup has stayed intact for decades.
The jam band that actually broke through to Top 40 radio, with John Popper's lightning-fast harmonica as the most unlikely lead instrument of 1995. "Run-Around" logged a then-record 49 consecutive weeks on the Hot 100 and won a Grammy, and the Wizard of Oz video never left MTV.
The mysterious French duo who hid their faces, invented the robot identity, and detonated dance music into the mainstream. Their chrome-and-gold helmets became one of pop culture's enduring enigmas. Two guys, a sampler, and a myth they refused to break.
The jam band that proved you didn't need guitar-on-guitar riffage—saxophone and violin could carry the whole load. College kids traded their live tapes like sacred relics, passing cassettes through dorm networks long before the internet caught up, and the band turned that devotion into an amphitheater-tour institution that defined summer for a generation.
Pete Wentz's swoopy black fringe, Patrick Stump's soaring voice, and song titles that ran on forever. "Sugar, We're Goin Down" ruled TRL and Warped Tour, making Fall Out Boy the pop-punk face of the MySpace era.
![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.
The Los Angeles radio-rock band behind "Hanging by a Moment" — a famous Billboard chart anomaly. Frontman Jason Wade's five-minute songwriting session produced a single that never hit weekly No. 1 yet finished as Billboard's No. 1 song of 2001. Earnest, huge-chorused, everywhere.
The Jacksonville metal band that defined nu-metal's MTV dominance. Fred Durst's backwards red Yankees cap and Wes Borland's shock-value body paint made them impossible to ignore. They broke through with a cover of George Michael's "Faith" reimagined as down-tuned metal. They became the sound of late-90s TRL, then evaporated just as fast.
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.
![Video thumbnail — O.A.R. - "Shattered" [Official] Music Video](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Qa5Mawz92xU/hqdefault.jpg)
The jam band MTV never gave a platform but college kids couldn't live without. O.A.R. — "Of A Revolution" — spread dorm to dorm on burned CDs of live shows, a band you heard about from a friend long before you ever heard them on the radio. By the time they sold out Madison Square Garden in 2006, the underground had simply become too big to ignore.
The Vermont jam band that never had a hit single and never needed one. While the radio played everyone else, Phish built an empire out of marathon two-set shows, fan-taped cassettes traded hand to hand, and festivals so big they were briefly the largest concerts in America.
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 Denver piano-rock band whose earnest, mid-tempo anthems were the sound of mid-2000s radio and every emotional TV montage of the era. "Over My Head" broke them; "How to Save a Life," supercharged by Grey's Anatomy, made them huge.
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.
![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.
Dublin's titanic arena-rock band, who peaked once in the 1980s and reinvented themselves entirely in the 1990s as ironic multimedia spectacle. The Nineties U2 was fearless—Berlin studios, video walls the size of buildings, prank calls to the White House. They nearly broke up, then wrote "One" and changed everything.
The Los Angeles band that made being a nerd sound like the coolest thing in the world. The 1994 "Blue Album" and its Spike Jonze videos — the Happy Days-themed "Buddy Holly" chief among them — turned Rivers Cuomo's sweater-clad geek-rock into a generational touchstone.
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.