55 items
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 piano riff every kid who took lessons tried to learn. Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" owned 2002 radio, then got a whole second life in White Chicks, with Terry Crews belting every word in absolute earnest. It belongs equally to burned CDs, karaoke nights, and the meme age that followed.
A Danish-Norwegian group called Aqua released a slab of pure pink synthetic pop in 1997 and accidentally created a song the world couldn't escape. "Barbie Girl" was everywhere — and Mattel sued, convinced it was watching its brand get mocked into oblivion.
"Oh, my God, Becky — look at her butt." Sir Mix-a-Lot's anthem to big butts spent five weeks at number one, got briefly banned by MTV, won a Grammy, and never once left the party playlist.
![Video thumbnail — Daniel Powter - Bad Day (Official Music Video) [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/gH476CxJxfg/maxresdefault.jpg)
'Cause you had a bad day, you're taking one down... The piano lament that conquered European radio in 2005, topped the Billboard Hot 100 in 2006, and soundtracked every single American Idol elimination that season. It was everywhere, for everyone, about nothing in particular — and that was exactly the point.
Duncan Sheik's brooding acoustic single became one of the defining adult-alternative hits of 1997 — and one of the longest-charting songs in Billboard history, quietly clinging to the Hot 100 for more than a year.
"Do you think you're better off alone?" Seven words, one heart-piercing synth riff, and the whole Y2K dance floor materializes around you. Alice Deejay wasn't a person — it was a Dutch studio project with singer Judith Pronk as its face — and its one perfect single conquered Europe in 1999 before burrowing into American radio in 2000.
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.
The swelling string loop, Richard Ashcroft shoulder-checking his way down a London pavement without breaking stride, and the most famous royalty heist of the decade — a smash hit whose writer earned a grand total of $1,000 from it for 22 years. (This is The Verve, from England — no relation to Michigan's The Verve Pipe.)
Salsa royalty — Tito Puente, Ray Barretto, Sheila E., Tito Nieves and more — convened in 1994 to cut the theme for the Bronx film I Like It Like That. Two years later a Burger King ad campaign turned their "I Like It" into a Top 40 hit two years after the fact.
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.
Crazy Town's tattooed valentine — a rap-rock love song floated on a borrowed Red Hot Chili Peppers guitar loop all the way to #1 in spring 2001. The softest thing the nu-metal era ever sent up the charts, from a band that never landed another hit.
Tay Zonday's impossibly deep baritone over a looping piano, delivered stone-faced into a home microphone. The joke was the caption: "I move away from the mic to breathe in." Beneath the meme, the lyrics were a metaphor about racism in America — a fact most people quoting it never noticed.
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.
A breezy reggae-tinged Eurodance smash from a Bremen-built German trio that somehow cracked the American Top 40. The "put me up, put me down" chorus became the summer 1997 earworm.
The summer-of-1998 single that got onto the radio before its singer had a publicity photo: a Los Angeles station started playing it in May, it reached number three on the Hot 100 by September and number one in Australia, Canada and New Zealand, and it left Jennifer Paige known everywhere for one enormous hit.
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 Italian Eurodance group Eiffel 65 and their inescapable hit "Blue (Da Ba Dee)," released in 1998 and an unstoppable global phenomenon in 1999. The auto-tuned "I'm blue, da ba dee da ba di" hook became the defining one-hit wonder of the turn-of-the-millennium era.
"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.
The "na na na na naaa" that took over the world in 1994. Jamaican veteran Ini Kamoze's one perfect strike—a four-sample collage that hit #1 and never let go, even after he faded back.
A synth-pop love song from a Huntington Beach band that began as a way to woo crushes. "Here (In Your Arms)" climbed from Drive-Thru Records and MySpace to number 14 on the Hot 100 in early 2007, with a summer-camp video in which the campers play pogs.
A New Zealand radio phenomenon with zero Hot 100 footprint—it topped Mainstream Top 40 as a radio-only track because no commercial single existed. That spoken-sung verse and trumpet hook owned summer 1997.
"I wish I was a little bit taller, I wish I was a baller." Skee-Lo's 1995 single was rap's great self-deprecating hit, a shortlist of everything he wasn't, rapped over a bouncing sample with a '74 Pinto where the '64 Impala should be. It went top 15, got a Grammy nomination, and became the one song everyone can still quote.
Stop, collaborate and listen: the B-side nobody wanted became the first hip-hop single ever to top the Billboard Hot 100. Vanilla Ice rode the "Under Pressure" bassline to the top of the charts — without crediting Queen or David Bowie, sparking one of music's landmark copyright fights.
![Video thumbnail — Snow - Informer (Official Music Video) [4K Remaster]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/TSffz_bl6zo/maxresdefault.jpg)
"A licky boom boom down": a white reggae MC from Toronto toasting so fast nobody could transcribe it, atop the American charts for seven straight weeks. It was infectious, it was baffling, and it was divisive enough that Jim Carrey parodied it on national television.
A half-spoken verse about a sad rich girl in the Hollywood Hills, then a hook that promised everything's gonna be all right, rock-a-bye. Shawn Mullins had spent a decade selling his own cassettes at shows when "Lullaby" went to number seven in the first weeks of 1999.
A Spanish song that somehow became the most inescapable earworm of 1996 — that one dance every kid learned: arms out, hips swaying, the synchronized turn. It played at every wedding, school dance, and ballpark in America.
![Video thumbnail — Lou Bega - Mambo No. 5 (A Little Bit Of...) [Official Music Video]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/n2qgHu7HJLw/maxresdefault.jpg)
"A little bit of Monica in my life, a little bit of Erica by my side..." — Lou Bega dug up a 1949 Cuban mambo, added a roll call of girls' names and a zoot suit, and created the most inescapable song of 1999. You still can't hear a trumpet stab without finishing the list.
Twin sisters from Astoria, Queens, singing over the Coolie Dance riddim's bongo loop, with a bridge lifted from Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam, in the summer when every block party in America was running on dancehall. It went to No. 4 on the Hot 100 in 2004 and remains the only single of their own to crack the top 40.
"Can we forget about the things I said when I was drunk?" Lit's hangover apology rode a staccato octave riff to eleven weeks at number one on Billboard's Modern Rock chart in 1999 and finished as the year's most-played modern rock song. It is still on rock radio, still at karaoke, and still getting credited to Blink-182.
One of the biggest radio songs of the late '90s — and almost nobody knew it was a cover. Natalie Imbruglia's version went supernova in 1997, spending 11 weeks atop Billboard's airplay chart while barely denting the Hot 100, because you literally couldn't buy it as a US single. The video's film crew dismantled the apartment set around her mid-song.
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.
A Chicago duo's chanted one-liner that nobody was sure was appropriate but everyone chanted at school dances anyway. The radio edit and album version were practically two different songs.
The definitive told-you-so strut: a breakup revenge anthem gliding on a Tom Tom Club groove, delivered with total conviction. It topped the UK charts in 1996, hit number two in America a year later — and it has never really left.
The relentless Finnish trance instrumental that owned the year 2000 — jocked by every arena PA, burned onto every mix CD — then got a second, stranger life as the internet's favorite troll answer to "what song is this?"
Four chords, a campfire strum, and a chorus anyone could sing on the first listen — Eagle-Eye Cherry's "Save Tonight" was the acoustic one-hit wonder of 1998, an easygoing plea to make the most of a last night together.
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.
The soaring 1999 power-pop single about a girl out of your league, written and sung by Randy Bachman's son. Tal Bachman's only hit went to number 14 on the Hot 100, topped the Adult Top 40 for three weeks, and won him two Junos.
A cheeky power-pop confection about a kid crushing on his friend's mother, built as a loving homage to the Cars — so faithful that Ric Ocasek assumed the opening riff was a sample. It wasn't. Add the Rachel Hunter video and you have the summer of 2003 in three minutes.
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 wobbly-sweet Canadian brother-sister one-hit wonder: a hungover-sounding boy-girl trade-off over a looping disco sample, sun-bleached and effortless. If 1999 had an official lazy-summer-afternoon soundtrack, this was it.
"This is the story of a girl, who cried a river and drowned the whole world" — the hook that owned the radio in summer 2000, peaking at No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100. Singer John Hampson wrote it about his then-girlfriend (later his wife) after an argument before a concert. The follow-ups never matched it, but the hook never left.
"I like girls that wear Abercrombie & Fitch..." — LFO's nonsense-couplet summer anthem rhymed Chinese food with Bruce Willis and somehow became the sound of 1999. New Kids on the Block, macaroni and cheese; it made no sense and everyone knew every word.
An outcast anthem in a nasal falsetto: the kid with the AC/DC tapes everyone treated like a devil worshipper, pining for a girl out of his league. The twist — "two tickets to Iron Maiden, baby" — is one of pop's great reveals. America shrugged; the rest of the world made it enormous.
"You and me baby ain't nothin' but mammals..." Bloodhound Gang's gleefully crude smash turned a biology-class euphemism into an inescapable party anthem — and the monkey-suit video sealed the deal.
"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.)
A hook that explains itself in a circle, a beat that hops from New York to the Bay to L.A. by sampling each city's anthem, and a leap from No. 32 to No. 1 in a single week in March 2007. Mims' debut single was the ringtone-era hit everyone could recite and nobody could defend, and he never got near the top again.
The platinum-blond Dru Hill frontman's solo signature — a 2000 smash so ubiquitous you couldn't escape it. 'She had dumps like a truck, truck, truck...' Sisqó turned a string section, a booming beat, and one very specific ode into the sound of that summer.
"I get knocked down, but I get up again — you're never gonna keep me down." The 1997 pub-and-stadium singalong that became an inescapable global anthem — sung by a band most fans never realized was a veteran British anarchist collective.
A struggling New York session singer takes a trip to Memphis to cure his writer's block, hears Al Green preach, sings "Amazing Grace" with a retired schoolteacher named Muriel in a Mississippi café, and comes home with the song of his life. Number 13 in 1991, a Song of the Year nomination, and a Grammy for Best New Artist.
The eurodance question nobody has ever answered: Haddaway's 1993 debut hit number one in a dozen-plus countries — then became immortal five years later as the head-bob anthem of SNL's Roxbury Guys. Baby, don't hurt me.
The paradoxical summer of 2000 phenomenon: it peaked at #40 on the Billboard Hot 100 yet became completely inescapable at every stadium, school bus, and kids' movie imaginable.
Two words that could fill any gym, wedding, or stadium in the 90s. Tag Team's 1993 anthem "Whoomp! (There It Is)" was pure call-and-response bass-music joy — and one of the best-selling singles of the decade.
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.