Spin Doctors — "Two Princes"
"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.
Spin Doctors — frontman Chris Barron, with Mark White, Eric Schenkman, and Aaron Comess sharing the songwriting credit — released their debut album "Pocket Full of Kryptonite" in 1991, and it built an audience the slow way. By the time Epic serviced "Two Princes" to US radio in January 1993 as the album's second single, one of the song's two music videos had already been out for nearly a year. Then it caught, and it caught everywhere: number seven on the US Billboard Hot 100, number one in Iceland and Sweden, top ten in thirteen other countries including Australia, France, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, and the UK, plus a Grammy nomination for Best Rock Performance by a Duo or Group.
Its legacy is a perfectly split verdict. VH1 ranked it number 41 on its 2007 "100 Greatest Songs of the '90s"; Blender ranked it number 21 on its "50 Worst Songs Ever". Both placements feel earned — "Two Princes" is an inescapable, slightly cornball, utterly undeniable earworm, and its "just go ahead now" refrain has been rattling around heads for three decades whether those heads wanted it or not. Everyone hums it. Almost nobody names the band. That gap is the song's whole story.
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