10. Weezer

"Say It Ain't So"

[DGC; 1994]

It's been obscured by misheard lyrics, Rock Band histrionics, and Rivers Cuomo's guileless run as a pop mercenary, but "Say It Ain't So"-- lunging riffs and all-- is an intimate piece of songwriting. There's the specificity and shorthand in the lyrics ("Somebody's Heine is crowdin' my icebox"), and the shaded references to a father (and stepfather) addicted to alcohol. And, oh, the little things: Matt Sharp's tender backing vocals, Patrick Wilson's Spartan kickdrum, Cuomo's surprisingly forceful vocal. But when something like Ric Ocasek's swallow-you-whole production is this huge and roiling, subtleties wilt away. And so we're left with the memory of a chest-grabbing, karaoke-ready chorus and that "wrestle with Jiiiiiimmy!" line.

It's important to remember what made Weezer such a steady, original American band, and subsequently an almost bizarrely influential touchstone for so many young bands. History has rewritten itself as Cuomo has incrementally received more acclaim for the gut-wrenching diarism of his band's second album, Pinkerton. The Blue Album, once the massive-selling behemoth, has lost some of its luster to Pinkerton's hidden gem authority. But Rivers is a metal dork at heart and Weezer fused the two strands masterfully, the high and the low, the heartfelt and the machismo, the delicacy and the power. Never better than on "Say It Ain't So". --Sean Fennessey

See also: Weezer, "Buddy Holly"; Weezer, "Undone (The Sweater Song)"; Weezer, "El Scorcho"

9. Beck

"Loser"

[Bong Load/DGC; 1993]

Most of the big alt-rock stars, and alt-rock songs, of the 90s feel hopelessly tied to their decade, relics of a certain period, place, time. Great as they are, even the biggest overground U.S. hits on this list bear little resemblance to what credible music sounds like today. "Loser", on the other hand, sounds like most all of it. Laid next to even the most leftfield of its alt-rock peers, it feels like a transmission not simply from the underground, but an environment all its own. A lot of its disparate parts no longer seem like odd fits-- independent art and trash culture; lo-fi music and commercially viable indie; hip-hop and folk. Yet if it came out today, it would still have to move from the fringes toward the center.

"Loser" misguidedly swept into pop culture on the same wave of slacker and outsider chic that earned Radiohead's "Creep" some spins. But it wasn't either explicitly about independent culture, or even self-loathing-- its roots lie in spontaneity and desperation, first worked out on stage as a young performer tried to charm indifferent L.A. audiences. Eventually, he did, and like the works of Quentin Tarantino or fashion designer Walter Van Beirendonck that same decade, he became an actual sidestream success-- a fringe artist incorporated into the mainstream without altering his sensibilities. --Scott Plagenhoef

See also: Beck, "Where It's At"; Beck, "Mixed Bizness"; Beck, "Nobody's Fault But My Own"

8. Aaliyah

"Are You That Somebody?"

[Atlantic; 1998]

Late-90s Timbaland was the epitome of audacious, screwball production genius, and Aaliyah was his ideal foil, a sultrily cool singer who did for melodic tension-and-release what other R&B singers were doing for showy melisma. Subsequently, "Are You That Somebody" sounds outlandish to the point where it comes across like a challenge from producer to singer-- and it's a challenge easily met. Tim's beat is borderline ridiculous, a rubbery, surreptitiously funky bounce that sounds like "Looney Tunes" composer Carl Stalling had been commissioned to rework a Catfish Collins chicken-scratch guitar riff.

But the aspects that might come across as goofy at first-- the baby coo sourced from Prince's "Delirious"; the beatboxing that sounds like broken castanets; the fact that it first emerged on the soundtrack to the Eddie Murphy version of Dr. Doolittle-- are offset by Aaliyah's characteristically deft performance, balancing an uncanny ability to wring new angles out of a deceptively simple melody and the chops to let her singing naturally jump from smooth longing to nimble rhythmic counterpoints. The moment in the chorus where her voice finally wraps itself entirely around that stagger-step beat and rolls out with the same fluidity as the frenetic bassline-- "causeIreallyneedsomebody/tellmeareyouthatsomebody"-- is everything great about late-90s R&B in one burst of inspiration. --Nate Patrin

See also: Aaliyah, "One in a Million"; Aaliyah, "Hot Like Fire"; Mariah Carey [ft. Jay-Z], "Heartbreaker"

7. Neutral Milk Hotel

"Holland, 1945"

[Merge; 1998]

Even though I first heard Neutral Milk Hotel in the context of mid-90s Athens psych-pop, they've always seemed culturally homeless to me: Too spirited for the slack posturing that dominated the era's indie-rock and too fey for its latent masculinity, too rough for folkies but not coy enough to be indie pop. I was a teenager possessed by lust and here was "Holland, 1945", a song that sounds like talent-show Nirvana hooking up with a marching band, led by a Georgia hermit wailing about Anne Frank. Terminally unmarketable-- and to me, real punk. An instant cult.

Jeff Mangum's lyrics were full of concrete nouns but made no concrete sense. They didn't dwell on his own specific space and time, but space and time in general: How they warp, refract, and continue indefinitely. This is how he comes to love a dead girl. This is how he sings a line like "It was good to be alive." This is how he sees the bedsheets for who used to sleep there. Science lies: In the heart, everything exists all at once. Teenagers deserve to learn this from amateurs, and to believe it as long as the world lets them.

It's both lament and anthem. He tires to hug the world despite the world's cruelty. Of course, he hasn't made another album: What more could he say, and how much more could he say it? --Mike Powell

See also: Neutral Milk Hotel, "Ghost"; Neutral Milk Hotel, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea"; Neutral Milk Hotel, "Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2"

6. My Bloody Valentine

"Only Shallow"

[Creation; 1991]

For exactly one second on "Only Shallow", My Bloody Valentine sound like any other rock band. But once Colm Ó Cíosóig completes his brief introductory drum roll, My Bloody Valentine-- and, arguably, guitar-based indie-rock music in general-- were never quite the same again. Since their 1983 formation, the Irish quartet had evolved considerably, from the Cramps/Birthday Party-inspired trash-punk of their debut EP to the droning noise-pop of 1988's Isn't Anything to the dance-dabbling productions introduced on 1990's Glider EP. But even those staggering developments provided little advance warning for the sound that overtakes "Only Shallow" two seconds in.

You'd be hard-pressed to call it a "riff"-- listening to the song, you don't so much picture a hand strumming across guitar strings as a buzzsaw hitting sheet metal, or a pack of singing dolphins swimming through an oil spill. The sound is so striking and disorienting, it practically distracts you from the fact that "Only Shallow" has a fairly conventional structure, with three verses set to a steady backbeat; Bilinda Butcher's blissfully sighed lyrics may not be decipherable, but the melody that carries them certainly is.

But as the opening track to My Bloody Valentine's epochal 1991 release Loveless, the prophetically titled "Only Shallow" is the fissure that thrusts us into the album's dense, vaporous interior, in which the concept of My Bloody Valentine as a four-piece rock band is gradually debased with each additional layer of effects-pedal freakery and electro-texture. Following Loveless, it would take 16 years for mastermind Kevin Shields to reassert My Bloody Valentine as a functional band, during which his squall-of-sound aesthetic had been adopted by everyone from post-rock ensembles to alt-metal acts to laptop-packing producers. But then, a nearly two-decade hiatus is arguably a fair trade-off for "Only Shallow" turning the underground upside-down literally in a matter of seconds. --Stuart Berman

See also: My Bloody Valentine, "Soon"; My Bloody Valentine, "To Here Knows When"; My Bloody Valentine, "Swallow"

5. Wu-Tang Clan

"Protect Ya Neck"

[Loud; 1993]

Hardcore hip-hop was nothing new by 1992. If you were in high school, you might have missed its earliest days: Boogie Down Production's proto-gangsta minimalism or the apocalyptic pimp tales of Schoolly D. But by the time the Wu-Tang Clan debuted, you'd already been blitzed by the new noise of Public Enemy's righteous (if deeply conflicted) Afrocentric party program. Or maybe you'd gotten off to NWA's ultra-violent "realism."

The Wu, though? They were deeply confusing, even to those of us on the lookout for the latest in grimy, pop-unfriendly rap. Throw on a Wu-Tang song at a party-- well, except for "Method Man"-- and people would beg you to play something "fun." The RZA's beats didn't sound "budget," like he was just another underground loop-maker biding his time until he could sneak into a 48-track studio. His earliest songs, offering a new and freaky definition of "murky," sounded like a very conscious choice. This was the work of a man trying to drain his music of joy, to reduce hip-hop menace to its most concentrated dose.

Plus there was the speed and density of the Clan's rhymes, the voices overlapping dizzily until you figured out who was who. Hip-hop had always been slang-dense as a way to keep out the squares, but nine dudes spinning line after knotty line of cult-like lingo? It was impossible to pick up even a fraction of the Wu's self-invented story without wearing down your Walkman's rewind button. No wonder it took a few self-conscious crossover stabs by the group's most camera-ready members before they truly entered the mainstream.

All of that was part of the draw: "Non-Shaolinites, can you hang with us?" They could: Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) eventually went platinum; Wu-Tang Forever did even better. Even today's grittiest radio rap sounds like a late-90s Bad Boy single when thrown up against something as stark as "Protect Ya Neck". But despite its (deserved) rep as a "let's see you top this!" line in the sand, the track still provides plenty of rap's traditional, visceral thrills: the rowdy virtuosity of the rhymes, the what-did-he-just-say? wordplay, the star-in-the-making charisma of certain Clan members, and one of the few kick-you-in-the-ass beats in the early Wu catalog. --Jess Harvell

See also: Wu-Tang Clan, "C.R.E.A.M."; Wu-Tang Clan, "Shame on a Nigga"; Wu-Tang Clan, "Triumph"

4. Radiohead

"Paranoid Android"

[Capitol; 1997]

"Paranoid Android" told the future. When the song came out as the most unlikely of lead singles, the Internet consisted largely of AOL mailers and chatrooms, but Thom Yorke saw where things were heading. Now, "unborn chicken voices" is a pretty solid descriptor of the daily web discourse, and "the yuppies networking," well, that speaks for itself. The voice software in the background haltingly pleading "I may be paranoid, but no android" becomes a little less true and more desperate with each passing year. Please, could you stop the noise?

Of course, on a more local level, "Paranoid Android" also foretold the future of Radiohead in all their prog-rock, love-hate-tech glory. The song's three-movement structure is a surgical wonder, suturing together the band's strengths up to that point-- half-reluctant guitar crunch, fragile acoustic melodies-- and coming away with an evil Frankenstein's monster that set the template for the rest of their career, most accurately when Jonny Greenwood's closing guitar solo disintegrates into wet modem squelches. But for all the art it foreshadows, the greatest asset of "Paranoid Android" is its theatricality, with the "rain down" segment building to a crescendo worthy of a Broadway curtain-dropper. The band's paranoia would grow while their indulgence of showtune drama would fade, but "Paranoid Android" captures the brilliant intersection. --Rob Mitchum

See also: Radiohead, "Street Spirit (Fade Out)"; Radiohead, "Lucky"; Radiohead, "Let Down"

3. Dr. Dre [ft. Snoop Doggy Dogg]

"Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang"

[Death Row; 1992]

Dr. Dre is a notorious studio perfectionist, the type of producer who will drive rappers to exhaustion by recording 20 takes of the same verse. But the greatest product of that perfectionism is maybe the calmest, most languid song ever to bear the man's name. "'G' Thang" boasts little in the way of structure or rigor; it's just Dre and a very young Snoop Dogg lazily tossing boasts back and forth, cycling back to the chorus whenever the mood strikes them, as a whistling keyboard line snakes through a bed of woozy bass. Snoop, who wrote Dre's lyrics as well as his own, completely owns the song. His chilly charisma, floating falsetto, and effortlessly weird cadences made him an instant star by the time the song's four minutes ran out.

In his great rap history tome Can't Stop, Won't Stop, Jeff Chang attributes the euphoric warmth of Dre's landmark album The Chronic to the Blood/Crips truce that had recently made L.A. a much safer place to live, but that easy bliss quickly transcended its origins. Incredibly, Snow's dancehall cartoon "Informer" kept "'G' Thang" from hitting Billboard's number one spot, but Dre's song-- and his slice-of-life video for it-- resonated huge in suburbs and small towns where even Dre's old group N.W.A never made a dent. --Tom Breihan

See also: Dr. Dre [ft. Snoop Doggy Dogg], "Deep Cover"; 2Pac [ft. Dr. Dre], "California Love"; Dr. Dre [ft. Snoop Doggy Doog], "Fuck Wit Dre Day (And Everybody's Celebratin')"

2. Pulp

"Common People"

[Island; 1995]

In one sense, it's difficult to separate "Common People" from its moment of release, so emblematic as it was of an era when the Britpop tide was sweeping up any UK outfit with a skinny, stylish frontman-- including a band of art-pop outsiders who'd been kicking about Sheffield to minimal acclaim since 1983. And the legend of the song's riotous reception at the 1995 Glastonbury Festival-- unveiled, in a symbolic passing of the torch, during a last-minute pinch-hit performance for the floundering Stone Roses-- is one of the decade's great underdog-victory tales, the crowning moment of an overnight-success story 12 years in the making.

And yet, long after Pulp had slid out of view in 2001 and frontman Jarvis Cocker traded in his pop-star visage for a more professorial look, "Common People" feels as pointedly acerbic and angry as ever. Its scathing indictments of class-tourism and the co-opting of authenticity resound all the more loudly at a time when celebrities and corporations are increasingly eager to siphon off street-cred from underground artists, and collegiate hipsters take ironic fashion cues from middle-American iconography. "Common People" may be centered around a specific encounter between Cocker's impoverished protagonist and his art-school-slummer of a date, but its ascendant, accelerated structure elevates it from personal anecdote to universal anthem, and transforms its spiteful invective into a celebration of the character-building fortitude one acquires when living hand-to-mouth-- something the have-nots will always have over the haves. --Stuart Berman

See also: Pulp, "This Is Hardcore"; Pulp, "I Spy"; Pulp, "Babies"

1. Pavement

"Gold Soundz"

[Matador; 1994]

Thing about Pavement is they never made it easy. That was part of their M.O. when they were defining themselves against the alt-rock moment. Where the big bands of the mid-90s were filling theaters and copping the arena-rock moves that had ossified somewhere back in the 70s, Pavement went around like regular schlubs and played messy shows with songs that took strange turns and didn't quite sound like guitar rock songs are supposed to sound. The Red Hot Chili Peppers said "Give it away now!" and stripped to the waist and jumped around and wanted desperately for you to notice them; Pavement always seemed to be holding something back, and they weren't about to give it away. "Gold Soundz" is as close as they ever got.

It was the second single from their second album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The first, "Cut Your Hair", was a surprise hit, going to #10 on the modern rock chart in a time when that meant something. "Cut Your Hair" was the indie rock "Smells Like Teen Spirit", to an extent: It was topical and had a sneer, but it was also melodic and you pretty much knew how you felt about Pavement from the first time you heard it. Also like "Smells Like", after you heard "Cut Your Hair" a million times you were ready to put it away for a while. But "Gold Soundz" was different. It sounded like a memory in the best possible way. The first two words are "go back," and that's exactly what it does: It was easy, light, and tinged with nostalgia, with a radiant guitar tone and drums that float along, joyously uncommitted. Some of the lyrics match the music's wistfulness ("so drunk in the August sun" is the one many remember, because it sounds like the first line of good yarn), but Stephen Malkmus always did like a good puzzle, so there are cryptic lines that hint at uncertainty, confusion, and doubt, too. But this song feels especially hard to pull apart; everything seems to fuse together into one thing. And damn, it is ever short-- verses and choruses and a super nice guitar break all in 2:40.

There are a lot of ways to think about the music of a decade. Sometimes when you sit down to make a list like this, you think about songs that seemed important-- maybe they changed music or were emblematic of prevailing trends in culture. And then sometimes you think about songs that make you feel good whenever they come on. You hear the first few notes, remember how much the song does for you, the excitement builds, you want to sing along, and hey-- they're coming to the chorus now... --Mark Richardson

See also: Pavement, "Here"; Pavement, "Shady Lane"; Pavement, "Summer Babe (Winter Version)"