(In no particular order)
1. "As I Lay Me Down" - Sophie B Hawkins. I don't think I'd heard this for years - quite possibly literally not since the 90s, though perhaps she never really went away[*] so far as I was concerned - but, airy, dreamy, memorably melodic, it's somehow still quite lovely today.
2. "If It Makes You Happy" - Sheryl Crow. I've always been fond of Crow, particularly those songs of hers with a strong melancholy undercurrent ("Strong Enough" was the big one for me), so really "If It Makes You Happy" probably should've registered properly with me years ago...what a great song. No other decade has done nice-sounding yearning like the 90s.
3. "Never Ever" - All Saints. So smooth it should be boring, and so overplayed back in the day that it should be completely worn out in any event, but in fact neither of those things, and instead beguiling and curiously addictive, probably for much the same mysterious pop music alchemy reasons that it was so massively popular way back when.
4. "Beautiful Stranger" - Madonna. This must have come out at the very end of the 90s, and so right in the middle of a period when mainstream pop had basically no appeal for me, but I liked it even then (it made me see colours); and voila - in 2012 it turns out to still be fabulous.
5. "Turn" - Travis. This song is so simple that I'm almost ashamed to like it, which is saying something for me; it's like some platonic ideal of the mainstream-alternative post-The Bends 'rock' anthem. But whatever to all that - it may make all the obvious moves, but "Turn" nails it.
* * *
[*] Wikipedia now informs me that the mystery was not in fact solved by that linked answer; rather, it seems. "ooh la kah koh" was, after all, just a nonsense phrase dreamed up by Hawkins to fill in some aural space.
1. "As I Lay Me Down" - Sophie B Hawkins. I don't think I'd heard this for years - quite possibly literally not since the 90s, though perhaps she never really went away[*] so far as I was concerned - but, airy, dreamy, memorably melodic, it's somehow still quite lovely today.
2. "If It Makes You Happy" - Sheryl Crow. I've always been fond of Crow, particularly those songs of hers with a strong melancholy undercurrent ("Strong Enough" was the big one for me), so really "If It Makes You Happy" probably should've registered properly with me years ago...what a great song. No other decade has done nice-sounding yearning like the 90s.
3. "Never Ever" - All Saints. So smooth it should be boring, and so overplayed back in the day that it should be completely worn out in any event, but in fact neither of those things, and instead beguiling and curiously addictive, probably for much the same mysterious pop music alchemy reasons that it was so massively popular way back when.
4. "Beautiful Stranger" - Madonna. This must have come out at the very end of the 90s, and so right in the middle of a period when mainstream pop had basically no appeal for me, but I liked it even then (it made me see colours); and voila - in 2012 it turns out to still be fabulous.
5. "Turn" - Travis. This song is so simple that I'm almost ashamed to like it, which is saying something for me; it's like some platonic ideal of the mainstream-alternative post-The Bends 'rock' anthem. But whatever to all that - it may make all the obvious moves, but "Turn" nails it.
* * *
[*] Wikipedia now informs me that the mystery was not in fact solved by that linked answer; rather, it seems. "ooh la kah koh" was, after all, just a nonsense phrase dreamed up by Hawkins to fill in some aural space.
