The Ringer - The ’90s Explained in 60 Songs

Grunge. Wu-Tang Clan. Radiohead. “Waterfalls.” The music of the 1990s was as exciting as it was diverse. But what does it say about the era—and why does it still matter? On 60 Songs That Explain the ’90s, Ringer music writer and ’90s survivor Rob Harvilla embarks on a quest to answer those questions. From hip-hop’s explosion in popularity to the rise of the alternative nation to the boy bands that ruled MTV, 60 Songs will cover all the major moments and esoterica that defined a wild 10 years. Whether you’re full of teenage angst or you feel bored and old, whether you don’t know the song at all or you know it far too well, we’ll take you through the decade one killer track at a time.

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Q&A With Our Host, Rob Harvilla

What made music in the ’90s so special?
Biggie … Tupac ... Kurt Cobain ... Shania Twain ...  Mariah Carey ...  Metallica … Lauryn Hill … the ‘90s had so many towering, incandescent stars who led revolutions in Top 40 pop, in rap, in alternative and not-so-alternative rock, in R&B, in dance music. But it also had unfairly maligned one-hit wonders, and unsung underground heroes, and just this incredible balance between hugeness and weirdness. The music industry would never be quite this dominant, or quite this chaotic, again. I’m glad it’s all over, for personal and professional reasons, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss it or love talking about it.

The music of the decade—of any decade, really—covers a lot of different ground. How do you account for that in a show like this?
Sixty is a truly terrifying number, but that’s how many songs it’ll take to cover all that ground: from rap to alt-rock to teen pop to country, from the megahits you might be rooting for to the deep cuts you might not see coming. It’s an overwhelming and maybe impossible task to summarize a decade this vibrant and bizarre and iconic. But that overwhelmed sensation is a big part of the fun.

Episode 1 dives deep into the legacy of Alanis Morissette's "You Oughta Know." It’s one of the most iconic songs of the decade, and it won a few Grammys and made Alanis very famous. But why start the show with this song specifically?
Because it’s one of the angriest, and funniest, and porniest hits of the decade. Because it helped Alanis sell 30 million copies of her breakout album—another ridiculous and very 1990s number—and it taught at least a few people I know some very specific sexual terminology. Because “I hate to bug you in the middle of dinner” is one of my favorite lines in a song, ever. 

What can listeners expect from each episode?
I want to explain what makes a particular song great, whether you’ve heard it a billion times or you’ve never heard it before in your life. I want to mix pure nostalgia (as a mildly rowdy teenager I once tried to toilet-paper one of those giant blue suburban street-corner mailboxes after a Rage Against the Machine concert) with a fresh perspective both critically and historically. (Rage did a better job explaining modern politics to mildly rowdy teenagers than Bill Clinton did.) Each episode will have a special guest, too—Ringer luminaries, critics and writers, star musicians—so it’s not just my perspective. Plus, we play the whole song uninterrupted at the end, so you can once again revel in the full majesty of Missy Elliott’s “The Rain,” or, for that matter, GNR’s “November Rain.”

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