From Nirvana to Aphex Twin: the 30 best songs of 1994
By all accounts, the 1990s was a dramatically transformative period for the music industry. With the compact disc leaving vinyl in the dust, listening habits evolved in tandem with genre propagation. Throughout the 1980s, the emergence of hip-hop and synth-pop laid the foundations for an exciting decade in alternative rock music. Alongside grunge, as popularised by Nirvana and My Bloody Valentine’s shoegaze, the ’90s witnessed the emergence of intriguing hybrids like folktronica and trip-hop.
Subgenre labels, as such, are often ill-fitting and tend to alienate more artists than early 20th-century badges like jazz and rock ‘n’ roll ever did. Understandably, listeners and artists like to let the music do the talking, but for us journalists, they can come in handy as loose descriptors. Among the most contentious labels that emerged in the 1990s was ‘grunge’. With Neil Young’s Crazy Horse regarded as its apical progenitor, grunge seemed to be embodied most by Nirvana, but its genes spread far and wide, even permeating Radiohead’s early material.
Today, we’re peeling back 30 years to appreciate the fantastic breadth of music that arrived in 1994. By this point, the decade’s subgenres had established themselves confidently on the music map. Meanwhile, the electronic music scene enjoyed a period of enlightenment with pill-popping ravers flocking to Manchester’s Haçienda and experimental producers like Aphex Twin pushing the vanguards of ambient music.
While 1994 saw the arrival of several seminal and timeless albums, it was also a year of great tragedy. On April 5th, 1994, Kurt Cobain committed suicide following several years of inner turmoil related to fame and addiction struggles. Several months prior, Nirvana had visited MTV to perform their monumental ‘Unplugged’ set. It arrived as a live album in November ’94 as a final tribute to one of the decade’s most popular artists.
As the industry came to terms with the loss, some of Cobain’s closest allies emerged to discuss their feelings. Among them was R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, whom Cobain had idolised throughout the 1980s before their friendship. The Atlanta-based singer and songwriter poured his emotions into the poignant 1994 Monster cut ‘Let Me In’.
“There were a lot of phone calls before that imagined one,” Stipe once said of ‘Let me In’ and its tragic subject. “[I was] really trying to pull him out of a very, very dark place. We all knew it, and we were doing everything we could to help – but it wasn’t enough. I wrote the lyrics in five minutes and recorded it in as much time. It was our – my – plea to Kurt. Too bad.”
Including R.E.M.’s ‘Let Me In’ and Nirvana’s ‘Unplugged’ cover of Lead Belly’s ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’, we have made a playlist of the 30 greatest songs from the 1990s. From Britpop to hip-hop, we’ve tried to keep the list as diverse as our tastes would allow, taking care not to take more than one track from any one artist.
The 30 best songs of 1994:
- ‘Roads’ – Portishead
- ‘Slide Away’ – Oasis
- ‘Hallelujah’ – Jeff Buckley
- ‘Reptile’ – Nine Inch Nails
- ‘End of a Century’ – Blur
- ‘Black Hole Sun’ – Soundgarden
- ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night’ – Nirvana
- ‘#3’ – Aphex Twin
- ‘N.Y. State of Mind’ – Nas
- ‘High Hopes’ – Pink Floyd
- ‘Joyriders’ – Pulp
- ‘The Wild Ones’ – Suede
- ‘Heat Miser’ – Massive Attack
- ‘Let Me In’ – R.E.M.
- ‘Drive On’ – Johnny Cash
- ‘Cowgirl’ – Underworld
- ‘Do You Love Me?’ – Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
- ‘Cut Your Hair’ – Pavement
- ‘Breaking into Heaven’ – The Stone Roses
- ‘Zombie’ – The Cranberries
- ‘Sometimes Always’ – The Jesus and Mary Chain
- ‘Bull in the Heather’ – Sonic Youth
- ‘Feel the Pain’ – Dinosaur Jr.
- ‘Alison’ – Slowdive
- ‘(I’m Gonna) Cry Myself Blind’ – Primal Scream
- ‘Tiger Lily’ – Luna
- ‘Nutshell’ – Alice in Chains
- ‘My Iron Lung’ – Radiohead
- ‘Undone’ – Failure
- ‘What Was Wound’ – Unwound
