Wednesday, May 9, 2012

Playlist: Childhood Alternative


Remember those posts I start and then never finish? This is one of them. I've been meaning to share with you my ultimate 90s rock-alternative playlist since I posted my first playlist back in January, but just hadn't gotten around to doing it. Finally, two things happened that convinced me to finally sit my butt down and finish this post: 1) I found this playlist on Spotify, which Thought Catalog called "The Best 90s Playlist Ever, Ever," and 2) I won an iTunes gift card from a giveaway at The Lovely Mist! Well, I did a little analysis of the 317 songs on the Spotify playlist, and this is what I determined:

  • There were 124 songs that I didn't consider alternative, so I didn't really care about them for the purposes of this post. But, I had 18 of them in my iTunes anyway (including songs from Rent and Beauty and the Beast—duh!).
  • Out of the remaining songs that I did consider to be rock-alternative music:
    • Love this song! I already have it in my iTunes: 94
    • Hmm, doesn't sound familiar. Guess I'm not as well-versed as I thought I was: 65
    • I know this song, but I don't have it in my iTunes (and don't care enough to buy it): 31

If you can do simple arithmetic, you might notice that adds up to 314, not 317, but I don't really feel like finding the three wayward songs I missed. I think I did enough unnecessary "research" for this blog post already, don't you think? Anywho, the point is, after all this, I wanted to share my ultimate 90s alternative playlist. I have a "Childhood Alternative" playlist in my iTunes, so named because I grew up with these grooves on the wonderful B93.1 radio station in Central California and the first chords of these songs always take me back to that decade of my youth. It's definitely the most-played group of songs on my iPod, and I used to study to it in college.


It was really hard for me to narrow down the list enough for a blog post. My real playlist has more than 200 songs on it, but I thought that was a little excessive. It was torture to even narrow it down to the following 56 songs, and I was really picky. I even left Vertical Horizon out because my favorite album of theirs was released in 2000. Sigh. Any artists with ** after their name means pretty much any song on their greatest hits album could be on this list, but I limited myself to one song for each. Enjoy!

Note: Songs are in no particular order.
  1. The Freshmen, The Verve Pipe
  2. Stay, Lisa Loeb
  3. Meet Virginia, Train**
  4. 3 AM, Matchbox Twenty**
  5. One Headlight, The Wallflowers
  6. Wonderwall, Oasis
  7. Kiss Me, Sixpence None the Richer
  8. Iris, Goo Goo Dolls**
  9. I Don't Want to Wait, Paula Cole**
  10. Ironic, Alanis Morissette**
  11. (What If God Was) One of Us, Joan Osborne
  12. Bitch, Meredith Brooks (Not Alanis! Why does everyone think that?)
  13. Lovefool, The Cardigans
  14. Breakfast at Tiffany's, Deep Blue Something
  15. Save Tonight, Eagle Eye Cherry
  16. Counting Blue Cars, Dishwalla
  17. Sunny Came Home, Shawn Colvin
  18. Father of Mine, Everclear**
  19. All For You, Sister Hazel
  20. Lullabye (Rockabye), Shawn Mullins
  21. Closing Time, Semisonic
  22. Tubthumping, Chumbawumba
  23. Torn, Natalie Imbruglia
  24. Every Morning, Sugar Ray
  25. It's the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine), R.E.M.**
  26. Follow You Down, Gin Blossoms**
  27. I'll Be, Edwin McCain
  28. What I Got, Sublime**
  29. No Rain, Blind Melon
  30. Roll to Me, Del Amitri
  31. Two Princes, Spin Doctors
  32. Run-Around, Blues Traveler
  33. Desperately Wanting, Better Than Ezra
  34. You Get What You Give, New Radicals
  35. Shimmer, Fuel**
  36. 1979, Smashing Pumpkins
  37. Leaving Las Vegas, Sheryl Crow**
  38. Good Riddance (Time of Your Life), Green Day**
  39. Smooth, Santana** (feat. Rob Thomas)
  40. Mr. Jones, Counting Crows**
  41. Absolutely (Story of a Girl), Nine Days
  42. Inside Out, Eve 6
  43. You Were Meant for Me, Jewel**
  44. She's So High Above Me, Tal Bachman
  45. What It's Like, Everlast
  46. My Own Worst Enemy, Lit
  47. Crash Into Me, Dave Matthews Band**
  48. Right Here Right Now, Jesus Jones
  49. Run, Collective Soul**
  50. Everybody's Free (To Wear Sunscreen), Baz Luhrmann
  51. Out of My Head, Fastball
  52. L.A. Song, Beth Hart
  53. Little Black Backpack, Stroke 9
  54. Wonder, Natalie Merchant
  55. Don't Speak, No Doubt**
  56. And, of course: Semi-Charmed Life, Third Eye Blind**
Whew! Kudos if you read that entire post. So tell me, what songs did I miss? Which musical genre takes you back to your childhood?

P.S. — Whatever you do, do not search "90s music" on Pinterest. I was trying to find a generic picture for the top of this post, and instead I got a bunch of Madonna porn. No thank you.

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