The 79 Best Alternative Rock Songs of 1997

By SPIN Staff

At 1997, rock radio was as optimistic as the U.S. president, who’d just been inaugurated for his second term. From angsty grunge and trendy Brit Pop came songs that were sunny in sound if not in temperament, singer-songwriters digging deeply into their feelings, the nascent rise of electronica on the charts, and something called Chumbawamba. A cheeky, lyrical British band had their biggest hit with a song where the chorus simply went “woo hoo”; the former drummer of the generation’s most defining bands came into his own as a powerful rock frontman; Oasis released a disappointing double album but some guys named Radiohead predicted the terrifying, computer-dominated future, and made us feel a little less alienated from each other; Green Day dropped their least rocking hit yet, which would end up scoring a million graduation ceremonies; by the end of December, Fiona Apple’s searing gaze was etched into our brains. Some artists had their only, indelible hits; others alternative rock bands entered their prime, and set the tone for what would come.

It was a pretty good year, and we’ve written about our favorite songs from the 1997 alt-rock charts, in order to speak to what they meant then and how they sound to us now. (Note: Some of the songs were released in 1996, but made their biggest impact the next year on the radio and Billboard’s Alternative Charts.) Find them below.

***

79. Matthew Sweet – “Where You Get Love”

“Where You Get Love” is the last single Matthew Sweet lodged on the Billboard charts–it went to 14 on Billboard’s Modern Rock Charts–and, from a certain angle, it’s possible to view the song as the afterburn of Girlfriend, the nervy 1991 album that’s the gold standard of power pop in the ’90s. If Girlfriend surprised—blame that on Robert Quine and Richard Lloyd, who treated simple pop tunes as a vehicle for exploration–“Where You Get Love” follows conventional contours, celebrating hooks and progressions but also benefitting from its constricted construction. Although the riff bubbles, there’s no suggestion that it will escape from its constraints, and that’s its excitement: like all great classicist pop songs, it follows a familiar structure but excites with its details. –STEPHEN THOMAS ERLEWINE

78. Jars of Clay – “Crazy Times”

For the Christian recording industry, the generational dissociation that buzzy alt-rock represented was prime territory for infiltration. Jars of Clay’s first incursion was 1996’s fluke hit “Flood.” On their follow-up album Much Afraid, they went the full nine: debuting a crisp pop/rock sound, enlisting future Adele and OneRepublic producer Greg Wells as a utility player, and trying to land a track in a Jim Carrey movie. Lead single “Crazy Times” is a would-be anthem of spiritual despair, where even the solo is glum. It’s creepy and cold and more than a little neggy, and rock radio rebuffed it accordingly. –BRAD SHOUP

77. Live – “Lakini’s Juice”

This was a time of reluctant male sex symbols. And, also, Ed Kowalczyk, he of the rattail, ubiquitous bird chest, and a band that filled the void left by U2 and R.E.M. for the spell where they decided to be fun. Kowalczyk treated sex with the same absurd intensity and utter lack of self-awareness that informed everything else about Live–while he lamented of a love “like water/pinned down and abused for being strange” on a song called “All Over You” (shudder), we didn’t realize how good we had it until “Lakini’s Juice.” The video likened the human sexual drive to a deli counter (Kowalczyk truly understood the sensual qualities of salted, cured meats) and managed to make a song with the lyric “I rushed the lady’s room/took the water from the toilet” even ickier. Having learned nothing from this experience, the lead single from the next album was a sex song called “Dolphin’s Cry” where video extras run screaming from a badly veiled metaphor. Say what you will about Kowalczyk, but make sure you say this guy fucks. — IAN COHEN

76. Filter and Crystal Method – “Trip Like I Do”

“Another world, another time, in the age of wonder,” begins a chant at the beginning of Crystal Method’s original version of “Trip Like You Do.” Looking back, that seems like an apt-enough description of the late 90s, when movie studios dropped millions on star-packed soundtracks to promote their latest blockbusters. Perhaps the oddest example of this phenomenon was the soundtrack to the 1997 film adaptation of Todd McFarlane’s graphic novel Spawn, which paired well-known metal and hard rock acts with popular DJs and electronic groups. (Think Korn with the Dust Brothers or Metallica with DJ Spooky.) Filter and Crystal Method’s “(Can’t You) Trip Like I Do”—a remix of the Vegas electronic duo’s single from the same year—was by far the album’s biggest hit.

Much like very idea of big budget soundtracks, the song is a relic from the 1990s: You had Crystal Method riding the wave of the very brief mainstream interest in electronica and Filter making the most of the lingering buzz from their first—and at that time, only—hit single, 1995’s “Hey Man, Nice Shot.” Alas, the song has not held up very well over the years: Filter’s decision to transform the track’s bizarre, nonsensical “lyrics” into something boastful and faux-angry, complete with generic hard rock riffs and out-of-place screaming, ruins the bombastic, aspirationally druggy charm the original held for those of us too young to have known better. With the benefit of hindsight (being 32 instead of 12) it now sounds exactly like what it likely always was: The shitty end result of cash grab collaboration between the poor man’s Chemical Brothers and the poor man’s Nine Inch Nails for an ill-fated comic book movie. –TAYLOR BERMAN

75. Silverchair – “Abuse Me”

Silverchair entered the global grunge scene with a serious credibility problem, as three Aussie teenagers who’d won a radio station’s demo contest and released their debut album—titled, terribly, Frogstomp—nearly a year after Kurt Cobain’s death. Maybe that’s why Daniel Johns and his schoolmates felt compelled to plumb the darkest depths of their young psyches on their second full-length, Freak Show, a record as obsessed with degradation and outsider identity as its name implies.

Although the harder track “Freak” became the Australian lead single, American fans heard “Abuse Me” first, and you can imagine why. The song is a perfectly executed Nirvana ripoff, from the ripply opening riff to the whispery verses and amped-up bridge to lyrics vague enough to be interpreted as masochistic. If it didn’t exactly prove that Silverchair transcended the sum of their influences, at least it confirmed that Johns was one of the world’s most competent Cobain stand-ins. – JUDY BERMAN

74. Days Of The New – “Touch, Peel And Stand”

Nirvana was the most legendary Seattle band, Pearl Jam was the most popular, Mudhoney had the most cred and Soundgarden were the most ambitious. But by the end of the decade, Alice In Chains became the most influential and no band owed them more debts than Days of the New–no mean feat, considering a band tellingly named after a Dirt deep cut sold 20 million albums, whereas DOTN mastermind Travis Meeks felt his project should’ve toured with Dave Matthews Band rather than Jerry Cantrell. But to literally everyone else, Days of the New drew from one single source of inspiration–Alice In Chains’ acoustic EP Sap–and ran with it. The album’s single “Touch, Peel and Stand” served as common ground for the ostensibly millions of people who didn’t want to have to choose between Jerry Cantrell and Dave Matthews Band. –IC

73. 311 – “Beautiful Disaster”

311’s breakout self-titled album had two huge hits: one of them a dopey nu-metal guitar chunkfest, the other a dancehall-flavored tune with a bassline cribbed halfway from the Stalag riddim. “Beautiful Disaster,” from the follow-up Transistor, is sort of like what might happen if you mashed them both together–huge riffs and reggae upstrokes–then pulled out all the goofy toasting and rapping. With lyrics that nod vaguely at drug addiction, “Beautiful Disaster” presents a more mature side of 311, and if lyrics like “some people really suck” don’t register as Seriously Heavy Shit the way they were intended–hey, at least those guitar harmonies still sound totally sick. –ANDY CUSH

72. Our Lady Peace – “Clumsy”

If you told Raine Maida you were drowning, well … he would not lend a hand. But he wouldn’t have known any better. “Clumsy” is a song of sneaky emotional intelligence, of recognizing how people can create mayhem without intent, and how the difference between heroism and harm can be a matter of awareness. That hasn’t been Maida’s strong suit, as he’s felt like a “One Man Army” while also rejecting superhuman capacity on “Superman’s Dead,” vying to be the Canadian Radiohead on Spiritual Machines, while Gravity was something closer to Canadian Staind. Which makes “Clumsy” a definitive song for Our Lady Peace, a Clark Kent that occasionally dreamed of being Superman but never could get out of the phone booth without a face plant.–IC

71. Smashing Pumpkins – “The Beginning is the End is the Beginning”

Whenever the Smashing Pumpkins contribute to a major motion picture, it creates a fascinating alternate history for the band. “Drown” was a glimpse of what might’ve occurred had Billy Corgan went into Siamese Dream as the same paisley-eyed flower-child of Gish; when “Doomsday Clock” seamlessly fit into Transformers fight scenes, it raised the possibility of Smashing Pumpkins regaining their alt-rock radio dominance as a crass commercial behemoth. And then there’s “The End is the Beginning is the End” from Batman & Robin, which signaled that electro-rock was going to be the future of Smashing Pumpkins, but in this case, it was adding block rockin’ beats to prescient, drop-C nu-metal riffage rather than the chiaroscuro Adore. Look, “The End” is awesome and Batman & Robin is not, but the latter turned out to be a blessing in disguise; by the time Smashing Pumpkins desperately needed a reboot, they couldn’t get a new director. –IC

70. Supergrass – “Cheapskate”

Supergrass are a British establishment that never crossed over to America, with the exception of “Cheapskate,” which landed them the only Billboard hit of their career in the summer of 97. Off their sophomore album In It for the Money, “Cheapskate” gets in and out in under three minutes, pairing Gaz Coombes’ uniquely English sneer to a blues-y organ riff. But it’s the chorus, which rips the song open with a searing riff, that undoubtedly opened it up to American ears. –JORDAN SARGENT

69. The Sundays – “Summertime”

The Sundays are best known for their janglepop, preternaturally dreamy in a way no one’s quite imitated, but their understated songwriting is just as noteworthy. The subject of “Summertime” isn’t such a new concept–the idea of summer doesn’t live up to the steaming-concrete reality, imagine!–but the execution is perfect: someone drawn to the idea of idyllic summer love, but cerebral enough to prod at the idea the whole time, and to know that the prodding’s ruining it. It’s good prodding, too. Wheeler’s fantasias are set right alongside chirpy personal-ad slogans, alienating and dehumanizing in a now-all-too-familiar way, and “angry young men with immaculate hair” is the best ’90s burn that came from inside the decade. But there’s no irony to the execution: Harriet Wheeler’s voice is summertime–buoyant, breeze-like, the perfect translation of the pastoral lovescapes she sings about. And unlike those, it’s real. –KATHERINE ST. ASAPH

68. Soundgarden – “Blow Up the Outside World”

Employing late-Beatles melodics in the service of nihilism like no contemporary save Elliott Smith, “Blow Up the Outside World” was the bleakest blast on Down on the Upside. (And that’s saying something for an album whose lead single was “Pretty Noose”.) “Nothing/seems to kill me,” drones Chris Cornell, “No matter how hard I try.” Even at his lowest, he shreds his lungs turning the title into a mission statement. In the liner notes for 1997’s posthumous A-Sides collection, Sub Pop co-founder Jonathan Poneman said this “should be declared the new national anthem”. Jesus Christ, he’s right. –BS

67. U2 – “Staring At The Sun”

Pop was–by U2 standards, at least–a failure commercially and critically, but today, it lives on as an infamous document of the lengths to which the band was willing to go to make music they believed to be timely, paradigm-shifting, and unabashedly huge in scope. “Staring at the Sun,” the record’s best charting single, was not as brazen a departure from form as the future-shock techno of the record’s first single “Discothèque,” and much of the more overtly electronics-heavy music featured on the album. Ultimately, this makes it more listenable than much of the rest of the album today: a languid, meandering, psych-pop dalliance, but with shuddering breakbeat to date it perfectly to its year. A much better song called “Staring at the Sun” would be written by TV on the Radio years later; depending on your mood, even The Offspring’s song of the same name may even stand the test of time better. But U2’s version stands as evidence that the band, however pompous they might risk being at every turn, never stopped pushing to redefine themselves in the 1990s, even at their most forgotten moments. –WINSTON COOK-WILSON

66. Better Than Ezra – “Desperately Wanting”

The mid-90s created a brimming subgenre of superficially milquetoast alt-rock songs that were way darker than anyone gave them credit for–Goo Goo Dolls’ “Slide,” “The Freshmen,” “Hey Jealousy,” the Nixons’ “Sister,” Ben Folds Five’s “Brick,” the unconfirmed possibility that Collective Soul’s “December” was about oral sex. Add “Desperately Wanting” to that list: rumor had it that it was inspired by Hell Week at the Kappa Sigma house at LSU where Better than Ezra formed. But those lyrics about getting your stomach pumped and lashing out at authority, well, that was actually Kevin Griffin recalling a childhood friend he lost to mental illness. One could argue which interpretation was darker, but either way, it cemented Better Than Ezra’s reputation as the band of frat boys who seemed a little more pensive at the keg. –IC

65. Counting Crows – “Long December”

Do you remember that Courtney Cox once dated Adam Duritz? Or that she’s in the “Long December” music video? Good, glad we got that out of the way.

The single– released in December 1996 as the second from Counting Crows’ Recovering the Satellites–was about a friend of Duritz’s who was in the car accident and was put-up in the hospital for a long while. A sweet meandering on the slow passing of time, the aspect that has maintained after all these years is that the worst month of the year does always always feels like an eternity. While the dulcet nasal melancholy of Duritz, it’s the glimmer of hope that suggests that “we all have reason to believe / that this year will be better than the last” that endures. An “Auld Lang Syne” of sorts for the hippie alt-rock set. —PUJA PATEL

64. The Prodigy – “Breathe”

British “electronica” had broken through to the U.S. mainstream by 1997, but never so ferociously as with The Prodigy, whose fealty to their head-banging breakbeats and freaky music videos (thanks in part to singer Liam Howlett’s crazed screw-face and reverse-clown mohawk) resonated in a country ready to go hard. “Breathe” wasn’t quite as big as their first single “Firestarter,” but the song’s opening synths found steady footing between acid house and metal and got lyrically weird for the outcasts of the outcasts: “Psychosomatic, addict, insane!” It made very little sense, but connected to the moment on a visceral level; listening to it 20 years later, I still wanna kick shit. –JULIANNE ESCOBEDO SHEPHERD

63. Ben Folds Five – “Battle of Who Could Care Less”

Scott Stapp never got the memo, but grunge was well and truly dead by 1997. Ben Folds Five threw it a funeral on their breakthrough single “Battle of Who Could Care Less,” a humble pianoman’s takedown of affectless slackers. Like The Modern Lovers’ “I’m Straight” and Weezer’s “Buddy Holly,” the song is so geeky, it’s transgressive. Scattered amid enough retro vocal harmonies and impassioned ivory-pounding to confirm the band’s nerd cred are some sick burns; “See, I’ve got your old ID / And you’re all dressed up like The Cure” is a genuine laugh line. But the hint of grudging infatuation that underlies their bitter mockery of a then-ubiquitous archetype complicates the sendup a bit. He may see right through it, but–just like us–Ben Folds has fallen for General Apathy and Major Boredom’s schtick anyway. –JB

62. The Offspring – “All I Want”

The Offspring were only a few years from going TRL when they released “All I Want” at the tail end of 1996, and it acts as one retroactive reminder that lead singer Dexter Holland could write a nice little pop-punk song. A song about rebelling against society, it worked best on the classic late-90s video game Crazy Taxi, in which users control a cabbie who criss-crosses a simulacrum of southern California with reckless abandon in order to get his or her customers to their destinations. Your character is working maniacally, but by its own rules. –JS

61. Cherry Poppin’ Daddies – “Zoot Suit Riot”

We were only a year away from the Gap mainstreaming the swing revival as an actual thing, not just the hobby of college kids who hadn’t yet graduated to steampunk, and the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies’ unlikely hit reaffirmed the beautiful possibilities of radio to occasionally boost songs no A&R would touch with a ten-foot upright bass. “It’s not our mission to be a swing band,” frontman Steve Perry (not from Journey) told SPIN, but a song like “Zoot Suit Riot” couldn’t help but stand for a whole movement. The Gap’s stock would peak shortly thereafter. –JEREMY GORDON

60. Foo Fighters – “My Hero”

Dave Grohl is basically untrained as a guitarist, and he has said that he approaches what is now his primary instrument as if he were still sitting behind the drum kit: the lowest strings are the kick, the snare and toms are in the middle, and up high are the cymbals. Nowhere is it easier to hear this unorthodox approach than on “My Hero,” with its ringing trebly leads subbing in for the huge cymbal crashes Grohl surely would have given the song if Nirvana had written it. Speaking of which, fans have widely assumed that Grohl wrote “My Hero” in tribute to his late friend and bandmate Kurt Cobain, though the lead Foo himself says it’s actually about “solid everyday people” doing heroic things within the normal course of their lives. Like just about everything in Grohl’s post-Nirvana catalog, the song is a little catchier and more saccharine than anything Cobain wrote himself, but it’s nice to imagine the professed fan of The Knack and Aerosmith would have enjoyed it anyway. –AC

59. Oasis – “All Around the World”

With multiple songs stretching past seven minutes, Oasis’ 1997 album Be Here Now has not aged… gracefully. The worst offender from a pure length perspective is “All Around the World,” which rolls past the nine minute mark. That said, it does contain the album’s most memorable hook, and even though the melody is a little cloying, the fluttery pre-chorus is even more rewarding from a songwriting perspective. “All Around the World,” in its full version, also justifies its length with a big jam that argues, if even briefly, in favor of Noel Gallagher’s narcissism. –JS

58. Incubus – “New Skin”

A lot of the best and worst music of the ‘90s took a cosmopolitan approach to genre, pairing hip-hop drums with bluesy slide guitar or Puff Daddy with Jimmy Page. Somewhere in the weird, muddled middle lies Incubus’s full-length debut S.C.I.E.N.C.E., a record by five mushroom-munching funky metal dudes from Calabasas who seemingly never had an idea they didn’t deem worthy of putting on wax. Incubus would scale back their more bizarre indulgences to big commercial success on the next few albums, but S.C.I.E.N.C.E. is the band’s essential document, filled with slap bass and distorted guitar, record scratches and smooth jazz licks, hand percussion and half-rapped vocals. “New Skin,” a minor hit built on djembe and sludgy power chords, is the aural equivalent of a graffiti-covered minivan with nag champa burning inside and a driver with white-guy dreads explaining his theories on Donnie Darko or Fight Club. Not the kind of situation you want to find yourself in every day, but if the mood strikes you and the weed is right, it’s the perfect ride. – AC

57. Smash Mouth – “Why Can’t We Be Friends”

“Shout out to all my haters!” — Steve Harvell upon discovering that he had his second radio hit of 1997, with a WAR cover at that. After the release of an album called Fush Yu Mang, Harvell would go on to have two more charting hits (“All Star” at No. 1, “I’m A Believer” at No. 25) and appearance on Guy Fieri’s Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives. 🙂 –PP

56. Save Ferris – “Come On Eileen”

You know someone, probably, who would argue that the canonical version of “Come On Eileen” is by Dexy’s Midnight Runners. But if you just can’t stand to hear it without an opening trumpet fanfare, know that you’re not alone. Dexy’s “Eileen” was already a bizarre chimera of a pop song, marrying Celtic music, new wave, tempo switch-ups, and lyrics that were definitely dirty but never made a whole lot of sense. Why not a highly caffeinated ska-punk version led by Save Ferris’ Monique Powell? There’s little more delightfully late-90s than Save Ferris jamming on the trombone against the checkerboard upholstery of their lime-green tour bus. –ANNA GACA

55. Sarah McLachlan – “Sweet Surrender”

Ninety-seven was the year McLachlan assumed her role as the queen mum of airy, fauxmotional pop–that summer is when she used her long-sought U.S. breakthrough to enlist her contemporaries for her woman-celebrating Lilith Fair. (Unfortunately, the festival’s mission of promoting women musicians actually backfired, as Luscious Jackson told SPIN in 2012, resulting in gendered radio ghettoization that effectively destroyed careers.) “Sweet Surrender,” McLachlan’s second American hit, was a biblical flood of lite romanticism, eschewing all the power other women musicians scrambled for through the decade and effectively dumping it on her lover’s doorstep in a very pretty soprano; it was the song equivalent of a silent film actress fainting on a divan. We can’t say she didn’t warn us, though. “It doesn’t mean much,” go the opening lyrics. “It doesn’t mean anything at all.” –JES

54. The Offspring – “Gone Away”

The Offspring are archetypal goofball SoCal pop-punks, but on “Gone Away,” they briefly imagine themselves as a band from Seattle, 1,100 miles north of their sunny Huntington Beach hometown. The beefy bass and sparse high-string guitar playing during the verses is straight from the “Smells Like Teen Spirit” playbook, and frontman Dexter Holland delivers his vocals with the strained sincerity of a latter-day grunge impostor like Gavin Rossdale or Wes Scantlin. It’s far from the band’s finest moment—that probably came sometime during their previous album Smash—but interesting as a showcase for the way the Offspring might sound if they ditched Spanglish and skateboards for heroin and flannel. –AC

53. Abra Moore – “Four Leaf Clover”

Abra Moore lived her gimmick: She grew up in a house with no electricity, proudly claimed the “hippie” mantle, and even popped up in Richard Linklater’s Slacker in a brief scene filmed as she was on her way to work. The earthy guitar-pop sincerity of “Four Leaf Clover,” which became popular just in time for the birth of Lilith Fair, was part of a continuum stretching to encompass artists like Michelle Branch and Nelly Furtado, though Moore was never lucky enough to get a Timbaland makeover. –JG

52. Third Eye Blind – “Graduate”

If BuzzFeed had been around in 1997, it could have made a pretty good personality quiz based on your favorite song from Third Eye Blind’s self-titled debut album. “Semi-Charmed Life” was for the carefree popular kids, or those who liked to think of themselves that way, “Jumper” was the choice of sensitive intellectual types, “How’s It Going to Be” was for hopeless romantics. Within the relatively polite confines of a massively successful power-pop album, “Graduate” was the song for those who just wanted to rock, man. The riffs were a little tougher thanthe others, the drums a little harder-hitting, the “Can I graduate!?” backing vocals playing like an update on Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” for the Boy Meets World era. And the swirling, nearly chaotic bridge contains what are surely the only 40 seconds of music 3EB ever recorded that could be credibly compared to Jimi Hendrix. –AC

51. Loreena McKennitt – “The Mummers’ Dance”

By 1997, Canadian artist Loreena McKennitt had spent over a decade making albums of decreasingly druidic folk music. Making an alt-rock hit from a May carol with earnest accompanying travelogues from Inishmore and Cornwall took a lot: a remix from DNA (resurfacing several years after putting a donk on Suzanne Vega’s sketch “Tom’s Diner”); several well-chosen syncs, including the trailer for Drew Barrymore period piece Ever After; a lowkey generational fascination with anything New Age or “spiritual.” The breathy oracular vocals, cultural-cafeteria instrumentation (violin, hurdy-gurdy, tabla and oud) and hushed seriousness would suggest insufferable levels of eat-pray-loving were the arrangement not so sinuous and restrained, and the harmonies so foregrounded and the melody as timeless as it aims for. –KS

50. Depeche Mode – “It’s No Good”

Electronica was seen as an extinction level event for alt-rock dinosaurs, and of all of 80s institutions still getting radio play, none were more prepared for survival than Depeche Mode … provided they made it to 1997 alive. The departure of Alan Wilder and David Gahan’s ongoing struggles with addiction led fans to believe that Depeche Mode was done. Instead, they carried on as a trio, and though a new voice taught Gahan to sing, he couldn’t teach him to love; more so than “Barrel of a Gun,” “It’s No Good” sounds dated in the best way possible, a classic so-dumb-it’s-brilliant Martin Gore lyric attached to the kind of seething, purple and black electronic production that still screamed 1997 when you heard guitar bands trying to co-opt it in 1998 and 1999. If not as ubiquitous as some of their other 90s hits, it at least achieved the frequent and dubious benchmark of being subject to a mind-blowingly inept nu-grunge cover. –IC

49. Green Day – “Hitchin’ A Ride”

The first flowering of Billie Joe Armstrong’s love of old time rock n’ roll, “Hitchin’ A Ride” rolls to a rockabilly shuffle that exists just south a Stray Cat strut. It’s a jaunty sound but “Hitchin’ A Ride” isn’t a party tune, rallying the troops for a night of drinking. Armstrong’s narrator is resigned to throwing in the towel on sobriety, determined to wash his guilt and troubles away with a fountain of booze. Such despair is disguised but by the roar of the trio–the band ratchet up the tension in the verse, then explode on the chorus and bridge–but the song’s weary heart indicates the progression in songcraft Armstrong was making in the back half of the ’90s. –STE

48. Beck – “Deadweight”

With its half-nonsensical lyrics and its hodgepodge of musical influences, “Deadweight”–released as a single from the A Life Less Ordinary soundtrack–wouldn’t be out of place on 1996’s sample-heavy, surreal masterpiece Odelay (like the majority of that album, it was produced by the Dust Brothers and it eventually ended up as a bonus track on the Odelay Deluxe Edition). Likewise, the fuzzed out Os Mutantes guitar and general bossa nova vibes mark it as a darker sonic cousin to “Tropicalia,” Beck’s ode to Brazil from 1998’s Mutations. Like nearly all other Beck songs from that fantastic two-year stretch, “Deadweight” sounds as great today as it did when it first came out. The same can’t be said for the film associated with it: A quick Google search reveals the Ewan McGregor-Cameron Diaz crime flick, which I remember loving when I saw it in theaters as a 13-year-old, holds just a 39 percent rating at Rotten Tomatoes and grossed a mere $4.4 million at the box office. –TB

47. INXS – “Elegantly Wasted”

With its walking bassline and a chorus that punches to the mezzanine, “Elegantly Wasted” owes more than a little to U2’s Achtung Baby. But the Gallagher brothers get some credit, too. Noel called INXS “has-beens” at the ‘96 Brit Awards, and during the recording sessions for Elegantly Wasted, Michael Hutchence had a dustup with Liam in a local pub. (The fight was defused by … Bono.) According to lore, Hutchence recorded new backing vocals for the exuberant title track without his band’s knowledge. Under “I’m so elegantly wasted,” you might hear him sing “I’m better than Oasis”. –BS

46. Creed – “My Own Prison”

Like a youth group kid conning his friends into attending a Wednesday-night gathering, Creed’s debut single dragged post-grunge to the throne of judgment. Frontman Scott Stapp–the stepson of a Pentecostal minister–prefigures the antics of his post-Creed years by flagellating himself at the feet of Christ, seething over Mark Tremonti’s muted progression. Compared to their crossover hits, this is positively humble: it sounds like Seven Mary Three at three-sevenths speed. In a sacrificial gesture, Stapp even hands the chorus over to Tremonti. They got grander, but they never sounded more sincere. –BS

45. Foo Fighters – “Monkey Wrench”

“Monkey Wrench” is a hallmark Foo Fighters single from the very first second, hurtling headlong in their very specific way right from the jump. The song is about the dissolution of Dave Grohl’s first marriage, and despite its speed at the outset there’s never really a release. Instead, “Monkey Wrench” remains tightly coiled for its duration—even when Grohl shreds his throat during the bridge, he only seems to be winding himself tighter. It doesn’t offer the catharsis of “Everlong,” working better as a sort of prelude to that song, which, given the order in which the singles were released, may have been the point. –JS

44. Our Lady Peace – “Superman’s Dead”

The “no, ah-ooo-ooo” in “Superman’s Dead” is one of the crucial lyric-less hooks of ‘90s alt-rock; it’s right up there with the riff/”yeah” pairing in Collective Soul’s “Shine.” The song is perhaps Our Lady Peace’s most memorable foray into the U.S. singles market: a bleak, strummy anthem that was all brooding, In-Utero-reminiscent chording, power yelps, and shameless crypto-platitudes (“Doesn’t anybody ever know / that the world’s a subway?”). That is to say, it amalgamated all the best grunge songwriting tropes. There’s plenty of textbook Billy-Corgan-yell in singer Raine Maida’s belligerent tenor delivery, mixed with some incongruously operatic moments when the wall of guitars hits in the chorus. Our Lady Peace’s song came at the tail end of the era when Cobain fan-fiction ran most rampant on alt-rock radio–at the beginning of a brave new era full of faceless alt-rock/power-pop bands and brash rap-rockers. It endures as a pleasant, wonderfully subtlety-free time capsule. –WCW

43. Cornershop – “Brimful of Asha”

Norman Cook (a.k.a. Fatboy Slim) gets all the credit for making “Brimful of Asha” a hit, with a remix that sped up Cornershop’s leisurely riff and nearly rocketed frontman Tjinder Singh’s vocals into Alvin and the Chipmunks territory. But that’s underselling the charms of the original version, a work of exuberant cultural hybridity that emerged amid a blindingly white latter-day Britpop scene. An homage to Indian cinema and its behind-the-scenes queen, the playback singer Asha Bhosle, the track meanders into a loose bridge (conspicuously absent from the Cook remix) that finds Singh shouting out global pop institutions from T. Rex to Trojan Records. “Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow” notwithstanding, this is a love song to the record player. And for kids who came across it on alt-rock radio, “Brimful of Asha” was an education in great music they couldn’t hear without turning the dial. –JB

42. Squirrel Nut Zippers – “Hell”

If you asked someone in the 1930s to predict the sound of the 1990s, they might have come up with something like Squirrel Nut Zippers: neo-swing music narrated by a suit-clad wise guy inexplicably unaware of how absurd the whole thing looked. Heaven is a place, and “Hell” is an immortal description of the gnarliest joint on the other side: “Teeth are extruded and bones are ground / Then baked into cakes which are passed around.” –AG

41. Dandy Warhols – “Not if You Were the Last Junkie on Earth”

From its mouthful of a title to its lighthearted depiction of heroin addiction as so 1993, “Not If You Were the Last Junkie on Earth” was a bizarre single. And yet, with that irresistible power-pop opening—three whip-cracks of percussion, then the stop-you-in-your-tracks lyric, “I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passé”—and a David LaChapelle-directed music video starring a troupe of dancing syringes, of course it made the Dandy Warhols stars.

It was a well-timed hit, too. Dandys frontman Courtney Taylor-Taylor may have been addressing one particular ex-girlfriend, but he could’ve been singing about early-90s alt-rock scene in general. At a moment when the cultural toll of heroin chic had become achingly obvious, “Junkie” closed the book on a dark period of music history and injected the MTV mainstream with a welcome dose of arch, Britpop-style irony. –JB

40. Veruca Salt – “Volcano Girls”

Teaming with Bob Rock, the producer behind Motley Crue’s Dr Feelgood and Metallica’s Black Album, Veruca Salt wound up with a sound so heavy it obliterated any idea the quartet were mere mimics of the Breeders. “Volcano Girls” is a big-footed romp, a song that proudly recycles ’70s arena rock riffs then marries this muscle to power pop melodies. Veruca Salt doesn’t disavow their indie past–indeed, a full verse nods at their 1994 hit “Seether,” styled as a deliberate allusion to the Beatles’ “Glass Onion”–but the key to the single is how the hooks barrell through any self-awareness; what matters is the riff, not the wink. Veruca Salt was determined that “Volcano Girls” played to the base instincts–probably with the hope it’d bring in a listener or thousand–and that’s why it’s thrilling: it’s capricious rock & roll, in love with its own sound and style. –STE

39. Oasis – “D’You Know What I Mean”

The moment the Gallaghers stepped out of that helicopter was the moment the Britpop bubble had burst. Oasis, one of the movement’s pillars, was powered by blue collar goodwill before drowning in their hubris on “D’You Know What I Mean?”—there’s no defense for stacking that many guitar tracks, feedback, and backmasked beside slalom levels of cocaine. And so, you get the indulgence and lack of self-awareness that’s inextricable from Oasis’ legacy. Look at the visual non-sequitur of Liam Gallagher attempting to lip-sync backmasked vocals at the video’s end—”D’You Know What I Mean” was about impulse, not better senses. Radiohead’s OK Computer, released two months prior, would presciently underscore the societal paranoia that’s still salient today. But in 1997, “D’You Want I Mean”—all seven minutes of it—sounded prettier and topped the UK Singles Chart. Twenty years out and more sober, the single works as an empty-calorie detour, a less problematic can of Pepsi. –BRIAN JOSEPHS

38. Beck – “Jack-Ass”

The plinking guitar that runs through the first half of “Jack-Ass” is a sample from “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue,” but not Bob Dylan’s original—it’s a cover by the band Them. Beck, of course, began as an outsider folk artist, and on “Jack-Ass,” he nods to one of the greats as he shapes his own fried-out, hip-hop-inspired style. When the sample drops out “Jack-Ass” briefly goes singer-songwriter, but then it detours again, back to where it all began: Beck on guitar and harmonica at once, over a barnyard menagerie of snorts and growls. “I remember the way that you smiled / When the gravity shackles were wild” might be as poetic and enigmatic as a Dylan line, but mostly, it’s just very Beck. –AG

37. The Chemical Brothers – “Block Rockin’ Beats”

A mission statement for British big beat, the breakbeat-intensive electronic music finally upending the guitar domination of the American alt-charts, “Block Rockin’ Beats” was a gift-wrapped example of creative and nostalgic pastiche in the sampling era. The bass funk that drove it was sampled from The Crusaders; the vocal sample, “back with another one of those block rockin’ beats,” came from Schoolly D; for the chorus, the Manchester duo added high-charged, synth pitch-shifting that, in retrospect, sounds like goofing off, and yet became an iconic palette across the world. American corporate “EDM” would not exist without it. –JES

36. That Dog – “Never Say Never”

“Never Say Never” wasn’t on Totally Crushed Out, that dog’s Sweet Valley High-invoking breakout album, but it might as well have been: “I’m crushed dead, just horribly frustrated–no, furious at you for being so great, but I never took it out on you. Shouldn’t that count?” A coat of production gloss by Brad Wood, best known for producing Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville through whitechocolatespaceegg, brings out the compactness in Anna Waronker’s deceptively sketchlike songwriting: everything here is a hook. And brightened by Rachel and Petra Haden’s Greek-chorus backing vocals and the latter’s buoyant violin solo, and assisted by keyboards by Go-Gos guitarist (and Waronker’s sister-in-law) Charlotte Caffey, everything here is irresistible. –KS

35. Bloodhound Gang – “Fire Water Burn”

I don’t know if I’m speaking for every suburban middle school kid in Philly in 1994, but King of Prussia was known for two things back then: a fairly nondescript mall and a band named Bloodhound Gang who frequently showed up on the marquee at Brownie’s on Ridge Pike. But then, the KOP Mall blew the fuck up and so did Bloodhound Gang; nature abhors a vacuum, whether it’s for Wilson’s leather jackets or the connective tissue between Licensed to Ill and Three Dollar Bill Y’all. I gotta admit, “I’m not black like Barry White/I am white like Frank Black is” is pretty damn clever, especially as it leads into a “Monkey’s Gone To Heaven” quote. It should’ve been a sign that we were wrong to underestimate Bloodhound Gang after the followup single “I Wish I Was Queer So I Could Get Chicks” failed to infiltrate KROQ’s playlist. Two years later, “The Bad Touch” resulted in Hooray For Boobies selling about five million copies, about the same number as the Beyonce album with “Crazy in Love” on it. –IC

34. Third Eye Blind – “How’s It Going to Be”

Third Eye Blind were almost universally derided by any music nerd with self-respect in 1997, blamed for creating the lowest common denominator for rock radio while touring with—lol—Smash Mouth, of all bands. But the teens who loved them wouldn’t develop a strong sense of self-respect ’til close to a decade later. For some kids, like the private school drama queens who lived near me, Stephen Jenkins became the leader of a band for the post-grunge kids who loved “Everlong” but didn’t really get Dave Grohl without Kurt Cobain otherwise; a band for an audience that was desperately waiting for Jimmy Eat World to arrive.

As for “How’s It Going to Be,” it was the anthem about heartbreak on an album that seemed full of them, with the benefit of having a hook that winked at the future of emo. That’s to its credit—the song hinges on the inevitability of doom and the vapid catharsis that will pull you through it. It’s perfectly crafted for those willing a deeply-mired emotional (or existential) crisis, but who have about as much weight on their shoulders as a stone-washed denim jacket from the Gap. A true masterpiece for the suburban set—one that only Gotye’s “Somebody I Used to Know” has touched in terms of subject matter and pop visibility. If only the Chainsmokers had such skill. –PP

33. Matchbox 20 – “Push”

Some songs, even from what might seem like the relatively recent past, could simply not happen–or, at least, be distributed as a major pop single–today. An anthemic song in which a macho lead singer yodels “I want to push you a-round” with impunity and then doesn’t wait for permission to do so would fit into this category. (Though Rob Thomas insisted that he was singing from the perspective of a woman doing the pushing-down-and-around.) For me, “Push,” despite other possible nominees, is the Matchbox 20 song. It’s also one of the most far-flung and most ubiquitous examples of the stew of grunge-derived musical tendencies, Top-40-ready common sense, and nebulously edgy lyrical material that characterized rock at this time. Run it all the way down from Third Eye Blind to Everclear to even the then-lecherous and antagonistic Smash Mouth and Sugar Ray. But no one took it higher on the charts in a more unlikely fashion than Rob Thomas on this song. –WCW

32. The Verve Pipe – “The Freshmen”

Though not originally a 1997 track–the single is a re-recording of a 1992 track that showed signs of becoming an inchoate breakout hit–“The Freshmen” lodged itself firmly into the year’s alt-rock canon, albeit largely via “wait, THAT’S what it’s about?” shock and listicles. (The band, prone to telling cagey backstories to the press, didn’t really discourage those.) The track is a guy’s futile, increasingly bitter flight from his potential role in his ex-girlfriend’s abortion and suicide–I can’t be held responsible, she was touching her face,” though it supposedly came of a misheard Divinyls lyric, is uncannily spot-on in how it echoes real-life redirection of blame, usually onto girls. Angst fights rationalization and wins, the melody turns from alma mater stateliness into a roar, and millions of listeners’ nostalgia is primed to get weird. –KS

31. Fiona Apple – “Sleep to Dream”

Fiona Apple’s debut album Tidal boasts one of the strongest runs of singles of any late-’90s alternative album. If “Criminal” is the more iconic artifact 20 years later–banned music video and all–”Sleep to Dream,” Tidal’s third single, was the perfect introduction to Apple’s peerless musical sensibility. One of the greatest kiss-off anthems in a discography that is full of them, “Sleep to Dream” exemplified the seething jazz-tronic production sense that makes Tidal singular in Apple’s discography and today, an endlessly listenable classic that sounds both distinctly of its time (only the finest breakbeats for Fiona) and way ahead of it (a point of inspiration for endless singer-songwriters who came after her). It also distilled the unapologetic attitude that, that same year, would help make Fiona Apple an undeniable star. –WCW

30. David Bowie – “I’m Afraid of Americans”

The years between his lackluster Let’s Dance follow-up, 1984’s Tonight, and the demise of Tin Machine in the early ‘90s were the least inspired of David Bowie’s career. It took a reunion with his Berlin Trilogy collaborator Brian Eno, for the refreshingly bizarre concept album Outside, to put him back in touch with the zeitgeist. Recorded during those sessions, “I’m Afraid of Americans” debuted on the Showgirls soundtrack before landing on Bowie’s next release, 1997’s Earthling. But the original version sounds downright anemic compared to the Nine Inch Nails remix, which appropriates the glitchy industrial-pop flourishes of The Downward Spiral to render the ballad of dead-eyed Jonny and his endless appetite for Coke, pussy and cars all the more chilling. Bowie claimed, at the time, that the track was “merely sardonic” in its depiction of his adopted home. Like so many of his songs, though, this bleak portrait of American masculinity proved all too prescient. – JB

29. White Town – “Your Woman”

The late 90s is where “world music” (ahem, Indian and Middle Eastern music) found its way onto alternative radio. Talvin Singh was introducing tabla to drum-n-bass after working with Bjork; Prodigy lost their damn mind on the speed before mellowing out over Shahin Badar’s wafting ghazal interlude in “Smack My Bitch Up”; Cornershop, a band whose name was a wink to stereotype, had a frontman with Punjabi heritage and a hit (“Brimful of Asha”) devoted to Asha Bhosle and the hidden playback singers in Bollywood. And then there was White Town’s “Your Woman.”

White Town is an Indian man named Jyoti Prakash Mishra. “Your Woman” is a trippy mind-meld of gender-fluidity that at any given point could take place from the perspective of a gay woman, a straight man, a gay man, or the woman that Mishra really futzed things up with. The 1930s trumpet sample, taken from melancholic jazz performer Al Bowlly (it appears on Bowlly and Lew Stone’s “My Woman”) only bolsters the mindfuckery–a hypnotic, lilting earworm that stuck with you for days. –PP

28. Radiohead – “Let Down”

OK Computer is famously an album about technological alienation, recorded long before biological attachment to our many screens became a facet of modern culture, but “Let Down” is dismayed with regular humanity. Over a diamond web of arpeggiated guitars, Thom Yorke collects the emptiest of feelings as he imagines all the people in their planes, trains, and automobiles, disconnected from each other. He warns against sentiment supposedly keeping us together, and sings of a Kafkaesque metamorphosis enabling him to fly away, before admitting he’d just end up smushed on the floor. It is fantastically moody, waves of angst rippling outward from Yorke’s alien voice, the strangeness of which headed off charges he was just being kind of emo. But music this gorgeous can’t help but counter whatever depressed thing is contained in the lyrics, and the trembling wonder of the melody breaks through Yorke’s mindful reservations about the human condition. You might be let down by other people, but as Radiohead sing about the feeling, it seems like a starting point to something better, not an ending. – JG

27. Paula Cole – “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone”

This Fire’s closing track “I Don’t Want to Wait” has had the longer pop-culture afterlife, but “Cowboys” was the bigger hit, as well as a Grammy nominee for Song of the Year. Cole’s question is answered in the verses, as her burly farmer slowly drifts from her prairie-porch visions. The snare lopes and her doot-doo-doots gallop, but the most memorable bit may be the acidic way she says “you go have a beer” on the final pre-chorus. –BS

26. Green Day – “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”

A song in which Billie Joe Armstrong trades in his power-chord angst for contemplative strings and an acoustic. A leftover from their star-making 1994 effort Dookie, “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)” lacked just enough serrated distinction to become a ubiquitous suburban high-school graduation hymnal. The anthem—which is more than a bitter send-off than a loving farewell—aged as well as the Vitamin C hit, but the bite would return to Green Day’s most inescapable hits by the time American Idiot shifted the zeitgeist. Still, once you get past the nostalgic phlegm, you’re still left with one of the cleanest examples of good songwriting: a universal sentiment expressed with palpable simplicity. –BJ

25. Beck – “New Pollution”

Cross-genre diffusion is a commonality in the Internet age, yet—even 20 years later—Beck’s opus Odelay still sounds deserving of every positive adjective that begins with a z. “The New Pollution,” which sounds as if David Byrne told George Michael to lighten up before “Careless Whisper,” stands as the exemplar for the album’s irreplicable peculiarity. The slide guitar, joyously off-beat drum pattern, and that resonant sax weave into this harmony in which you hardly notice the Frankenstein seams. Beck’s lyrics are admittedly nonsense, but they deadpan onward naturalistically. For a nation that’s spent its existence going out of its way not to make sense, it’s a metaphor. –BJ

24. Smash Mouth – “Walkin’ on the Sun”

Take it from me: “Walkin’ on the Sun,” a sneeringly half-rapped song by a spiky-haired, 30-year-old dude in oversized board shorts about (among other things) the death of the hippie dream and the crack epidemic, could really send a thrill through a middle-school gymnasium. The musical detailing in Smash Mouth’s first hit–a wonderfully unlikely #1 on the alternative charts–suits its decades-spanning subject matter: It’s a steaming casserole of early-’60s/late-’90s musical styles presaging later curiosities like JXL’s remix of Elvis’ “Little Less Conversation.” The sound of the band evokes a raucous night at some truck stop bar, which ends with some drunk firing up the shitty, blown-out organ on the corner of the stage. “Walkin’ on the Sun” is about the apocalypse, but more so nothing at all. It’s a wonderland of post-Odelay word salad that would make even the Cake guy blush, and every gesture in it is unforgettable. –WCW

23. Sarah McLachlan – “Building a Mystery”

Every generation gets the douchebag archetype they deserve, and who better to represent the brooding late ’90s than this Angel-looking, cross-bearing, church-squatting, winter-sandals-wearing, Rastafarian dilettante, beautiful fucked-up scrub? 1997 was a more earnest time, and how far removed from it you are likely determines how much you think McLachlan is mocking the dude or admiring him from an unasked-for distance. But the hook to “Free Fallin’” is still pretty good when reclothed in gossamer; the lyric is measured and empathetic where sassy or glib would have been easy; and today’s moody, hazy slowcore owes a largely unacknowledged debt to Surfacing and Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. –KS

22. Nine Inch Nails – “The Perfect Drug”

Trent Reznor doesn’t like “The Perfect Drug.“ He claims to have knocked the abidingly weird song out in a week or so, on deadline for the soundtrack for David Lynch’s even-stranger film Lost Highway. Perhaps that’s why the hook is so simple and immediate: At that time Reznor was hard rock’s most notorious perfectionist, but he didn’t have time to doubt his instincts here. The song still sounds like he could have spent several years tweaking its particulars, however. From its opening moments, it’s deranged and overstuffed even by NIN standards. The droning vamp and verse emulate the low string on Satan’s Stratocaster slowly being slowly bent up, before the song explodes into peak, batshit Reznor maximalism. The song has a handful of constantly complicating grooves that fall in and out–most iconically, the dizzying, hyperactive drum’n’bass breakdown that’s doesn’t sound like it could possibly be the work of either a simple human or a simple machine. In other words, it’s a NIN production par excellence: deafening, damaged but fussy, comically melodramatic, unable to commit to any one idea for very long, catchy despite its best efforts, and definitely visionary. –WCW

Nine Inch Nails: The Perfect Drug (1997) from Nine Inch Nails on Vimeo.

21. Oasis – “Don’t Go Away”

In 1997, the 70-minute-plus Be Here Now found Oasis at the peak of cocaine-addled rock star excess. They recorded the demo for “Don’t Go Away,” a song about pining for lasting love from a jet plane, during a stay on a private Caribbean island. The finished product is as maximalist as the album is—padded out with strings and finished with an acoustic outro that lasts a whole minute. It’s certainly capable of outstaying its welcome, but it was also an alternative hit on the American charts for a band who notoriously under-performed in the States. –AG

20. The Prodigy – “Firestarter”

The months leading up to the release of Fat of the Land was a blunt telling of the shift of alternative music and embrace of electronica, even as the Prodigy resisted the idea that their growing popularity might indeed be tied to newly acceptable genre-cool. Ascending from the role of performative rave punks to that of performative Rock Stars implied success, after all—even if the group’s grab-bag sampling made them more “loud” than anything else. (Something the band realized as they toured small U.S. rock venues in lieu of clubs, only to discover that a soundystem rigged for grunge was not ideal for their speed-addled dance music.)

But cool thrived–Madonna, who spoke about hating techno, was rumored to have wooed the band to come over to Maverick after nearly two dozen labels bid over their 1997 release, and both Bono and Jerry Seinfeld attended their small, New York release show. The kool-aid was strong enough that “Breathe” and “Firestarter” landed on the alternative charts, while the third single–“Smack My Bitch Up”–benefitted and broke the Billboard Top 100.

“Firestarter” was the single that started the Prodigy, though, and was performed years before they officially released “Breathe” as Fat of the Land first single. While they were both dancers in underground clubs in the U.K., Liam Howlett told Keith Flint to drop vocals on top of the frenetic drum-n-bass track, acting as hype man for the record while dancers performed. “I’m the trouble starter, punkin’ instigator / I am the firestarter, twisted firestarter” landed, becoming the group’s climactic dance floor anthem, while developing an edgy storyline to the pair’s tattooed punkish veneer. Most of being a rock star is enigma, anyway. —PP

19. Ben Folds Five – “Brick”

The vocally challenged, piano-led Ben Folds Five–acidic chroniclers of their hip Chapel Hill scene–were an unlikely bet to land a pop hit, let alone one about abortion. Nevertheless, some combination of the narrative, Folds’ elegant, cyclical keyboard figure, and the falsetto-studded chorus (written by drummer Darren Jessee) struck a nerve, making this possibly the worst-sung Top 20 hit of all time. Sounding bone-tired throughout, Folds is empathetic and elliptical, rendering his partner’s turmoil without fully inhabiting it. –BS

18. Jamiroquai – “Virtual Insanity”

You know the moving floor. If nothing else is remembered about Jamiroquai, who were a force on British radio well before their one and only American hit, it’s that they did their best work on a moving floor. (Well, that and the big, fuzzy hat.) And with all respect to England, what was this? “Virtual Insanity” is radio mish mosh, a collection of disparate elements—punch-drunk piano riffs, stabbing strings, hip-hop percussion, a funky white boy vocal for the ages—congealing in orgastic pop pleasure. Jamiroquai were singing about the same technological alienation as Radiohead, and having a way better time; you didn’t really register a pointed finger about how people “always seem to be governed by this love we have / for useless, twisting, our new technology” when you were busy dancing. And just as easily as they’d slid onto the radio, the floor quickly moved them out of sight. Still, songs these irresistible deserve to be treated with respect. –JG

17. Tonic – “If You Could Only See”

It sounds like it’s describing a love triangle, but Tonic frontman Emerson Hart is singing to the parents who disowned him after he took up with an older woman. A propulsive barrage of guitars scream like cars flying past a phonebooth, as Hart pleads his case in vain. Typically for Tonic, the composition is airtight–bracketed by choruses, closing with a resolving sigh–which makes Hart’s anguished performance that much more impressive. As for the couple, they eventually broke up, but she called him after Tonic’s Grammy nomination. –BS

16. Everclear – “Everything to Everyone”

“Everything to Everyone,” an cautionary tale about a serial people-pleaser, did not end up being the most ubiquitous hit from Everclear’s sophomore breakthrough So Much for the Afterglow (that would probably be “Father of Mine, a snowballing radio hit in the following year). However, it was the one that cemented them as more than a one-hit wonder, signalling to those who hadn’t taken a chance on their new album yet that it was an even-more-immaculate collection of well-oiled power-pop anthems than the last one. The distortion on the walls of guitar was gentler; the hooks–and the narratives about sad, lowdown ne’er-do-wells in the outskirts of Hollywood–were carefully honed. In these songs, Alexakis became more impartial narrator than the guy in the thick of the action, as he was more often on 1995’s Sparkle and Fade. Based around a siren noise that lead singer/Everclear musical director Art Alexakis made with a distorted Wurlitzer, “Everything to Everyone” is one of Everclear’s greatest, sleazy breakbeat-driven pop anthems: the moment when the band proved that they could show the world dying from more than one compelling angle. –WCW

15. Sister Hazel – “All For You”

For an eight-year-old kid just learning to love the stuff he heard on the radio while riding around in the car with mom and dad, “All for You” had everything: a melody so sticky you could conjure it in your head at a moment’s notice, an instrumental intro that gave you a chance to press record on your cassette deck before he started singing, lovey-dovey lyrics you could imagine using to serenade your first crush, twangy vocal harmonies that suggested a romantic world out there beyond the confines of your suburb. Sister Hazel released an acoustic version of “All for You” on their self-titled first album before striking gold with the full-band re-recording on …Somewhere More Familiar, and that’s one’s just fine, too, except that listening to it deprives you of hearing 1997’s most mildly rippin’ guitar solo. –AC

14. Matchbox 20 – “3 AM”

“3AM” was a song that Rob Thomas wrote about his mother suffering from cancer, and when viewed through that lens it is a nerve-wracking song about nothing less than confronting death. Of course, for most people the song hits as a fidgety rant about needing a partner, an uncomfortable gap that Thomas nonetheless acknowledges. Either way, it highlights his songwriting, with verses and instrumental refrains that are as catchy as its chorus. Like the best pop, “3AM” is melodic enough to sell itself as whatever you want it to be. –JS

13. Sugar Ray – “Fly”

One of the keys to Sugar Ray’s “Fly” is how the end of its guitar riff seems to hang in suspended animation–it could resolve, it could dissolve, but the answer isn’t certain. It’s the riskiest move in a song determined to celebrate good times even in the wake of bad, a sentiment underscored by how Sugar Ray keeps returning to their interpolation of Gilbert O’Sullivan’s mawkish “Alone Again (Naturally),” accelerating the mother’s death by forty years. But sadness doesn’t touch the heart of “Fly.” It’s a song of transcendence, an anthem for the beach, the summer, or at least a moment where troubles wash away and you’re left with the possibility of a sunny afternoon. Sure, it’s corny but that’s the point: good times require the suspension of sadness, and Sugar Ray’s determination to keep things light–even when there’s death and tedium in their sight–keeps their breakthrough single buoyant. –STE

12. Mighty Mighty Bosstones – “The Impression That I Get”

A decade and a half before the phrase “check your privilege” entered mainstream cultural discourse, Mighty Mighty Bosstones spent an entire song doing just that. “Have you ever felt a pain so powerful, so heavy you collapse?” asks frontman Dicky Barrett. No? Because neither has he. You’ve never “had the odds stacked up so high you need a strength most don’t possess?” The Bosstones haven’t either.

“The Impression That I Get” is so frank about its author’s relative ease in life that it becomes almost zenlike. And the band delivers its message with such charm that when Barrett gets to its crucial third verse– “I’m not a coward I just haven’t been tested / I’d like to think that if I was I would pass” –you’re pretty sure he’d pass too. The song is possibly the most concise articulation humanity has ever produced of this very particular feeling: knowing that you’re too green to fully appreciate the gravity of a particular situation, but hoping that you’d do OK if it were ever placed in front of you. And that unforgettable horn riff and lovably beery chorus make it the best artifact of the weird moment that was the ‘90s ska revival, too. –AC

11. Meredith Brooks – “Bitch”

This song was too sunny for it to be totally believable—we were coming off the riot grrrl high, with feminism in music becoming more diluted as it trickled up; Brooks was, of sorts, radio rock for people who believed the Spice Girls would usher in the revolution. And yet, “Bitch” was immediately anthemic, if a little embarrassing, Brooks declaring her right to contain multitudes … to a man, symbolic of the great softening in woman-power rock music. Its title was occasionally censored (“Nothing In Between”) because we were apparently a politer society back then, which imbued it with a renegade cool that seems quaint in retrospect. Listening to it now is objectively unpleasant, and yet it’s so imbued into the cultural fabric it’s difficult not to appreciate. “I’m a sinner, I’m a saint… I do not feel ashamed!” Preach, Brooks. –JES

10. Chumbawamba – “Tubthumping”

For many bands, the notion of being a one hit wonder carries a negative connotation. But others, like the British rockers Chumbawumba, can wear the phrase like a championship belt. There’s no shame in writing “Tubthumping,” a single so good that it was bound to completely overshadow everything that came before and after it (at least in America, anyway). It is one of the great drinking songs of the ‘90s, celebrating the emboldenment you feel while getting hammered but also affixing drunkeness with a melancholic glow, the shout along chorus getting cut through by a whimpering trumpet solo. The band also gives the song a second context, naming it after a colloquial word for progressive political fighting, allowing its chorus to be read as a chant of encouragement. It’s mostly a big, dumb, fun song, but if you like mild subversion, “Tubthumping” may be the one hit wonder for you. –JS

9. blink-182 – “Dammit”

Has a pop-punk song ever opened more reasonably? “It’s alright to tell me what you think about me,” Mark Hoppus sings on “Dammit,” the finest of blink-182’s pre-Barker songs. “I won’t try to argue or hold it against you.” But before long, the singer has fallen back to his old, depressive thought traps. He thinks about his ex in bed with another guy, and fantasizes about running into them while trying to maintain the mask of someone who doesn’t care that much, though he obviously does. Over a woozy, circular riff practiced by thousands of aspiring teen guitarists, he ping-pongs between wistful remembrances and spiteful kiss-offs, before settling on a more bittersweet emotion: “Well, I guess this is growing up.”

For a bunch of bratty court jesters who loved to show off their dicks, blink-182 were always best when indulging their serious side. “Dammit” captures the messiness of emotional maturity, when you can sense some far-off adult resolution through a cloud of resentment. (It’s also just a lot of fun, infused with energy meant for moshing with a tear rolling down your eye.) You can hear Hoppus trying to convince himself everything’s fine, though the note in his voice says it isn’t. How he’s really feeling is right there in the one-word title, which is never actually uttered in the song—a perfectly unrefined expression of angst as only pop-punk’s finest idiot poets might land on. –JG

8. The Verve – “Bitter Sweet Symphony”

The guitar squeals evoke a baby’s first breath, the six-note orchestral riff is a falling teardrop anthromorphosized, and the triumphant harmonies are Sisyphus finally getting that boulder to the top. The Verve reached past Britpop’s commercial structure to sample a rework of a Rolling Stones deep cut. As a result, the ephemeral became ethereal and the quintet became the first men to solve existentialism. But even a summary of the entirety of the human experience is owned by bitter Brits in suits. The Stones’ former manager Allen Klein reneged on an agreement and demanded 100 percent of the song’s royalties, legally stripping the Verve of their achievement. –BJ

7. Natalie Imbruglia – “Torn”

Once more for the “Torn” fans who don’t already know: Natalie Imbruglia’s version is a cover. The original “Torn” is by a band called Ednaswap, and if you, an alien descending to Earth, were going to guess which version would someday appear on an alt-rock songs list, it wouldn’t be Imbruglia’s. Ednaswap’s song is all distorted guitar and raw-edged vocals. Imbruglia’s is a melodic soft-rock smash that isn’t going to retire from Lite FM rotation until the day FM radio gives out. Find someone who thinks they don’t know it, and tell them, “I’m all out of faith / This how I feeeel.”

If you cover “Torn” now, like One Direction did, you cover Imbruglia’s song, with the poppy acoustic guitar riff and the passionate bridge breakdown (a section that didn’t appear in the original). It’s so perky that, instrumentally, it barely registers as sad. Its staying power is in Imbruglia’s delivery, the pretend nonchalance of her sweatshirt in the music video, the earnest way she breaks the fourth wall to let you know: Nothing’s fine, I’m torn. It’s cheesy. It’s perfect. –AG

6. Blur – “Song 2”

“Song 2” is a perfect two-minute song. A conclusive rationale for this fact has never been ascertained. Is it an intentionally dolty parody of grunge’s more mindless impulses? Or is it a stroke of creative genius? Whatever, man. Woo hoo! –AG

5. Radiohead – “Karma Police”

Sometimes Radiohead’s signature malaise is just as palpable when you zero in on the band’s parts, as is the case with “Karma Police” Over a chord progression that would go on to be a benchmark for intermediate guitar learners in the years to come, Thom Yorke’s fragility is supplanted for a more acrid, despondent presence. What results is a severe portrait of _OK Computer_‘s isolationism, where the mundane are terrors. “For a minute there, I lost my self,” Thom says as he disappears into the noise that threatens to supplant us all. –BJ

4. Marcy Playground – “Sex and Candy”

The joke, of course, is that the title’s “Sex and Candy” and the lyric drops all manner of glam-rock references–cherry pie, suede platforms, anachronistic perfume trends, whatever the hell “disco lemonade” is–but the track sounds more like Starlite Mints and barely cuddling, possibly in a dorm room. The sex is there, kinda, but the drug of choice is caffeine and the rock n’ roll is in Sugar Ray (or later, Maroon 5) form. We point this out as a bullet dodged: how easy a choice, and how terrible a thing, would a full glam version be coming from these guys? Low-key is far more their speed, and the charts agree. –KS

3. Third Eye Blind – “Semi-Charmed Life”

It’s hard to imagine a better opening to a career than “Semi-Charmed Life,” the debut single from the Bay Area’s Third Eye Blind. Contained within are all the possibilities of late-90’s alt-rock: a clean, chunky riff; overgrown verbosity; flirtations with rapping; and, most importantly, a devotion to melody. “Semi-Charmed Life” is a song about meth, but it connected to the masses so completely because it embodies the release of angst and the slide into euphoria. Frontman Stephan Jenkins said once in an interview that it was his version of Lou Reed’s strung out “Walk on the Wild Side,” a beautifully galling comparison that nonetheless perfectly frames “Semi-Charmed Life” within the context of Clinton-era optimism, a drug addict and his girlfriend do-do-do-do-ing their way towards the sunlight. –JS

2. Foo Fighters – “Everlong”

Dave Letterman is old enough to be Dave Grohl’s dad, but “Everlong” is his favorite song. Foo Fighters were there for his first show back since having heart surgery, and for his final broadcast, closing out Letterman’s long run by playing over a montage of his greatest hits. There’s a neat parallelism in the two Daves, both of them occasionally bearded mensches whose humor guarded against what could’ve been a crippling cynicism in a less talented man. Letterman was a bitter perfectionist who still managed to be open enough to succeed on late night television, the most exposed of entertainments, for decades; Grohl started out as a drummer behind the most tortured man in rock history, and still came out of it goofy enough to wear comically oversized hands in the video for what was supposed to be his serious song. It figures.

Grohl never tried to be clever about his allegiance to rock’s greatest and most obvious bands—while Kurt Cobain was coy in claiming Meet the Beatles as his favorite record by the Fab Four, Grohl went ahead and named The White Album. “Everlong,” the best song he ever wrote, was ready to be penciled into classic rock radio playlists around the world on the first day of its release. It sounds like a jet fighter moving at full speed, the sound and fury masking the most heartfelt of sentiments, the essential questions of rock n’ roll crystallized in a few, perfect fragments: “And I wonder / When I sing along with you / If everything could ever feel this real forever.” Grohl, one of the funniest men in rock n’ roll, bends his knee to pay fealty to the mysteriousness of real love, and all its powers to bind you to other people. He’s scared by how fast he’s going, but he doesn’t want to stop, even when he thinks he does. Some bands spend their entire careers trying to land a moment this pure. – JG

1. Fiona Apple – “Criminal”

Passion-haunted, steamy and perfectly situated within the blues bugbear of the devil’s temptation, “Criminal” scuttled to the alt charts the same year as way too many bands doing bad white-dude reggae. Its presence, then, was at least a little redemptive—trained in jazz and blues, she didn’t denigrate the genres she was mining, for one, and the force of her throaty songwriting was astonishing, and signaled a turn from the sludgy masculinism that scourged the airwaves. “Criminal” was also a scandal, if you can believe it, the year before the country discovered Monica Lewinsky: a jaded, emaciated 19-year-old interrogating the way she could use the male gaze to her own ends, and a voyeuristic video that clocked her every move in various states of undress. Now, we just call that Instagram. – JES

This post The 79 Best Alternative Rock Songs of 1997 first appeared on SPIN.