Giving Laughing Len a run for his money

[Gob]

Most Depressing Hits of the '90s


10. 'No Surprises' - Radiohead

Released: January, 1998

Supposedly 'No Surprises' was written in 1996 while Radiohead were on tour with R.E.M.. Makes sense. The most sing-song, melodic moment on OK Computer is (with the possible exception of 'Climbing Up The Walls' and 'Exit Music (For A Film)' - unfortunately for us neither were singles) also its most unnerving. "You look so tired and unhappy / Bring down the government" remains possibly Thom Yorke's greatest doom-inducing non sequitur.

YouTube comment: if anything; a tiny bit underrated. They def. have more talent than nirvana that's for sure, as much as i like their music... i like pie too. - dannymoney02220



9. 'Foolish Games' - Jewel

Released: July 1997

Man, videos in the '90s were really bad (as you will continue to see). In this one, the proto-Adele, Jewel, appears to be wearing a lot of lip gloss. All over her face. And is caught inside an icy Instagram-matrix wobbling about the backlot of Red Hot Chili Pepper's 'Give It Away' clip. Maybe.

It's hard to believe that 'Foolish Games' was a single, so leaden is this number. There's nothing official about the line in the track's Wikipedia page that says: "The song details one's frustration and agony of knowing that one's lover does not care about them as much as they care for him," but it does strike as being perfectly applicable to every love song ever. Which this rain-soaked melodramatic coffee shop pencil-case-full-of-tears brow-furrower eventually collapses under.

YouTube comment: because she thinks its crazy to stand in the rain with your coat off is exactly why the relationship doesn't work, she must have been too boring for him. - PhnxOnAcid



8. 'Jeremy' - Pearl Jam

Released: 1992

Rock-ballad 'Black' would be the most obvious contender from Pearl Jam's debut record Ten but—at the band's insistence—it was never officially released as a single. Ancient B-Sides 'Yellow Ledbetter' and 'Footsteps' have more starkness to them, but it was the relentlessly bleak subject matter at the core of 'Jeremy' that both confirmed the band as angst-icons and would surely never allow it to succeed as a single today. A 5 minute+ song about a kid killing himself in front of his classmates—featuring cover art of a toddler playing with a handgun—would not trouble the outer reaches of the Billboard 100 in the '10s.

YouTube comment: Gingers are scary - mentosmenno



7. Losing My Religion - R.E.M.
Released: February, 1991

We could have said 'Everybody Hurts' here. But that song's inherent cheesiness and eventual hopeful outro doesn't quite hold up to the insistent UNKOWN misery that Michael Stipe is maybe/maybe not banging on about. 'Losing My Religion' also sums up what made R.E.M. so elusively great for a while: a bunch of traditional instruments backing a non-traditional singer who made no sense, but together they evoked something unnervingly important that no one could ever really define. Including Michael Stipe.

YouTube comment: The look on the bloke's fac when he fingers that angel's wound.... - Everista



6. 'Black Hole Sun' - Soundgarden

Released: May 1994

Soundgarden's biggest (only?) hit was a misnomer for the band. Probably the most boring and pedestrian song on the band's otherwise often brilliant Superunknown, 'Black Hole Sun' featured the cheery hook 'Black hole sun / won't you come / and wash away the pain'. For a band who's strengths lay in their telekinetic rhythm section and the banshee wail of Chris Cornell over complex drop-D riffage, 'Black Hole Sun' stood out like a overlong, snoozy, dated, thumb.

YouTube: This song makes me cry cause it brings me back childhood memories .Wish i can go back in time i hate this generation - Thaliat96



5. 'Brick' - Ben Folds Five
Released: January, 1997

A literal and emotionally bruising piano-led song about abortion? "SOUNDS LIKE YOU'VE A HIT ON YOUR HANDS, GUYS" - No one. Ben Fold's narrative about accompanying his girlfriend to an abortion clinic turned out to be the band's biggest hit. Also managed to fit metaphors of drowning in the chorus for good sing-a-long measure.

YouTube comment: I came here to watch a video about abortion, but I was too distracted by the excessive amount of turtle necks to pay attention. - williamschatten



4. 'I Will Always Love You' - Whitney Houston

Released: November, 1992
A cover of a Dolly Parton song being used to sell a Kevin Costner flick doesn't seem like a recipe for melancholy, but Houston's version not only provided the singer her most iconic moment, it also wrought universal weepiness. At least up the back of dive bars/couches the world over. The track is the longest running Number One single from a soundtrack album ever. It's also almost unbearable listening to it twenty years on: not because Houston turned into a tragic drug-abused figure and passed away in a bathtub last year, but because there's a sax solo. Way to further tarnish your legacy 1992. Still...that voice. It's now common lore that the pause/snare hit/key change on the vocal note at 3:05 is one of the most extreme karaoke moves in the game.

YouTube: my guinea pig is sick, she's very old so i think she will die :'( I just decided to always think about her when I listen to this song... :'( - MissFlummigaJag



3. 'Nothing Compares 2 U' - Sinead O'Connor
Released: February, 1990

Written by Prince. Covered by Sinead. Sinead stares down the barrel of the camera and cries. Sinead wins. Considering the nigh-impossibility of trumping Prince, that's high praise indeed.

O'Connor supposedly actually cried in the video at the line: "All the flowers that you planted, Mother / in the back yard / All died when you went away," because she had "a very complex relationship with her late mother, who used to abuse her in childhood." If that's not an added shard of brittle emotion to consider while watching/listening then you're an LMFAO cover band.

YouTube comment: I remember this came out Jan 1990, it was a cloudy depressig day I was 5 years old.. went perfectly - joeyjeremiah1985



2. 'One' - U2

Released: March, 1992

We had this at Number One for a while but ultimately dropped it back because, well, it's pretty. (Also, watching a few U2 videos reminded us that Bono is a big cheeseball.) U2's most lasting song was influenced by a band at the beginning of a recording process and in fractures. It is, as Bono has said explicitly, about "breaking up". It was used as an AIDS benefit charity single. Its cover photo showed a herd of Buffaloes leaping to their deaths. It has the line "and I can't be holding on to what you got / when all you got is hurt" which is a fairly great line to have in a massively popular song that's universally considered to be an ode to love.



1. 'Hurt' by Nine Inch Nails

Released: April, 1995

"I wrote some words and music in my bedroom as a way of staying sane, about a bleak and desperate place I was in, totally isolated and alone," says Trent Reznor of possibly his darkest musical moment. Can you believe this was a single? I mean, who in the record company ever thought they might make money by sending this to a pressing plant so that someone thumbing through the singles section at (insert dead record store) would pause to idly whistle a familiar refrain and pop over to the counter for 'Hurt' and a dozen-pack C-60 cassettes? People in the '90s I guess.

Of course Johnny Cash came along in 2003 and covered it for his acoustic "American" series. Reznor said that Cash "took" the song away from him, similar to the way that Jeff Buckley's stark version of (John Cale's version of) Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah' is widely considered the defining take. But I don't buy it. There's something about the incessant, dying-machine-like wind hum in Reznor's original that inspires more dread than even a wrecked Johnny Cash-video can trump. "Everyone I know goes away in the end," goes the choice of lyric. Came with a video featuring charred corpses and maggots rebuilding a fox carcass, in case you didn't get the vibe.

YouTube comment: HOW DARE THIS EMO COPY JOHNNY CASH - it8nky0u

[Lord Jim]

Kiss From A Rose didn't make the list?

[rubato]

White Euro-American pop music after ca 1980 has been a deep black hole.

The world passed you by.

Keep up?

yrs,
rubato

[Gob]

White Euro-American pop music after ca 1980 has been a deep black hole.

The world passed you by.

Keep up?

yrs,
rubato

Utter nonsense, your sweeping generalisations are wrong and meaningless.

[Lord Jim]

White Euro-American pop music after ca 1980 has been a deep black hole.

Damn that Ronald Reagan!

[Jarlaxle]

A bit obscure (not a single), but Billy Joel's Great Wall Of China is a little depressing...it's about hiss brother in law embezzling most of his money.

Similar subject matter: Wolf At Your Door by Meat Loaf.

[loCAtek]

Very interesting, I didn't know that....


I know it was 80's, but thought Billy Joel's Allentown & We'd all Go Down Together[Goodnight Saigon], were quite sad.





...I knew a guy back then, who used to live in the real Allentown, PA. He had to room with whores.

[Jarlaxle]

Allentown was actually written about Bethlehem Steel.

Another: The Downeaster Alexa...about the fishermen on Long Island.

[loCAtek]

Allentown was actually written about Bethlehem Steel.

Well, okay but I still know a guy who survived by subsisting with whores, there in the 80's.