20. Veruca Salt - Seether
This music video gives you a nice little recipe for coming up with a breakthrough hit song:
1. Write a lot of parts -- verse, pre-chorus, chorus, bridge -- but don't use too many different chords.
2. Make sure the chorus is a hook that people can't get out of their heads.
3. Use vocal harmonies liberally.
4. Have two cute female singers.
19. Collective Soul - Shine
This is exactly the kind of song that will get me in trouble with the official arbiters of grungedom (watch out -- they're out there!) for putting it on the list. "How can you include that lame MTV hit but not the real grunge like Mudhoney / Screaming Trees/ Afghan Whigs / Archers of Loaf?!"
Well, because I've never heard a song by any of those bands that I remembered the next day. "Shine" is a song I'll always remember.
Being commercial and accessible doesn't subtract any points from you in my book. I just care whether something's a good song or not. And this is.
Yeah!
18. Nirvana - School
Nirvana was always a heavy band, but they were more uncompromisingly heavy before they switched to a major label. "School," from their first album, Bleach, gives a taste of their early period.
The entire lyrics to the song are as follows:
Won't you believe it, it's just my luck
No recess
You're in high school again
17. The Smashing Pumpkins - I Am One
This is the first song from their first album, back when they were a straightforward rock band with minimal frills. And Billy Corgan actually showed off his guitar virtuosity -- a relic of the '80s that would become verboten in the '90s (and even more so in the '00s). You certainly don't still hear guitarists overdubbing one shredding track over another, as Corgan does here.
There's something wonderfully unironic about this song -- possibly related to its surprising religiosity ("Time is right for a guiding light...").
16. Meat Puppets - Backwater
A solid, no-nonsense, well-constructed rock song. That's all.
>>> Go to #15-11 >>>
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