We're back with 10 new old songs! From now through the middle of November, I'm participating in an event on Bluesky, counting down my 200 favorite songs from 1977-1999: the rise of disco and punk to the end of the 20th century. This post features songs 181-90. Plus, scroll down for something I enjoyed this week, links to what I've been reading online, and an exclusive cat photo.

Previously: Songs 191-200 and more information on the #UncoolTwo50 project

190. Skunk Anansie – Hedonism (Just Because You Feel Good) (1997)

Do we still do pop songs about a lover who’s chosen drugs over the heartbroken narrator, or was that an extremely ‘90s thing? I love the contrast between Skin’s soulful voice and the post-grunge crunch of the guitar. Her delivery is breathy, at the top of her range, which infuses the vocal with grief rather than rage. The hollow pauses after each chorus put the listener in withdrawal, anxious to relapse.

Skin put some R&B flair into her vocal in this 1998 TMF Awards live performance.

Stanley’s 2019 acoustic cover makes the song feel personal.

189. Alaska y Dinarama – A quien le importa (1986)

Little queer Goths in the English-speaking world got some good anthems, but none as perfect as this Spanish electro-pop classic. It’s a defiant statement of self-acceptance wrapped in layers of synths but anchored by warm, human percussion. Alaska delivers the lyrics with the right balance of witchiness and vocal depth, so they don’t sound like platitudes. I mean, they are platitudes, but not when everyone’s shouting them together at the gay bar.

Although the rest of the band are white folks from Spain, Alaska herself is Latina, of Mexican and Cuban heritage.

Thalía brought this back to the club with her 2002 hit cover.

Alaska collaborated with several generations of Spanish queer celebrities to record this as the official hymn of WorldPride 2017.

188. The Psychedelic Furs – Love My Way (1982)

It’s hard to conceive that this wasn’t a major hit in its own time, because it sounds more like the early ‘80s than a lot of music that was more fashionable. There’s not a lot of competition for best marimba hook in pop music, so this one wins uncontested. Richard Butler has never leaned more into his David Bowie shtick, and he has both the voice and the presence for it.

A more rock-oriented 1984 Psychedelic Furs live performance.

This 2024 cover suggests that “Love My Way” might have been a DeVotchKa song all along.

187. Live – Lightning Crashes (1994)

This might be the kind of quasi-profundity that only works on teenagers, but boy, did this song work on me when I was a teenager. It’s one of my uncoolest picks for a list that is so intentionally uncool that it’s right there in the name, but only because we know what music sounded like 30 years ago and doesn’t sound like now. The guitars are at peak ring and echo, and Ed Kowalczyk growls like he needs us to know the depth of his man feelings. But it pays off because the extended metaphor actually works, and the cycle of grief and rebirth is a powerful enough theme to justify the theatrics.

This semi-acoustic Live live TV performance from 1995 makes the song even prettier.

I like John Rock Prophet’s gravelly, almost Waits-ian delivery in this 2022 cover.

186. Counting Crows – Mr. Jones (1993)

This is the closest the ‘90s got to a Bob Dylan revival, except maybe for Dylan’s actual ‘90s comeback. The lyrics feel like they’re packed too full for the melody, which makes Adam Duritz sound like a drunk telling a tale at the bar. The story is mundane, bereft of inherent meaning, but it spurs the kind of philosophical revelation that seems profound when you’re wasted. The song works not because the profundity holds up – it emphatically doesn’t – but because the narrator’s thwarted hopes and delusions glimmer darkly through them.

Counting Crows’ live performance at Woodstock ’99 quoted the song’s influences and added an angry urgency.

Two excellent covers by dudes with guitars on couches: Drew Hale (2018) and Fernando Ufret (2014).

185. Toni Braxton – Another Sad Love Song (1993)

Just another sad love song about sad love songs. So much of this song is at the bottom of Braxton’s range, and I love the rich, whiskeyish quality of her alto register. To some extent, this is part of the ‘90s conveyor belt of R&B hits, with way too much drum machine. But it’s one of Babyface and Daryl Simmons’ finest compositions, built for a strong and versatile voice to fill in the emotional narrative. It’s a triumph of Braxton’s acting ability, as much as her singing – you believe she’s sitting in her car, all torn up about a breakup, every song on the radio reminding her of what she’s lost.

Braxton live at the Apollo Theater in 1993, flirting with every man in the front row.

A simple, pretty 2015 cover by Melody Angel.

184. Bob Mould – See a Little Light (1989)

I’m on kind of a Bob Mould kick lately, which is not the outcome I expected from this list-making process. This song is mostly about Mould’s grief surrounding the breakup of Hüsker Dü, but it’s not not about a romantic breakup, and an implicitly queer one. Some production flourishes mark this as a late-‘80s release, but Mould’s distinctive melodic style and guitar sound make it timeless. And Mould’s voice –full of quirks and glitches, and yet rich and tuneful – sounds like no one else’s. My brother and I are seeing Mould live next month, and I can’t wait to hear how his signature song sounds these days, since it’s a little different every time he plays it.

Mould continues to perform frequently and plays this in almost every set. This live performance from 2016 shows how he’s evolved the song.

This 2017 cover by Saint Frank takes the song in a pleasing grunge-pop direction.

183. Nine Inch Nails – Closer (1994)

“You bring me closer to God” undermined any hope of keeping me in religious education or away from teenage sex. In high school, this song was one of the dirtiest things any of us had ever heard, hotter and more visceral than porn, because it made fucking like an animal sound transcendent. The aggressive slap bass and the synth line, which swirls and pulses like neon lights, slide across each other like human bodies. It’s a rough listen in the same way as a lot of atonal classical music, focused more on creating a soundscape than pleasing the ear, but it’s also so hooky that you couldn’t keep it off the radio.

Nine Inch Nails live at Woodstock 1994, with Trent Reznor appropriately drenched in sweat and slathered in mud.

Halocene’s 2023 cover is the logical next step for this song, lesbian BDSM goth metal.

182. Letters to Cleo – Here and Now (1994)

The pinnacle of babydoll grunge, and probably as close as grunge ever got to hip hop. There were a bunch of bands on regular alternative rock radio rotation in the mid-90s fronted by cute young women with peroxide-fried hair in pigtails. Some of those frontwomen had more powerful and versatile voices than Kay Hanley, but none of them could spit a high-speed lyrical stream like her. You can’t understand half of what she’s saying, but the whole song is built around wordplay, a series of muttered recriminations about someone who’s taken a “live for today” philosophy way too far. It’s the kind of bottled feminine rage that ‘90s culture frequently set free, only to keep it palatable for the Melrose Place soundtrack with plastic barrettes and a quartet of white men on guitars and drums.

Letters to Cleo made the rounds on late-night talk shows, full of energy every time, as in this 1995 performance.

HER added banjos and 2020 levels of rage to their cover.

181. The Offspring – Self-Esteem (1994)

The Offspring are an extremely intelligent band masquerading as a very stupid band. Despite Dexter Holland’s Ph.D. in microbiology, they’ve kept up the façade for 30 years. The a cappella, off-key “la la la” intro throws you off the scent of a lyric with deep insight into the psychology of straight white male insecurity. Musically, it’s straight-ahead ‘90s punk, but with a prominent bass riff that would be equally at home in ‘70s funk. Most of the rhymes are brilliantly slant (nerve/dessert, dweeb/esteem) in a way that makes you question the narrator’s mental acuity, which is clearly what they’re going for.

This fantastic live acoustic performance by The Offspring from 2015 comes with an intro about transposing the whole thing up to ukulele to preserve the bass line in an acoustic arrangement.

A woman vocalist makes this song really disturbing, as in this understated 2019 cover by Lana Shea.

Something I enjoyed this week

My wife and I were seeking a little comfort viewing, so we watched the first Toy Story film, which neither of us had seen in decades. This turned into a slow binge of the whole Pixar feature film catalog in order, with some skips of films that we've watched together in the past couple of years and know we don't need to see again anytime soon. (This means we get to skip the first Cars, a movie that I hate with evangelical passion, but we're going to watch the sequels For Science.) In our first week, we watched the first two Toy Stories, Monsters Inc., and Finding Nemo. It's amazing how visually effective these movies are, even if some of the individual animation techniques look labored or ugly now. (Quipped during Nemo: "It's 2003, we haven't figured out arm hair yet.") They're also triumphs of emotional manipulation, in the best way, full of heartwarming and tearjerking moments that keep you invested in cartoon fish and toys. Ami has been humming "When She Loved Me" from Toy Story 2 and sobbing cathartically over her Warhammer figurines for the past week.

Most of the voice performances are terrific, and checking IMDB for the cast lists has become ritual. Once you realize that Bob Peterson voices both Roz from Monsters Inc. and Mr. Ray from Finding Dory, you can't un-hear it. Wallace Shawn, who voices Rex in all four Toy Story movies, is probably the Pixar MVP for voice acting, but Willem Dafoe and Allison Janney just about run away with Finding Nemo, and Sully from Monsters Inc. is a role that John Goodman was born to play.

A lot of these earlier Pixar films have a picaresque quality, moving from one set piece to the next, rather than driving relentlessly through a central plot. In this age of streaming, when even ostensibly episodic television seems allergic to standalones and bottle episodes, the brief, interlocking events are not just refreshing but relaxing. They're also kid-friendly (and tired-ADHD-adult-friendly) in a way that feels organic. I can't think of a better way to practice self-care while trying to meet a work deadline.

What I'm reading online

This detailed analysis of national and statewide data by Dynomight gives a thought-provoking view of what homelessness actually looks like in the United States.

A feel-good story about a small, working-class Alabama town that had figured out how to support its growing population of English Learner students turns dark as the superintendent who championed the effective approaches was drummed out of his position due to anti-immigrant sentiment and local politics.

And a cat photo

Thanks for reading!