VH1’s 100 Greatest Songs Of The ’90s: What Are You Gonna Do?

VH1’s list and charticle programming sorta resists any possible bitching and moaning, doesn’t it? It’s such a harmless, long-established shtick that hating on its kitschiness-at-all-costs worldview just makes you look like the kind of crank who gets worked up when a boy band member supposedly “devalues” rock history by namedropping a beloved indie act. But when reading lists like their new 100 Greatest Songs Of The ’90s, which you can now vote on for the TV special to be broadcast late in the year, it’s hard not to walk away with the feeling that VH1’s programmers are almost trying to get a rise out of you if you’re someone who self-identifies as a “music fan.” And it almost always works:

(Unfortunately VH1’s stupid voting system means I can’t cut and paste the list in full, so go check it out and then come back and I will continue my rant.)

Okay? Anyway, I mean, “From a time when Hammer and Hootie reigned!” It’s factually true, but do we really need to celebrate it? Enjoying pop, for seemingly a lot of people, has gotten tangled up with enjoying pap. Are there great songs on VH1’s list? Songs that were on the charts and on the video channels and the radio and lodged in in the craw of popular culture while still being, you know, songs you legitimately want to listen to a decade later? With Mary J.’s “Real Love” or Janet Jackson’s “That’s The Way Love Goes” on there? No doubt. Right next to “The Macarena” and Kris Kross. And what on Earth is Wu-Tang’s “Protect Ya Neck” doing in there, beamed in from galaxy far, far away from the forced, chipper high-school-reunion-style reminiscing that makes up the bulk of the list?

It’s inclusions like that where you wonder just what kind of cheeky chicanery VH1 is up to. If nothing else, the channel keeps you guessing, which is probably why Entertainment Weekly seems upset, with nearly a straight face, that there’s nothing from Morphine or Pavement or Juliana Hatfield on this list. You’d almost wonder if they just haven’t been paying attention if “Cut Your Hair” showing up between Shawn Mullins and Primitive Radio Gods wasn’t an honest possibility. You want to get irritable over the whole thing, but people who (rightly) take music as more than warm, nostalgic amniotic fluid to float around in while idylly remembering dumb/offensive trash that time has apparently transubstantiated into charming silliness are getting played (and playing themselves) if they take these lists as more than popcorn entertainment designed to be pointlessly argued over. Even if that means the kitsch/camp terrorists have claimed another decade as their own.

Anyway, the real problem is that so many of those songs are friggin’ terrible. Edwin McCain? For chrissakes.

The Best Songs Of The 90s [Entertainment Weekly] The 100 Greatest Songs Of The 90s [VH1]