re: What's the most 90's song ever recorded?

My personal image of this goes to the songs that signal the death of the alt-rock movement. My interest in the better songs of the early 90s is really an extension of the 80s in that the movement was basically the payoff from the previous ten years of underground music. The '91-'92 explosion was more or less very art-intensive musicians getting better at what they were doing, gearing it toward wider appeal and never figuring that appeal could ever go full-on mainstream.

Once the REAL artists established that new trend, less artistic opportunists came on the scene, went for full-on surface appeal, and destroyed the movement. Most of the 90s was occupied by these dillettante bands riding the gravy train out till there was nothing left.

For every "Teen Spirit" there are ten songs like "Cumbersome" or "Shine" or "Hold My Hand" which was the REAL sound that saturated the 90s. The sound of a vital music movement going moribund.