On this week 30 years ago the billboard top modern rock songs

I too remember when the media told us what was “good”.

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I was going into my Jr year in HS. Growing old sucks

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I was not even sperms in my daddy's bobble sack yet

Friend,

I am not sure I recognize a single song on that list. Which would you say is the best song listed?

Yours,
TulaneLSU


P.S. Friends, 

Thanks to some of your suggestions, I decided to spend the day listening to these songs, reading their lyrics, and reflecting what those songs meant to the writers and to the listeners. In a way, I feel like I may have missed out, since it became clear after this exercise that I had not heard a single one of these songs before today. Many of the songs were horrid, in both tone and lyric. It is a shame that youth misspent time and memory on some of these songs. But a few of the songs were quite lovely on which to put ear as well as edifying on which to dwell for a moment or ten. 

Here are the fruits of my labors today:

TulaneLSU's top 10 songs from from the 14th of August, 1996 Modern Rock Tracks list:

10. Pepper
It contains the strangest sound on this list. I am not sure what genre of music this would be considered. The words, though, are an important critique of 1990s suburban America on its detachment from the terrible violence of 1990s American inner cities. Sitting comfortably in front of their Sony Trinitron screens, parents and children nightly consumed the bloody gore on both the local 5:00 and national 5:30 news programs. We were partial to Warren Bell and John Snell in those days. And without care, moved to the dinner table without self-reflection nor metanoia. 

9. Trippin' on a Hole in a Paper Heart
It is without question the least enjoyable noise to which to listen on this list. And let us be perfectly clear — it is not music. The singer's voice is unintelligible and unpleasant. But the words, if you read the lyrics, are reminiscent of Saint Augustine. The lyrics bubble up from a broken heart, a restless heart, that yearns to be filled with God's love. Who among us has never felt that emptiness so well described in this song? 

8. Don't Look Back in Anger
Conversely, this song is perhaps the most melodic in the list and puts the spirit in a verdant valley. But the words are gibberish and lack anything important to say about authentic human life. Don't look back in anger? That is glib 1990s "whatever floats your boat...regret nothing" mentality that flies in the face of actual life in a broken world in which we hurt others and have a moral duty to make right when we fail others. 

7. I'm Free to Decide
The most ironic and delusional song in the list, it reveals the splanchnikos of a person shackled by a deterministic world in which she has no liberty. She so desperately yearns for the freedom she lacks. Thou dost protest too much. 

6. Burden in My Hand
Though a little harsh and depressing, it can be seen as a confession or even a jeremiad warning others of the crushing consequences of succumbing to alcohol's snares. With Big Alcohol's omnipresent encroachment on American life, it is a worthy message. This generation would do well to consider the same dangers from marijuana, cocaine, pornography, and gambling. 

5. Where It's At
A catchy little tune. I like the random Star Screamer voice thrown in when the video shows a robot with a flashlight for a head. I do not have the faintest idea what it is about, but it did not sound offensive or mean. And for mid-1990s music in this category, that is actually quite unusual.

4. Standing Outside a Broken Telephone Booth
A man may have all the money in the world and still find himself standing before a broken telephone, rich in everything except the one thing he has come to ask for. For what good is having the world at your feet if the line to heaven has gone dead? If you gain the whole world, but lose your life, what have you gained?

3. Counting Blue Cars
Though the sound of the music can be unpleasant to hear, there is something tender underneath it, especially in the question it keeps returning to: if there is a God, will God come close enough to hear a child ask? It reaches back to Christ’s words, “Come to me, little children,” and to the promise that the kingdom of God belongs to them. Beneath all the noise, it seems to be asking the oldest and simplest question of faith: whether we are still small enough, and humble enough, to believe that we are welcomed home.

2. King of New Orleans
Now I understand some will say, "What a New Orleans homeburger pick," but this song is profound. It seems to me to be about the teenagers who in the 1990s moved from across the country to the French Quarter. You may remember them: usually white, sometimes dressed in clothes from an army supply store, sometimes with a dog, sometimes with nose rings, often with tattoos. What I think the writer is singing is that from the least of us shall we see God in this world. It is a song about judgment, but ultimately about redemption and an affirmation that in God's economy, there is unequivocal election of and arguably preference for the outcast.

1. Tonight, Tonight
Shexter, when he recommended this song, was correct that it is a great starting point, and I would say also an ending point in this list. A philosophical ballad on the essence and essentiality of the present, Heraclitus would be proud of the message here. The words seem to me to know something about us that we have not yet learned to say, namely, that love can be both a promise and a wound, and that even the brightest things carry the knowledge of their ending. Tonight, listening to them, I felt how a song can hold a whole life inside a few simple words: what we were, what we lost, and what we still hope to become.

Yours,
TulaneLSU

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I too remember when the media told us what was “good”.

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They still "try"

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I am not sure I recognize a single song on that list. Which would you say is the best song listed?

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For me, Machine Head by Bush. I doubt many will agree, but I have always loved that song.

I pride myself by not knowing who the frick the "butthole surfers" are

Another win by a straight, male pureblood

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I am not sure I recognize a single song on that list.

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Ironically, I recognize all of them but three.

Tulane, "Tonight, tonight" by the Smashing Pumpkins would be a great start to that list due to the many symphonic instruments involved.

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"Tonight, Tonight" is written in the key of G, performed on instruments tuned down a half-step so the actual pitch is G?/F #. In the original recording sessions, "Tonight, Tonight" was initially written in the key of C instead of G. However, since Corgan was unable to sing the song in C, he wrote a version during the Mellon Collie recording sessions to suit his range. The strings for the song were arranged by Billy Corgan and Audrey Riley, and recorded with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Corgan said that recording with a 30-piece string-section for the song "was probably one of the most exciting recording experiences I have ever had."

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I pride myself by not knowing who the frick the "butthole surfers" are

Another win by a straight, male pureblood

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They are straight white dudes too and you have probably heard Pepper

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you have probably heard Pepper

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Everybody 15+ that listened to alternative/rock in the 90's knows Pepper. They may not know the bands name, but they know the song. It was everywhere.