Of The 90s ^hot^ | Top Hundred Songs

And at the top of page forty-seven, centered, underlined three times:

– “First song that made me cry in a food court.” #57: “Du Hast” – Rammstein (1997) – “Jerome’s mom walked in during this. She asked if we were ‘summoning something.’ We said yes.” #42: “Bittersweet Symphony” – The Verve (1997) – “They lost every penny of royalties. The song still won.” top hundred songs of the 90s

The top twenty was a war zone. Crossed-out numbers, arrows, angry annotations. had a note screaming: “OVERRATED. NO, YOU’RE OVERRATED. – Craig. Rick, fight me. – Fine, put it at 18. But I’m not happy. – No Gallagher brothers are ever happy. That’s the point.” And at the top of page forty-seven, centered,

– “The West Coast changed everything in three minutes and forty-seven seconds. Maya’s pick. She argued for two hours. Worth it.” Crossed-out numbers, arrows, angry annotations

“January 1992. I was in my friend’s basement. The video came on. I didn’t know music could sound like that—like being angry and sad and free at the same time. Kurt died two years later. The song never did. It’s still here. We’re still here.”

I opened the binder. The first page was handwritten in Sharpie, the ink bleeding through the paper:

I was twelve when the 90s ended. Old enough to remember the last gasps of grunge on MTV, young enough that my strongest musical memory was the Digimon theme song. Rick, on the other hand, had been seventeen in 1990. He’d lived it: flannel from Goodwill, Doc Martens held together with safety pins, a mixtape collection that required its own shelving unit.