A Few Songs from '60 Songs that Explain the '90s'

Irish singer-songwriter Sinead O'Connor displays two of her three awards she won at the 7th annual MTV Video Music Awards in Universal City, Ca., Thursday evening, Sept. 6, 1990.
( AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian )

Summary Transcript

[music]

Alison Stewart: At the beginning of 2023, the website, The AGEIST declared that 1990s culture was making a comeback. Our next guest might agree. Music reporter, Rob Harvilla, hosts a podcast titled 60 Songs that Explain the '90s. Now that podcast has been turned into a book of the same name. He uses adjectives like chaotic, gritty, and magical to describe the '90s while illustrating the music scene and sifting through major pop culture moments. The book analyzes songs that define the time right before the turn of the century with chapters like Sellouts or Not, or Maybe and Flukes, Comebacks, and Spectacular Weirdos. It revisits Third Eye Blind's frontman, Stephan Jenkins' feuded with Pearl Jams, Eddie Vedder, and the moment when one discovers Wu-Tang Clan.

CBS News described his approach this way, "Harvilla does not hide his own personality in the podcast or in his book. As self-deprecating and humble as he might be, he does realize he's gotten people to understand the music they love a little better." The book, 60 Songs that Explain the '90s, is out today, and Rob joins us here at All of It. He's been a professional rock critic for 20-plus years, including at New York's own, The Village Voice, rest in peace. Rob, welcome to WNYC.

Rob Harvilla: Thank you so much for having me. I'm so thrilled to be here. Rest in peace, The Village Voice. Absolutely. That was a beautiful moment. I was there for the twilight of it, but it was a thrill anyway.

Alison Stewart: Listeners, we want to hear from you. Which artists or bands were you listening to in the '90s? What is one song that describes the decade for you? Tell us the story behind it. Did you listen to Rob's podcast, 60 Songs that Explain the '90s? What questions would you like to ask him? Our phone lines are wide open. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can also text us if that is more convenient, or you can join us on the air. 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. Social Media is available to you as well. That is @allofitwnyc.

In the intro to your book, you write, "As of this writing, I've done 91 episodes of the podcast with those scripts totaling 562,465 words. This book is about 288 pages. [laughs] How did you decide what you wanted to focus on and how did you decide to organize the book?

Rob Harvilla: It's a pretty terrifying process. I'm up to 109 episodes and I think well north of 600,000 at this point. It is a truly frightening quantity of words. Yes, I thought I was just going to throw the Google Docs together and just print it. I thought this would be very easy, and it turns out, yes, I have to actually cut it down a little bit so somebody can lift it. I think what I wanted to do is get the songs talking to each other. Songs that maybe had never interacted before. I think the first two songs I mentioned are My Heart Will Go On by Celine Dion, and then Doll Parts by Hole.

What does Celine Dion and Courtney Love have to say to each other? What do Wu-Tang Clan and Björk have to say to each other? Would Stephan Jenkins' the Third Eye Blind guy get along with Brandy and Monica? I wanted to find new ways, new contexts for these songs and start new prisms to look through them. Sometimes it's my own personal experience. These are the random songs that soundtracked my mundane suburban teenage rebellion. Sometimes these are huge hits. Notorious B.I.G. Nirvana, of course, Aaliyah, Serena, these gods, these goddesses to us, these murals on the walls, trying to see them as people again and celebrate them as humans when they were young before they were superstars.

So much has been written about a Kurt Cobain. What can I bring to it and what other songs can I bring alongside of him?

Alison Stewart: We get a sense of your writing style in a very interesting way in the introduction. You were working as a music journalist for decades, and there was a time when you wrote a preview, a review of a U2 concert for an alt-weekly in Cleveland, Ohio. Someone wrote a letter to the editor, and I'm going to read the first paragraph, and this was the letter that was written. "I have to question your criteria for hiring music writers. It seems that you have one too many young punks whose heads are still stuck in the Seattle grunge phase and who apparently don't know how squat about good rock music. As a longtime U2 fan, I have to take issue with Rob Harvilla's short-sighted preview of the Elevation tour. I was at the concert. It was one of several U2 concerts I've attended, and I can assure you the band is better than ever, and Bono is still a rock and roll god." The writer of that letter was your mother.

Rob Harvilla: That was my mom. Hello, Mom, if you're listening. Yes. That was both the highlights and the lowlight of my career right there, just being trashed by my mother in Prince, probably less than a year into my professional career. I don't know how I carried on after that. I either had to retire in glory or shame or both somehow, but I have somehow made it through. Yes, that's the greatest piece of feedback I've ever received. She goes on to make fun of me for liking, I think, MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice. It's a really rude piece of writing by my mother, I've said. Unwarranted. Absolutely unwarranted.

Alison Stewart: Well, it shows where you got your critical skills from and your writing skills.

Rob Harvilla: That's correct. Everything I have I owe to her, including as she says in that letter, I believe she took me to my first U2 concert. Where I went to see the Zoo TV tour, 1991, that was her ticket. I do think that's worth acknowledging. She can take some credit for whatever I've become.

Alison Stewart: My guess is Rob Harvilla, the name of the book is 60 Songs that Explain the '90s. You have all these different chapter titles. In Chaos Agents, you discuss songs like Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On, which you wrote, "Celine Dion sings songs like they owe her money." That made me laugh out loud. There's Madonna's Vogue-

Rob Harvilla: Awesome.

Alison Stewart: -alongside Eminem's My Name Is. What characteristics define Chaos Agents and why did you want to begin with Chaos Agents as the first chapter?

Rob Harvilla: I guess disruptors is now a corny way of looking at it. It's been co-opted by the tech industry or whatever, but I just wanted people who appeared on MTV and just like a tornado surrounded them and suddenly was surrounding you. Just absolute chaos erupts whenever Madonna does anything. Madonna is still upsetting people to this day, which is incredibly impressive. Just the thunderbolt of terrible and awesome that was Eminem when Eminem appeared. I'm so grateful that I was not 12 years old and I did not model my entire teenage years after Eminem. I'm very grateful that I did not, myself, have a 12-year-old yet who would model themselves after Eminem. I would have to deal with that as a parent.

Being able to watch Eminem from somewhat of a safe distance was very gratifying. I think that chapter ends with Erykah Badu, who I think is one of my favorite live performers of all time. I talk about the song, Tyrone, but I talk about a show that I saw in Columbus, Ohio in the early 2000s, and I was just enraptured by her, but she was wearing a giant afro wig, and at a climactic moment in this song, she pulled the wig off her head and bounced it on the stage, it just went, boing, boing, boing. It was the most incredible, the most rock and roll thing I've ever seen in my entire life. I was just shocked and delighted, and I committed myself to her for life in that moment. That's the kind of chaos that I was going for.

Alison Stewart: In the book, you reflect on the legacy of Third Eye Blind and their frontman, Stephan Jenkins. You hear the way I'm saying that.

Rob Harvilla: [laughs].

Alison Stewart: For those who don't know what made him an interesting figure in the '90s.

[MUSIC - Stephan Jenkins: Third Eye Blind]

Rob Harvilla: Can you hear me? I'm sorry.

Alison Stewart: There you go. Sorry. The engineer went crazy. She just had to hear Third Eye Blind. [laughs]

Rob Harvilla: Oh, okay. [laughs] Stephan Jenkins is maybe one of the truest '90s antagonists. His bandmates did not like him very much. It became one of those estranged situations. The frontmen for such lucrative bands as Smashmouth, as Matchbox Twenty, as Jimmy Eat World have talked trash about him, and he has talked trash about them in turn. He's a very smart, very funny, very swaggering rockstar figure who doesn't care who he upsets. He lives for this in an era when '90s rock stars were supposed to be dour, and they didn't want it, and they were tortured by their fame and he was not at all tortured by his fame. He was torturing other people. I'm just delighted by how upset he makes everyone around him.

Alison Stewart: Got a text here. "Gen Xer on '90s songs, Groove Is in the Heart, is the song that defines the '90s to me. It set the tone for the decade, the sounds that took the '70s and '80s and extended them into the '90s. The video, the group Lady Kier, all set the benchmark." I like that text.

Rob Harvilla: That's a beautiful song, absolutely.

Alison Stewart: It's a great song. We'll have more about the book, 60 Songs that Explain the '90s. Yes. We're going to talk about Nirvana. Don't worry. Stay with us.

[music]

Alison Stewart: You are listening to All of It on WNYC, I'm Alison Stewart. My guest is Rob Harvilla. The name of his new book out today is 60 Songs that Explain the '90s. The podcast is of the same name. Listeners, we'd love to hear from you. Which artists or bands were you listening to in the '90s? Maybe there was a song or an artist that really defined the decade for you, 212-433-9692, 212-433-WNYC. You can text to us, or you can join us on the air, that number, 212-433-WNYC, or you can hit us up on social media @allofitwnyc. This text came through Rob, "Come on. You know It Smells Like Teen Spirit, Seminole." You write about what--

Rob Harvilla: [laughs] There's a handful of times when I remember the first time that I heard a song and Smells Like Teen Spirit is one. I write about it in the book. It's a really mundane environment. I'm just sitting in his room, I'm playing a video game on his computer. He puts the CD in, he turns the volume all the way up. More than the music itself, I will never forget the physical force of the volume of that song. It is the loudest music I have ever heard in my life. The loudest man, the loudest screaming. I was so terrified, but also so exhilarated in that moment. I have just never forgotten that feeling.

That feeling probably is what made me want to be a rock critic in the first place, if I'm honest. It determined the course of the rest of my life. As corny as that sounds to say, I do think it's absolutely true.

Alison Stewart: Let's hear a little Nirvana.

[MUSIC - Nirvana: Smells Like Teen Spirit]

Load up on guns, bring your friends

It's fun to lose and to pretend

She's over-bored and self-assured

Oh no, I know a dirty word

Hello, hello, hello, how low

Hello, hello, hello

With the lights out, it's less dangerous

Here we are now, entertain us

I feel stupid and contagious

Alison Stewart: There's a great video of Dave Grohl talking about how he ripped off that drum lick from-- It's not Chic and it's not The Gap Band, but it's in that. I will think of it before the end of this conversation. Once you hear it, you know it. There's a chapter titled Women Versus Women in Rock. How did you come up with that title? What's the difference?

Rob Harvilla: I didn't want to do like the Mad Men thing where I talk about how worse things were back then, and how enlightened I am now that I know that things were worse back then. Somewhere in the lifecycle of the podcast, we started like the Britney Spears Apology Tour, where suddenly we were making all these documentaries and just realizing how terrible the treatment of her, the tabloids, the magazine covers, everything. The most jarring moments for me doing research is not so much. It's nothing musical. It's reading the press. Reading Fiona Apple's late '90s press, or Sinéad O'Connor's, or Tori Amos's.

Just the way they were talked about, the way their songs were talked about, and the way it was so different to how anybody else's, any male rock bands. I remember all the corny women in rock or women of rock covers, of Rolling Stone, of all these other magazines. The way it was drilled into my head as a teenager like, "This is a genre. Women are a genre, all to themselves. That's their kingdom and they rule that, but they're totally separate from everything else that's happening with Nirvana, Grunge, whatever." Just having to unlearn that. To find the nuances in that and to understand to not hector the journalists of that time asking the questions or writing the reviews.

It's not about any kind of superiority that I have to that perspective now, but it's just those are the moments where I feel the distance, the 30 years or whatever between now and the '90s. The way we used to talk about and classify these things.

Alison Stewart: For the record, Dave Grohl said, "I pulled so much stuff for the Nirvana record from Gap Band, Cameo, and Chic's Tony Thompson. I told Tony Thompson that. He came to my house for a barbecue. Someone was like, 'Man, I just want to thank you because I owe you so much. I've been ripping you off my whole life.' Tony Thompson goes, 'I know. '" [laughter] It's a great story.

Rob Harvilla: Sounds like a great barbecue.

Alison Stewart: Doesn't it?

Rob Harvilla: I wish I would've attended that barbecue.

Alison Stewart: Love that. Somebody very nice said, "Maybe this is too on the nose, LOL, but Luscious Jackson is everything that made the '90s cool. A little offbeat. Not for everyone, but for those who knew, adored them." They do our theme music for this show. Thank you for that text.

Rob Harvilla: That's fantastic. Naked Eyes, forever. Absolutely. Absolutely, Luscious Jackson, Under Your Skin, too.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Alexander on Line 1. Hi, Alexander. Thanks for calling All Of It.

Alexander: Thank you very much. What a great segment to have. I've been waiting 30 years for this segment, so thank you for putting it on. [laughter] My favorite band back in those days, not terribly original, but I'm going to say, to this day, my favorite of all time is Pearl Jam. I think Mike McCready's guitar solo in Alive has to rank as one of, if not the greatest pop guitar solos of all time up there with Green Grass and High Tides Forever. I can still hear it or replay it now 30 years later as if I'm hearing it for the very first time.

Alison Stewart: Alexander, thank you for calling in. We got to text, "Pixies, Breeders, Jayhawks, Soul Asylum, Lucinda Williams, Alanis Morissette. Could listen to Jagged Little Pill over and over. Saw her in concert again this summer. Amazing." Let's see. "Depeche Mode, Personal Jesus, big crossover from '80s to '90s, signaling the '80s we're really moved on from. Let's take a listen to another song you talk about on page 181, Salt-N-Pepa.

[MUSIC - Salt-N-Pepa: Shoop]

Hey yeah, I wanna shoop, baby (Shoop)

Ooh, how you doing, baby

No, not you, you, the bow-legged one, yeah

What's your name?

Damn, baby, that sounds sexy

Uh, here I go, here I go, here I go again

Girls, what's my weakness (Men)

Okay, then, chilling, chilling, minding my business

Yo, Salt, I looked around and I couldn't believe this

Alison Stewart: What chapter did you put Salt-N-Pepa in?

Rob Harvilla: I believe Salt-N-Pepa made it into the Sex and Romance chapter, if I recall correctly. In large part because this is a song that my wife sings/raps around the house, as we are caring for our three children, as we are engulfed in chaos of a different sword, as we are doing the dishes. As she's going, "Here, I go, here I go." It's just the most delightful thing to me. I can remember so vividly listening to Salt-N-Pepa when I was a kid. I would go to the junior high after-school gymnasium dance. I would watch everybody dance, but I would be hugging the wall because I was too shy. Watching them line dance to Push It by Salt-N-Pepa. Then Shoop came along in the same deal.

To now be married to the love of my life and to listen to her rap this song in our kitchen, it's just such a delightful full circle thing, where it all turned out all right in the end.

Alison Stewart: Let's talk to Brad from the Bronx. Hi, Brad, you're on the air.

Brad: Hi. Great segment. I love this. It's taking me back, this show today. My selection of the '90s, how can we forget the Beastie Boys with Sabotage? In the '90s, they picked up their own instruments again. Their roots were like a punk thrash band. Boy, I don't think they thrash harder with Sabotage in terms of they're one of their main signature songs. The power of that, the base on that, the sheer literal screaming from Ad-Rock. They were at the peak of their power in the '90s. I just thought that is worthy of one of the songs of the decade. Thoughts?

Alison Stewart: Thought. I think--

Rob Harvilla: It's in there, dude.

Alison Stewart: Thank you. Right on. That's what I think, Brad from the Bronx. "Geriatric millennial here. First album I bought was Traveling Without Moving by Jamiroquai when I was 10. That mid to late '90s, London Disco funk electro sound completely defines the time for me." We're going to go out on a song from the chapters, oh gosh, is it Flukes, Comebacks, and Spectacular Weirdos?

Rob Harvilla: You got it.

Alison Stewart: A song that you note was the first song of the 20th Century. First number-one song. Wait. The last number-one song of the 20th Century and the first of the 21st Century, Santana and Rob Thomas.

Rob Harvilla: The first thing I need to say is that I did Smooth at karaoke in Sweden two months ago with some coworkers. There was my coworker section, we were all from America. Then there was a section of Swedish people. I have to say that the Swedish people just did not get this at all. Maybe it was my vibe, maybe I just performed-- I thought I did all right. I tried to hit "man, it's a hot one" with the right amount of passion, intensity. I feel like my performance was adequate, but it did not translate internationally the way I wanted it to. Smooth is one of these songs that is so much bigger than you remember it being in terms of how many records Santana sold. He won like 50 Grammys in two hours. It was just incredible how huge that song was and how indelible. It still feels like the number-one song in America today. I can't explain why, but it does.

Alison Stewart: The book is a lot of fun. 60 Songs That Explain the '90s by Rob Harvilla. Rob, we go from Rob to Rob. Thanks for being with us.

Rob Harvilla: [chuckles] Thank you so much for having me. It's been a thrill.

Alison Stewart: Here's Smooth.

[MUSIC - Santana feat. Rob Thomas: Smooth]

Man, it's a hot one

Like seven inches from the midday sun

Well, I hear you whisper and the words melt everyone

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