For all Sons fans who were feeling down after last Sunday.

REM: Everybody Hurts

For some reason a lot of my posts in this category so far seem to come from 1990. This is The Farm’s first big hit. I have previously posted their biggest, All Together Now, in another context.

The Farm: Groovy Train

Another 90s song that alludes to the Apollo programme.

World Party: Is It Like Today?

This was the first (the only?) song with lyrics sung in the language of Wolof to be a hit in the UK. It possibly helped that Neneh Cherry’s contribution to it was sung in English. N’Dour sings in three languages in total as he also threw French into the mix.

Youssou N’Dour featuring Neneh Cherry: 7 Seconds

Another 90s song inspired by the Apollo Programme.

It’s a pity that Tasmin Archer’s career somewhat fizzled out.

Tasmin Archer: Sleeping Satellites

The organ on this has a very retro early- to mid-60s sound. Not quite appropriate for the subject matter as the rocket it was named for was a late 60s early 70s machine.

Inspiral Carpets: Saturn 5

A song packed full of cultural references from around 1990.

I especially liked the line, “Leslie Crowther, Come On Down.”

The Beloved: Hello

This is the song with which I would have started off this category in the best of circumstances.

It’s the lyric on this that I really like. It has that sense of contingency, of paths that might not have been taken, and in that context reminds me of Abba’s The Day Before You Came which you may remember I waxed lyrical (ahem) about some moons ago now.

It was the last single taken from Pulp’s big breakthrough album Different Class but not the least.

Pulp: Something Changed

In the first of this category’s posts I mentioned that Dolores O’Riordan of The Cranberries had a distinctive voice. There was a distressed quality to it that spoke of demons in the way that Janis Joplin’s also did. O’Riordan’s childhood experiences and subsequent bipolar disorder can perhaps be discerned in her vocal performances.

(Listening to the guitar on this I think Snow Patrol may well have listened to this sort of thing.)

The Cranberries: Zombie

I haven’t previously had a category for 1990s music – the spur for Friday on my Mind, Reelin’ in the Years and Live it Up wasn’t there. I had been thinking of a starting point, but not this one.

I have been shocked into it by the premature demise of Dolores O’Riordan, lead singer of The Cranberries, who first entered the public consciousness in the 1990s. 46 isn’t 27 but it’s still shockingly early. O’Riordan had a distinctive voice which I shall be coming back to.

The Cranberries: Linger

Dolores Mary Eileen O’Riordan: 6/9/1971 – 15/1/2018. So it goes.