Wednesday, August 01, 2012

1995: Top 50 Singles

The monthly series of posts featuring our favorite singles from each year of the '90s is moving on to the second half of the decade, the post-grunge years, with 1995’s Top 50 list.

PJ Harvey, who reinvented herself as a goth diva for her third album "To Bring You My Love", claims another Single of the Year (she was also at the top of our 1992 list) with the stunning, futuristic blues of "Down by the Water", the lead single from the album which was released to great artistic and commercial success in February '95.

Grunge was already history by then, but there are still plenty of kick-ass rock tunes to choose from and several of them by the likes of Hole, The Smashing Pumpkins, Rocket From The Crypt, The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion and the ill-fated but excellent Scarce, have stormed to the top of our list. 1995 was also a landmark year for britpop that culminated with the Blur vs. Oasis chart battle in the summer, but although we do have quite a few of the genre's hits scattered throughout our list, it’s only the post-punk and new wave influenced sounds of Elastica that have what it takes to crack our idiosyncratic Top 10. Check it out below and then click here for the complete Top 50 of 1995:

1.   Down By The Water - P.J. HARVEY
2.   Violet - HOLE
3.   Bullet With Butterfly Wings - THE SMASHING PUMPKINS
4.   Born In '69 - ROCKET FROM THE CRYPT
5.   Bellbottoms - THE JON SPENCER BLUES EXPLOSION
6.   Vow - GARBAGE
7.   Waking Up - ELASTICA
8.   Born Slippy - UNDERWORLD
9.   Natural One - THE FOLK IMPLOSION
10. Glamourizing Cigarettes - SCARCE

Listen to the majority of our 1995 selections in the playlist below, which combines (as usual) the year's great hits with the hidden gems:

1995 Singles by ody on Grooveshark

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