The Music of My Life – Decade Extras – The 1990’s

I noticed that I accidentally scheduled this to post at 8pm instead of 8am. Sorry I am late.

This is sort of a continuation of the Music of My Life feature. It focused on music from 1970-2025. It featured tunes that have special meaning to me, brought back a certain memory or a tune that I just really like. I found that with the first three decades, there were songs that I didn’t feature. So I sat down with my original lists and selected some songs that “bubbled under,” so to speak.

I figured a good way to present them was to focus on a decade. 10 years = 1 song per year = 10 songs. Last week I wrapped up the 80’s. This week we move on to the 90’s. So, let’s check out a few “Decade Extras.”

1990

My first song this week is one from a group that has music in their bloodline – Wilson Phillips. Chynna Phillips is the daughter of John Phillips and Michelle Phillips of The Mamas & The Papas, while Carnie Wilson and Wendy Wilson are the daughters of Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys and Marilyn Rovell of The Honeys.

Around this time I was really going through some depression. There were so many things coming at me at home, at work, and life in general. Hold On, cheesy as this may sound, really helped me get through some of those times. The song was the breakout hit for the group, and it was a huge one, peaking at #1 on June 9, 1990.

According to Songfacts.com, Chynna Phillips wrote the lyrics about her drug and alcohol addiction.

Producer Glen Ballard had been working with Wilson Phillips when he handed Chynna a cassette tape with some music that needed words. Phillips took it home to work on the lyrics, but inspiration struck before she even got to the front door.

She wrote about the pain of a lost love and the substance that surrounded it while sitting in her driveway. “I thought to myself, ‘Well, AA tells me, just hold on, just one day at a time. I thought, ‘OK, if I can just hold on for one more day, then I can do this.'”

Hold On

1991

The plea for racial tolerance had been going on long before 1991 (and remains to this day). Michael Jackson offered up his plea in the song Black or White. The song was the fastest-rising single in 22 years (since The Beatles’ “Get Back”), jumping from #35 to #3 in its second week, and landing at #1 in its third week.

The video was originally 11 minutes long, but eventually edited down for airplay on channels like MTV. It featured a morphing technique that was very innovative at the time. We see this kind of thing all the time today, but in 1991, it was one of the coolest things I had ever seen.

The video features Macaulay Culkin and George Wendt (Norm from the sitcom Cheers, who passed away yesterday) appeared in it, as well as Tyra Banks before she gained supermodel status.

Black or White

1992

Tears in Heaven by Eric Clapton is just a beautiful (albeit sad) song. Clapton wrote this about his four-year-old son Conor, who died on March 20, 1991 when he fell out of a 53rd floor window in the apartment where his mother was staying in New York City. He wrote it with Will Jennings. Jennings told Songfacts:

“Eric and I were engaged to write a song for a movie called Rush. We wrote a song called ‘Help Me Up’ for the end of the movie… then Eric saw another place in the movie for a song and he said to me, ‘I want to write a song about my boy.’ Eric had the first verse of the song written, which, to me, is all the song, but he wanted me to write the rest of the verse lines and the release (‘Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees…’), even though I told him that it was so personal he should write everything himself. He told me that he had admired the work I did with Steve Winwood and finally there was nothing else but do to as he requested, despite the sensitivity of the subject. This is a song so personal and so sad that it is unique in my experience of writing songs.”

Clapton wasn’t sure he wanted this song to be released at all, but the director of Rush, Lili Zanuck, convinced him to use it in the film. “Her argument was that it might in some way help somebody, and that got my vote,” Clapton said.

The song was a huge hit. It won Grammys in 1993 for Record of the Year, Song of the Year, and Best Male Pop Vocal. Clapton was nominated for nine Grammys that year and won six.

Tears in Heaven

Clapton played an acoustic version on his 1992 MTV Unplugged special. Personally, I love this version best.

1993

There are some songs that will be forever associated with television or movies. The next song is one of those. If I say “What is Love” by Haddaway, you know what you think of …. SNL.

According to Songfacts, this song gained popularity when it was used in a recurring Saturday Night Live sketch about three guys who go clubbing. They dress alike – in outdated fashion – and torment women at the clubs by forcing their dancing upon them. There is very little dialogue in the sketches, and this song plays throughout, with the three men bobbing their heads in unison. In 1998, the skit was extended to a full-length movie called A Night At The Roxbury.

The two regular performers in the skit (and movie) were SNL cast members Will Ferrell and Chris Kattan. The host of the show would often be their third man in the bits – Jim Carrey and Sylvester Stallone each did a turn as the head-bobbing swingers.

Although the song is an upbeat dance track, the lyrics are rather gut-wrenching, as Haddaway sings about trying to love a girl who won’t love him back.

What is Love

1994

1994 features a cover song. The original was done by Vicki Sue Robinson in 1976, and it was her only hit. That song was Turn the Beat Around.

Gloria Estefan’s nearly identical cover version in 1994 was used in the Sharon Stone movie The Specialist. Her version was a #1 Dance hit and went to #13 on the Hot 100. The song reminds me of many of the dances that I DJ’d over the years where it was a big dance tune.

Turn the Beat Around

1995

The next song was meant to be a tribute to Bob Dylan. Apparently, Dylan felt the “tribute” infringed too closely on original work, and he sued the group who recorded it for unauthorized use of his lyrics. Bob wound up receiving a large, out-of-court settlement in 1995. The song? Only Wanna Be With You. The group? Hootie and the Blowfish.

When singer Darius Rucker recorded a country album, he stopped by our station. It was in the late afternoon and I was the morning guy. I honestly didn’t think his country stuff would go anywhere, so I skipped the visit. For what it is worth, that first country album had some great tunes on it and I regret not stopping in.

I Only Wanna Be With You

1996

One of the biggest slow dance songs of 1996 came from a movie that featured – Cartoon characters! R. Kelly wrote I Believe I Can Fly for Space Jam, a movie starring Michael Jordan and other NBA stars in a world of cartoons (including Bugs Bunny). The song plays in the opening scene where a young Jordan is practicing late at night. When his father comes to bring him inside, they talk about Michael’s aspirations: to play at North Carolina; to play in the NBA; to fly.

The movie was big at the box office, but this song was even bigger, becoming an inspirational anthem often played at weddings and used in video tributes. Kelly got an early copy of the movie to view for inspiration. According to Rolling Stone magazine, Kelly said, “I studied it and I prayed over it because I wanted the best thing to come out of it.”

Fun Fact: Kelly may claim that he believes he can fly in this song, but in reality the R&B superstar has a chronic fear of air travel. Kelly is so scared of planes that he even takes boats when he tours Europe.

I Believe I Can Fly

1997

I was still working at the mailroom at EDS when Tonic released If You Could Only See. It played a lot on Planet 96.3 in Detroit when I was doing deliveries. I had no idea how the song came about, but it is a neat story.

Songfacts says, Tonic frontman Emerson Hart wrote this song after a tense phone call with his mother. Hart was 21 years old and planning to get married – not what his mother had in mind. She tried to talk him out of it, but you can’t argue with love. Emerson told her: “If you could only see the way she loves me, then maybe you would understand,” and then he hung up.

With his fire sparked, Hart started writing the song, and it came very quickly, with him taking aim at his mother’s “manipulations” and “lies” during the strident verses, then slowing it down to present his side of the story in the chorus. The song was very cathartic and helped him work out his feelings, but in the end his mother was right: it didn’t work out with the girl and they never got married.

This was Tonic’s first single, but it almost didn’t make the album. The band got a deal with Polydor Records after playing clubs for a few years in the Los Angeles area. When it came time to record their debut album, Emerson Hart wasn’t sure if they should use “If You Could Only See,” since it was a very vulnerable song and he wasn’t sure how it would be received. Polydor, however, loved it and made sure it was the debut single.

If You Could Only See

1998

I’ve said before, Jewel was one of the greatest interviews I ever did. She was such a wonderful and delightful person. The story that proceeds her success is inspiring.

At a February 2008 concert in Las Vegas, Jewel explained that when she was 18, she was living in a van and did some shoplifting. She was going to take a dress when she looked at her hands and realized that she controlled them. Said Jewel, “I realized I was cheating myself. No matter how you work with your hands your own dignity is up to you.”

She played mostly new tracks from her country album when she was with us. I did get her to play Hands for us while we not on the air. She also did a Christmas version on her Christmas album.

Jewel performed this on Late Night with David Letterman a week after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The song was a popular choice on the radio when a DJ remixed the track after the tragedy.

Hands

1999

American Woman by the Guess Who was the song that was number one on the day I was born. It was featured in the first installment of this feature. It’s interesting that it shows up again in 1999, but this time by Lenny Kravitz.

This was used in the movie Austin Powers 2, The Spy Who Shagged Me. The video featured Heather Graham, who was in the movie, as the American Woman. Kravitz told how he came to record the song in an interview:

“I was called by the people making Austin Powers and they simple asked me to cover ‘American Woman,’ which I thought was odd but I accepted thinking it was an interesting challenge and did my best to change it as much as possible while still respecting the original. I was pleased when Burton Cummings called me to tell me how much he loved it.”

Lenny’s version is actually pretty good. I think he did a great job making it his own. People liked it, too, as it won a Grammy in 1999 for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.

American Woman

There’s Round 1 of the 90’s. We’ll revisit the decade again next week before moving on into the 2000’s and wrapping up the feature.

Thanks for listening and for reading.

The Music of My Life – 1990

Welcome back to The Music of My Life, where I feature ten songs from each year of my life. In most cases, the ten songs I choose will be ones I like personally (unless I explain otherwise). The songs will be selected from Billboard’s Year-end Hot 100 Chart, Acclaimed Music, and will all be released in the featured year.

A brand new decade has dawned and I will turn 20 in 1990. It was a time of change for me, as well. I had been working at WKSG for a little over 2 years. I truly believed that I’d have that job for years, but had yet to learn how unstable radio jobs were. When I was fired, I called my old boss (now at another station in Detroit) and cried like a baby. He brought me in part time at WMXD.

As I looked through the music from 1990 and 1991, there were many songs that I played while at WMXD. When I started there, the music was a mix of Adult Contemporary and Urban songs. Eventually, they would go all Urban Contemporary and I was let go again.

One of the songs I played, I wrote about recently, but it still makes my list here. If you want to know more about Elton John’s Club at the End of the Street, you can read the earlier post here:

Throwback Thursday Tune

Club At The End of the Street

Next on the list is a song that was released on my 20th birthday, May 15, 1990. “Vision Of Love” was Mariah Carey’s first single. The song debuted at #73 in America, but two months later, in August, spent four weeks at the #1 spot. I remember playing this one on WMXD, as well. It was a song that really showcased her outrageous vocal range! The first time I heard her belt out that high note, I couldn’t believe it!

The original demo of the song was described as a 1950’s shuffle, but that didn’t matter. The song was good enough. Songfacts says, The original version was included on Mariah’s demo tape for Columbia. It was one of the songs that caught the ear of Tommy Mottola, her future husband and, more importantly, the head of the label’s parent company, CBS Records. At the time, Mariah was working as a backup singer for Brenda K. Starr, who invited her to a label party in Manhattan where the demo tape made its way into Mottola’s hands. After listening to the tape in his limo on the way home, he went back to the party to track down the singer. Mariah had already left and no one knew who she was. Days later, she found a message on her answering machine inviting her to sign with the label. Mottola then sent her to Los Angeles to re-record “Vision Of Love.”

Let me be honest right here. After her second album, there were not too many songs by Mariah that I cared for. I don’t know this for sure, but I feel the “business” changed her. There were a couple of songs later that were good. I felt, however, her strongest stuff was on those first two albums.

Vision of Love

The Godfather trilogy will always be my number one, but my second favorite trilogy would be Back to the Future. In 1990, Back to the Future Part III was released in theaters. I couldn’t wait to see how it all wrapped up.

ZZ Top released their Recycler album in 1990. The lead single from the album was a song from Back to the Future Part III called Doubleback. The group made a cameo appearance in the movie playing an acoustic version. That version is on the soundtrack of the movie.

Doubleback

But wait, there’s more! Consider this a Double Shot of ZZ Top. From the same album, My Head’s In Mississippi sounded like classic ZZ Top to me. I just loved the shuffle and the vocals. Billy Gibbons said:

“My buddy Walter Baldwin spoke in the most poetic way. Every sentence was a visual awakening. His dad was the editor of the Houston Post. We grew up in a neighborhood where the last thing you would say is, ‘These teenagers know what blues is.’ But our appreciation dragged us in. Years later, we were sitting in a tavern in Memphis called Sleep Out Louie’s — you could see the Mississippi River. Walter said, ‘We didn’t grow up pickin’ cotton. We weren’t field hands in Mississippi. But my head’s there.’ Our platform, in ZZ Top, was we’d be the Salvador Dalí of the Delta. It was a surrealist take. This song was not a big radio hit. But we still play it live, even if it’s just the opening bit.”

In 2008, Gibbons stated, “‘My Head’s in Mississippi,’ which was one of the first completed tracks on the album, is a great example of how we mixed the new with the old. Initially, it was a straight-ahead boogie-woogie. Then Frank stepped in and threw in those highly gated electronic drum fills, which modernized the track.”

My Head’s in Mississippi

I have never owned a pair of parachute pants. They do look comfortable, however, and it looks like you have a lot of freedom in them.

As much as I didn’t really want to include this one, I did play it a lot while DJing. It always got folks out dancing, then again, so did Super Freak by Rick James. Believe it or not, James did NOT give Hammer permission to use the song.

Songfacts explains: Rick James tried to keep rappers from sampling his music, turning down any requests. According to James, his lawyers authorized the “Super Freak” sample without his permission. He heard about it when a friend told him about “U Can’t Touch This” and the song came on the radio they were listening to in the car. James said he was irate, but somewhat appeased when he found out how much money it was making for him. Still, he claimed he wouldn’t have done the deal if he was asked.

James had another beef as well: he wanted to be listed as a songwriter on “U Can’t Touch This.” He sued MC Hammer for credit. The case was settled out of court, with James getting listed as a co-writer on the track along with Hammer and Alonzo Miller. Miller was a disc jockey who wrote some lyrics on “Super Freak.”

He recorded the song at Capitol Records, where Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and Dean Martin recorded, The label ran an innovative marketing campaign to promote this song. They mailed out free cassette singles of the track to 100,000 kids. The cassettes came with a letter from Hammer asking them to call MTV and request the video. The ploy worked, and the video became the most-played of 1990 on the network.

U Can’t Touch This

I don’t remember when my ex-girlfriend had sent this song to me. It was probably after we broke up the first time. I say that because I believe that this song is what led us to getting back together eventually. I remember being pretty messed up after the break up. I did end up dating someone else.

I don’t recall how my ex and I began chatting again, but it led to her giving me this song. I really loved and cared about my ex. I broke it off with the gal I had been dating to get back together with my ex. It was really unfair to her, but I was 20, almost 21, and didn’t really know any better.

While we enjoyed some very good times the second time around, it didn’t last. She broke up with me again, which led to me always wondering what I did to cause he to leave. Anyway, I tell you all that to play Cuts Both Ways.

Cuts Both Ways

In 1967, Otis Redding wrote and recorded his version of Hard to Handle. He wrote it with Allen Jones and Al Bell and the track was produced by the legendary Steve Cropper. It was released in 1968 (after his death) as the B-side to his song “Amen.”

The song was first covered in 1968 by Patti Drew. The Black Crowes covered the song on their debut album, Shake Your Money Maker. Two versions of the song exist. First, the original album version and the hit single remixed with an overdubbed brass section. The latter is available on the 30th Anniversary edition of Shake Your Money Maker.

Songfacts says: This was The Black Crowes’ third single, following “Twice As Hard” and “Jealous Again.” It made #45 in the US in December 1990, as the group was rapidly gaining momentum. After “She Talks To Angels” hit #30 in May 1991 – over a year after the album was released – “Hard To Handle” was reissued, this time going to #26 and becoming the highest-charting single for the band on the Hot 100.

This has always been a song that I love to crank up. It’s funky and fun!

Hard To Handle

My next song is another one that I played while at WMXD. I was familiar with James Ingram before I worked there and always liked his voice. I Don’t Have The Heart was his only solo number one song. The song won him a Grammy Award for Best Male Pop Vocal Performance in 1991.

The song was written by the duo of Allan Rich and Jud Friedman. It was the first song they wrote together. Speaking about Rich’s lyrics, Friedman told Songwriting Magazine, “Allan says he’s not a poetic lyricist, and he’s not a flowery lyricist. He is very conversational, but in a good way, and that has its own poetry. It’s the poetry of reality and the poetry of life and interactions. And the thing about I Don’t Have The Heart, among many brilliant things about Allan’s idea for the song, is it’s an example of taking a phrase that’s very well known, ‘I don’t have the heart,’ and flipping it. ‘I don’t have the heart to hurt you but I don’t have the heart to love you.’ He used it in two different ways, and that was poetic. We’ve all been there, sometimes wearing one of the shoes and sometimes wearing the other.”

That was the thing that caught me, too. The flip. I love when a lyric does that.

I Don’t Have the Heart

Whitney Houston hadn’t been on the radio since 1988. While she had her fair share of uptempo songs, but I feel like radio played more of her ballads. So the first time I played I’m Your Baby Tonight, I was wowed by it.

According to Songfacts:

By the time Houston released her third album, I’m Your Baby Tonight, she was coming off of a three-year hiatus. Prior to this, she had a record-breaking string of seven consecutive #1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100. The problem was, her record label felt she was losing touch with her black audience. Houston balked at the claim, telling USA Today, “I don’t sing music thinking this is black, or this is white… I sing songs that everybody’s going to like.”

But producers L.A. Reid and Babyface agreed with the assertion. Reid told Billboard: “We wanted to come up with something that was different than anything Whitney had sung. So we approached it from that angle. We wanted to give her a new direction, and pick up where we felt she was lacking. We felt like she needed more of a black base.”

It definitely was a fresh sound for her, but I don’t know hear it as “more black” or “more white.” To me, it is just a great song!

The Julien Temple-directed music video shows Houston in the guise of different pop culture figures. They include silver screen siren Marlene Dietrich, Audrey Hepburn, and all three of The Supremes.

I’m Your Baby Tonight

Allow me just one more song from my WMXD days. Let me set this up for you. When I was at WKSG, these two sweet old ladies always called to request songs. They were sisters named Virginia and Dorothy. They always seemed to call toward the end of my overnight shift.

Virginia suffered with respiratory issues, so it took her a bit to say what she wanted. She would get a couple words out and have to take a breath. She had emphysema and really struggled to breathe.

Dorothy, on the other hand, was always on the go. She was always talking about where she was over the weekend. She was always at a party or something, even though she didn’t drive. She took a bus or Your Ride where she needed to go.

When I told them that I was leaving the station, Dorothy gave me her address to keep in touch. When I moved to Ludington, she and Virginia wrote me often. Eventually, communication was over the phone. When I moved back home, we actually ran into each other at a Weight Watchers. meeting.

I was closer to Dorothy, and she would invite me to stop by for coffee. She always had some sort of baked good ready. She was born the same day as Frank Sinatra. She was such a sweet friend. I am sure that I lost touch with her after I married my ex, and was sad to hear that she (and her sister) had passed away.

She once told me that she didn’t like all of the music we played at WMXD. One song she loved was The First Time by Surface. This song went to number one on the Billboard Hot 100. Whenever I hear it, I think about my friend and am grateful to have known her.

The First Time

Robert Palmer’s Don’t Explain album was very different. It contains 18 tracks and a variety of styles. There is R&B, Rock, Jazz, and more. It also includes some cover songs. I love the track “Top 40” because it swings a bit with a great sax line. It, however, wasn’t released as a single.

The song that is closest to what he had success with in the 80’s is You’re Amazing. I love the guitar line in the song. Billboard said, “Palmer’s reliably strong soul stylings added to headbanger guitar riffs and sweet background harmonies proves to be a quirky, but potent, combination.”

I don’t know that I would call the guitars “headbangers,” but I suppose they are a bit harder than Palmer usually presents. Now, the background harmonies – yeah, I dig those!

You’re Amazing

1990 Bonus Song

I just can’t pass up one song. It is a song that my best friend, Jeff, and I still laugh about. I can’t be sure who heard this first, but I know we laughed about it for years. The idea of taking the voice from a 1970’s instructional dance record and incorporating it into this is brilliant. The Bingo Boys did just that!

It is this vocal part from that record that makes us laugh so much. I cannot even being to picture a couple in their living room trying to learn a dance to that guy! It is so absurd that after a few of his lines, Princessa jumps in to shut him up. “Act like the end of a record and fade out …” is the lyric. I think that’s an awesome line.

The Bingo Boys were a trio from Austria. The song was actually released in the US first. It was released in the UK in 1991. It went to number one on the Hot Dance Club Play chart and reached number 25 on the Hot 100.

The song borrows heavily from a number of earlier recordings, including “Dance, Dance, Dance (Yowsah, Yowsah, Yowsah)” by Chic, “Dance (Disco Heat) by Sylvester, “Kiss” by the Art of Noise and Tom Jones, the popular James Brown “Yeah! Woo!” sample loop, the bassline motif from Mantronix’s single “Got to Have Your Love”, and a synth motif from The Whispers’ “And The Beat Goes On”. See if you can catch them all ….

How To Dance

That’s a wrap on 1990. Next week, we’ll check out 1991. That was the year I turned 21 and moved out for the first time. What kind of surprises will pop up?

Did I miss any big 1990 songs from your list?? Drop them in the comments!