The Best Songs Of 1996

I can’t exactly remember what I was looking for, rummaging through old folders and drawers in our garage, but I stumbled upon an old folder from my Humanities class. (While I’m at it, thanks to Mida at http://myalchemy.blogdrive.com/ for being a great lit teacher – there were stories from James Joyce, Maxine Hong Kingston and Kazuo Ishiguro in that wonderful folder) Anyway, a really strange find was this: a yellowed printout of a list of all the songs that I loved, three year’s worth from 1996 to 1998. Imagine that, songs from a decade ago. I had a habit of writing them down so I can pick them up on CDs later, but then again, who had money in high school?

In the previous entry The Best Songs of 2006, I talked about this, and not having a medium for keeping them. Well, well, well. Time to change that – and to have a full nostalgia effect, let’s have them as a series of posts! So let’s start with the oldest of the list, songs from 1996. They’re ranked, and embarrassing the list may be, I hope you find songs that like from it as well, and remember them good old days.

25. Mary J. Blige – Not Gon’ Cry
24. Total – Kissin’ You
23. Everything But The Girl – Two Star
22. Alanis Morissette – Head Over Feet
21. The Bodeans – Closer To Free
20. Mark Morrison – Return Of The Mack
19. Joan Osborne – One Of Us
18. Oasis – Don’t Look Back In Anger
17. Keith Sweat – Twisted
16. Spice Girls – 2 Become 1
15. Babylon Zoo – Spaceman
14. Whigfield – Close To You
13. Monica – Why I Love You So Much
12. Duncan Sheik – Barely Breathing
11. Spice Girls – Wannabe
10. The Corrs – Runaway/Love To Love You
9. The Tony Rich Project – Nobody Knows
8. La Bouche – Be My Lover
7. Boyzone – Father And Son
6. Alanis Morissette – Ironic
5. Mark Snow – X Files
4. Squeeze – Heaven Knows
3. Robert Miles – Children
2. Mariah Carey – Always Be My Baby
1. Gina G – Just A Little Bit

Okay, okay, it’s a pretty embarrassing list, when you look back at it. Hey, it was the first time this countdown was conceived, and I was yet to refine the music I listened to. And did I say that that’s only the Top 25 of a hundred songs? Others floating in the list include Prodigy, Bush, The Beautiful South, Ash, Fugees, The Cardigans, Ocean Colour Scene, and Underworld. You might want to catch up on that. Meanwhile, there are songs in the list that I have to search for, because honestly, I forgot what they sounded like.