a little experiment of mine, let’s see if this stirs up any discussion around here:

1)Wilson Phillips - “Hold On”: Catchy chorus, I guess. Makes up for those super-dated guitar and synthesizer-fake-vibraphone sounds. Since I like the chorus, I can’t say I dislike the song, but I will say the verses are nothing to get worked up about. Nor, obviously, are the lyrics. Then again, they’re better than what Carnie Wilson’s FATHER was writing that year (“Smart Girls”!)
VIDEO: The blonde is the prettiest of the three, I suppose (is she a Wilson or a Phillips? I’m guessing the latter) but also the worst actress. She does this Steve Perry “Separate Ways” style overacting thing and most of the time she’s posed with her back against a tree like she’s about to fall off a cliff.

2)Roxette - “It Must Have Been Love”: This isn’t dated-sounding really, but it sure is boring as hell. I guess the blonde singer hits some decent high notes. Behold the wonders of the DX-7 tinkly synth tone.
VIDEO: Cuts between the blonde singer (who I take it from the comments died about five years ago) and clips from some Julia Roberts movie I’ve never seen.

3)Sinead O’Connor - “Nothing Compares 2 U”: A bit pokey, I’ve always thought. The musical backing is sparse, which prevents it from being too dated, but it also makes the song a bit pokey. Her voice does well hitting that single high note. I never much got into this song, though.
VIDEO: It’s just her face. That and her walking around a bit in some cemetery. I noticed she hadn’t shaved her head yet? It’s impossible for me to see, read about, discuss, or think about Sinead O’Connor without immediately thinking about how thoroughly godawful her life was, before she was famous, while she was famous and after she was famous.

4)Bell Biv Devoe - “Poison”: Viewer comment: “When this song came out in February 1990 it said, welcome to the new decade.” Oh, for that brief window of time when THIS was supposed to be the “new sound of the 90s.” When THIS was “edgy.” I guess I like that beat, and the bass part…but not much of anything the BBD guys are doing on top of it.
VIDEO: Bullet hair, bright solid colors, baggy pants for the guys, Living Single haircuts, tight dresses, L’eggs and pumps for the girls. Makes the girls look older, doesn’t it? Would that happen today, when you have 45 year old pop stars trying to pass for 19? Running-in-place dance moves that people probably associate first and foremost (however wrongly) with Vanilla Ice these days. Again, it’s fun to think there was a time when this was edgy.

5)Madonna - “Vogue”: One of the few Madonna songs I ever cared for; if I had to pinpoint why, I think it’s because those slightly discordant piano chords got stuck in my head all the time as a kid. I do like the way the verses shift to the piano bit in the chorus, a nice move for the “house” genre. Which has me wondering if kids today have heard the term “house” to refer to a genre of music. You know what sucks about drum machines? Or electronic drums? The “rolls” sound POWERLESS. When you hear the drum roll in this song, it doesn’t energize you like it’s supposed to because it sounds like some guy comically going “piffapiffapiffapiffa”! The part where she raps a bunch of old movie stars’ names hasn’t aged well either.
VIDEO: Shot by David Fincher in about 16 hours. I’d forgotten it was all black and white. Dunno how he got away with her obviously visible nipples in the earlier parts of the video. Then again I’m at a loss for words to explain how you could get away with stuff in 1990 that you couldn’t today, but also can get away with stuff today that you couldn’t get away with in 1990.

6)Mariah Carey - “Vision Of Love”: ZZZZZ. Boring adult contemporary sung by a girl who was trying to pass herself off as an adult. I guess she really could sing, and it’s better than the fucking Christmas song, but who cares. It’s the 1990 equivalent of that horrible Alicia Keys “I keep on fallin’” song. I don’t spend much time thinking about Mariah Carey (and when I do, the first thing that comes to mind is the drubbing she received over Glitter) and I’m not into any of her songs and I thought the melody of this was just bland.
VIDEO: Again, I notice she looked older than she was (20 or 21), which isn’t what I was expecting. She’s sitting in front of a window that has some silly chroma key green screen or whatever the hell it is so that some big dark blue sky is behind her. Looks dated.

7)Phil Collins - “Another Day In Paradise”: Whoa, Old Man Phil comes through on MTV. “The last hit song of the 1980s” because it was #1 in Dec ‘89 and #1 in Jan ‘90. Full disclosure: I don’t really mind Phil’s hits. “Sussudio” and “One More Night” suck (at least, the studio versions do–live, “Sussudio” was a monster) The chorus to this was good enough. I don’t really listen to it outside of hearing it in public, but I don’t think it’s a bad little song.
VIDEO: Phil trying to bring attention to homeless people by using a bunch of black and white still photos. Hope it worked. The shading, framing and lighting seems like it’s trying and failing to hide Phil’s bald spot.

8)En Vogue - “Hold On”: We just HAD a song with that title! The intro sounds nice, but it was written by Smokey Robinson. When the bassline enters it gets old after about fifteen seconds. It’s a pretty dull song, IMO, though I confess to not being much for this genre to begin with.
VIDEO: More pumps and L’eggs. That look was everywhere in 1990. I can’t tell how much I like it.

9)Billy Idol - “Cradle Of Love”: Believe it or not, Billy actually did have an excuse to survive into the 1990s, but it was when he did the song that played over the end credits of Speed in 1994. This song is dumb one-chord shit with a bad guitar solo. Die, die.
VIDEO: Ridiculous. MORE pumps/L’eggs fetishism. Did MTV had a law about this shit or something? A guy who looks like a young version of Eugene Levy lets a girl into his apartment so he can watch her dance while being distracted by his computer (wow, that’s ahead of its time) and he spills wine on her tits, while Billy takes his shirt off. Who directed this shit?…checks…DAVID FINCHER AGAIN. The hell?!? Well at least now we know he did something worse than Alien3!

10)Jon Bon Jovi - “Blaze Of Glory”: Lame boring power ballad with cowboy lyrics. I like “Livin’ On A Prayer” by him and absolutely nothing else ever. Even “Wanted Dead Or Alive,” a song I think I’ve hated my entire life, is more interesting than this. It doesn’t seem to matter that he did this “solo,” either. As George said, “Keep It Simple, Stupid And Serious.” I guess at least it doesn’t have lame keyboards in it.
VIDEO: Jon in the Grand Canyon, swinging his guitar around (that’s another obnoxious MTV trope–guys spinning around with their guitars, preferably in semi slow motion), next to a lame fake set made of buildings with stuff like “SNACK BAR” obviously fakely painted on the sides. Then a drive in movie screen starts playing clips from Young Guns which I think I’ve probably seen every scene from on TV airings without actually sitting through the entire movie, then the whole damn thing burns up melodramatically. Pssht.