1)Boyz II Men - “End Of The Road”
SONG: Boring standard issue 80s adult contemporary. “90s” my ass. Those keyboards are standard issue Casio, and the arrangement is completely uninteresting. The one dude’s spoken-word part near the end is laughable. If I were completely shitfaced drunk, which I never am, the chorus might be worth stupidly singing along to, but get real.
VIDEO: Dude in the blue dress shirt needs to take acting lessons. The expression he makes when he sings “pain in my head” is Tommy Wiseau-level laughable.

2)Sir Mix-A-Lot - “Baby Got Back”
SONG: I can’t remember the last time I listened to this of my own volition…probably never, actually. I guess it was always good for a laugh, but not ten thousand laughs.
VIDEO: I never had watched the video, which has a few visual plays on things that look like ass cheeks (a bunch of peaches animated using stop-motion, heh) that get a laugh. I wonder if either of the two girls who play the “oh my God Becky” girls went on to actual acting careers?

3)Kris Kross - “Jump”
SONG: I feel like being nice to this–for music made by a couple of thirteen year olds, it actually wasn’t that embarrassing to listen to. As a kid I got it confused with the House Of Pain song anyway (very stupid to admit that). It’s pretty repetitive though. I guess it’s the “wiggidy wiggidy wiggidy wack” part that people made fun of the most over the years, at least as far as I can remember. I didn’t remember they only had one “s” in their first name though.
VIDEO: I feel like being nice to this too–the clothes they were wearing somehow don’t look that stupid!! After all the time I spent ragging on pop stars’ clothes in my first two Billboard posts, I can’t complain about this!

4)Vanessa Williams - “Save The Best For Last”
SONG: Adult contemporary shit. Modern EGP keyboard tone. Might’ve been some strings and bass in there towards the end. Unmusic. ZZZZ. Nothing to see here, folks.
VIDEO: She sure was hot. Not that I’ll be watching it again.

5)TLC - “Baby-Baby-Baby”
SONG: Generic R&B. Could be worse, I guess, but I have no idea what made this any sort of a stand out when I was 10.
VIDEO: Okay, I can’t tell and can’t remember–was this actually how black college kids dressed in 1992, or is there some sort of in-joke going on in this video? Bright yellow kiddie coveralls, Bill Cosby-colored shirts…there’s a scene in the video where they’re all having a slumber party, so are they supposed to be dressed like little kids or something in the rest of it?

6)Eric Clapton - “Tears In Heaven”
SONG: Okay, okay…I know that in recent years it’s been pretty fashionable for people to come out and admit that they never actually liked this song, or that they hated it at the time, along with sentiments that Clapton either exploited his son’s death for a comeback, or that Clapton should have died before he was 30…it’s tied to all sorts of Clapton hate. I can’t say that I feel like listening to the song much of my own volition, but I can say that I don’t feel like hating it; his voice is a little too soft and dead-sounding, and I don’t know why there’s an accordion in the mix, but the melody of the song is passable. That’s as close as can get to, er, “objective subjectivity” about the song, by which I mean discussing its musical merits subjectively, and not the tragedy surrounding it.
VIDEO: Actually this is just Clapton sitting there playing his guitar, while clips of Jason Patric and Jennifer Jason Leigh from the movie Rush play. You wouldn’t know if you didn’t know ahead of time that the song had anything to do with Clapton’s son!

7)En Vogue - “My Lovin’ (You’re Never Gonna Get It)”
SONG: Well, this better than the other R&B junk on this list. It has a 1970s flute wafting in and out of it, which is sort of nice. It takes three whole minutes to get to the part everyone remembers, which must be some sort of miracle for an MTV song.
VIDEO: A 1990 video in 1992–huge heels and short one piece dresses. Silhouettes of dancers doing those early 90s dance moves. A non-silhouetted dancer wearing a weird blue vinyl S&M body suit thing with his face covered. Harg.

8)The Red Hot Chili Peppers - “Under The Bridge”
SONG: I…still love this one. Sorry. I’m not a Chili Peppers fanatic by any stretch of the imagination but all I can really say to rag on this musically is that maybe Anthony Kiedis’ singing is a little bit overwrought. The choir at the end is glorious. I’ll die on this hill. 1992 forever, bruh.
VIDEO: Kiedis with that pink filter on him looks silly, as does John Frusciante’s get up, like an early 90s dunce-cap uniform. The part where Kiedis runs slow motion towards the camera is pretty bad too.

9)Color Me Badd - “All 4 Love”
SONG: At first I thought the barrelhouse piano and super-cutesy major-key melody meant that this was going to be some sort of a deal breaker, but they got old before the song was over. And another lame spoken word bridge like all these songs seemed to have in them.
VIDEO: No, THIS is a 1990 video in 1992. Yep, the Vanilla Ice dance moves, giant baggy pants and garish colors live forever. Am I the only one who noticed that the lead singer looks exactly like a younger version of the deaf dude who won Best Supporting Actor about four years ago? Hilariously enough the first, like, 400 viewer comments are all “how come they don’t make music like THIS anymore?” Gee, bruh, I dunno.

10)Jon Secada - “Just Another Day”
SONG: The chorus to this needs to be slightly rewritten. It’s actually pretty nice the way it sort of moves downward…but then it tapers off too much. It’s, like, a great chorus for the first six or seven notes. Someone rewrite that, stat. Aside from that…well, I guess moody Latin adult contemporary is better than other people’s adult contemporary?
VIDEO: Steamy beach stuff with seagulls, orange filter, slo-mo, and Jon having a great big hole in his jeans that looks like somebody put it there five minutes before the video was shot.

Well, at least by stopping at 10 I didn’t have to do “I’m Too Sexy” or, God help me, “Achy Breaky Heart,” a song I literally would shoot out my computer screen to avoid hearing. “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” the most historically important song of this era, is at #32.