1)Bryan Adams - “(Everything I Do) I Do It For You”
SONG: Six and a half minutes?!? Where were the people who wanted them to edit “Stairway To Heaven” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” when this shitpile topped the charts? The only good thing I can say for this snail-paced snoozefest is that it’s light on the synthesizers, and the drums aren’t very gated, but it’s still a reasonably dated-sounding song anyway. The beloved fake digital piano sound is still present. I also hate how there’s a fake ending at the four-minute mark, giving way to two and a half more minutes of adult-contemporary guitar soloing. This was NOT a song worth revisiting, you GUYS.
VIDEO: Boring slow-mo black-and-white footage of Bryan singing the song in concert. I’d forgotten what he looked like–he was a plainly dressed, plain looking guy with plain curtained hair and a square jaw, singing his plain lyrics to his plain song. Wow, I’d actually prefer if it had just been a bunch of clips from the silly Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves. I mean, at least Alan Rickman is entertainingly bad in that movie.

2)Color Me Badd - “I Wanna Sex You Up”
SONG: I guess I’ve heard worse. A mild major-key R&B groove that does nothing but itself for four minutes. Falsetto vocals that are one inch away from getting these guys called homophobic names in the 90s. Not horribly dated, but not the best either. I don’t remember these guys’ music at all, just that they were from Oklahoma City and people have been making fun of their terrible band name for a very long time. Of course there is also the song title, which I guess would have been edgy back then.
VIDEO: It’s themed around “office guys inviting girls who look like Russian prostitutes back to the office.” I’m reminded of both American Psycho (set in the 80s but published in 1991) and that silly Neo Geo magazine ad from the same year which clearly had a subliminal cock in it, but I’ve noticed that you can already tell from these guys’ appearance that they’re realizing the MC Hammer/Vanilla Ice thing is already on its way out. Their dance moves are straight out of that era, obviously, but their clothes and style seem to be shifting away from it. One of the guys looks like George Michael (hence the song title, probably meant to evoke GM, right?) but more hilariously there’s one that looks like Kenny G. He’s the one who gets the laughs.

3)C+C Music Factory - “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”
SONG: I’m wondering if this is the all time champion entry in the “song people only remember the first 30 seconds of” sweepstakes. I’d forgotten entirely that there was rapping in it. Both the guitars and synths being used to create the riff sound like they could be coming from a Casio or something like that, or like how there’s “gated drums,” then there’s these which are “gated guitars” or “gated synthesizer notes” or something. Whatever. I’m getting into Pete Anderson psychobabble talk here.
VIDEO: Everybody look like Milli Vanilli now. Running in place dance moves. Bike shorts and boots. Silly words like “FREEDOM” flashing across the rapper guy’s eyes. Names of band members appearing next to them on the screen in the font I remember from either the cover of The Downward Spiral or Pump Up The Volume, whichever comes first.

4)Paula Abdul - “Rush Rush”
SONG: Three-chord adult contemporary mush. Again, I guess it could sound a lot more dated, but then again, so could Phil Collins’ “One More Night,” and that’s a piece of shite.
VIDEO: Paula and Keanu Reeves laughably re-enact scenes from Rebel Without A Cause, which I only picked up on when they re-enacted the dumb “drive off the cliff” scene, and they weren’t even the first people in that era to do that (anyone remember the opening of The Heavenly Kid? No?) Up until that, I was just wondering why on Earth anybody wanted to dress Paula Abdul up as a 1950s bobby-soxer. A silly dialogue bit between Paula and Keanu interrupts the only musically palatable part of the song, a violin solo.

5)Timmy T - “One More Try”
SONG: Okay, at this point I’m starting to die inside at the disparity between what people were actually talking about in 1991 musically (grunge, alternative, gangsta rap, Public Enemy, shoegaze, etc.) and what was topping the chart–shit like this!! This is such a pathetic adult contemporary ballad that it makes the Paula Abdul song look like Van Der Graaf Generator. Simple Casio synth sheen and lame little synth bass notes going “lubb lubb” under the song. Bland vocals and lyrics, too. The dude’s little monologue at the end of the song is probably the worst moment I had to listen to from any song in this post.
VIDEO: I’ve seriously never heard of the song before or the guy who sings it a single time in my life. He’s the oldest looking 23 year old I’ve ever seen and his hair looks stupid and he’s wearing a yellow turtleneck for most of the song. This is the first and last time I’ll ever listen to this!!!

6)EMF - “Unbelievable”
SONG: British rap-rock, I guess–a soft-voiced guy speak-singing over a combination of (surprisingly bluesy) guitar, piano, and a dance beat. The first even remotely interesting guitar part I’ve heard in any of these songs so far. I mean, I’m not in love with this, but it’s at least mildly interesting. It beats its riff into the fucking ground, though. Maybe Aerosmith could take a cue from these guys back in the day, huh?
VIDEO: Footage of a show. Over-edited and obnoxiously shot. The silly sideways baseball caps and super baggy shirts and obligatory running in place dance moves remind you that this is, indeed, 1991–I’d only heard of these guys because Prindle made a joke about how GG Allin had to retitle Eat My Fuc as “E.M.F.” in his review of the Allin album.

7)Extreme - “More Than Words”
SONG: I’ll cop to liking “Hole Hearted” by these guys. I have been told by more than one person (around here) that these guys were the only good hair band, or that their second and third albums were the only good hair metal albums ever made, or the “one hair metal album to hear if you hear only one.” I dunno–I still have to try those Def Leppard albums. I think the song is not bad but not great either. It has been pointed out that it’s not a power ballad. I guess the falsetto bit is sort of a better hook than the rest of the chorus. The lyrics to the song aren’t the best. I used to sneer at the part where the dude sings “nev-er-let-me-go” and the guitarist chops at his guitar real hard. But after Timmy T I don’t feel like sneering at this song at all.
VIDEO: Sensitive black and white clip that you’ve probably all seen. Gary Cherone and Nuno Bettencourt look like they could be mistaken for brothers, even though Bettencourt was from Portugal. Whatever happened to the “straight long hair that had to constantly be brushed out of your face” look from the early 90s?

8)Hi-Five - “I Like The Way (The Kissing Game)”
SONG: Again, I hadn’t actually heard this song, or of the people who made it. Plain vanilla R&B from the era with Michael Jackson-ish high lead vocals, laughable junior-high-school lyrics, a not-too-dated musical backing, but not much interesting happening overall. If the song had a bit more edge maybe that “silky” chorus would get stuck in my head, 13-year-old-friendly lyrics notwithstanding. It also features that stupid Yamaha DX7 “electronic cowbell” song that should have been terminated from all popular music after its appearance at the beginning of Whitney Houston’s “I Just Wanna Dance With Somebody.”
VIDEO: The dance moves with the guys swirling around each other at the beginning made me laugh. That’s about all I have to say. Cuts back and forth between the running in place dance moves and a close up of the dude’s mouth in front of a mike.

9)Surface - “The First Time”
SONG: Another bland adult-contemporary/R&B tune. Never heard of the group or the song. Yet again. Was I even alive back then? I was 9 years old. Musical backing features “Modern EGP” (electric grand piano) tone keyboards, one of the quintessential badly dated synth sounds.
VIDEO: Another slow-motion black-and-white clip. Featuring dancers silhouetted to look like they’ve having sex, like the dumb pottery scene in Ghost or some shit. The couple in the clip is mixed-race, I wonder how much controversy that would have garnered in 1991? Lead singer has bullet hair, huge glasses, and a mustache to go with his baggy dress shirt.

10)Amy Grant - “Baby Baby”
SONG: God help me, I kinda liked this one. Cheap Casio synth strings playing staccato notes and a gummy chord sequence, but it’s kind of a nice chord sequence. The little “solo” about halfway through it adds a cute fake organ tone. Not bad for such a supposedly white-bread person! Shoot me if you want, but if there’s one song in this top 10 I’d be willing to listen to again, it’s this one!
VIDEO: Everyone’s favorite devil worshipper walks down the street with her overly jazzed up red hair, black jacket, giant earrings, acid-washed jeans and bowler hat and flirts with a few people. It could have been a lot worse, I guess. I wonder if Tori Amos cribbed from her when she wasn’t cribbing from Kate Bush?