Top 90s house tracks

Table Of Content

• Charlie Haden & Hank Jones – It’s Me, O Lord (Standin’ In The Need Of Prayer)
• Dawn Penn – You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)
• Mobb Deep – Shook Ones, Pt II
• House Hits That Defined the 90s
• Black Box, Dreamland
• Roy Davis Jr.: “Gabriel (Live Garage Mix)” [ft. Peven Everett] (
• The Chemical Brothers – Block Rockin’ Beats

In its stead came artists willing and insistent on changing the rules of the game in favor of something weirder, edgier, and rule-breaking. Female stars like Fiona Apple and Alanis Morissette proved that women not only had a seat at the rock table, they were sitting at the head. Elliott Smith appeared to be the second coming of Bob Dylan, infusing his folk-inspired 90s songs with tales of heartbreak and depression. Jimmy Eat World helped usher in emo music’s ascension within mainstream rock, and Pavement brought slacker cool to campuses across the country. Bands like Foo Fighters and Red Hot Chili Peppers, though, continued to make sure that mainstream rock would continue to be a dominant force in the music industry into the 21st century.

Charlie Haden & Hank Jones – It’s Me, O Lord (Standin’ In The Need Of Prayer)

The 30 Best House Tracks of the '90s - Pitchfork

The 30 Best House Tracks of the '90s.

Posted: Thu, 13 Oct 2022 07:00:00 GMT [source]

Listen to our 90s Music playlist as you read our list of the best songs of the 90s below. Right Said Fred’s “I’m Too Sexy” might have been a one-off earworm, but it, along with the Shep Pettibone Remix of Madonna’s “Vogue,” belongs to the larger narrative of this influential era. Connect your Spotify account to your Last.fm account and scrobble everything you listen to, from any Spotify app on any device or platform.

Dawn Penn – You Don’t Love Me (No, No, No)

And despite its crossover success, Waters kept her day job for two years after the record hit the top of the charts. With that, the hook and perspective of the song were crafted, leading to the first socially aware classic house track to top the charts. Cajmere—aka Curtis A. Jones or Green Velvet— released this iconic track in 1992 during the second wave of Chicago House. Composed of a drum machine, Cajmere on the vocals, and a bed of silly synth sounds it paved the way for a free frame structure not common in house music. Just like its hip-hop sibling genre, R&B had a bounty of great songs during the 90s. The list of superstars emerging in the R&B lane are too many to name, but Aaliyah, Mariah Carey, and Mary J. Blige blended pop ballads with lush, R&B-inspired instrumentals, bringing a groundbreaking style to the genre.

Mobb Deep – Shook Ones, Pt II

TLC mashed up lush vocals with stellar bars, giving R&B a rap edge it had previously lacked. Blackstreet helped revive New Jack Swing late in the decade, while D’Angelo was among those pioneering neo-soul along with many others. And while the decade's great producers are known more for successful club singles and mixtapes than for their long-players, a few memorable albums emerged from those early years. Below you can dig into a wide-reaching selection of LPs that illustrate the many forms that house music took as it began to mature into the music we know today.

Daft Punk dominated the music scene in the 1990’s so of course, they had to be included in this list. The acclaimed duo’s 1997 track, "Around the World" was their introduction to the mainstream. The robot vocals, with a disco boogie bassline, a sprinkling of synth, topped with a catchy hook. Regardless of the DIY recording, this track retooled dance music as we know it and still echoes today. Part of the beauty of “The Ha Dance” stems from its wildly unlikely origin story. One of their earliest original productions, 1991’s “The Ha Dance” took its hook from a phrase chanted by Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places—“boo-bwele, boo-bwele, boo-bwele, HA!

Black Futures: In the '90s, dance music was in a 'constant state of mutation' : World Cafe Words and Music Podcast - NPR

Black Futures: In the '90s, dance music was in a 'constant state of mutation' : World Cafe Words and Music Podcast.

Posted: Tue, 20 Feb 2024 08:00:00 GMT [source]

The mechanical, acidic take on house that Adonis perfected on ‘No Way Back’ in 1986 mixed retro-futurism with the spirit and soul of classic Chicago house, retaining more than enough funk in its lifeblood to fill any dancefloor. Helping pioneer the UK strain of Chicago-licked acid house with 808 State wasn’t enough for Gerald Simpson, who also recorded this seminal sizzler of a track on the side. Heavily influenced by the psychedelic side of house, ‘Voodoo Ray’ also utilised trippy, tribal rhythms, making for a multicoloured post-rave odyssey that still sounds deliciously heady today. Based around a couple of simple but utterly hypnotic loops, ‘Chime’ rang out Orbital’s floaty take on house loud and clear. It also soundtracked countless chill-rooms across the land as the perfect example of ambient-leaning dance music which still had enough of a pulse to dance to, should you be able to drag yourself off the bean bag. According to legend, it cost Orbital (a.k.a. Sevenoaks-born brothers Paul and Phil Hartnoll) less than £1 to produce.

It was everywhere—both the dominant force in the underground and the sound du jour at the top of the charts. There was deep house, cued to dusky moods and soulful expression; gospel house, pairing dancefloor deliverance with spiritual union; minimal house, blippy and lithe—and that’s just to name a few. House could be lean and tracky or carefully arranged, hell-bent for leather or in love with the drift. The 90s saw an influx of alternative artists shape the sound of rock music.

Roy Davis Jr.: “Gabriel (Live Garage Mix)” [ft. Peven Everett] (

The 1990s represented a grab bag of unimaginable wealth for music fans. This track from a little-known Chicago duo demonstrated that stripped-back, minimal house could still carry a killer groove. The percussive rhythms, wandering bass, occasional synth hits and whispery vocals are all beautifully simple, making for a laid-back, funky gem when mixed together. This legendary British outfit, formed in 1987 in Manchester, were among the earliest ambassadors for American acid house across the pond.

The Chemical Brothers – Block Rockin’ Beats

For more alternative music, check out our list of the 100 best alternative songs of the 90s. Music from around the world, too, was becoming more popular in America. Jamaican dub and reggae were prevalent in ska and punk music, and Afropop found its way into a variety of genres. Electronic music hit the mainstream with force, as both underground and mainstream acts helped define the dance culture we now see at festivals worldwide. Jazz saw an experimental renaissance after a tough decade, and Latin music started its long ascent to becoming pop music in the United States.

“Little” Louie Vega and Kenny “Dope” Gonzalez are two of the most prolific producers in the history of house music. Together as Masters at Work, they helped define the funky, Latin-flavored sound of the New York club scene in particular and can still be found controlling the decks at top dance spots downtown. This 1993 album provides a vivid illustration of how hip-hop, house, and reggae once mingled on the streets of NYC, with an opening track that features Jamaican dancehall emcee Screechie Dan. The great producers of the 90s are known for successful singles that grew beyond the rave into mainstream radio culture. Below you can dig into some of the house tracks that made an impact in the 90s.

It's a harrowing thought that there's a generation of tweens who have only ever heard Daft Punk's comeback album, Random Access Memories. In case you were in Huggies the first time around, let’s be clear that the duo's 1997 album is the crowning jewel of French electronic music. While acts like Fatboy Slim were conquering the electronic charts with a juiced-up, rave-ready breakbeat sound, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo were taking a different tact by bringing disco and funk to the fore. Their singular style turned a generation of teenagers in rock bands onto the joys of drum machines, samplers, and synthesizers, and changed the face of pop culture in the process. Even at the turn of the ’90s—only five or six years after the term "house music" had been uttered for the first time—the movement had reached the far corners of Europe and the Americas. The Brits in particular ran with the new records from Chicago, Detroit, and New York and added their own experimental edge to the mix, giving birth to the beginnings of rave culture.

House music was born in the 80s but really hit its height in the 90s. As its sonic footprint expanded, many directions of influence emerged. And in the process gave birth to countless genres making it a global phenomenon. At the turn of the decade, the grips of the house movement expanded to the far corners of Europe. Tracks with origins in Chicago, Detroit, and New York were studied, reconstructed, and sampled.

No Doubt proved that punk could still have pop sensibilities, and NOFX merged the parallel paths of punk music and skate culture. If country music in the 1980s was adrift, not quite sure of what it was supposed to be, it emerged full force in the following decade as a behemoth, signaling to industry insiders everywhere that the genre was once again on the rise. It foreshadowed the explosion of country in the coming decades, as stars like Garth Brooks and George Strait released some of their best songs in the 90s and newcomers such as Tim McGraw skyrocketed to the top of the charts.