Archives – 1999 – September  
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65. MADONNA – “Bad Girl”
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— 23 Sep 1999 Tom Comment

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s 
Madonna’s trajectory through the 90s has been a confused one, and who can blame her? She’d always been the object of critical interest – she was tough and canny and massively popular at[…]

66. SINEAD O CONNOR – “Nothing Compares 2 U”
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— 22 Sep 1999 Tom Comment

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
“Nothing Compares 2 U” stakes its claim and sinks its hooks with its first pinpoint line. “It’s been seven hours and fifteen days” – the inescapable specifics of a split[…]

67. MANIC STREET PREACHERS – “Faster”
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— 21 Sep 1999 Tom Comment

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
The wounded mind draws into itself, narrowing perception down to a hard, unarguable line, sacrificing perspective and judgement for an awful, logical clarity. The poles of this line are absolute and do not[…]

Spacemen Two
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— 20 Sep 1999 Tom Comment

The Human League – Reproduction and Travelogue
One thing we know about men who go into space: they come back changed. Quatermass’ astronauts return carrying a cold-war plague; Philip K Dick’s Palmer Eldritch comes back a hallucinopa[…]

68. COOLIO ft LV – “Gangsta’s Paradise”
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— 20 Sep 1999 Tom Comment

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Lyrically this seems negligible, even laughable: the first big gangsta piety hit, wherein Coolio delivers a stern message to the youth, to mend their ways and not follow his path of violence and bloodshed.[…]

69. FLOWERED UP – “Weekender”
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— 18 Sep 1999 Tom 1 comment

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s 
The sharp London boy dialogue which bookends Weekender‘s 12 minutes sounds like Billy Liar or some other bolshy, aspirational 60s youth fable. It’s that link as much as the length which tips […]

70. BASS D AND KING MATTHEW – “Like A Dream”
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— 17 Sep 1999 Tom 1 comment

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
Being as contrary as you possibly can is an excellent ground rule for a pop critic. An example: judging solely by the smug, pot-addled, nervelessly shuffling trip-hop being made mid-decade by Mo’Wax and […]

71. PIANO MAGIC – “I Am The Sub-Librarian”
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— 16 Sep 1999 Tom 1 comment

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
It is the fourth track on a four-track EP. There is no chorus, and barely any melody. The voice is flat and preoccupied, the lyrics muted to the point of being muttered, the whole song gives an air of term[…]

72. PREFAB SPROUT – “A Prisoner Of The Past”
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— 15 Sep 1999 Tom 1 comment

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
The beat is preposterous, sheer melodrama, Spector meets Lloyd Webber uptown. The song tops it. “Prisoner Of The Past” is mock-epic of Broadway proportions, dwarfing everything on its puny pare[…]

73. PULP – “Razzmatazz”
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— 14 Sep 1999 Tom 1 comment

Tom Ewing’s Top 100 Singles Of The 90s
One thing about breakthrough-era Pulp is how vicious it all is: “Razzmatazz”‘s absurdist soap opera shenanigans are a couple of shades blacker and a couple of shaves sharper than most of […]

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