And yet it’s sort of impossible to not feel a twinge of nostalgia for the finitude of solid-matter, extended-play singles with copious remixes, to feel gratitude for the chemically balanced variety that emerged from the rigid discipline-and, yes, probably payola-of radio DJ charts. Many of the songs on this list don’t actually feel like part of our past, but still linger as representations of our eternal present. Consequently, the songs that so many of us cherished in the ‘90s lived on in our own personal “shuffle play” soundtracks long after the likes of Janet Jackson, Prince, and Alanis Morissette couldn’t land a Billboard number one hit for love or money. In a more philosophical sense, the decade ended just as MP3 culture was really starting to forever change the way singles operate in our lives.

Maybe it was simply that the ‘90s represented nostalgia’s last big blowout in tandem with the death throes of physical media. And need I mention that few songs sat at the top of the charts in the ‘90s longer than a 1973 ditty by Elton John?

The first time I heard “Vogue” on the radio, I wondered why my local pop music station was playing a disco song from 1978. And if that tidbit weren’t enough to boot you off the good-time train trip alongside memory lane, you could still arguably never compete with the decade itself in terms of how much it deified the past. Is it fair to say that many of us attach no actual “nostalgia,” in the strictest sense of the word, to the singles of the 1990s? In one putrid sense, the decade began with back-to-back number one hits from Phil Collins and Michael Bolton.

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