3 One-Hit Wonders From the 1990s We Used To Request on the Radio Every Day

In the 1990s, there was so much good music on the radio that if you wanted to hear your favorite song, you just had to call up your local station to request it yourself. It was the way things went back then.

Here below, we wanted to highlight three songs from back in the day we regularly needed to hear on the local airwaves. Indeed, these are three one-hit wonders from the 1990s we used to request on the radio every day.

“Firestarter” by The Prodigy from ‘The Fat Of The Land’ (1997)

In the late 1990s, there was nothing quite like listening to The Prodigy. The British-born electronic outfit was an onslaught of rhythm and melody on your senses. Hearing the group was like teleporting to some warehouse on the outskirts of town. Everything goes black until you start to see flashes of neon light—red, green, yellow, and blue. Then the music begins, and everyone around you starts to headbang. Their chain wallets start to clink. Where are you? What is this? Indeed, the music is disorienting and fabulous. And we just had to hear it as often as we could.

“Return Of The Mack” by Mark Morrison from ‘Return Of The Mack’ (1996)

Some songs just boast a chorus that you can’t get enough of. You need to hear it over and over again at all costs, even if that means tying up your home phone lines to ring up your favorite local radio station over and over again. Well, maybe we know a little bit about this from personal experience. Maybe that’s what happened in the mid-1990s when “Return Of The Mack” by Mark Morrison came out. So what if we got callouses on our index fingers from dialing so often? IT’S OUR LIFE, MOM!!

“The Freshmen” by The Verve Pipe from ‘Villains’ (1996)

While this tune isn’t as celebratory or rambunctious as the others on this list, it is just as magnetic. There was something about the 1996 track by The Verve Pipe that was irresistible. Maybe it was the pained nostalgia woven into the lyrics. Maybe it was the echoing guitars. Who knows? But whatever it was, “The Freshmen” was a favorite. So, it’s no wonder why we dialed up the radio station so often to request it.

Photo by Simone Joyner/Getty Images