4 Forgotten Alternative Rock Songs From 1995

The year 1995 was the peak year for alternative rock’s cultural dominance. It was also the final year that Lollapalooza booked a festival headlined by mostly indie and alternative rock bands. (Sonic Youth headlined in 1995 and Metallica the following year.)

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It was the year Dave Grohl emerged from Nirvana to front his new band, Foo Fighters. Meanwhile, Radiohead was moving away from the sound of its biggest hit, “Creep”, en route to becoming a groundbreaking band. It was the height of Lollapalooza and Gen X angst, and the final episode of My So-Called Life aired on January 26, 1995. If you liked guitars and bands with guitars, the mid-90s were for you.

With so much alternative rock hitting record stores then, you may have forgotten a few classics from 1995. Here’s a reminder.

“My Friends” by Red Hot Chili Peppers

John Frusciante’s melodic instincts and guitar-god skills helped turn the Red Hot Chili Peppers into a stadium band. But in his absence, the band badly missed him. Even with the supergroup vibe of adding Jane’s Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro. But Navarro’s lone album with the band, One Hot Minute, features two RHCP classics: “Aeroplane” and “My Friends”. Neither seems to make it onto the band’s set lists with Frusciante, but “My Friends” remains one of the band’s best recorded moments and features heartbreaking lyrics by Anthony Kiedis. If Kiedis was feeling lonely under the bridge all those years ago, his friends also commiserated in despair.

“Misery” by Soul Asylum

Brands understood what the kids wanted in the 90s. And similar to how clothing companies peddled overpriced versions of Eddie Vedder’s thrift-store jacket, capitalists found great profits in marketing angst and depression. Vedder reacted in 1994 with the Pearl Jam song “Corduroy”. But Dave Pirner wrote an absolute anthem that more widely distilled Gen X as a commodity. “Runaway Train” made Soul Asylum famous, but “Misery” might be its best track.

“Natural One” by The Folk Implosion

Lou Barlow and John Davis had an accidental hit with “Natural One”, which appeared on the soundtrack to Larry Clark’s 1995 coming-of-age film, Kids. Before the film, The Folk Implosion was known only to underground diehards who followed Barlow’s lo-fi moves from Dinosaur Jr. to Sebadoh. Barlow probably never imagined he’d have a song charting on Billboard’s Hot 100. But audiences were reacting to lo-fi folk backed with hip-hop beats, most notably on Beck’s slacker hit “Loser”.

“Windfall” by Son Volt

Following the break-up of Uncle Tupelo, Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy took two very different paths. Though they both initially continued the pioneering alt-country work of their former band, Tweedy’s Wilco widened its lens and moved further from the sound he helped popularize. “Windfall” opens Son Volt’s stellar debut Trace and stays true to Uncle Tupelo’s mix of alternative rock and country. Wilco’s debut A.M. wasn’t as well received. But Tweedy found his footing on Being There and, by 2001, released a masterpiece, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Still, Trace is a gem from 1995.

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