Officially, the dance music songs of the 90 are…
The Portuguese have saudade - a deep state of yearning for absent people, places or things. I have the 90s.
Not quite the same thing, I realise. But I do spend more than a few moments of my waking hours thinking of the decade that formed me, the decade that taught me all there is to know about music and clubbing.
And so, while walking to work this morning, I started to think about what might be the most 90s dance music songs in existence. Not the best dance songs of the 90s. Oh no. But the songs that could only happen in the 90s: songs so 90s they thought Union Jack guitars were a good idea and had a free university education; songs so 90s they spent 75 grand on an Armand van Helden remix then got into speed garage; songs so 90s they own three different Dope On Wax compilations on CD.
Well, you get the idea.
And here I present them to you: the 10 most 90s dance music songs in existence. (With, as you might imagine, a heavy UK bias.)
What do you think? What did I miss? Let me know below.
Primal Scream - Jailbird (the Dust Brothers remix).
It was listening to The Chemical Brothers that got me into this mess. Because they - with all due respect to Underworld, The Prodigy etc. - are the most 90s dance act and I will hear no argument on the matter. And their most 90s song? It’s probably Setting Sun, a song that nails the mystical 90s mix of The Beatles (via the Tomorrow Never Knows beat), Oasis (with the Noel Gallagher vocal) and huge chart success.
Instead, though, I am going for the Brothers’ (the Dust Brothers, as they were then known) remix of Primal Scream’s 1994 single Jailbird) on the grounds that a) it’s a total banger and b) it reminds me of driving around in my friend’s Honda Jazz car at the age of 17, when he had just passed his test, and feeling an unbelievable freedom in our hair. Damn right!
Bentley Rhythm Ace - Bentleys Gonna Sort You Out
What’s the most 90s dance genre? One that The Chemical Brothers flirted with in their time? It’s definitely Big Beat, that Frankenstein’s Monster of breakbeats, silliness, rock influences and acid house. Birmingham duo Bentley Rhythm Ace were the epitome of Big Beat. And their debut single Bentleys Gonna Sort You Out is their Mount Rushmore.
The song is defined by a series of very silly “boing” sounds, which ensure - probably consciously - that Bentleys Gonna Sort You Out is never going to be taken seriously by any respectable dance music fan, overriding what is actually a pretty alluring collage of 303 tweaks, shadowy breaks and easy-listening samples. It’s like your wacky uncle making dance music - if your wacky uncle had studied at the knee of DJ Shadow. Just think about that.
Grace - Not Over Yet (Perfecto mix)
Coming in just after Big Beat in the battle for the most 90s dance genre: progressive house, that bright, clean, melodic, uplifting and very British take on house music that emerged at the start of the 90s and kind of turned into trance. Paul Oakenfold was its king and his Perfecto label progressive house’s Windsor Palace.
And it’s best song? How about Oakenfold’s Perfecto mix of Grace’s classic Not Over Yet, a whooshing, jostling, fluoro sunrise of a hit that, despite a snare drum that sounds like it was recorded in a bucket, is basically a perfect dance pop song, all tears on the dance floor and wonderful daytime Radio 1. Listening to Not Over Yet today, it sounds simultaneously as old as the hills and utterly up to date.
But what about jungle, I hear you ask? Doesn't jungle represent all that is fantastic and ground-breaking and exciting about 90s dance music?
Indeed it does. But you know what really screams 90s dance? An MTV- friendly, watered-down jungle hit from Finland. And that is what we have with Bomfunk MC’s [sic - and very much sic] - Freestyler, a song that I detested at the time but nowadays passes muster as a kind of bubblegum jungle hit, so far from the dark innovation of the actual jungle hits of the decade, but catchy as herpes and incredibly silly. Freestyler would never, ever, get played in an actual jungle club. But it has just about enough of the genre - the break, the sub bass, the BPM - to suggest that Jaakko Salovaara and Raymond Ebanks have actually heard some proper jungle in their time. And they possibly even enjoyed it.
Josh Wink - Higher State Of Consciousness (Tweekin Acid Funk)
One of the defining features of 90s dance music, certainly in the UK, is that it threw up some unlikely chart hits. And what better to illustrate this than Josh Wink’s Higher State of Consciousness, whose Tweekin’ Acid Funk remix hit the British top ten in 1995. The song was totally inescapable that year: I remember walking around my university halls of residence and hearing it blasting from what seemed like every single window on a sunny day.
And why not? It’s a brilliant song that combines an ithchingly exciting 303 line with endless drops, a metallic breakbeat and a wobbling vocal hook that ensured you knew what song to ask for at the record shop on a Monday afternoon. Higher State of Consciousness was sort of Big Beat, in the end, if, you know, Big Beat was good.
Tori Amos - Professional Widow (Armand’s Star Trunk Funkin' mix)
90s dance music was a business. A big one. And few people were bigger than Armand van Helden, a Boston producer who could allegedly charge $75,000 for a remix at the peak of his fame and still find takers.
And you know what? Armand earned it, his remixes transforming indie dance whimsy, pop reggae, the Rolling Stones and tender piano ballads into strutting club hits. And none more so than his 1996 remix of Tori Amos’s Professional Widow, in which he looped an errant bass line, grabbed the odd catchy vocal phrase, strapped on some massive drums and sent the song to the top of the UK charts. It might - just might - be the best remix ever.
Sometimes those big 90s dance hits were sublime; sometimes they were incredibly catchy; and sometimes they were weird and awful. This was very much the case with Swamp Thing, a huge 1994 hit for The Grid.
Don’t get me wrong: The Grid have made some brilliant songs; Crystal Clear is a chill out classic; and David Ball and Richard Norris have serious dance credentials. But Swamp Thing… Swamp Thing is horrible, a teeth-rattling combination of banjo, electric clapping and progressive house beats that is once heard and never forgotten.
And not in a good way. I have listened to Swamp Thing this morning, so now you don’t have to. If your friends ever get too jacked up on 90s nostalgia just play them this and watch those hazy memories turn to dust.
Ibiza was very 90s, the holiday of any self-respecting raver who wanted to spend a week in the Balearic sun drinking Orange Fanta and vodka and listening to the club anthems that would become British chart hits after their return to the drizzly UK.
Chart trance was also very 90s. And the two collided on ATB's megahit 9PM (Till I Come), a song that ate Ibiza alive, then snacked on the British charts for afters. Do I like it? I do not. But that doesn’t mean I haven’t heard the song’s distinctive guitar hook in my head every single day since 9PM (Till I Come) was first released in October 1998. Which, I suppose, is a kind of success.
Remember speed garage? Of course you do: it’s the galloping British dance sound that nailed atomic sub bass lines to shuffling house beats and briefly threatened to take over the world in 1997, before everyone decided they preferred UK Garage anyway.
New genres were very important to British dance music in the 90s, thanks to the country’s profusion of dance music magazine, radio shows, TV coverage etcetera. Speed garage was one of those genres that never quite took off but left a lasting influence on the likes of Sammy Virji, who is very speed garage indeed.
The absolute number one speed garage tune - the one that made you think that world domination really was possible - was RIP Groove, the 1997 debut single from Double 99, which brilliantly combined a vocal snatch from the Kelly G Bump-N-Go Vocal Mix of Tina Moore’s Never Gonna Let You Go with a bass line hewn out of granite and lots of spin back sounds, aka British catnip. You know RIP Groove. It still gets played today. A lot. And you can’t say that about Swamp Thing.
Look, if you don’t know why Robert Miles’ 1995 Eurodance classic Children is one of the most 90s dance songs ever there’s not really much point in us talking. I heard it everywhere, from Megadog to MTV, and - if you were alive in the 90s - you did too.
Children is perfect, in a way, that flickering, melancholic piano riff, plaintive acoustic guitar, enormous snare rush build and pumping drums intended to make ravers calm down at the end of the night (and therefore reduce car accidents) but which had precisely the opposite effect. If I could look at Children objectively, I might hate it. But if I could look at Children objectively then I wouldn’t have lived the 90s and you wouldn’t be reading this piece. So drink it in.
Some listening
IZCO - Strike a Pose feat. Camille Munn (Karen Nyame KG remix)
IZCO’s recent album Powerscroft is seriously twisted fun. As I put it in my DJ Magazine review, “The album is fast and furious, running through 12 songs in 45 fat-free minutes of playful invention, the colourful skip and jazz-y chords of broken beat making hay with influences from UK Garage to jungle, melody always to the fore.”
Now Karen Nyame KG, a producer entirely au fait with accessible but twisted dance-floor numbers, has put her inimitable stamp on Strike a Pose, one of the album’s highlights. Where the original song is as tight as a drum and ever so slightly nervous, KG’s remix is laidback and hopeful, both cooling things down and heating life up, a sultry house slink for late nights with nothing to worry about in the morning.
I spoke to someone recently who said that the new Marina Herlop album Dja Dja is mind-blowingly good, the defining work to date of an artist who has never shied away from an experimental challenge or devastating vocal melody.
Jaque, the first song to be released from Dja Dja, is certainly very special, a kind of woozy but infinitely tough martial jazz march, that reminds me a little of the opening days of London’s Millennium Bridge, when this huge metallic structure started mysteriously swaying under people’s feet and no one could work out why. But, er, musical. Jaque contains so many ideas over its five-minute run time it feels like we might be still coming to terms with it in 2036. And that is obviously a compliment.
PS Important update: the album is fabulous.
Eden Samara - Punish Me (Hodge remix)
When I reviewed Eden Samara’s Punish Me for this newsletter, I made much of the un-punishing nature of the music it contained. Perhaps Hodge heard me (Hodge definitely didn’t hear me) because his remix of the song ups the levels of punishment to quite shattering levels, his pounding, rattling, New York house rhythm like being trapped in a metallic dungeon with a load of Basque Aizkolaritza experts. Samara’s vocal is still a pop celebration and, in itself, quite sweet. But little can escape Hodge’s dungeon of doom. And while that doesn’t sound like a good thing, it really is. This song doesn’t just bang; it clatters.
Djrum has forced his way into the brilliantly free space that few musicians ever occupy, in which the doors are entirely open for any kind of Djrum sound. Rather than going full on minimal techno or summer-time lovers rock, though, I Wander might be seen as (relatively) typical Djrum, a mixture of graceful classical piano, frantic, glitched rhythm and finely stitched production trickery that hangs in the balance between acoustic finery and electronic nerve. At the same time, to suggest there is anything typical about a piece of music this thrillingly out there on the edges, this beautifully rendered and this stuffed with dazzling ideas seems like treachery.
Topdown Dialectic - False LP A 03
I could wax and wane about dust storms, trips to the North Pole, fractured sonic reality and the devastated shadow of electronic music. Or I could say that False LP A 03, from once anonymous producer Topdown Dialectic, sounds a HELL of a lot like Pole - one of the greatest to ever do dub techno. And, look, it’s hot outside, so I’m going for the latter.
Things I’ve Done
Line Noise podcast - Étienne de Crécy returns
This week, we welcome Étienne de Crécy, a house hero for any sensible musical brain, back to the Line Noise podcast. Last time out, in 2023, we spoke about the origins of Étienne - Motorbass, Super Discount and all - so in this interview I wanted to catch up with what he had been doing since then. That included the Flashback tour, playing vinyl, songs that do and don’t work with modern audiences, his excellent Warm Up album, working with Damon Albarn, football and playing live versus DJing. We also look ahead to the 30th anniversary of his classic Super Discount.
The playlists
Apple Music: The newest and bestest 2026
Spotify: the newest and bestest 2026
Apple Music: The newest and the bestest
Spotify: The newest and the bestest
