the best pop song of the 90s

or, three words to rule them all

The 90s and early 2000s were an utterly bizarre time in pop music. We went from Grunge to boy bands and teen queen belters sharing the top spot on the album and single charts with Slipknot and Korn and Eminem. TRL, where many people my age discovered national rankings for songs, had Britney Spears, Backstreet Boys, Eminem, Linkin Park, and Korn all battling for the top spot, and this, strangely, opened up the path for someone like Tom Green to have a number one song (at least on TRL).

Man, now I almost want to turn this into being about Tom Green, but that may have to wait for another beautiful day.

Anyway, we had some of the most manufactured pop acts churning out bops designed from a Swedish laboratory and authentically angry music rising from poverty stricken white trash America all swirling together.

I really cannot express how bizarre it was to hear this song and watch this video sandwiched between NSYNC and Christina Aguilera, but that was 1999, I guess.

Anyway, despite all the strange mercurial dissonance of popular music in the late 90s, there is a crowning achievement of the decade’s pop music.

I was thinking about this while on a long drive with a good friend this weekend and then, yesterday, the exact song I’m talking about came on the radio, as if beckoning me to finally write about what I consider to be a perfect pop song.

I could not tell you what the last two decades have been like for Beyonce, but everything about this song is just brilliant, and the music video manages to bring its own incredible visual language to the music. I love the stark monochromatic nature of the video, the jilting movements, the stillness, the arch of Beyonce’s brow, the way it shifts to rapid, bouncing music, and then transitions to these flowing movements, which change the color palette of the video.

Everything becoming more and more complex and visually dynamic as the song itself grows with vocal flurries and fluctuations.

And much of this relies on Beyonce’s voice, which, even as a young woman, had a deep richness to it.

Even from those opening lines,

Say my name, say my name
If no one is around you, say, "Baby, I love you"
If you ain't runnin' game
Say my name, say my name
You actin' kinda shady, ain't callin' me "baby"
Why the sudden change?
Say my name, say my name
If no one is around you, say, "Baby, I love you"
If you ain't runnin' game
Say my name, say my name
You actin' kinda shady, ain't callin' me "baby"
Better say my name

I love the demand, the command, the calling out that happens all at once from that very first phrase.

Say my name.

Let that phrase, absent of music, absent of memories of this song, this video, and let it live inside you.

Say my name.

There’s so much in these three words. An entire relationship, but even an entire world where these three words carry such weight, levered like a javelin but also as a plea, a command.

Words of power, but also hopelessly vulnerable.

Say my name.

She doesn’t add that fourth word, please, but we can hear it even as we hear the other possible fourth word, now.

I find this an intoxicating way to begin an upbeat popsong destined to be played in clubs, at college parties, in the car of every sixteen year old girl in the country.

And then when we get to the first verse where Beyonce sings alone, detailing the crux of the problem, the brokenness of this relationship, the shady behavior of this man, her voice feels so new.

It’s hard to say this, now, 25 years of Beyonce later. She’s a megastar. Maybe the only one close to the fame and influence of Taylor Swift right now, but her voice felt so unusual and fresh. The depth and flexibility of her voice allowed those simple words

to become both a weapon and a plea.

And I do think much of what makes this song work is Beyonce’s vocal performance. And, strangely, those ye-yeah, ye-yeahs that become the backbone of the final two minutes, even as her voice rises above us, contains us, captures us, dominates us while her backing trio continue to demand that he say her name.

But for all the power of her singing, I do think the rapid pace leading into the chorus gives a galloping quality to the song that makes you want to get up and dance, prepares you to yell out the chorus when it blasts over the club’s speakers, the floor splashing with beer, with liquor, thousands of voices all knowing every word, feeling those three words echoing in their chests, in the mists of their memories, reverberating through our bones, boiling our blood, and Beyonce’s voice cascades down around us, drowning us.

My novels:

• Glossolalia - A Le Guinian fantasy novel about an anarchic community dealing with a disaster

• Sing, Behemoth, Sing - Deadwood meets Neon Genesis Evangelion

• Howl - Vampire Hunter D meets The Book of the New Sun in this lofi cyberpunk/solarpunk monster hunting adventure

• Colony Collapse - Star Trek meets Firefly in the opening episode of this space opera

• The Blood Dancers - The standalone sequel to Colony Collapse.

• Iron Wolf - Sequel to Howl.

• Sleeping Giants - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse and The Blood Dancers

• Broken Katana - Sequel to Iron Wolf.

• Libertatia; or, The Onion King - Standalone sequel to Colony Collapse, The Blood Dancers, and Sleeping Giants

• Noir: A Love Story - An oral history of a doomed romance.

• House of Ghosts - Standalone sequel to Libertatia; or, the Onion King