How do we determine what qualifies as “classic rock”?

For quite a while now — at least as long as the ten years I’ve been writing Hack’s Back Pages — the loose definition I’ve used has been rock/pop songs of the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s and ’80s. Songs that are, 30, 40, 50 years old or longer, basically.

With that in mind, it’s time for a reality check: 1990 was 35 years ago.

That means that songs and albums of the 1990s (at least the first half of the ’90s) should now qualify as “classic rock” because they’re three decades old.

That means they are now valid candidates to be among the songs I like to call “lost classics” — tunes you might recall but have forgotten about, or tunes from albums you knew but were “deep tracks” that flew under your radar at the time.

In the early ’90s, I was a new dad of young daughters, and I had neither the time nor the disposable income to pay as close attention to the music being released. As a longtime record collector, I tried to keep up, but where I once bought an album a week in the ’70s or ’80s, I was instead buying maybe an album a month.

But it’s high time that this blog should acknowledge some of the great songs released in the early ’90s and present them for my readers’ consideration. This week’s post includes a dozen lost classics from albums released in the 1991-1993 period. As always, there’s a Spotify playlist at the end.

I expect some of these will be vaguely or instantly familiar to you, but perhaps most of these will be brand new to you because, like me, you weren’t listening as closely to what the radio was playing at that point. In either case, I reckon you’ll find these songs appealing and worthy of your attention.

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“Weather With You,” Crowded House, 1991

Singer/guitarist/songwriter Neil Finn formed his band Crowded House in Australia in 1986 and had early Top Ten success in the US with two hit singles, “Don’t Dream It’s Over” and “Something So Strong.” Their popularity continued in the UK and elsewhere but didn’t last in the US. When I bought their greatest hits CD in 1996, I discovered about a dozen of their earlier gems, especially the catchy “Weather With You” from their 1991 LP “Woodface.” Said Finn, “My brother Tim had the line ‘Everywhere you go, you always take the weather with you,’ and we got the guitar riff going and wrote the song together. It’s about a guy totally wrapped up in melancholy, but ultimately, the theme of the song is, you are always creating your own weather, making your own environment, always.”

“Stars,” Simply Red, 1991

Mick Hucknall has one of the most appealing voices I’ve ever heard, alternating between sensual and powerful throughout Simply Red’s 13-album catalog. Only the first three LPs performed well on US charts, thanks to their #1 singles “Holding Back the Years” and the remake of “If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” but in their native UK, every one of their 13 albums has made the Top Ten. One of their most consistent is 1991’s “Stars,” the title track of which was a big hit elsewhere but managed only #44 here. Critics loved it, calling it “wistfully dreamy” and “charmingly upbeat.” Hucknall wrote it as a love song between two people who are crazy about each other but “unlikely to walk off into the sunset together,” as he put it in a 1995 interview. I find it curious that Simply Red’s engaging music wasn’t embraced more enthusiastically in the US.

“Crazy,” Seal, 1991

I’ve loved this guy from the moment my friend Barney returned from England raving about this startling new vocal talent, and I’ve bought everything he’s ever released since. Critics have compared his vocal control to Marvin Gaye, though Seal’s voice offers more grit in his delivery. His first hit was “Crazy” (no relation to the Patsy Cline classic), which he wrote in 1990 in response to world events at the time. The lyrics preach a simple philosophy: “We’re never gonna survive unless we get a little crazy.” Musically, the track has a keyboard-driven bass/synthesizer groove that flows naturally enough that you find yourself humming along on first listening. It peaked at #7 on US charts and served as an entree to the more conventional “Kiss From a Rose,” a #1 hit for Seal three years later.

“Afternoons and Coffeespoons,” Crash Test Dummies, 1993

One of Canada’s more intriguing rock bands, the Crash Test Dummies found major success in 1993 with their third LP, “God Shuffled His Feet.” The unusual bass/baritone vocals of lead singer Brad Roberts take a little getting used to, but the group’s songs are instantly likable. US audiences were enamored by the unusually titled #4 hit “Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm,” but just as strong to me was the fan favorite “Afternoons & Coffeespoons,” a pop/folk rock track inspired by the famous T.S. Eliot poem “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.” Roberts said, “It’s a song about being afraid of getting old, which is a reflection of my very neurotic character.” Although it charted well in Canada and a few European countries, it inexplicably stalled at #66 here.

“Dream in Blue,” Los Lobos, 1992

In 1973, David Hidalgo and Louie Pérez were classmates at an East Los Angeles high school and discovered they both played guitar and had similar musical tastes. Pérez recalls, “I went over to his house one day and stayed for about a year, listening to records, playing guitars, and starting to write songs.” By 1980, they formed Los Lobos (translated as The Wolves), and gained momentum warming up for bands like The Clash and The Blasters. Their cover of Ritchie Valens’s hit “La Bamba” went to #1 in 1988, and they’ve maintained a loyal fan base ever since, even though their chart performance doesn’t show it. My friend Lou exposed me to their 1992 LP “Kiko,” which is full of great tunes, particularly “Kiko and the Lavender Moon” and the leadoff track, “Dream in Blue.”

“Say Something,” James, 1993

Hailing from Manchester, England, in the late ’80s, James has been consistently popular there for more than 30 years, but their success in the US has been relatively limited. In 1993, college radio stations latched on to their single “Laid,” the title track to their sixth album, which stalled at #61 on pop charts but reached #3 on Alt Rock listings. The LP leans acoustic, partly because they had just completed a stint as the support act for Neil Young during his “Harvest Moon” tour, and their next songs reflected that. Again, I credit a friend (this time Bob) for turning me on to that album, which has a whole bunch of great songs produced by the great Brian Eno and carried by the strong vocals of Tim Booth. “Say Something” is one of the songs that first caught my attention.

“Hero,” David Crosby, 1993

Probably the least prolific of the songwriters in the CSNY stable, Crosby seemed more focused on quality than quantity, writing some of the more complex, fascinating songs in their repertoire (“Déjà Vu,” “Guinnevere,” “The Lee Shore”). His third solo studio album, 1993’s “Thousand Roads,” got almost no attention, but it’s jam-packed with great tracks, mostly written by other noteworthy composers (Joni Mitchell, Marc Cohn, John Hiatt, Stephen Bishop, Jimmy Webb). Phil Collins collaborated with Crosby to write and produce the soothing tune “Hero,” an underperforming single on which Collins also sang backing vocals and played drums and keyboards. Crosby didn’t record another solo LP until “Croz” in 2014, then churned out four more in seven years before his death in 2023.

“Professional Jealousy,” Van Morrison, 1991

Talk about prolific: This 79-year-old musical dynamo has released 50 LPs between 1968 and 2025, specializing in vibrant Irish soul, folk and ballads. In the US, his albums from the 1970s were his most popular (“Moondance,” “Tupelo Honey,” “Saint Dominic’s Preview”), but he could reliably sell several hundred thousand copies here every time he released something new. In 1991, his first double studio album, “Hymns to the Silence,” managed only a #99 charting, and critics felt it rehashed his most recent predecessors, “Avalon Sunset” and “Enlightenment,” but I think it stands as a solid effort in its own right. “Professional Jealousy,” the leadoff track, “brims with the consistent passion that continues to make Morrison fascinating,” according to Rolling Stone.

“Miss Chatelaine,” k.d. lang, 1992

An admirer of poet e.e. cummings and his fondness for the lower case, Canadian singer k.d. lang came on strong in 1992 with “Ingénue,” a commendable LP of originals that fall more into the cabaret genre than the country music groove she first presented. She has been nominated for Grammys several times, and “Ingenue” won a Juno Award for Best Album, helped along by three well-received singles: “Constant Craving,” “Save Me” and the come-hither bauble “Miss Chatelaine.” The latter song’s popular video depicted lang in an exaggeratedly feminine manner that seemed like a “Lawrence Welk Show” parody because it was such an about-face from her decidedly androgynous appearance most of the time. This is one of those “guilty pleasure” songs for me.

“Jesse,” Joshua Kadison, 1993

This humble guy seemed to come out of nowhere in 1993 with his debut, “Painted Desert Serenade,” a smart collection of introspective story-songs that went platinum on the strength of two hits: “Beautiful In My Eyes,” which became a popular choice at weddings, and “Jessie,” with its lovely piano-based melody that recalls Marc Cohn’s gem “Walking in Memphis.” Critics compared Kadison’s voice to superstars like Billy Joel and Elton John, which is actually pretty accurate. “I was so used to being outside of whatever was going on that I didn’t even think I’d ever get a record deal, much less have my songs played on the radio,” Kadison said in 1996. Although he released four more LPs before withdrawing in 2001, none managed the simple appeal of his first.

“On Every Street,” Dire Straits, 1991

Mark Knopfler is easily one of my Top Five favorite guitarists, with a supple, quicksilver sound that augments his songs and informs his solos, first on six Dire Straits albums and then ten solo records since 1996. “Brothers in Arms,” the group’s multiplatinum international LP, was in everybody’s collection in 1985-86, but truth be told, I’ve always preferred their swan song, 1991’s “On Every Street,” with a dozen exquisitely realized tunes that show uncommon diversity and depth. It went #1 all over the world, and peaked at #12 in US, despite no singles on the pop charts. The track that never fails to grab me is the marvelous title song, about a private eye who’s trying to find an elusive criminal: “There’s gotta be a record of you some place, you gotta be on somebody’s books… /Somewhere your fingerprints remain concrete, and it’s your face I’m looking for on every street…”

“California Here I Come,” Sophie B. Hawkins, 1992

This quirky, talented singer-songwriter from New York City made an impressive debut in 1992 with “Tongues and Tails,” an album full of mostly originals that included the surprise #5 hit, “Damn I Wish I Was Your Lover.” A second LP in ’94 did almost as well, but Hawkins had a falling out with her record label over the third album, which soured her on the music business and curtailed her career. Critics praised her “Madonna-meets-Chrissie Hynde voice” on deeper tracks like “California Here I Come,” a compelling tune about the lure of the West Coast: “How come some people got it all, some people got none, /I been banging my head against the writing on the wall, /But now I just wanna have fun, /California, here I come, open up your golden arms, /I had enough of the New York City slums…”

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