90s Modern Rock Ranked!

#1,638
Marilyn Manson
“Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)”
Released: October 24, 1995
Chart Peak: 31
Artist Appearance: 1 of 5

Is Marilyn Manson’s Spirit Halloween-fueled cover of Eurythmics’ “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” actually the worst of the 1,638 songs to appear on Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks in the 1990s? I suppose that depends on your appetite for unnecessary covers of 80s classics slathered in industrial butt goth spooky season vibes — a surprisingly crowded microgenre that the next song on this list is a proud member of as well.

Part of the exercise in compiling this list is to highlight how Billboard’s Modern Rock Tracks, a chart that in the first week of January, 1990 featured artsy college rock acts like Kate Bush, David Byrne, The Psychedelic Furs, Laurie Anderson and The Ocean Blue (as well as Nine Inch Nails and the Red Hot Chili Peppers) transformed into something populated by conservative lunkhead bozos like Creed, Kid Rock, Korn, and Staind (as well as Nine Inch Nails and the Red Hot Chili Peppers) in the week leading up to Y2K.

As for Manson’s “Sweet Dreams,” it’s not only unpleasant to listen to, but at least partially responsible for a number of awful things, including (but not limited to): the career of a truly shitty human, the proliferation of snail’s pace, moody covers of hit songs that now permeate countless movie trailers, and the slew of WWE-makeup smeared bands that dominated the Modern Rock chart in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and which legendary failson AJ Soprano had posters of in his room.

On the plus side, we did get one of the best-ever Onion headlines out of it. Can’t say that about Powerman 5000.