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Welcome! This is the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we dive deep into a year in Pop music and culture, and count down the top ten hits according to our exclusive recap of the weekly charts published at the time in the music industry’s top trade mag, Billboard.

This week it’s 1998. Still the ’90s, but the table was being set for what was to come, with one commenter on a Buzzfeed feature calling ’98 “the perfect balance of technology and real world life” before things descended into chaos with social media and iPhones. “We had the internet,” another observed, “but it didn’t yet control every aspect of our lives.”

But the main story, even bigger than tech: the new generation starting to flex its cultural (and economic) muscle. Yep, here came Millennials in ’98, with their well-over $100 billion (with a “b”) in disposable income. Self-obsessed Boomer media at first called them “Echo Boomers:” condescending to Millennials, of course, but totally dismissive of Generation X, the generation between Boomers and Millennials, every member of which in ’98, in the coveted 18 to 34 target group for ads and media: Gen-X’s cultural peak.

But just like the Silent Generation in ’63 and ’64 whose peak was cut short by young Boomers flooding the zone with their Surf, Motown, “Louie Louie” and Beatlemania, you’d never know it. Xers as a rule, skeptical of wealth, consumerism, upward mobility… Disney. And Millennials, by contrast, breathing it all in like oxygen.

Tech Visionary Steve Jobs was back running Apple and his comeback product in ’98? The stylish and relatively inexpensive iMac (CPU and monitor all-in-one) with its famous Rolling Stones “She’s a Rainbow” TV ad showing off the six different candy colors it came in.

Earlier ads with Actor Jeff Goldblum had emphasized its internet readiness, hence the “i:” a major selling point the year the Drudge Report broke the Monica Lewinski scandal that dominated news and politics in ’98: President Bill Clinton’s affair with a White House intern in her early 20s. Newsweek had spiked the story last minute. And just like that, as scholar J.D. Lasica put it, “the internet came of age as a news medium.” Clinton and Ken Starr, the Independent Counsel in charge of investigating, shared Time Magazine’s Man of the Year cover at the end of ’98 after Clinton was impeached over the scandal.

Apple sold nearly a million iMacs in ’98, for many Millennials—aged 2 to 17—their first connected device.

Two ’90s “appointment TV” institutions ended in ’98: Seinfeld and The Larry Sanders Show, and Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210 were on life support. New on the dial in ’98? Dawson’s Creek, Sex and the City, Total Request Live, Powerpuff Girls and Teletubbies! And in bookstores, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.

In tech, politics and TV, the pages were turning as Millennials came of age. And in music too, as we’ll be hearing this hour.

But a note about the charts before we kick things off. 1998 was the fourth year in a row that songs in the top ten on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 chart were not even among the top 30 on the year-end Airplay chart. And the fourth year that some of the year’s top hits on Radio weren’t on the Hot100 at all because of Billboard‘s outdated rule that songs be out as physical singles.

For the Country chart, Billboard effectively jettisoned that rule all the way back in 1990 when Airplay on Country radio became the sole factor on that chart. Which made sense because 45 rpm vinyl singles were going extinct. But for some reason, it remained in force for the Hot100, causing a disconnect between the Hot100 and Airplay charts.

Casey Kasem returned to American Top 40 in 1998 after ten years and used his own proprietary chart instead of the Hot100. And at Chartcrush, our rankings for 1995 to ’98, which we call the “broken Hot100 years:” based on Billboard‘s weekly Radio Songs chart.

#10 K-Ci & JoJo – All My Life

And at #10 on our ranking as we kick things off, a song that was #3 on that chart for nine weeks, April to June, and #1 on the Hot100 for three weeks during that run: one of only four songs in our Airplay-derived top ten that was also in the top ten on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 for ’98: Brothers Cedric and Joel Hailey from the defunct R&B Group Jodeci, now working as a Duo.

They debuted with a song on the Bulletproof soundtrack—the buddy cop action flick starring Damon Wayans and Adam Sandler—then sang the hook on Rapper 2Pac’s first (and only) Hot100 #1 “How Do U Want It” in ’96. Their first two singles off their ’97 album only made a ripple, but the third was a splash. At #10 it’s K-Ci & JoJo’s “All My Life.”

Ironic that members of Jodeci, the ’90s’ ultimate bad boy seduction Group, scored one of the decade’s top Wedding Songs, the Slow Jam “All My Life.” K-Ci & JoJo at #10 as we count down the top ten Radio hits of 1998, here on our 1998 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Over on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100, they had it at #7.

Songs like that dominated in the early ’90s, so, already kind of throwback for ’98, but it worked, despite fallout from K-Ci’s abuse of R&B Singer Mary J. Blige during their just-ended four-year relationship. Doubtful the Duo could’ve weathered that post-social media, but they scored two more Platinum albums and a #2 hit, “Tell Me It’s Real” in 1999, before their chart action gradually waned into the ’00s.

#9 Next – Too Close

Sticking with R&B for our #9 song that only got as high as #4 on the Airplay chart, but had a nice long run in the top ten, 21 weeks, racking up those ranking points week after week. But its 23 weeks in the top ten on the Hot100, with five at #1 made it Billboard‘s #1 Hot100 song of 1998. Breakout hit by a previously unknown Group was always a good bet for single sales—especially when it has a taboo double meaning that somehow flies completely under the radar of Gatekeepers at radio! At #9, Minneapolis, Minnesota Trio Next, with “Too Close.”

Next’s “Too Close,” Billboard‘s #1 Hot100 song of 1998, and also their #1 R&B song of the year—and a big hit on the airwaves; just not as big: #9 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1998’s top ten Radio songs.

The groove in the song lifted from Rap Pioneer Kurtis Blow’s “Christmas Rappin’” from 1979—not a sample, but Blow still got a co-writing credit.

Next scored one more top 20 Airplay hit with “Wifey” in 2000 but didn’t fare well after Clive Davis’ ouster from Arista Records. Eventually they landed at Davis’ new label, J, but by then, their time had passed.

#8 Backstreet Boys – As Long as You Love Me

Well we kicked off our 1998 countdown with a pair of Airplay hits that also made the top ten on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100. At #8, the first of five—count ’em five—of the year’s top ten Airplay hits we’ll be hearing this hour that didn’t chart on the Hot100 at all. Again, ’95 to ’98: the broken Hot100 years, when Billboard‘s rule that songs be out as physical singles rendered the Hot100 all but irrelevant as a popularity gauge—and why, for those years, our Chartcrush rankings are based on the Radio Songs chart instead.

Now as I mentioned in the intro, MTV’s Total Request Live debuted in ’98, September 18 to be exact: ground zero of Millennials’ arrival on the cultural landscape: throngs of Teen Girls taking over New York’s Times Square Monday through Thursday afternoons as Carson Daly hosted behind a big window, and sparking a flurry of thinkpieces and explainers in the mainstream press to explore the phenomenon.

New York Times Critic Jon Pareles’ dismissive “When Pop Becomes the Toy of Teenyboppers,” and an 8,000-word expose titled “The Secret Life of Teenage Girls” in Rolling Stone, by a Reporter who embedded herself among Teen Girls in Connecticut for 18 months—just two notable examples.

Our Act at #8, #1 on TRL‘s very first countdown with their fourth charting radio hit, “I’ll Never Break Your Heart,” but this one from earlier in the year pre-TRL was their biggest hit of ’98, never released as a single so it didn’t chart on the Hot100. It’s Backstreet Boys’ “As Long as You Love Me.”

Backstreet Boys’ “As Long as You Love Me” at #8 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown of 1998’s top ten radio hits, but fun fact: its 26 weeks in the top ten on the Adult Contemporary chart was five more than on the all-genre Airplay chart our Countdown is based on. In that Times piece I mentioned, Jon Pareles explains that as “kiddie pop’s pledges of love stak[ing] out the romantic middle of the road that Bread or Boyz II Men once occupied.”

But after nearly ten years of Gen-X’s Alt, Grunge and Gangsta Rap, Backstreet Boys and ‘NSYNC (their upstart rival they narrowly beat on that first TRL countdown) were a return to normalcy for Boomers, inside the box and accessible: definitely a happy compromise while chauffeuring the kiddos around town in the minivan.

Both acts were repackaging the sound and style of Black R&B Boy Bands topping the charts since the early ’90s, two latter-day examples of which we kicked off with at numbers 10 and 9, K-Ci & JoJo from Jodeci, and Next.

’99, of course: peak Teen Pop after Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera joined the fray.

#7 Celine Dion – My Heart Will Go On

Now it might not be obvious at first glance, but our #7 hit: also a product of the Millennial Pop explosion, in that (as Vulture Writer Craig Marks observed) the Teens and Tweens who made Backstreet Boys’ Millennium the #1 album of 1999, were a huge factor in making the movie soundtrack containing the song the #1 album of 1998—and the movie itself the #1 grossing film of, not just the year, but of all-time up ’til then.

It was #1 on the Hot100 for two weeks but topped the Airplay chart for ten. Her third Hot100 #1 after “The Power of Love” in ’94 and “Because You Loved Me” in ’96, at #7, the song from Titanic, Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On.”

Not only was Titanic the #1 album of the year; Celine Dion’s own Let’s Talk about Love was #2. The ’90s: a decade of Pop Divas: Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, Mary J. Blige, Vanessa Williams, Amy Grant, Toni Braxton. And Celine, of course, in that mix all the way back to her first top10 in 1991, “Where Does My Heart Beat Now.” But “My Heart Will Go On” was the final undiluted ’90s Diva chart topper.

Celine announced a hiatus in ’99 to help her husband fight his cancer, and then, with highly-publicized IVF treatments, have a son. She returned with a new album in 2002 but by then, Teen Pop and Hip-Hop-inflected R&B had changed everything on the charts and going forward, she was only able to crack the top 20 on the Adult Contemporary and Album charts.

#6 Paula Cole – I Don’t Want to Wait

Well we are counting down the top ten Radio hits of 1998 here on this week’s edition of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show and at #6, it’s yet another hit that owes its success to a Millennial TV phenomenon. I mentioned the show in the intro, the Drama Dawson’s Creek, which premiered on The Teen-targeted WB Network as a mid-season replacement in January, and was a breakout hit despite criticism for its “almost obsessive focus on pre-marital sexual activity.”

Well, the title of the show’s theme song after Producers failed to get permission to use Alanis Morrisette’s “Hand in My Pocket:” very much in line with that criticism. At #6 it’s Paula Cole’s “I Don’t Want to Wait.”

Paula Cole at #6 on our Chartcrush Countdown of 1998’s top ten radio hits with “I Don’t Want to Wait,” the theme of the Teen Drama Dawson’s Creek. It also made the top ten on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100: the first song since 1974 to do so without ever cracking the top ten on the weekly Hot100, where it only got as high as #11. But its 56 weeks on the chart: longer than any other 1998 hit except for LeAnn Rimes’ “How Do I Live,” which notched 69.

It was Cole’s second hit after her widely-misunderstood Feminist Anthem “Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?” in ’97, and, as it turned out, her last. She was on the main stage of the all-Female Lilith Fair festival tour in ’97 and ’98 and won Best New Artist at the ’98 Grammys, but she re-vamped her sound for her next album and it didn’t connect, so she retreated to raise her daughter.

Dawson’s Creek ran ’til 2003 and spawned two hit soundtrack albums. Sixpence None the Richer’s “Kiss Me” from the first of those: that’s our #9 song of 1999.

#5 Smash Mouth – Walkin’ on the Sun

At #5 the second of the five hits in our countdown of 1998’s top ten Radio songs that didn’t chart on the Hot100 because they weren’t out as singles. For eight straight weeks over the holidays in ’97 into ’98 though, it was #3 on the Airplay chart behind Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” and Sugar Ray’s “Fly“, then hit #2 for a week and stayed on the chart all the way to September—its motifs and gimmicks connecting with a wide swath of fans of Retro Kitch.

That was a sub-current that percolated through the ’90s encompassing ’60 Garage, Surf and Northern Soul, ’50s and ’60s Lounge, Exotica and Cocktail music, bad vintage Sci-Fi, Beach and Biker flicks—and other suddenly-hip-again memes.

SNL star Mike Meyers’ Spy Comedy Austin Powers rode that wave to box office glory in the Summer of ’97, but then these unknowns from San Jose took their song written in 1992 about (of all things) the Rodney King riots in L.A., and did for Retro Kitsch in a three-and-a-half minute song what it took Austin Powers a whole movie to do. At #5, it’s Smash Mouth’s breakthrough, “Walkin’ on the Sun.”

Smash Mouth’s “Walkin’ on the Sun,” #5 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1998, tacked on last-minute to their debut album, Fush Yu Mang: the only way to get the song once it was a hit, because, remember, no single. But as two million fans who spent $18 bucks to find out, nothing else on that album sounded even remotely like “Walkin’ on the Sun.”

Smash Mouth was a Ska-Punk Bro Band with zero roots in ’50s and ’60s Revivalism, unlike the countless Bands out there toiling away on vintage instruments, decked out in period attire playing to small niche crowds since the ’80s. The Cramps or Fuzztones or Chesterfield Kings or Marshmallow Overcoat should’ve scored the big hit, but alas, the Pop charts are only rarely predictable, and even less often fair. Smash Mouth’s fluky success did made them instant converts, though. Look no further than the Retro Kitschy title of their next album, Astro Lounge!

#4 Matchbox Twenty – 3AM

At #4, another Alt-Rock Act and the third of the five hits in our countdown that didn’t chart on the Hot100 because again, no single. They’re also the second of the two Acts in our countdown from Orlando, Florida, home of Disneyworld. Backstreet Boys, the other, and ‘NSYNC, also based there.

The Band had been playing around Orlando since 1990 under the moniker Tabitha’s Secret, but once labels came a-knocking in ’95, three of the members quit and signed with Atlantic Records with a new name, and the first single “Push” off their debut album was an immediate hit on Alternative radio in ’97.

But then, this carry-over from the old Band was a massive crossover smash on the all-format Radio Songs chart, so the two guys still trying to make a go of it as Tabitha’s Secret down there in Florida sued, and after three years, settled out of court for an undisclosed sum. At #5, the song all that fuss was about: matchbox 20 with “3AM.”

matchbox 20, “3AM,” the #5 Airplay song of 1998 according to our exclusive ranking based on Billboard‘s weekly published Radio Songs chart. We’re counting down the top ten from that ranking here on our 1998 edition of Chartcrush.

Matchbox 20 was only just getting started. Later in ’98, Lead Singer Rob Thomas took a random call from a Label Exec that led to him co-writing and singing “Smooth,” the lead single off legendary Rock Guitarist Carlos Santana’s comeback album: our #1 song of 2000 and one of Billboard’s top five charting hits of all time.

But not even counting “Smooth,” matchbox 20 was the top Rock Band of the first three years of the ’00s on the Hot100. “Bent,” our #9 song of 2000; “If You’re Gone,” #9 for ’01, and “Unwell,” #4 for ’03.

Creed, 3 Doors Down, Train, StainD and Linkin Park, further down on that early ’00s Band ranking.

#3 Savage Garden – Truly Madly Deeply

Well, it’s back to Teen Pop for our #3 hit, which was #1 on Billboard‘s year-end Radio Songs recap for ’98. Like its year-end Hot100, all Billboard‘s year-end charts—including Radio Songs—only count weeks within their “chart year,” which for ’98 was the first week of December ’97 to the last week of November ’98. That’s so they can get those recaps out by New Years.

But the downside, of course, for ’98 and all years: songs with weeks before or after the cut-offs aren’t fully counted, which gives hits that were all within the chart year a built-in advantage, and this was one of those. And it was out as a physical single so it charted on the Hot100 too: #1 for two weeks in January there.

Not a Boy Band, but a Boy Duo who started out with a great Teen Pop name, Crush, but changed it to the scary Alt-Metalish sounding Savage Garden from a phrase in Anne Rice’s Vampire Chronicles. At #3, “Truly Madly Deeply.”

Savage Garden, “Truly Madly Deeply” at #3 on our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown of Billboard‘s biggest Radio hits of 1998. Their first hit, “I Want You” entered the top ten in April ’97, four weeks before Hanson’s “MMMbop” and 13 before Backstreet Boys first hit, “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart),” so technically, Savage Garden was Millennial Teen Pop’s debut on the charts.

But that’s obscured by how huge they were on Adult Contemporary. Backstreet Boys’ “As Long as You Love Me” we heard at #8 had 26 weeks in the AC top ten; “Truly Madly Deeply” had 58, including 11 at #1, and stayed on the AC chart all the way ’til February 2000—123 weeks. So based on that and their being Australian, you could just as easily say they were the late ’90s version of Air Supply!

After their next and last #1 hit “I Knew I Loved You” was on the AC chart for 124 weeks, they split to pursue solo projects, and never re-formed.

#2 Natalie Imbruglia – Torn

At #2 another Aussie, but this time a one-hit wonder by a former Soap Opera star: her first attempt at singing. And if it wasn’t for Billboard’s rule about songs having to be out as singles she would’ve very likely been the first Australian Female to score a #1 hit on the Hot100 since Olivia Newton-John.

It’s a cover of an obscure track by an L.A. Alternative Band totally re-worked into what Billboard‘s Larry Flick called “a slice of pure pop” that stayed on lite-FM playlists for years. At #2, Natalie Imbruglia, “Torn.”

The #1 song on America’s airwaves for 14 weeks in 1998, which makes it the #2 Airplay hit of the year, Natalie Imbruglia’s “Torn.” She stayed in music and was still scoring top20s in the U.K. and her native Australia as late as 2005, but her run on the American charts began—and ended—in 1998.

As I mentioned, not out as a single, but it did make the Hot100 the last two weeks of its 43-week run on the Airplay chart. How’s that? Well at the end of 1998, for its 1999 chart year, Billboard finally scrapped its outdated single rule.

“The goal is deceptively simple,” they said, “to reveal the most popular songs in the United States. Period. End of sentence.” So henceforth, songs could make the Hot100 on Airplay alone. And the week of the announcement, “Torn” debuted at #42…

#1 Goo Goo Dolls – Iris

…and our #1 song debuted at #9 that week, eight months after entering the Airplay chart for a run with a record 18 weeks on top. It replaced “Torn” at #1 August 1 and dominated ’til December, but without much competition.

Curiously, it’s the only song in our Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown for 1998 that was moving up the chart in the second half of the year; everything else had peaked by April. The calm before Britney Spears’ explosive debut in November? Or maybe folks were just too preoccupied with the unfolding Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, or figuring out their new iMacs, or reading Harry Potter.

It was another milestone in the mainstreaming of Post-Grunge in the mid-to-late ’90s: crossover hits combining the sonic touchstones of early ’90s Grunge with first-person Emo lyrics and a less threatening, less confrontational attitude.

Written for the Romantic Fantasy City of Angels starring Nic Cage and Meg Ryan, about an angel who wants to be human so he can be with the woman he loves, at #1, Goo Goo Dolls, “Iris.”

Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris,” the #1 song of 1998 on our Radio Songs-derived Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top ten from this hour, and the only song in our top ten that was rising up the charts in the second half of 1998.

Certainly not the only hit without the title in the lyrics, but there was no Iris in the movie City of Angels either. As it turns out, Songwriter John Rzeznik got the title from concert listings in a free weekly he was paging through: Iris DeMent, a Country Folk Singer-Songwriter. That’s it. That’s how he got the title!

Bonus

Well there you have ’em, the top ten hits of 1998 based on our Chartcrush recap of Billboard‘s weekly Radio Songs charts, which for all the reasons I’ve been mentioning is the best source for what was broadly popular from 1995 to ’98. But given how out of sync the Hot100 was with what was on radio in those years, no surprise that several of the songs that made the top ten on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 were not in our ’98 countdown.

Six to be exact, and of those, two were also in the top ten on Billboard‘s 1997 year-end Hot100. Recall that Billboard only counts weeks within its discrete “chart years” to compile its year-end charts, so both Elton John’s Lady Diana tribute “Candle in the Wind ’97” and LeAnn Rimes’ Ballad “How Do I Live” made the year-end top ten two years in a row. Incredibly, though, neither were top ten Airplay hits in either year, which leaves four of Billboard’s year-end top ten Hot100 singles for ’98 to shout out.

#40 Usher – Nice & Slow

At #9, Billboard had the first #1 by the kid snapped up in Atlanta by LaFace Records’ honcho L.A. Reid and handed over to P. Diddy for mentorship at Diddy’s so-called “Flavor Camp,” and then? Thud—the sound his debut album made upon release in ’94. But then he hooked up with Atlanta Producer Jermaine Dupri, who helped him craft his breakthrough, “You Make Me Wanna…” and this follow-up co-written with Dupri. It’s Usher’s “Nice & Slow.”

Billboard‘s #9 Hot100 song of 1998, Usher’s “Nice & Slow” as we count down the hits from the published Hot100 year-end top ten that didn’t make our Chartcrush top ten based on the Airplay chart. We have it at #40.

#15 Janet Jackson – Together Again

Next up, at #6 Billboard had a hit that came out of a music biz consensus that Electronica was gonna be the next big thing once Alt-Rock plateaued. Millennial Teens and up-and-coming Hip Hop impresarios, of course, had other plans for the ’00s, but when it was still looking like a possibility, Pop’s highest paid Act ever up to then, Janet Jackson, scored her first #1 in four years in the genre: “Together Again.”

Janet Jackson’s “Together Again,” #6 on Billboard‘s year-end Hot100 for ’98, and a very respectable #15 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top ten from earlier in the show, based on the Airplay chart.

#13 Shania Twain – You’re Still the One

So I mentioned before we heard our #1 song, Goo Goo Dolls’ “Iris,” that it was the only hit from the second half of ’98 in our countdown. But of course other hits were rising during that pre-Britney lull, and two of them were Billboard‘s #3 and #2 Hot100 singles of the year.

Both got tons of airplay, but topping the all-format Radio Songs chart meant conquering several formats, not just one or two. But if you were listening to Country or Adult Contemporary stations in late ’98, you can’t believe that this one isn’t in the top ten on the year!

She was the closest thing there was to a Country Pop Diva in the late ’90 with an album, Come On Over, that was in the top 30 for a record 99 weeks: Billboard’s #1 Country album of all time. It’s Shania Twain’s sixth Country #1, but her first to crack the top 30 on the Pop chart, “You’re Still the One.”

Shania Twain’s “You’re Still the One,” Billboard‘s #3 year-end Hot100 song of 1998; #13 on our Airplay-derived Chartcrush ranking. It was #2 on the Hot100 for eight straight weeks late June into August…

#23 Brandy and Monica – The Boy Is Mine

…behind our next song that was #1 for 13 weeks and was Billboard‘s #2 Hot100 hit of the year. And if you were listening to Urban radio, you can’t believe that this one isn’t in the top ten Airplay hits of the year, but it’s just #23 on our ranking.

Two of the mid-’90s top young Female R&B newcomers, Brandy & Monica, mining their media-ginned rivalry for a hit, and they got it: the first #1 for both on the Hot100: “The Boy Is Mine.”

Brandy wrote “The Boy Is Mine,” inspired by the bleep-heavy daytime talk TV show that was so over-the-top that it needed onstage Bouncers, the Jerry Springer Show. Then, Monica punched Brandy backstage at an awards show rehearsal and they did the song on opposite ends of the stage, so the rivalry wasn’t just a media concoction after all.

And that’s all we’ve got for ya on our 1998 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi and I want to thank you for listening! Hey, if you like what you heard, head on over to our website, chartcrush.com, where you’ll find written transcripts and links to stream the podcast versions of this and other Chartcrush shows, plus chart run line graphs, our full top100 charts and other dank extras.

Every week, we count down a different year from the beginning of the charts in the ’40s all the way up to the present, so tune again, same station, same time, for another edition of Chartcrush.

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