Remember listening to some killer rock songs way back in 1990 while hanging out at the mall with your friends? Loitering at the mall was part of teen culture and would remain so well into the 2000s. And if you were a teen in 1990, you might have heard the following rock hits playing on the mall’s speakers that year.
“More Than Words Can Say” by Alias from ‘Alias’
This hair metal song from Alias was polished and pop-oriented enough to earn a place in the musical rotation of mall speakers back in the day. And you definitely jammed out to it as a teen when you heard it for the first time.
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“More Than Words Can Say” by Alias was released toward the end of the summer and would become a radio favorite for the rest of the year. This hair metal hit made it all the way to No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and topped the mainstream charts in Canada. It was one of the biggest power ballads to drop that year.
“Enjoy The Silence” by Depeche Mode from ‘Violator’
This one’s a classic. And it was chill enough to be perfect for a trendy clothing store at the mall in 1990. Depeche Mode’s synth-pop alt-rock delight still sounds so insanely ahead of its time decades later. It’s no surprise to me that “Enjoy The Silence” was a hit when it was first released, peaking at No. 8 on the Hot 100 and No. 6 on the UK Singles chart. It ended up reaching the Top 10 across the globe.
“Blue Sky Mine” by Midnight Oil from ‘Blue Sky Mining’
This alternative rock song is on the more politically charged side. But it was still commercially accessible enough to make it to the ambient sounds of the mall in 1990. “Blue Sky Mine” by Midnight Oil is a garage-leaning alt-rock song about the Wittenoom asbestos mines in Australia. There, many workers in the 20th century contracted diseases related to the toxic mineral.
Despite its dark and touchy subject matter, this entry on our list of rock songs from 1990 that you heard at the mall was an international hit. “Blue Sky Mine” peaked at No. 1 on the Mainstream Rock chart in the US.
(Photo by Jim Steinfeldt/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
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