The 50 Essential Songs For Gen Xers

These are the anthems that raised us, scarred us and still live rent-free in our heads

Dave Holmes,

AARP

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Published January 12, 2026

an illustration of a young person playing a classic game boy while using headphones to listen to music on a portable cassette player

From MTV's Second British Invasion to hip-hop's boldest era to grunge's takeover, Gen X witnessed popular music transform over and over again.

Ryan Inzana

The sound and the shape and the look of popular music changed an awful lot when Generation X was its main demographic, and it changed an awful lot of times: The MTV-fueled Second British Invasion knocked Kenny Rogers and Kansas off the charts, Madonna writhed in a wedding dress, hair metal ruled until it didn’t, hip-hop took bigger and bolder strides, college rock became alternative rock and then alternative rock became mainstream rock, and there was a band called Toad the Wet Sprocket.

Our generation is the link between the stodginess of old-school radio of the boomers and the algorithmic chaos of whatever we’re calling young people now. Narrowing it down to 50 essential songs was a daunting task, and you are correct in assuming it had me drunk with power.

50. “Stay (I Missed You)” by Lisa Loeb & Nine Stories

If you loved a little too much in the 1990s and got good and dumped for your trouble, you were comforted by this song. Lisa Loeb may not scream “indie,” but this was the first song by an unsigned artist ever to hit No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100.

49. “Eat It” by Weird Al Yankovic

Even if you don’t like Weird Al, you kind of love him: He’s pure joy, the definition of good clean fun. But maybe even that is changing: I write these words just after Weird Al sat in with Portugal. The Man for a straightforward cover of Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name.” Didn’t change it to “(Pumpkin Pie) Filling in the Name” or anything! The state of the world has angered even Weird Al. Sit with that for a moment.

48. “Pour Some Sugar on Me” by Def Leppard

Not even the first North American single from their blockbuster comeback album Hysteria — that would be “Women,” the Def Leppard song you are currently failing to remember. They made us wait a few months for this one, a breakthrough for cheese metal, the purest possible expression of producer Mutt Lange’s whole thing, and a sex metaphor we still cannot quite understand.

47. “Born in the U.S.A.” by Bruce Springsteen

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is the feel-morose hit film of the year, a gripping tale of one man’s crusade to be a huge bummer. And it taught us that Bruce recorded this song in 1982, just after his semi-breakthrough album The River, at a time when he knew he was about to become a superstar. Instead, he shelved it, recorded and released Nebraska instead, then followed with the Born in the U.S.A. album, which catapulted him to even greater fame than anyone had expected. Ronald Reagan tried to use this song in his 1984 reelection campaign, proving that nobody actually listens to the lyrics.

46. “Danger Zone” by Kenny Loggins

Listen, this song is not my favorite Loggins, nor is it my favorite from Top Gun; it’s “Playing With the Boys” in both categories, for its association with The Volleyball Scene. But it was the jingo-y-est song in a Navy recruitment campaign of a movie. It may not be good, but it’s important, and I’m mostly including it so that I can tell you it was originally offered to Corey Hart. Do you ever wonder about the alternate universe where he took it? Can we go there and just scope it out?

45. “Tennessee” by Arrested Development

Right in the middle of 1992, as America paid lip service to Afrocentrism — X caps, Cross Colours rugbies, A Different World on Thursdays after The Cosby Show — a new pop/rap collective dropped some truth. An emotionally layered reflection on faith, Blackness and life in the American South, “Tennessee” gave hip-hop the vulnerability it had been lacking.

44. “Pretty Persuasion” by REM

In the ’80s and ’90s, REM evolved from a jangly Georgia indie band with mumbled lyrics to a stadium-sellin’-out rock juggernaut (with mumbled lyrics). Being an REM fan for those first three albums on IRS Records felt like being in a secret club: It was so exciting to be into something the popular kids didn’t get, it almost didn’t matter that you didn’t get it either.

43. “Check the Rhime” by A Tribe Called Quest

Q-Tip and Phife Dawg brought jazz samples to hip-hop, a playful tone to their rhymes and the whole Native Tongues family to the mainstream. The kids won’t believe this, but it’s true: The first line of Pfife’s verse goes “Now here’s a funky introduction of how nice I am,” and white people over the age of 30 were still afraid of it!

42. “Everybody Loves Me but You” by Juliana Hatfield

Seattle got all the attention, but Boston in the early ’90s was a damn good music scene: Buffalo Tom, The Lemonheads, The Gigolo Aunts, Letters to Cleo and a handful of other bands who channeled East Coast Catholic yearning into songs that sound like a brisk October afternoon, no matter when you hear them. On track 1 of her zero-skips solo debut, Hey Babe, former Blake Babies lead singer Hatfield makes unrequited love sound as ecstatic and devastating as it actually is.

41. “Einstein on the Beach” by Counting Crows

Their best song, and also their least morose, can’t be found on any of their proper albums, but rather on a record-label compilation disc: DGC Rarities, Vol. 1. This— and Sire’s Just Say Yes series, and comps like No Alternative or Red Hot + Blue— was often how curious young music nerds got put on to new music before The Algorithm.

40. “Friends in Low Places” by Garth Brooks

Country music had a big mainstream moment starting in 1990, as did karaoke, and historians will agree that this track is responsible for both. Let’s slip on down to the Oasis, and while we’re there, let’s talk about this: Country tends to do well on the pop charts just before a major cultural reset.

39. “Latifah’s Had It Up 2 Here” by Queen Latifah

From today’s perspective, it makes sense that ’Tifah would become a movie star, a sitcom regular, an afternoon-TV talker and the person you get to host an awards show if LL Cool J can’t make it. But in 1991, she was a jazzy rapper finding her sound on her second album, Nature of a Sista, dropping cultural references and giving pure attitude with lines like “Achoo / I’m allergic to wack crews.”

a colorful collage featuring album covers from a tribe called quest, guns n roses, the pixies and arrested development

The essential Gen X soundtrack: Hip-hop got bolder, alternative rock broke through, and hair metal ruled until it didn't.

Ryan Inzana

38. “Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies

Sure, “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is the song that brought the underground overground, but the seeds of Nirvana (and Soundgarden, and Alice In Chains, and about 40 percent of what you’d hear at Lollapalooza) were planted in 1988 with this one. A little foreboding, a little disorienting and, in its slightly gentle way, about twice as hard as most of the metal of the time.

37. “Still Be Around” by Uncle Tupelo

In the late ’80s, Midwestern kids Jay Farrar and Jeff Tweedy started a band and did what at the time seemed impossible: made country music sound cool to indie kids. They eventually split up into Son Volt and Wilco, and are still cool. I would argue that this song made it all possible.

36. “Freedom! ’90” by George Michael

At the absolute height of his popularity, after having sold eleventy bajillion copies of his solo debut, Faith, and making every man, woman and child on the planet familiar with the shape and contours of his butt, George Michael returned with the much more challenging Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1. This track is a joyous middle finger to the music industry and a plea to fair-weather fans to let him stretch into his next chapter. Plus, the video ushered in the supermodel era and remains one of the hottest things ever committed to film.

35. “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N’ Roses

Fun fact about this song: I cannot stand it. Yes, I am aware that the GNR boys were a cut above their ’80s hard-rock contemporaries talent-wise, but they were also humorless and needlessly cruel. But this was their debut unto the world, and it sure did inject a bit of punk fury into a genre that needed it.

34. “Right Here, Right Now” by Jesus Jones

It was 1990, and David Hasselhoff was ascendant throughout the world. It was easy to think the good guys had won and that a new, joyful, peaceful and permanent era of freedom had begun. It was fair to think, as the lyrics say here, that we were “watching the world wake up from history.” Ultimately, things have… not gone that way, but it’s still good to remember the exuberance.

33. “You Get What You Give” by New Radicals

Gregg Alexander is a Generation X icon, and not just for his bucket hat. Rumor has it he snuck into a Grammy party in the late ’80s, bluffed his way into some meetings at record labels and released a debut album… let’s say a minute or two before he was ready. After a few years he returned as New Radicals, made one perfect album, then vanished from the public eye once again. This song is a slice of pure joy that never loses its freshness no matter how long it sits on the counter.

32. “Violet” by Hole

This song was recorded months before Kurt Cobain’s death in April 1994, and released just a week after. Hole bass player Kristen Pfaff would die a couple of months after that, and every live performance of this track for the next couple of years would be a cathartic blast of rage and grief.

31. “Never Said” by Liz Phair

I could put just about any song from Phair’s album Exile in Guyville here, but I went with this one because I think it was the official single, and also I don’t think you can say “F--- and Run” in an AARP publication. [Editor’s note: And yet you found a way to slip it in anyway. Well played, Dave.] Exile is a masterpiece, an album that was studied like a Rosetta stone by rock nerds and college feminists, making it clear that you could be both.

30. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” by Tears for Fears

Tears for Fears gave you quality instead of quantity, and while I’m sure their label wasn’t wild about that policy, the rest of us had a few years to go deep on Songs From the Big Chair. “Everybody Wants to Rule the World” addressed climate change, creeping fascism and end-stage capitalism way before it was cool to do any of that, and it sounds like the end of a scorching summer day no matter when you listen to it.

29. “Unsatisfied” by The Replacements

Let It Be was the record that made The Replacements irresistible to the big labels, and while Tim and Pleased to Meet Me are stone classics that should have reached Slippery When Wet sales levels, they never got there. The band’s self-sabotaging tendencies got the best of them; a sloppy SNL set got them permanently banned; live shows were hit-and-miss and back again. This song reflects the band’s attitude: I’m frustrated and disillusioned, and I’m going to take it out on myself.

28. “Two Princes” by Spin Doctors

Listen, in the wake of Nirvana, kind of anything went. Anything counted as “alternative” and could therefore be played on “alternative radio,” even this deliciously sloppy slab of jam-band jambandery. They became a punch line pretty quickly, because we as a generation were a little afraid of the sincerity that is required of a Spin Doctors fan, but come on: You sing “just go ahead now” in the “just go ahead now” parts. You know you do.

27. “Take On Me” by a-ha

By 1985, it was clear: If you had a good video, you had a good chance of getting it played on MTV, and if it was played on MTV, there was a very good chance it would take off. Norwegian trio a-ha had given this song a couple of tries before settling on the pure synth-pop version we have come to know, and shelled out for a semi-animated video that got it (and them, and their cheekbones) into high MTV rotation and right to the top of the U.S. charts.

26. “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’” by Michael Jackson

It is one of the most important philosophical questions of our time: Can there be any ethical consumption of Michael Jackson? Here is my answer: The alleged troubling behavior dates only as far back as the early 1990s, which means Off the Wall and Thriller are safe to enjoy. Honestly, “If you can’t feed your baby / Then don’t have a baby” is a shockingly pragmatic message from a man who owned a theme park and a chimpanzee.

25. “Wannabe” by Spice Girls

In 1996, Spice Girls arrived fully formed, in a whirlwind of pop and marketing. You either loved them or pretended not to. I remember seeing a father and daughter at a New York newsstand at the height of Spice World, where the fivesome beamed from cover after cover. The dad asked the kid, “Who’s your favorite?” And the kid, maybe 7 years old, said something absolutely chilling and unforgettable: “I like Posh, Dad. She never smiles.”

24. “Don’t Look Back in Anger” by Oasis

The mid-’90s Britpop moment gave us many songs to bellow, arm in arm with our friends, pints in our hands, whole lives ahead of us. While the Gallagher brothers seem to look back (and forth, and sideways) in anger themselves, this is still my favorite.

23. “Sure Shot” by Beastie Boys

Nobody will accuse the Beasties of excessive enlightenment in their early years. But by 1994 — whether it was adulthood, or weed, or Buddhism, or what — MCA laid down the law: “I want to say a little something that’s long overdue, the disrespect to women has got to be through.” It was the good kind of startling, and it went down smooth right in the middle of their funkiest track to date.

22. “Finally” by CeCe Peniston

Wherever you are right now, stop for a second. Take your headphones off, turn the TV down, find a quiet space and just listen. In the stillness, if you are patient, you will hear this song. That’s because it’s playing at the gay bar down the street from you, forever and always.

21. “It’s a Sin” by Pet Shop Boys

A graduate-level examination of the actual defiant gay pride that can emerge after a young life spent in religious repression and shame, disguised as a pop song. I honestly can’t believe they got it on the radio.

a colorful collage featuring album covers from michael jackson, pearl jam and doctor dre

Gen X didn't pick sides. We cranked Michael Jackson and Dr. Dre with equal reverence.

Ryan Inzana

20. “Elderly Woman Behind the Counter in a Small Town” by Pearl Jam

“Alive” was the one that put them on the map, “Jeremy” was the one that made them massive, and their second album, Vs., was an instant smash. It’s track 10 on that album that went on every mixtape I made in 1993.

19. “Nuthin’ but a ‘G’ Thang” by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg

The Chronic made Dr. Dre a star, good business sense made Dr. Dre a billionaire, Dr. Dre made Snoop Dogg a star, and we made Snoop Dogg a game-show host. Life takes you to some places you don’t expect to go.

18. “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” by Band Aid

Yes, it is often cringe. No, Bono’s “tonight thank God it’s them instead of you” does not hold up. But it made a lot of money, it raised awareness, and that synth tone is still beautiful. Fun fact: The song’s intro is a slowed-down sample from Tears for Fears’ “The Hurting,” their contribution to the song since they couldn’t be at the recording session.

17. “Rain” by Madonna

Never count Madonna out. In 1992, she released her Erotica album, which came along with her Sex book, in a moment when it seemed like she might be settling for pure provocation. And then, right in the middle of Erotica, the best pop song of her career.

16. “But Anyway” by Blues Traveler

In 1990, you or someone you loved owned a Hacky Sack, and that Hacky Sack was kicked in a circle while this song played in the background.

15. “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” by Deep Blue Something

In the post-Nirvana radio gold rush, everyone was looking for the next big “alternative” thing, which was complicated because nobody knew what “alternative” meant. What resulted was a five-year stretch of one-hit wonders the likes of which we had not seen since MTV disrupted the industry a decade before. The best of them is this one, a breezy pop song that got played on alternative radio pretty much only because the band had kind of a weird name.

14. “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent

Many of us who were born in the ’70s had parents who were young in the ’50s and ’60s, a time when it was not unusual for an original cast recording of a Broadway musical to be a Thriller-style hit album. Young people didn’t have a big musical to call their own for a couple of decades after Hair until Rent broke through, largely due to this song, which is now stuck in your head. You’re welcome.

13. “Just the Way It Is, Baby” by The Rembrandts

Because without this forgotten top-20 hit, who knows where Allee Willis would have gone with her song “I’ll Be There for You”? Love or hate Friends, it will be how we are remembered, so stop complaining and clap four times.

12. “Dancing Queen” by ABBA

OK, ABBA is technically a boomer group. But it was Generation X that made those ABBA Gold compilations big hits, that made the world a place where Mamma Mia! could thrive, that turned the divorcees into Swedish billionaires. Boomers may have made “Dancing Queen” a hit, but we made it a standard.

11. “Flagpole Sitta” by Harvey Danger

If there is a lyric that is more 1997 than “I wanna publish zines and rage against machines,” it is not safe for me to hear it. A goatee will appear on my face, my tips will self-frost, my sensible Buck Mason button-down will become a bowling shirt. We can’t risk it.

10. “Wicked Game” by Chris Isaak

Once in a while, an artist releases a song that is such a perfect distillation of their Whole Thing that it becomes a big mainstream hit, and they escape one-hit-wonder status because they’re still chugging away doing what they’d been doing before they were bothered by top 40 airplay. This song is that song for Isaak, and the video is still the hottest thing anyone within 10 years of my age has ever seen.

9. “How Soon Is Now?” by The Smiths

From ages 12 to 15, I spent enough time in the record store at my local mall that the staff kind of knew me. One Saturday afternoon in 1985, the guy behind the counter saw me walk in, put on this brand-new 45 and said, “You. Listen to this. It will change your life.” It was scary, it was sexy, it was angry, it was yearning. I bought it immediately. It changed my life.

8. “I Melt With You” by Modern English

Don’t let the fact that you can hear this song in a CVS make you think it was a hit. It never even made the top 40. But it was an early example of the word-of-mouth smash, the song that you didn’t hear on the radio, you heard it on a cooler kid’s mixtape. Knowing this song in the ’80s meant you had a clued-in older sibling and/or you’d seen Valley Girl, the two can’t-miss cheat codes to cool.

7. “Beautiful Day” by U2

Those of us who grew up in the ’80s got to watch U2 go from college radio to the bottom of the top 40 to the top of the world, and then spend the ’90s victory-lapping with disco and concept tours. By the year 2000 they were a legacy act, and in the year 2000 a legacy act could have one last big global hit. This is when we knew for sure that Generation X had taken over.

6. “Closer to Fine” by Indigo Girls

At the tail end of the ’80s, two Atlanta women and two acoustic guitars (and one tin whistle) signaled a way forward to a better place. This song is still too easy a needle drop in movies and television to suggest burgeoning lesbian themes, as an appearance in the Barbie trailer indicates, but I do not begrudge these Indigo Girls for making that green.

5. “Waiting Room” by Fugazi

In the wake of Minor Threat, Ian MacKaye was trying to determine where to put his prodigious energy next, and after a couple of bands that fizzled, he wrote a song about waiting for your perfect moment that sounds like it’s about to snap from impatience.

a colorful collage featuring album covers from nirvana, run d m c, prince and fugazi

The Mount Rushmore of Gen X: Nirvana's revolution, Prince's genius, Run-DMC's swagger and Fugazi's fury.

Ryan Inzana

4. “King of Rock” by Run-DMC

People go on and on about how rock and rap were finally brought together in 1986 with “Walk This Way,” but they forget that the merger had already taken place a full year before by Run-DMC themselves, without the participation of Aerosmith or any of Steven Tyler’s scarves. This would belong in the Museum of Generation X Culture — which does not exist but should — even before you consider that Larry “Bud” Melman was in the video.

3. “When Doves Cry” by Prince

The first single from Purple Rain was a strange story of generational trauma, stomach-touching and having sex in the woods while getting stared at by, like, elk. And it didn’t have a bass line. And it became his first No. 1 single. We did not deserve Prince.

2. “Smells Like Teen Spirit” by Nirvana

I mean, of course. This was the song that changed the sound of music for a generation, that forced mainstream radio to be more daring, that made “Oh well, whatever, never mind” a legit rallying cry. Here’s a fun fact: The album Nevermind had been creeping up the charts, but it wasn’t until the week after Christmas 1991, when kids went to the record store with the gift card or the Michael Jackson Dangerous CD their grandparents had given them, and turned them in for Nevermind, that the album rocketed to No. 1.

1. “Bein’ Green” by Kermit the Frog

No, this is not a joke. Kermit takes the top spot. Today’s kids are showered with self-love messaging from birth, and that’s only if their parents are neglectful enough to wait so long. Soul-and-body positivity is everywhere, and it’s a beautiful thing to see. It is also, if you grew up in the ’70s, an easy thing to resent.

In Generation X’s formative years, anyone outside the narrow lane of normal got one unified message: don’t be. Are you a little heavy, a little fidgety, a little gentle, a little short or sparkly or scattered? Try being something else. As was his way, Jim Henson presented us with the truth in a layered, realistic and honest manner. The act of loving the parts of yourself that make you feel self-conscious isn’t a single decision; it’s a difficult and ongoing process. It’s not a fist in the air at the end of your musical, it’s a shrug and a commitment to hard work. We were lucky to have the golden-era Muppets, who spoke to us like adults.

Editor’s note: This story ran previously in The Arrow, AARP’s former online magazine for Gen-X men.

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Dave Holmes is a television and radio personality, editor at large for Esquire, author of the memoir Party of One and former MTV VJ. His podcasts include Homophilia, Troubled Waters, Waiting for Impact: A Dave Holmes Passion Project and Who Killed the Video Star: The Story of MTV.