Ten years ago, when Puffy and Hanson ruled

Ten years ago this week, the top 5 songs in the country were as follows:

1. I'll Be Missing You, Puff Daddy featuring Faith Evans and 112
2. MMMBop, Hanson
3. Say You'll Be There, Spice Girls
4. Return of the Mack, Mark Morrison
5. Hypnotize, Notorious B.I.G.


What a great list in retrospect! Puffy and Biggie were all over the TV, with Biggie having just been killed and Puffy gaining popularity for his tribute anthem. Some rock fans hated I'll Be Missing You, thinking somehow that The Police were too big to sample (?), but come on, I'll Be Missing You is a classic. If you can't give him props for that song, you're just not being impartial. Puffy's performance of the song with Sting at the MTV Awards later that year was one of the most classic award show performances in history.

The Mark Morrison song annoyed me at the time, because of its title. Nobody knew who Mark Morrison was - this was his first hit. Yet, it's his "return"? How can you say you're returning if you were never here in the first place? I felt the same way about the Backstreet Boys' "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)." But, Return of the Mack is still a great R&B/dance song, and I love the fact that during the time it was popular, Mark was in jail in England. That's gangsta.

And then there's Hanson and the Spice Girls. I'll lump them together because that's what people do, even though astute observers know the comparison between them was absurd, given that Hanson wrote all their own songs, played their own instruments, and, um, had talent. MMMBop is an all-time classic, Say You'll Be There? Not so much.

This countdown, for better or worse, probably sums up the late '90s better than any other.