Report: Hey Jealousy From The Gin Blossoms Voted Most Emblematic Song Of The Nineties

Los Angeles, CA — Hey Jealousy, an unassuming sleeper hit by nineties rock band the Gin Blossoms, has been found to be the song most representative of the last decade of the twentieth century, according to UCLA researchers.

The Tempe quintet’s surprise smash about planning an illicit car chase was first recorded at Whipping Post Studios in 1989, before really catching on in their 1992 breakout album, The New Miserable Experience.

Billed as “manna for Radio” by Rolling Stone, the Gen X anthem beat out a cabal of challengers, with Rusted Root’s Send Me on my Way, and Better than Ezra’s Good taking second and third in the study.

“Smells like Teen spirit is a banger, but it’s also kind of a buzzkill.... And don’t get me started on Bulls on Parade” said UCLA researcher Clive Zorko. “There’s a big-hearted whimsiness to “HeyJel” that fits the Clinton era economics like a velvet glove.”

The study was a multivariate analysis of musicianship, melodic composition, and lyrical motifs; and has been called into question by many who claim selective nostalgia for the decade isn’t accurate. “The nineties weren't merely peace time and presidential BJs,” claimed Pepperdine University lyrical waxer Fred Fleming. “People forget Rwanda was horrific, OJ walked free, and Titanic won best picture.”

Snow, the Canadian reggae sensation whose 1992 hit Informer went unacknowledged, felt particularly aggrieved. “I was ahead of my time as a white man singing black music,” seeming to overlook the advent of every white performer in the history of popular music. “Clearly the cultural appropriation police have tarnished the results. A licky boom boom down.”

More to come.