Modern Rock No. 1s: Better Than Ezra and "Good"

Better Than Ezra's "Good" not only topped the Modern Rock Tracks chart in 1995, but also my "Best Songs of the '90s" mix tape from 1997, which begs several questions about what defines "good"

Better Than Ezra - “Good”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock chart: 5 weeks (April 29 to May 27, 1995)

Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Live and “Lightning Crashes”

Next Modern Rock #1 hit: Soul Asylum and “Misery”

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

• Montell Jordan - “This Is How We Do It” (4/15/95 to 5/27/95, 7 total weeks)

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My first lesson in “recency bias” likely didn’t come by way of Better Than Ezra, but with 30 years of hindsight, I can definitely offer it up as one of the first that really stands out enough to be featured as part of my 2025 newsletter on alternative rock.

Back in the ‘90s and even into the 2000s, I created these things called “mix tapes.” For the younger Millennial and Gen Z audience, you might not be familiar with the concept in the form I’m describing. Sure, you all have “playlists” and “algorithms” that produce a list of a certain number of songs, usually some of your old favorites intermixed with more recent discoveries. This is close, but it’s nowhere near the level of the Mix Tape™️ I’m describing.

If you were lucky enough to get your hands on some blank tapes with anywhere from 45 to 60 available minutes on each side, and a dual-cassette setup on a boom box or stereo system, you could take cassette albums and singles and record individual entries from those cassettes onto your blank tape. It didn’t just happen, though; usually, you had to sit and listen to each song as you recorded it onto the blank cassette. If you were really fancy with the recording process, you intentionally paused for 2 to 3 seconds between each recording so your car tape player could “skip” tracks, a process only available on the fanciest of car stereo systems.

I was really into Barenaked Ladies in college. That said, it’s a decent mix.

I spent many, many hours in my room copying songs from cassettes (and later CDs) onto blank tapes to play in my car or in my Walkman, and it was always front-loaded with my favorite songs from my recently purchased albums, followed by recurrent hits and songs that were once Side A material which “graduated” to the flip side. While I do appreciate the convenience of a well-curated playlist on my streaming service of choice, the nostalgia tug on my heartstrings that comes from memories of crafting mix tapes is strong, and I miss the experience intensely.

With the hubris that comes with being a teenage know-it-all, I decided sometime in 1997 to create a mix tape of the “best songs of the 1990s,” a tape I was sure I still had in my possession, but is sadly lost to time. The only thing I remember from making that tape was the battle I had over #1. I had it in my head that the final two tracks came down to a battle between a couple of well-worn but superlative alternative-pop crossover songs from the summer of 1995: Collective Soul’s “December” and Better Than Ezra’s “Good.”

I was not as attentive to the Billboard charts back then as I was now, because I probably would have broken that tie based on chart performance, as “Good” managed to become the band’s first and only Modern Rock Tracks chart #1 hit in the spring of 1995.

Some initial thoughts on the placement of Better Than Ezra’s “Good” atop a “best of the ‘90s” mix tape I created at least three full years before the ‘90s were over:

• “Good” is not the best song of the 1990s, by almost any metric.

• “December” probably should have gone ahead of “Good,” but is also not the best song of the 1990s.

• I don’t have the “best of the ‘90s” cassette or list, but I do have my “Top 30 of 1995” playlist and, strangely, it does NOT have Better Than Ezra on it AT ALL.

There’s a LOT to unpack with this list…

Here’s what I’ve deduced from this trip down musical memory lane: At some time in 1996 or 1997, I finally purchased Deluxe, and because the album was new in my collection, recency bias determined that “Good” needed to be at the top of the list of best songs of the 1990s.

I was wrong, but that doesn’t mean that “Good” isn’t a solid track.

I’ve talked at length in this space about the explosion of post-grunge alternative rock in the U.S. What strikes me from a historical perspective is how many bands exploded into the alternative space AND the mainstream space at the same time. As you’ll see looking at the Chart Check section below (and from that section in previous weeks), there are a lot of bands who have a radio-friendly, grunge-adjacent sound popping up on airplay charts all over the place. Better Than Ezra is a good example of this phenomenon.

Take, for example, the release of Deluxe, the band’s second album, which was released in February 1995 and catapulted Better Than Ezra to superstar status in the alt-rock community. Weird thing: Deluxe was first released in 1993 on the band’s original indie record label, Swell Records. I imagine in 1993, the marketplace for the band’s signature sound hadn’t quite hit the peak that it did in late 1994 into 1995, but once it did, major-label record company Elektra signed the band, looking to capitalize on the booming post-grunge market. With the strength of a major record label behind it, Deluxe was re-released and went platinum, largely on the strength of “Good.”

You could do a lot worse than “Good.” As an alternative track, it hits all the right notes musically: solid lead guitar, terrific bass play, and a loudly percussive drum beat launching otherwise mellow lyrics into a signature refrain that’s catchy as hell.

Aha, it was good, living with you
Aha, it was good, ah-ah-ah-ah-ah
Aha, it was good, living with you
Aha, it was good, ah-ah-ah
Good, good, good, good, good, good

Like many songs of the era, “Good” is ostensibly about a failed relationship, though lead singer and songwriter Kevin Griffin chose to focus on the … wait for it … good parts of the breakup, as he said in this American Songwriter interview:

“I wanted to talk about the positive things that come from the end of a relationship,” said Griffin. “There’s always the hurt feelings and everyone’s guarded and it can be traumatic, but when the dust settles, it was about looking at the good things – no pun intended – that you got from that relationship.”

I feel like the pun was intended, but nevertheless, “Good” caught on quickly with both alternative and pop radio, as the two were largely intertwined by this point in 1995. In addition to the song’s five-week run atop the Modern Rock charts, “Good” managed a solid #30 peak on the Billboard Hot 100, solidifying the track as a bona fide crossover hit. The song and the band became so popular that they were the subject of one of my all-time favorite jokes from the late Norm Macdonald during his legendary run as anchor of “Weekend Update” on “Saturday Night Live”:

Better Than Ezra maintained a steady presence on the alternative charts for much of the rest of the decade, notching two more Modern Rock top-10 hits (the terrific “In The Blood” hit #4 and “King of New Orleans” peaked at #5) along with modest radio hits “Rosealia,” “Desperately Wanting” and “At The Stars,” the last of which was on heavy rotation during my college radio DJ days in 1999 (a time when I arguably did a much better job making mix tapes). Of all the songs, I’d say confidently that “In The Blood” is the best of the bunch, a track better aligned with the alternative spectrum than the mainstream.

Regardless of your feelings on “Good,” the band stands by its signature track, and credits their perseverance and belief in the goodness of their music to their continued success. Griffin acknowledged the fruits of this effort in an interview with Offbeat magazine in 2021:

“I knew it was cool and catchy [the first time we played it together]. We performed the song for the first time in Jackson, Mississippi at W.C. Don’s, a double-wide trailer in a crappy part in Jackson. The lyrics weren’t finished. The wha ha part was gonna be lyrics and I remember us as a band thinking, ‘People dig this as is and this feels really cool to play live.’ … That was written in 1991 and it took us for years to get signed … .”

“It’s a great example of something that’s very true in the music industry: you got to believe in the song and believe in what you are doing in a world of no’s, and it just takes just one yes. We kept believing and kept pushing. The biggest thing in music is not quitting. If you are talented and people love you, it’s about not quitting you gotta keep spreading the word. We did that song for five years before we got signed in 1995.”

And the band is still going strong. They released their ninth studio album, Super Magick, in May 2024, nearly 30 years after Deluxe put the band on the map. I have at least one co-worker who not only adores the band’s catalog, but had the privilege of seeing them play live in support of that album. Their new stuff is pretty good, too!

We’ll see the band again from time to time when their subsequent singles peak on the Modern Rock chart. As for “Good”: Is it the best song of the 1990s? No. Hell, based on my top-30 list from 1995, it’s not even good enough to chart for that year (certainly not as much as “Theme From Shaft,” which came out 24 years prior and was still my top pick for ‘95). But it’s still pretty solid, and a great time capsule song that embodies the peak of post-grunge alt-pop for that era.

I’ll share some more of my goofy mix tape chicanery as we continue to move forward through the decade, even if Better Than Ezra wasn’t “Good” enough to make the cut on many of those tapes. But lots of upcoming Modern Rock #1s are definitely on those playlists, though definitely not the band who’ll occupy this space next week.

Rating: 6/10

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Chart Check

Other notable MRT chart songs from this time period

A couple of solid acts peak at #2 during Better Than Ezra’s run at the top. And as I teased in the article, we have some post-grunge acts making their chart debuts this week, including Our Lady Peace, Blues Traveler, Cake, and Hootie & The Blowfish.

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“Connection” by Elastica (#2):

Elastica had their first and only top-40 U.S. Hot 100 hit with “Connection,” a song that tangentially rode the wave of post-grunge alternative and peaked at #2 on the Modern Rock charts behind Better Than Ezra. I love the guitar hook and the refrain on this one, and it’s still in regular rotation for me to this day.

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“Sick Of Myself” by Matthew Sweet (#2):

Matthew Sweet, an artist who’s no stranger to being robbed of the top spot (I’m still salty about his amazing track “Girlfriend” peaking at #4 behind a terrible track from Talking Heads), gets robbed again, as “Sick Of Myself” peaks at #2 behind “Good.” I don’t hate “Good” as much as I hated “Sax and Violins,” but I still think Sweet’s track is the better of the two. Warm thoughts to Matthew Sweet and his family as he continues his recovery from a 2024 stroke.

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“Universal Heart-Beat” by Juliana Hatfield (#5):

Former Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Juliana Hatfield returns to the top 10 with “Universal Heart-Beat,” the lead single off her second solo effort Only Everything. This song is a solid alt-rock banger, tonally different than her band’s 1993 chart topper, and one of a handful of female-led rock-and-roll tracks that dominated the charts during this period. Though she won’t appear in this chart again, as of this writing, Hatfield continues to produce and distribute new music, with her latest album Juliana Hatfield Sings ELO dropping in 2023.

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“She” by Green Day (#5):

The last of five singles from Green Day’s Dookie to chart in the top 10 of the Modern Rock Tracks chart, “She” is a quick two-minute punk-rock jam with a feminist perspective, one that the folks at “Genius Lyrics” says was inspired from a poem shared with Billie Joe Armstrong by a girlfriend. The song still slaps to this day, and is one of my all-time favorites.

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“Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails (#8):

Future Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Nine Inch Nails hit #8 on the chart in 1995 with “Hurt,” a promotional single from The Downward Spiral and one of the band’s signature hits. These days, folks are more inclined to listen to Johnny Cash’s absurdly beautiful cover of the track from 2002, but make no mistake: Trent Reznor’s original is just as powerful and haunting.

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“River Of Deceit” by Mad Season (#9):

Mad Season, a ‘90s supergroup of sorts featuring members of Pearl Jam, Screaming Trees and Alice in Chains, released a single album in 1995 and its lead single, “River Of Deceit,” peaked at #9 behind Better Than Ezra. The story of Mad Season’s creation is fascinating, originating out of a relationship between Mike McCready and John Baker Saunders forged in a Minnesota rehab clinic, and eventually including Alice in Chains’ Layne Staley, who McCready recruited with the hope of helping him regain focus and maintain sobriety. “River Of Deceit” is a solid track in its own right.

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“Starseed” by Our Lady Peace (#10):

Canadian alt rockers Our Lady Peace made their debut on the U.S. charts in 1995 with “Starseed,” a single off the band’s debut effort Naveed. The track peaked at #10 on the Modern Rock Tracks chart and #7 on the Mainstream Rock chart, and marked the beginning of a solid half decade stretch of modest commercial success for the band. We’ll see a lot more of these guys in the coming months and years.

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“Run-Around” by Blues Traveler (#14):

Blues Traveler is one of those bands that was around for a good part of the ‘90s, but seemed to find their niche in both alternative and mainstream circles during the massive post-grunge wave of the mid 1990s. “Run-Around,” the lead single from the band’s four album, peaked at #14 on the Modern Rock chart behind Better Than Ezra, but found greater success on the pop charts, peaking at #8 on the Hot 100. I may or may not have had a crush on Diana Marquis, the actress who plays Dorothy in the music video…

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“Rock ‘N’ Roll Lifestyle” by Cake (#31):

Speaking of bands who put out an album in 1993 and then found success with that album in 1995, I present future Modern Rock Tracks #1 artist Cake, who charted for the first time with “Rock ‘N’ Roll Lifestyle,” which peaked at #31 behind “Good.” Alternative rock in the post-grunge era absolutely started to fragment into multiple artistic paths, and Cake’s path was quite unique: funk-rock jams, horns, spoken-word vocal leads and an ultra-smooth cool vibe. That oeuvre would take them to commercial success through the rest of the decade into the new millenium.

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“Let Her Cry” by Hootie & The Blowfish (#34):

Hootie & The Blowfish were already household names by the summer of 1995, thanks in large part to “Hold My Hand” and its top-10 peak on the Billboard Hot 100. The follow-up single, “Let Her Cry,” did even better, peaking at #9 on the flagship chart and even crossing over to alternative radio, where it peaked at #34. Hootie definitely stayed more in the pop lane than the alternative lane, but we’ll see a couple of tracks in the next year that managed to find some love on the Modern Rock chart.

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