Modern Rock No. 1s: Soul Asylum and "Misery"

I double and triple checked, and there's no doubt about it: "Misery" by Soul Asylum is, in my opinion, the worst #1 hit on the Modern Rock Tracks chart in the 1990s. Yes, even worse than Björk.

Matt Madurski

Jun 08, 2025

Soul Asylum - “Misery”

Weeks atop the Billboard Modern Rock chart: 3 weeks (June 3 to 17, 1995)

Previous Modern Rock #1 hit: Better Than Ezra and “Good”

Next Modern Rock #1 hit: U2 and “Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me”

Billboard Hot 100 chart toppers during this time:

Bryan Adams - “Have You Ever Really Loved A Woman” (6/3/95 to 6/17/95)

If you’re new to Chart Chat, you may not be aware that I’ve been reviewing songs that hit #1 on Billboard magazine’s Modern Rock Tracks chart in chronological order from the chart’s inception in September 1988. I rank all of these songs on a scale from 0 to 10, and to date, I’ve only reviewed two songs I found to be so dreadful and unlistenable that they rated a 1/10 on my completely subjective and personal review scale: “Every Beat Of The Heart” by The Railway Children and “The Devil You Know” by Jesus Jones.

(If you want a quick recap of my first two years writing this newsletter, along with my reviews of the first 93 songs to top the Modern Rock Tracks chart, take a look at the songs I covered in this space in 2023 and 2024.)

I mean, even for all of my Björk hate, I was still able to force a 2/10 review for her band’s lone #1 MRT chart hit, The Sugarcubes’ aptly titled “Hit.” I think the 2/10 might have been generous, but, to be fair, if you remove the lead singer from the equation, the song itself is probably deserving of at least a 6 or 7.

I’m now seven years into the chart’s chronology, covering the first 108 songs to hit #1 on this chart. Today I’ll be reviewing the 109th song in my ongoing retrospective review, a song that was #1 on the Modern Rock charts exactly 30 years ago to the date in which this article is published.

Before I begin, I’ll preface this by saying that I love modern rock, I love ‘90s alternative rock, and I love pop songs that many people hate because of their repetitious airplay and omnipresence in popular culture. In a world where music snobs proudly proclaim how much they hate every band’s radio single and treasure the obscure deep cuts that no one else likes, I’m here to tell you that I rarely, if ever, dig deeply into album cuts. I love the radio stuff. Inject it directly into my veins, recording industry. If you think it’s something I’ll like, I’ll take your word for it.

I say this because it might be a popular niche-music-lover’s opinion that Soul Asylum’s “Misery” is awful simply because it was a radio juggernaut that garnered airplay and toed the line between alternative and pop so deftly that it was overplayed on multiple genre radio stations. I agree with that assessment, for sure — the song was overplayed ad nauseum for months and months. And while that factors into my review, rest assured that’s only a piece of it.

I’m not much of a lyrics fanatic, but the line “put me out of my misery” never resonated so strongly as it did whenever I heard Soul Asylum’s “Misery” on endless repeat in the summer of 1995, when the song inexplicably hit #1 on the Modern Rock charts for three weeks, topped out at #20 on the Hot 100, and just made both pop and alternative radio … miserable.

One more quick caveat before moving forward: I really like Soul Asylum’s other charting songs. Even “Runaway Train,” which falls on the same alternative/pop spectrum as “Misery,” is endearing in its own way. Their previous #1 Modern Rock hit, “Somebody To Shove,” wasn’t my favorite from that album, per se, but it was fine. I liked “Black Gold” from that album a lot more, and it peaked at #6 a little bit later in the year. So this isn’t me just pooping all over Soul Asylum because it’s Soul Asylum. These guys have talent.

All that said, let’s break down why “Misery” is just awful.

First, for reasons I already mentioned, this song was everywhere in the summer of 1995. Because it was the first single from an established alternative band’s newest album, it got plenty of airplay on alternative radio. And as we’ve already established over the past few weeks and months, alternative post-grunge was already infecting pop radio, and this song managed to permeate the pop realm with its relatively simple hook and infectious guitar refrain. And were the song aesthetically pleasing to the ears, I would have been OK with that. But it’s not. So it quickly became a change-the-station song every time I heard it.

Why is it not aesthetically pleasing? Because lyrically it reads like a poem constructed by a toddler. We’ll get into the larger message the band was sending with the song, but if one wanted to make a deep, introspective rebuke of the recording industry, surely you could have done it better than this:

They say misery loves company
We could start a company and make misery

-OR-

We could build a factory and make misery
We'll create the cure, we made the disease
Frustrated Incorporated
Frustrated Incorporated

Just say these lyrics out loud a couple of times. It’s silliness. And then you attach these lyrics to a lead singer who sings them in a squealy whine that I *think* is intended to approximate the angsty whine of the early grunge era, and it doesn’t sound emotionally compelling in the least. It sounds annoying. It sounds … frustrating.

There are some good guitar riffs in here, to be sure — this is definitely an alternative song with a pop focus, perfect for the post-grunge era. Honestly, though, I’d rather hear a Björk cover of this song, because I think she could handle the shrieking and make the song redeemable.

American Songwriter didn’t quote Soul Asylum lead singer Dave Pirner directly, but they captured a lot of what the band was going for with “Misery,” which is a critique of the commercialization of angsty Gen X sadness to the masses. From the online magazine’s review in March 2025:

Released as the first single from Soul Asylum’s seventh studio album Let Your Dim Light Shine, “Misery” describes how the mood of a generation was captured and marketed.

While many young people were depressed by a lack of economic prospects, large corporations cashed in on the glum. Dreary and sullen became products to sell back to the people. All companies had to do was convince consumers to buy what they already felt.

The ’90s alt-rock bands weren’t happy being rock stars. … Sadness and depression became as much a feature of these bands as flannel shirts, long johns, or Eddie Vedder’s brown corduroy jacket. Meanwhile, companies turned thrift store apparel into couture, and angst became a commodity.

In his song, Pirner critiques how record labels and marketing firms sold “misery” to the masses. Sad bands dominated MTV, but the gloom also appeared in fashion magazines, nationwide malls, and even soap operas.

I get it, I do. “Misery” is a critique of the mass market push toward selling misery. And to be fair, it was definitely happening at that time. And, honestly, a song like “Misery” definitely had a place in the zeitgeist of the time, because I’m sure there were people who were starting to grow tired of the angsty angst of the early 1990s and turn themselves in a more positive direction.

But why do it with such a terrible song?

“Misery” makes an attempt at biting sarcasm and critique, but it’s done ham-fistedly and without any real message. Honestly, I listen to this song and it makes me want to go back to those angsty songs pumped out by the mass-market machine, because at least there something real there. This critique from Soul Asylum, such as it is, drips of the same commercial/mass-market urgency that they’re chastising other bands for doing. And that they do it with this treacly, whiny rock-and-roll backdrop just reeks of hypocrisy. Listening to “Misery” with that depth of understanding just makes it feel all the more icky and disingenuous.

And to be honest, if they were writing and performing this song to change the mindset of record labels and consumers, they really didn’t have to do it — the shift was already happening without their frustrated, sappy half-assed poetry. Before 1995 is over, several songs that espouse the positivity Soul Asylum says is missing from the world would either top the MRT charts or dominate the top 10. Post-grunge angst had its moment in the sun, but in a post-Cold War world, everyone was starting to feel more positive about life and the future. In the U.S., at least, from the time “Misery” hit #1 to the 9/11 attacks in New York City in 2001, the vibes in the music world and throughout the zeitgeist were far more positive than Soul Asylum would lead you to believe.

Not surprisingly, this was Soul Asylum’s last taste of commercial success in the U.S., and not because of the “Frustrated Incorporated” machine turning against their particular brand of quasi-positive alternative rock. (My gosh, even saying “Frustrated Incorporated” over and over again is so frustrating and awful. Why not call it the “Angst Phalanx” or the “Depressed Express” or whatever. Ugh.)

As noted above, the times were changing and the era where Soul Asylum had their greatest influence was giving way to a more pop-friendly alternative rock that generated happier vibes. The second single from the band’s Let Your Dim Light Shine album, “Just Like Anyone,” peaked at #19 on the Modern Rock charts in ‘95. The lead single from their 1998 follow-up Candy from a Stranger, “I Will Still Be Laughing,” peaked at #24 on the Modern Rock chart, and the band disappeared from the commercial charts thereafter.

That said, the band continues to put out music, with their most recent release, Slowly But Surely, dropping in 2024. The first single off that album, “High Road,” is pretty good, actually!

I hate to be all negative about bands, especially talented acts like Soul Asylum. Their overall output is good, and this review could just be an “old man yells at cloud” moment for 30 years of pent-up frustration over how much I hated this song as an angsty teenager (and still hate it to this day). But even looking through the lens of 30 years of hindsight and having matured emotionally (at least a little bit, anyway) over that time, there’s just so much I still dislike about this song. It feels commercial and devoid of emotion, which is not something you want for a song that’s arguing against commercialization with lyrics that are childish and have the emotional depth of the CD jewel case this album was mass produced into.

I’m willing to debate this further in the comments, so all you “Misery” lovers, please, defend this dreadful piece of ‘90s nostalgia. Change my mind, because, as it stands, this song’s only redeeming quality is that it provides a clear bright line between the angsty grunge and post-grunge years and the (mostly) positive songs that are to follow as we continue through the ‘90s and beyond. And congratulations to both The Railway Children and Jesus Jones: you are both no longer the worst-reviewed artists in this newsletter’s history.

Rating: 0.5/10

Chart Check

Other notable MRT chart songs from this time period

Lots of songs in this week’s review of the charts definitely fit into the “Frustrated Incorporated” model of music mass production, and it’d be tough to argue against any of these songs being more deserving of the #1 spot in June 1995 than “Misery.” Yet somehow, they all peaked below the Soul Asylum track, despite their overall greatness. Some solid work from Collective Soul, Bush, Radiohead and R.E.M., along with legacy hits from acts like White Zombie and the recently deceased Jill Sobule.

“December” by Collective Soul (#2):

I guess Collective Soul is a part of “Frustrated Incorporated,” but I argue that, even though “December” is steeped in cold and angsty imagery of a relationship gone bad, it is still a wildly uplifting song. “December” is a song I stumped for in my review of Better Than Ezra’s “Good” as the “#2 song of the 1990s” in my end-of-decade mixtape, and while it’s definitely not the second-best song of the ‘90s, it’s still a song I very much love and appreciate. Any alternative song that incorporates a string section into it will have my respect and admiration, and while this song absolutely deserved better than peaking at #2 behind “Misery,” I think its reputation and quality far exceed Soul Asylum’s track, as evidenced by their Spotify plays, where “December” (79 million) outpaces “Misery” (13 million) by a factor of six.

“Little Things” by Bush (#4):

Is there anything more “Frustrated Incorporated” than Bush’s “Little Things”? Gavin Rossdale’s group, a future Modern Rock Tracks #1 act, was a little late to the action in terms of capitalizing on the post-grunge movement, but even with the zeitgeist heading into more positive territory, the band continued to make a sustained push to the top. The second single off the band’s Sixteen Stone album peaked at #4 behind Soul Asylum, and it won’t be long before a more uplifting and pop-friendly track takes over the top spot on the Modern Rock charts. From a personal perspective, pound for pound, this is my favorite single off Sixteen Stone, which is a high threshold — every commercial single from this album is an all-time great.

“More Human Than Human” by White Zombie (#7):

White Zombie put out four albums and existed for a little more than a decade, and it wasn’t until the end of that run that they achieved some level of mainstream chart success. “More Human Than Human,” the band’s lead single from their fourth and final studio album Astro-Creep: 2000, peaked at #7 behind Soul Asylum and is a poster child for post-apocalyptic dystopian visions that would make “Frustrated Incorporated” blush. Rob Zombie would emerge from the ashes of White Zombie and become a solo artist and cinema auteur in his own right, and while the band would occasionally perform one-off sets through the early 2000s, there is no forward momentum for a White Zombie reunion as of the writing of this newsletter.

“Fake Plastic Trees” by Radiohead (#11):

I didn’t explore Radiohead’s catalog until late in the 2000s, and that’s a blind spot I sincerely regret in retrospect. I remember asking my social media friends in 2008 or 2009 where I should begin to listen to Radiohead, and while my inclination was OK Computer, one friend wisely suggested I start with The Bends, and it was a wise suggestion. The Bends is truly special, and “Fake Plastic Trees,” the album’s first U.S. single, is a good encapsulation of that. Radiohead is still in full-on rock mode with this, and the single made a splash on alternative radio, peaking at #11 behind Soul Asylum.

“Strange Currencies” by R.E.M. (#14):

Not sure I understand how this works, but “Strange Currencies” was released as the fourth single from Monster, yet somehow charted and peaked on the Modern Rock charts before “Crush With Eyeliner,” which is officially the third single from the album. Nevertheless, “Strange Currencies” is the first singe from the album not to top the Modern Rock charts, and it peaked at a pedestrian #14 behind Soul Asylum. This song always felt more omnipresent on pop radio than it did in the alternative sphere, and peaked at #47 on the Hot 100 during its run in 1995. It’s not my favorite on Monster, but it’s still a solid track.

“I Kissed A Girl” by Jill Sobule (#20):

Jill Sobule didn’t make huge waves in the music industry during her career, but she definitely had a huge cultural impact in 1995 upon the release of “I Kissed A Girl,” a song that jubilantly reflected on the then-verboten subject of girl-on-girl kisses for a mainstream audience. I was surprised to see the song only managed to reach #67 on the Hot 100 in ‘95, as I remember it being all over the radio at the time, but it also peaked at a respectable #20 on the Modern Rock charts. Ms. Sobule passed away on May 1, 2025, about five weeks prior to the publication of this newsletter, and the tributes to her musical legacy were heartwarming and overwhelmingly positive.