5 Hit Songs That Prove 1993 Was The Decade's Greatest Year For Women In Rock

From Courtney Love to Sheryl Crow, Alanis Morissette to Gwen Stefani, the '90s were overflowing with women in rock of all stripes and types. And while enormous albums in certain years shook pop culture, like 1995's "Jagged Little Pill" and "Tragic Kingdom," it's 1993 that paved the way forward and afforded the music world the widest breadth and impact of female voices (before rock started to ossify post-grunge). It was the best year of the decade for women in rock in terms of musical vibrancy, freshness, and creativity. 

Our choices for songs from 1993 reflect the core reason we're choosing the year as the decade's best: Variety and uniqueness of style meets quality of music and contribution to women in rock across the entire decade and beyond. This means opening our selections to female-led rock outfits beyond the decade's most dominant names and into artists who wove the musical fabric of the decade in less obvious ways. Each song has to stand on its own merits but characterize the best of the decade when taken on a whole. We're omitting flash-in-the-pan artists like 4 Non Blondes, whose one song, "What's Up?," from their one studio album, 1993's "Bigger, Better, Faster, More!," caught on in a big way but is ultimately lacking in depth. 

We've settled on superb tracks from the likes of Melissa Etheridge, The Cranberries, Mazzy Star, and The Breeders, all of whom represent different facets of women's voices in rock. Then, there's PJ Harvey, who forever defies definition. 

Is there a modern-day, guitar-strumming singer-songwriter who exudes unshakable authenticity like Melissa Etheridge? No doubt this is a big reason she caught on in such a mighty way, right down to her 1988 self-titled debut album, for which she earned a Grammy nomination right off the bat for "Bring Me Some Water." But it's 1993's "Yes I Am" that shot Etheridge to superstardom, with "Come to My Window" being our choice for a superlative track that demonstrates the power of women in rock, rock in general, and sincere artistic expression writ large. She even won a Grammy for it.

"Come to My Window" feels almost too personal, to the extent where Etheridge's gritty, impassioned delivery embodies the song's deliriously in-love lyrics: "I would dial the numbers / Just to listen to your breath / And I would stand inside my hell / And hold the hand of death." In the mouth of a different singer, such "precious ache," as Etheridge sings, might sound strained. But as Etheridge said in a 2023 video on YouTube, she wrote the song about her flagging relationship at the time. She would actually dial her partner's number while on the road and they had nothing to talk about; hence the "dial the numbers" couplet. This real experience, plus Etheridge's raw delivery, and extremely well-written composition, elevates "Come to My Window" to top-tier songcraft. 

Etheridge did all this while eschewing any and all "women in rock" stereotypes. Neither an '80s shredder like Lita Ford, a female guitarist who's criminally underrated nowadays, nor a pigeonholed artifact of '90s grunge, Etheridge was just a lady with a guitar and a lot of soul. That's more rock than anything.

In a very real way, The Cranberries were their late frontwoman, Dolores O'Riordan. Many people undoubtedly remember her gold-painted body and distinctive, traditional Irish keening, caoineadh, from "Zombie," a Cranberries song about the killing of two children during The Troubles, an entangled religious/nationalistic conflict that plagued Ireland from 1968 to 1998. But that wasn't The Cranberries' only hit. One year earlier in 1993, The Cranberries released their debut album, "Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can't We?," featuring a song that's lived on nearly to the streamed heights of "Zombie:" "Linger." Unbelievably, this beautiful, musically refined song was the first song the Cranberries wrote together. It emerged from their first rehearsal and was built on a bare-bones recording of guitarist Noel Hogan's.

Much like Melissa Etheridge's "Come to My Window," the lyrics of "Linger" came straight from O'Riordan's life. Listeners can feel it in every quaver of her voice, especially in a 1994 "MTV's Most Wanted" acoustic performance that just might bring the listener to tears, especially given the song's conversational lines about longing, betrayal, and rejection: "If you could get by / Trying not to lie/ Things wouldn't be so confused / And I wouldn't feel so used." O'Riordan wrote the song about a time when she was 17 years old and a guy she liked and kissed just walked right by her the next time they saw each other. This personal experience, plus an elegantly simple song structure, open acoustic chords, and lush background tracks, has helped "Linger" linger.

As far as O'Riordan and women in rock are concerned, "Linger" is a prime example of the power of honesty and vulnerability. Rock needn't be all clenched teeth and cocky solos. It can be sensitive and open, just like The Cranberries. 

In all likelihood, Mazzy Star means one song and one song only to many people: 1993's "Fade Into You" from "So Tonight That I Might See." A dreamy, atmospheric, shoegaze-adjacent song, "Fade Into You" overflows with sweetness and sorrow in equal proportions and is vulnerable to the point of painful (a theme we've already seen in this article). 

Much of "Fade Into You's" otherworldly beauty flows directly from singer Hope Sandoval, whose reluctant, back-of-the-classroom shyness makes you wonder why she and David Roback, the other half of Mazzy Star, ever decided to perform anything in front of anybody. But that's precisely why the song works, why it's had such a lasting appeal (over 1 billion Spotify listens), what made Mazzy Star such unlikely stars, and what makes Hope Sandoval such a stellar and unconventional representative of women in rock.

Like Sandoval herself, "Fade Into You" exudes mystery. She wrote the song's lyrics, which could be taken as a tale of lost love, unrequited love, or just the desire to exist in a state of "comfortable silence" (as writer Anthony Gomez III says via Ultimate Guitar): "I wanna hold the hand inside you / I wanna take the breath that's true / I look to you and I see nothing / I look to you to see the truth." As Roback said in a 1993 interview quoted by the Los Angeles Times after his untimely 2020 death: "You have to leave something to people's imagination, so they feel they can participate ... We feel you should be able to shut your eyes and listen to it [the music]." There isn't much better music to make your eyes shut and your imagination float than "Fade Into You." 

Easily the most straightforward rock-out choice in this article, The Breeders' "Cannonball" from 1993's "Last Splash" is instantly recognizable for its "hoo ooh" opening vocals and weird intro bassline. Add to these elements some early internet dial-up sounds, vocal harmonies reminiscent of '90s post-grunge act Veruca Salt (which also featured two female vocalists), an undeniable hook, some chunky power chords, allusions to French aristocrat Marquis de Sade (who, yes, really was that sadistic), and a playful, post-punk ethos, and you've got a recipe that landed The Breeders their highest-charting song (at No. 44 on the Billboard Hot 100). Ah yes, and frontwoman Kim Deal was bassist for Pixies, a band that heavily influenced Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. That's all the rock pedigree you need right there.

In what's perhaps a joking reference to the band's name, three of the four Breeders are actually women, which was and is a rarity in rock. Besides Kim on guitar and vocals, we've got her twin sister Kelley Deal, bassist Josephine Wiggs, and drummer Jim Macpherson (in 1993, at least). The quartet has been forever intertwined with Pixie's long, convoluted history of intra-band personality clashes. Kim left Pixies in 1993 and plowed ahead with her Breeders project, rejoined Pixies in 2004, left them again in 2013, and continued to put out Breeders' music all the while. Neither band's output has been stellar, presumably in part because of troubles with band cohesion. 

However, this is yet another reason why "Cannonball" is significant. The Breeders managed to give birth to the stand-out song, no matter the ongoing chaos. It suited the grunge-y times, lacked all pretentiousness, and had enough unique qualities to stand out from the crowd, all of which helped make 1993 the '90s most important year for women in rock.

We might have saved the most impactful for last. Where to begin with Polly Jean Harvey (or PJ Harvey, her band name)? A true, uncompromising, multi-disciplinary artist in every sense of the word, Harvey is an illustrator, spoken-word poet, and costumed stage performer in addition to being a guitarist, singer, saxophonist, pianist (which she learned how to play for her 2007 album, "White Chalk"), and more. Her music varies wildly from post-punk to trip-hop, sublime ballads to disturbing orchestral pieces, and she's collaborated with the likes of Tricky, Josh Homme of Queens of the Stone Age, and Björk. In 1993, she released her second, rock-heavy album, "Rid of Me," which many Harvey fans still rank among her finest, rawest work. The album's song of the same name, with Harvey's artistic oeuvre behind it, does much to propel 1993 to the finest year of the '90s for women in rock.

"Rid of Me" is definitely a slow burn of a song. It's a largely empty soundscape occupied by a single acoustic guitar down-strumming the simplest chords possible, with bizarre, dissonant vocal harmonies peppered throughout. Then, it explodes into crunchy guitar work and snarls that build into an outro where Harvey rasps, "Lick my legs, I'm on fire / Lick my legs, I'm desire." 

Hence, the other element of Harvey's work that's especially important for women: her presentation of female sexual desire as an overwhelming, almost brutish force of nature. And since none of Harvey's music or themes are radio-friendly, Harvey's had precisely zero songs on the Billboard Hot 100. "Rid of Me," the album, reached No. 158 on the Billboard 200. We're sure she doesn't mind.