This week’s song heads back to 1992 and the alt-rock scene to dig up some old treasure. While a lot of retrospectives like to paint the early ’90’s as mired in grunge, there was a fair bit of other stuff out there to check out, and Cracker gained early notice with their debut single.

Teen Angst (What The World Needs Now) did stand out from the crowd on MTV – it’s a bright, guitar-driven song with cheeky lyrics in a video clip that features nothing more than the band playing their instruments while dressed in silly gear while standing in a field.

Cracker were not necessarily “alt-rock” in the truest sense – their music incorporated elements of country and roots, and the band’s principal members David Lowery and Jonathan Hickman were very wary of any genre tags. But Teen Angst was certainly an alt-rock tune in the alt-rock era, and even with the band’s varying tastes and influences, the song got plenty of play on the airwaves.

Teen Angst has a pretty standard and familiar for-the-time musical bent. Its lyrics also don’t reinvent the wheel but are pretty sly and smart in their own way. The world may need this or that, but kicking back with a drink is probably the safe approach to it. And I don’t know how folk singers came to take the brunt of the chorus’ wrath, but it’s pretty funny stuff. And in the end it does what a lot of songs seek to do – pick up the lady.

Teen Angst would hit the top of the Billboard Modern Rock chart and get position 27 on the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart. It did not chart on the Billboard Hot 100, in fact Cracker had very little success on that chart, even with their most-known song from 1993, Low.

That makes for an interesting conversation about “one-hit wonder” status, which is typically measured by the Billboard Hot 100 and getting one song on it to the top 40. Cracker didn’t do that at all, so what does that really make them? The one-hit wonder thing is an odd conversation, for my money it doesn’t really apply to Cracker since I feel like Teen Angst was a decent success along with Low, though this kind of stuff is hard to arbitrate.

Cracker always have been a unique entity anyway – they had some degree of success with albums and singles through the early ’90’s but never truly had massive status there. Their music does go in several different directions and each album is a bit of a journey. Their main draw has always been on the live front, where they have been a viable touring act since their formation.

Teen Angst is a nice slice of life from back in 1992 – fits the scene very well while also standing out from it, but is also a great song to check out 31 years later. Some songs just work no matter what era they’re originally from.