“Plush” by Stone Temple Pilots

"Plush" came off Stone Temple Pilots' 1992 debut, Core, and Atlantic sent it out to American radio in February 1993. Robert DeLeo, who wrote the music, has said it changed everything for the band; Scott Weiland and drummer Eric Kretz put the words together.

Brendan O'Brien produced, with Nick DiDia engineering, and the sound is thick and humid. Dean DeLeo's guitar slides through chords that seem to sag in the heat, Robert's bass slinks along underneath, Kretz keeps it heavy and patient, and Weiland pours on a deep, brooding croon that turns the chorus into a slow-motion car crash you can't stop watching.

Plenty of critics weren't buying it at first; they heard a knockoff of Pearl Jam and the rest of the grunge pack. Nobody told the audience. It became the first alternative track ever to reach the top of Billboard's Album Rock Tracks and finished 1993 as that chart's No. 1 song. Josh Taft directed the video, which MTV played to death and which won the band the MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist, and at the 1994 Grammys "Plush" took Best Hard Rock Performance. The reviewers only really came around in the 21st century, by which point it had long since become one of the defining songs of its decade.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.