“100,000 Fireflies” by The Magnetic Fields

"100,000 Fireflies" was the Magnetic Fields' first single, taken from their first album, Distant Plastic Trees, on Harriet in 1991, and it's as gloomy as it is funny. Stephin Merritt wrote the words and music and stocked them with deadpan, pitch-black humor, and Susan Anway sings it in a spare soprano. Critic Tom Ewing heard everything pressed up close and trebly, the drum pushed back to a stern thud and the keyboards cycling round like a calliope.

College and alternative stations played it when it came out, and from there it crept up slowly into a cult classic and a fixture on '90s indie mixtapes. Glide magazine later ranked it the decade's second-best modern rock song, and Ewing put it at number 11 among the '90s' best singles.

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