When driving to work Thursday I heard a Ned’s Atomic Dustbin song on the radio.

Odds are, unless you’re David Gill or Tony Hicks, you’ve either never heard of or can’t remember ever hearing of Ned’s Atomic Dustbin, and even those two aren’t a sure thing. They were a British alt-rock band band in the early ’90s that had a song, “Not Sleeping Around,” at No. 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock chart for one week in 1993.

Why am I telling you this? Mostly because I’m an increasingly old man who likes talking about things that were popular when I was a young man. But also, it’s a great example of how, in the moment, people have no idea what’s good.

You know what song also spent exactly one week at No. 1 on the Billboard Modern Rock charts two years prior? “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” Yeah, just one week. In all, four Nirvana songs spent a combined seven weeks on top of the Modern Rock chart in the ’90s. Even if you weren’t born yet when Kurt Cobain was alive, you can name at least that many of his songs off the top of your head.

To reinforce my point—that we won’t know what the best music coming out now is until the 2040s—here are five individual songs that spent more weeks at No. 1 on the Modern Rock chart in the ’90s than the entirety of Nirvana’s musical output. Remember, all these songs were more popular than the band that defined rock in that decade.

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Peter Murphy — “Cuts You Up”

Starting off in 1990, “Cuts You Up” spent seven weeks on the charts and was Billboard’s Modern Rock track of the year. I’d never heard it. Granted, I was 7 for most of 1990, but when has that ever stopped me? I’m intimately familiar with deep cuts from when my parents were 7.

Anyway, it’s not bad. What was its competition? Sinead O’Connor’s “Nothing Compares 2 U” (behind her, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” for some reason), “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode and “Policy of Truth,” “Roam” by the B-52s (a personal favorite) and “Birdhouse in Your Soul” by They Might Be Giants at.

People had awful taste in the past.

Oh, and one piece of trivia about 1990 I just learned: The top pop song was “Hold On” by Wilson Phillips and the top R&B/Hip-Hop song was “Hold On” by En Vogue. Purely a coincidence!

The Lemonheads — “Into Your Arms”

This one spent nine weeks at No. 1 in late 1993 and the first week of 1994. I forgot this song existed. The only Lemonheads song I really remember is their cover of “Mrs. Robinson,” and apparently I’m not alone, since it’s the only song mentioned in the intro to their Wikipedia page. In fact, the only time it’s mentioned in the text of that page is in the sentence: “The band enjoyed modest mainstream success, this time with the single ‘Into Your Arms’ (their highest charting UK hit to date).”

Their cover of “Mrs. Robinson” peaked at No. 8.

“Into Your Arms” is especially appropriate to the theme of this column because the song it knocked out of the top spot was “Heart Shaped Box,” which held the position for just three weeks.

Morrissey — “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get”

In early 1994, Nirvana’s “All Apologies” spent two weeks at No. 1. Immediately following that was Beck’s “Loser” for five weeks. Then in April and May, this Morrissey song spent as long in the top spot as both those songs combined.

For the record, I’d like to point out that I disliked Morrissey before it was cool. His music is so mopey that even as a teen who wore pretty much exclusively black clothes, I found it exhausting. And now that he’s defending anti-Islam bigots and saying things like “everyone ultimately prefers their own race,” I feel vindicated. I’ve got a nose for these things; I’ve also always had a bad feeling about famous Japanese musician Gwen Stefani.

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Bush — “Swallowed”

This one spent seven weeks at No. 1, and that’s fine. I like the song, and I actually like the band quite a bit! But the fact that this one Bush song spent as many weeks there as every Nirvana song combined is a little absurd.

Various members of the band cite Nirvana as an inspiration but insist Bush is its own thing. Listening to the first albums, Sixteen Stone and Razorblade Suitcase, makes that claim immediately ridiculous. They’re trying really hard to be Nirvana! A distilled, polished version of Nirvana, yes, but they were to grunge what UB40 was to reggae. They heard it, liked it and decided to mimic it.

Basically, Cobain was dead, grunge as a movement was starting to die down, so the establishment finally started to realize it was pretty good and look for something close enough. That meant that most of the bands that created it were somehow late to their own party.

Chumbawamba — “Tubthumping”

Yeah, this Chumbawamba song is also famous, you still know it, and I love it for the absurd catchy thing it is. But it still didn’t deserve to spend exactly as many weeks at No. 1 as Nirvana. The album is good, but even singer Dunstan Bruce says the song isn’t their best. It’s certainly not representative of the anarcho-punk vibe the rest of their music has. It makes more sense for They Might Be Giants. (Yes, that’s the second mention of the band. It’s my column, I do what I want.)

The moral of the story: It’s OK to not like whatever song is popular right now. Taylor Swift will probably stand the test of time but we really have no idea how hindsight will filter modern music. Odds are that in 20 to 30 years, the musicians kids will be wearing vintage shirts of won’t be anyone you listen to or even have heard of today.

Except me. It’s going to be all the bands I like now. I have impeccable taste and always have.

Follow publisher Daniel J. Willis and send column ideas to him at @bayareadata.press on BlueSky. (He has some invites if you ask nicely).