By the 1990s, it started to feel like the Song of the Summer had turned into a real thing—this stuff wasn’t an accident anymore; it was a competition. Not that the music suffered for it. If anything, even the rise of alternative rock—bands who seemed almost constitutionally opposed to joining in on such ordinary fun—produced great summer songs, while hip-hop’s move towards the mainstream and the boy-band/teen-pop wave gave us more big-tent pleasures than we knew what to do with. With that, here’s a playlist that captures not only the spirit of ’90s pop, but the summers it soundtracked—and still does. Our editors like to mix things up here now and then, so if you hear something you like, add it to your library.