In the early nineties the adult contemporary charts endured the usual chart fraud until the Soundscan innovations that tracked actual sales. The charts get less interesting as songs ruled longer and longer — in 1999 Phil Collins’ “You’ll Be in My Heart” and Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” replaced each other at #1 for six months. As much as these songs dominated that format — and they did, without a doubt — other songs competed too, so this development looked like a fraud too.
Fortunately these charts had oddities: Richard Marx’s spare, slivery, unexpectedly poignant narrative about a dead girl in a small town (two years later “Now and Forever” would complete one of the longest reigns in the chart’s history); Cathy Dennis’ ballad followup to several pop house hits; and Swing Out Sister’s cover that, for reasons I don’t know, got airplay on Miami’s Y-100 commensurate with “End of the Road.” This goes for Genesis’ “Hold on My Heart,” which, to my reckoning, was the biggest hit from the album despite not making the top ten — it lingered for months in the top twenty and tormented me during my first summer job (along with Tom Cochrane’s “Life is a Highway”). Aren’t you glad I said nothing about Michael Bolton’s “Said I Loved You…But I Lied”? Or the Chicago and Journey hits?
1. Vanessa Williams – Save the Best for Last
2. George Michael ft. Elton John – Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me
3. Backstreet Boys – I Want It That Way
4. Madonna – I’ll Remember
5. Janet Jackson – Come Back to Me
6. Toni Braxton – Un-break My Heart
7. Richard Marx – Hazard
8. John Mellencamp featuring Me’shell Ndegeocello – Wild Nights
9. Cathy Dennis – Too Many Walls
10. Amy Grant – That’s What Love Is For
11. Rod Stewart ft. Ronald Isley – This Old Heart of Mine
12. Tina Turner – I Don’t Wanna Fight
13. Elton John – The Simple Life
14. Sophie B. Hawkins – As I Lay Me Down
15. Shania Twain – You’re Still the One
16. Swing Out Sister – Am I the Same Girl.
17. Seal – Kiss from a Rose
18. Billy Joel – The River of Dreams
19. Savage Garden – Truly, Madly, Deeply
20. Mariah Carey – Can’t Let Go
Humanizing The Vacuum 
I might have ranked “Kiss from a Rose” higher – BAME British act breaking through the PBS myth, all that. Still wish it had been “Killer” obviously (that’s his “Heaven”, his “Latch”, his “Gotta Get Thru This”, i.e. the initial moment of promise before the drift to MOR – the latter two of the above, of course, *were* American hits, the last-named the only time the US even approached a UK Garage hit, exploitative though it obviously seems in retrospect).
“Hazard” is my Loss of Innocence song.