Every #1 Hit Song From 1993 Ranked From Worst to Best
Featuring Janet Jackson, Meat Loaf, Mariah Carey and more
From the start of July through August 2023, we’re ranking every Billboard #1 hit from 1973, 1983, 1993, 2003 and 2013 from worst to best in each respective year. Last week, we looked at what 1983 had to offer—including chart-toppers from legends like Billy Joel, Michael Jackson, Toto and Bonnie Tyler. It was a relatively dense list, with 17 entries across a 52-week span. That number continues to shrink this time around. Today, we’re looking at all 11 tracks that found musical immortality in the year of 1993. Over half of the list dominated the charts for five weeks or more, while three of the tracks held court for at least seven weeks.
As is the case with the era these songs come from, there are quite a few duds. I would argue that half of this list is forgettable. Luckily, the other half of the list is brimming with some of the best pop and rock tracks of the entire decade, let alone just 1993. But, to score a #1 hit is an achievement that makes your career immortal in some capacity—whether the songs are good, great or just plain awful (see #11 below). These artists put in the work and got to the promised land. 1993 offered up a great mix of one-hit wonders and legends just getting their greatness started. From songs by UB40 to Janet Jackson to Mariah Carey to, yes, Whitney Houston, here is every #1 hit from 1993 ranked. —Matt Mitchell, Assistant Music Editor
11. Snow: “Informer”
Reggae singer Darrin Kenneth O’Brien, grew up in [checks notes] Toronto, the son of an Irish-Canadian cabdriver. The performer known as Snow was charged with attempted murder after a stabbing incident in a club. But before reporting to prison, with the help of Jamaican-born DJ Marvin Prince, he got signed to Elektra and recorded his debut album, 12 Inches of Snow. He was in jail when the album’s single “Informer” became an unexpected #1 hit and was later acquitted. Snow would have other songs get radio play, but none had the staying power of “a licky boom boom down.” —Josh Jackson
10. UB40: “(I Can’t Help) Falling in Love With You”
Talking about UB40 makes me sound and feel as old as I am. Because I’m aged enough to remember when this British reggae group were political firebrands in their earliest days, writing furious songs against the Thatcher administration, the threat of nuclear war and environmental destruction. But around the late ’80s, they realized there was money to be made in writing lover’s rock and covering old soul and pop songs. Hence, the recording of this moldy chestnut previously associated with Elvis Presley and taking it to the top of the charts. Like most covers of its ilk, it didn’t need to exist as the band didn’t do much with it beyond adding some horns and a loping reggae beat. It’s not good for anything beyond a junior high gropefest ca. 1993. —Robert Ham
9. SWV: “Weak”
According to Brian Alexander Morgan, the songwriter responsible for this sultry slow jam, when he worked with SWV in the studio on “Weak,” lead vocalist Cheryl Gamble hated it and “gave me a real attitude when we recorded it.” How must she have felt when the song became the group’s second Top-10 hit and their first #1? Whatever frustration she may have had with the song, Gamble gave it her all, fully embodying the romantic bliss and sexual thrills wound into each line. This is the kind of quiet storm, baby-making music that just doesn’t get made anymore. —RH
8. Silk: “Freak Me”
Georgia R&B group Silk were certainly not the biggest soul act of their era, but their debut album Lose Control was a pretty great entry into echelons of rizzed-up pop music. “Freak Me,” in particular, was a deft, technicolor articulation of bedroom extracirriculars. The punch of the track, a steadfast admittance of “‘Cause tonight, baby, I wanna get freaky with you,” feels a bit cringey in retrospect. But “Freak Me” is bound by its era, as artists were pulling from the blueprint of artists like Barry White and Anita Ward and pushing them to an 11. This is the type of stuff that Silk Sonic was trying to replicate, a sensual ode that lays a focus on sex, sex and more sex. Silk have all but faded into obscurity but, like their peers Ginuwine and Keith Sweat, numbers like “Freak Me” can still conjure something in somebody, somewhere. —Matt Mitchell
7. Peabo Bryson & Regina Belle: “A Whole New World”
Just a few months before Disney completed the circle with the birth of Disney Theatrical Productions Limited, which would take its animated movies to the stage, the Mouse released yet another animated musical inspired by Broadway. 1992’s Aladdin once again featured music by Alan Menken and Howard Ashman (The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast), with Tim Rice finishing the lyrics after Ashman’s death. Voice actors Brad Kane (Aladdin) and Lea Salonga (Jasmine) sing “A Whole New World” in the film, but the single released in 1993 used the end-credits version featuring Peabo Bryson and Regina Belle. It spent one week atop the Billboard charts before winning Disney’s its only Song of the Year Grammy. —JJ
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