Kind of like the early 70's, the early 90's were crappy years for pop. A few titles will still stand up today, but not many.
Beg to differ on the early '70s. Yes, the harder rock dried up at CHR during those years, but 1970-73 saw hits from Carole King, James Taylor, Elton John, Cat Stevens, Rod Stewart, the Spinners, the Stylistics, Marvin Gaye, and many more that became staples of both oldies and soft rock formats from the mid-'80s to the new millennium, when rhythmic and uptempo became pretty much the only way to go.
In the early 90's, a lot of stations defined themselves by what they didn't play. You can't really do that now (and we shouldn't have done it then). But if given the choice between trying to check the 90's box by playing a mediocre Rod Stewart song like "Rhythm of My Heart" or "Motown Song" I might test a stronger one like "Forever Young" or just skip ahead to the mid to late 90's and look at Hootie, Sheryl Crow, and (gasp) Alanis or some of the Lilith Fair types like Lisa Loeb, Sarah McLachlan, and such. Effectively you start to snipe the better testing songs off of AC radio and claim them as your own. Speaking of which, with Bon Jovi now being a core artist at AC, classic hits has license to poach most of his catalog now.
For the record, I love that Jane Child song and always have. I'm not sure if anyone besides me would have such a favorable reaction to it, though. Outside of XM, has anyone played it since 1990?
I love it, too, but can't say I've heard it anywhere but XM. As for "The Motown Song," just hours after I posted about it, I walked into the local CVS and was greeted by "...bring over some of your old Motown records...", so the song makes CVS's in-house background music playlist as well as XM's. But again, that doesn't mean the song stands up to research for mainstream FM radio, and its absence from FM formats of any kind indicates that it doesn't.
That Lilith Fair stuff would be fine with me, as would songs like "Save Tonight," "Runaway Train," "Hey Jealousy," "When I Come Around," "Semi-Charmed Life," "The Freshmen" and other mid/late-'90s fare that satellite radio seems to have no problem with. Again, though, are any of those compatible with '80s songs and the more rhythmic hits of the '90s?