Nice list, but none of this multiple selections stuff.
Pick 1, make a call, no matter how hard 1994 is.
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Righto - count the first one listed.
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My 1990 and 1998 choices probably wouldn’t make my top 30 of the 90’s, given the great albums that came out from 1991 to 1996.
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I feel you though.
I’m thinking I might make a ‘B List’
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Ok I’ll play.
1990 - Midnight Oil. Blue Sky Mining.
1991 - Hoodoo Gurus. Kinky.
1992 - Def Leppard. Adrenalize.
1993 - Counting Crows. August And Everything After.
1994 - Live. Throwing Copper. (What a year that was).
1995 - Oasis. What’s The Story Morning Glory.
1996 - Robert Miles. Dreamland.
1997 - The Prodigy. The Fat Of The Land.
1998 - Fatboy Slim. You’ve Come A Long Way Baby.
1999 - Moby. Play.
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OK, just one per year, decision process, special mentions and runners up awards later) These are not the best albums of the decade, but the ones that mattered to me.
90 Pod - The Breeders
91 Out of Time - REM
92 Dry - PJ Harvey
93 Last Splash - The Breeders
94 Crooked Rain Crooked Rain - Pavement
95 Maxinquaye - Tricky
96 What Bird is That - The Lucksmiths
97 Living in Clip - Ani DiFranco (live album)
98 Moon Pix - Cat Power
99 Fear of Fours - Lamb
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95-99 is seriously underrated.
There is a number of absolute genius albums between this period that are yet to be discovered by the mainstream audience.
You could probably say that for every year from 1960 to 2018 though… (As I’ve learned reading the 60s, 70s and 80s threads and coming across stacks of albums I’ve never heard by artists I have never heard of!!)
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Yeah, I guess the late 90 and 00’s albums have yet to truely mature over time, where we can point to albums as ‘greatness’
Time is the essence where we discover the truely great albums from the good ones.
The albums I was listening to in the 90’s, they aren’t the great albums of that era. I can look back now with hindsight and less judgement, of which albums were true greatness.
In 1979, no one would have said that any iggy Pop and the stooges albums would be rated as one of the greatest albums of that decade.
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Yeah, I’d agree with that.
In my list I had to make a couple of calls between albums that were central to the period for me, and albums that I’d rate as potentially great now, but which would never mean as much to me. I mostly went with the former, just because…
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I also find that new artists and bands will become very big, then acknowledge their influences as a driving factor. That’s what I mean by hindsight.
Would Iggy and Stooges albums funhouse & Raw Power be considered ‘great’ if the Ramones didn’t exist? If the 1970’s punk scene never happened, would the Stooges even be relevant? I don’t think so.
The way we view albums of past generations, is very much connected to the influence they had on the next era of music. IMO even more so than record sales.
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Great to see
RATM
Pearl Jam
STP
Nirvana
Oasis
No SoundGarden SuperUnKnown and only a little TOOL and RHCP
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Alright, I’m cheating, and here’s my ‘B List.’ Which I would have been perfectly happy with as the ‘A list.’
90: Midnight Oil - Blue Sky Mining
91: Nirvana - Nevermind
92: Pantera - Vulgar Display of Power
93: The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
94: Green Day - Dookie (I might do a c-z list just for '94)
95: Faith No More: King For A Day
96: Rage Against The Machine - Evil Empire
97: Radiohead - OK Computer
98: Fear Factory - Obsolete
99: Stone Temple Pilots - No. 4
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I think ‘context’ is so relevant to the greatness of any album that it can never be separated. Context in the shape of who they influence etc is critical to how “great” an album might be. (and can never be judged until years later). But it also matters to how an individual perceives an album (as evidenced by this place being desperate to get to the 90s thread).
Albums become intertwined with our sense of self and how we see ourselves in the world and any judgement of the greatness of any particular album will be through the narrow window of our own experience of the album. And anyone trying to judge an album in any other way isn’t really experiencing that album anyway.
For me Nirvana’s Nevermind will always meet the criteria of a great album, even though I couldn’t get it onto my list for various reasons. But I was 18 when it came out and I can remember us all sitting around the day it came out just looking at it. Even before it was played it already was a metaphor for our lives. The possibilities that were in front of us, everything. It really did feel like this album changed everything. Of course it didn’t, in that it was just another album, but it also did.
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1990 - Flood - They Might Be Giants
I have Triple J to thank for this. I heard the amazingly light and tender and nerdy and surreal single, Birdhouse in Your Soul and fell in love with it. I’m still in love with it. It’s gotta be tough to sing that song without a smile on your face. One five star review from Q magazine later I was off the local record shop (remember them?).
The melodies, the harmonies, the joy…
The album starts off with its own theme song. There’s a fantastic cover of Istanbul. Your Racist Friend is so on point (‘I know politics bore you…’), just so many perfect lines - ‘Now I’m dead and I haven’t done anything that I want, or I’m still alive and there’s nothing I want to do.’
This weird little album made me feel…understood somehow.
And even songs that meant ‘nothing’ were still laden with…snippets of wisdom.
But mostly, it’s the joy.
1991 The Ghosts That Haunt Me - Crash Test Dummies
This album is my blanket. The single, and again my introduction to the album, was Superman Song. There seem to have been a lot of songs about how tough Superman had it around that time. It was Brad Roberts’ amazing baritone that drew me in, of course.
The rest of the album has a folksy feel to it, fiddles and such.
I don’t expect anyone else to like it.
1992 Rage Against The Machine - Rage Against The Machine
It can take me a long time to get into stuff. Of course I loved the lead single, but if you asked me what I thought of the album around 1994 it would have been a one word, four letter review.
I went to see Tricky instead of RATM at the BDO.
But over time the melodies emerged from the fuzz and I realised how good this album is. And like the rest of Australia, I love a vague little protest song.
1993 - Sad But True - Tex, Don and Charlie
The Cruel Sea’s This is Not the Way Home is on the '91 shortlist. So purchasing this album without having heard a track wasn’t much of a gamble.
What I wasn’t expecting was bourbon and loneliness and regret. Too much of being one of the last people at the pub, too much of being a jerk, too much of letting people out of your life that you shouldn’t have. I’m sure Chisel fans won’t agree, but I prefer Walker’s Danielle to Janelle.
1994 Vitalogy - Pearl Jam
I don’t have to explain this one, do I? StBS put me off buying the album, but I bought it anyway. And I got Coruroy and Nothingman and Better Man.
1995 - Jagged Little Pill - Alanis Morissette
Not even sorry. I love this album. I love every single rocky, folky, poppy, self-confessional, bitter and angry and yet still positive song on this wonderful album.
1996 - Beautiful Freak - The Eels
Hmmm. I kinda like folky stuff, huh.
Everything’s ■■■■■■, and you, especially, are ■■■■■■, and that’s okay.
You wouldn’t want to be like them anyway, would you?
I mean, yes. Obviously you would.
Who wouldn’t?
But they still suck, and you’re kind of awesome.
1997 Eternal Nightcap - The Whitlams
This is sort of…recognisable nostalgia.
There’s this sort of, look at all this stuff that happened, but we survived it, feel.
Also, ‘There’s a band on every corner but I’m not in one
I hate three out of every four of them, but I haven’t got a gun.’
1998 Moon Safari - Air
Is it lazy to say that if Oxygene was a 90s pop album it would be a bit like this?
I like finding warmth in elecrtro. And this is that.
1999 - Bad Love - Randy Newman
I’m not a huge fan of his. But these cartoony songs about ugly people, that still finds…well, maybe not good in them, but humanity, appealed to me at the time.
And still does.
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I had a few in front of it, but it was in the mix.
Glad somebody gave it a nod.
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No Bjork? F*ck you Blitz.
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That’s how good the decade was. 1994 was an especially amazing year for albums.
Post was second for its year.
Sorry.
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‘Turnover’, should be the EFC theme song.
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