Best Album of the ‘90s — Winner Takes All

rsvman said:
I have neither the time nor the inclination to read through every post. I just want to know whether anybody nominated Aenima by Tool.

If not, consider it nominated.

These guys are monsters, and this album is astonishing.

'I've been wallowing in my own chaotic, insecure delusions.' IYKYK. 46 and 2 may well be the best rock song ever written.
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It was nominated. I also love Undertow which has one of my favorite hidden tracks.
 
OldPhiKap said:
I won’t say that I hate Gershwin. But a lot of that time period is so far below the romantic composers from the late nineteenth century to my ear that it really doesn’t do it for me. “Ooh, discordant eight notes and random blaring horns or screeching piccolos — we must be in a busy city.”

It’s sorta my same view of pop music, when there is so much great roots music to explore instead.

Give me Dvořák‘s New World Symphony or a cranking Liszt, Bartók or Brahms. Chopin or Debussy if you wanna chill

I realize that others may disagree.
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I feel like you plagiarized this from somewhere. It’s good!
 
Kdogg said:
Green Day was bigger in the 00s than the 90s though. It's in that cross generational group that links X and Millennials. They are bigger now than any other band from the 90s except the Foos and PJ. That's partly because of all the drug over doses of front men of that time (Chris Cornell, Layne Stanley, Scott Weiland, etc). Way back in 1994 I was a rising senior in high school. That year at Lollapalooza at Walnut Creek Green Day was the noon opener. The Smashing Pumpkins and Beasties were the headliners. Thirty years later I'm watching the Pumpkins opening for Green Day.
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Yeah, American Idiot was my favorite album in 30 years, since The Who’s Quadrophenia. But it was in the noughts, not the 90s.
 
luvdahops said:
Huh? In what parallel universe would that be true? The one in which “alternative music” only makes it into mainstream radio with the advent of Nirvana, rather than the Clash, Ramones and Elvis Costello? Or even, say, REM and the Cure?

In reality, while music fans who came of age in the 90s may argue otherwise, grunge was more of a short-term detour along a longer term alternative music arc than any sort of fundamental watershed. The pop/punk/ska and Brit pop movements had little if any relation to grunge, and quickly supplanted it in terms of alternative and mainstream impact. And Green Day was the leading force of the former.
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Green Day got signed to a major label because those major labels were looking for the next Nirvana. There was a huge boom in labels trying to sign any band from Seattle, any indie or underground band of any repute, including punk acts like Greenday, or NOFX, or Offspring or Bad Religion. Grunge wasn't a detour from punk or hardcore, it was just a different interpretation of those same movements, all those bands listened to the Sex Pistols, and then Black Flag, just like Green Day did.

I'm not arguing Nirvana started alternative music, I know The Clash, and REM and the Cure had big radio hits. U2 came from the same background, they were the biggest band on the planet at the time. But none of them created the "alternative music" gold rush that followed Nevermind, that lead to several bands getting major label deals, this isn't debatable. Could Green Day have been signed to a major without the whole Nevermind phenomenon? Maybe, but there's no way they get pushed as heavy as they were without it. There is no Alternative Nation on MTV during prime viewing hours without Nirvana (120 minutes existed well before them but it was like Sunday night at 10pm IIRC).

I've always found it interesting that people want to separate Grunge from the other movements as if there was some huge difference in the audience. Most of the kids I knew who liked Nirvana, also liked Green Day and Offspring and Smashing Pumpkins. You might find some who weren't super into Soundgarden or Alice in Chains because they were too metal or whatever. Grunge was a short lived moment in rock, its not hard to see why that happened. Pearl Jam stopped making videos, Soundgarden went on hiatus after 96, Alice in Chains essentially went on hiatus in 95, Nirvana ended before Green Day even became a household name. All the other movements you listed were also short lived in terms of defining the zeitgeist, and by 98-99 the kids want total request live, Britney and NSYNC.......and Korn (yeesh). Green Day is still trucking along, so is Pearl Jam. Hard to say what happens to Nirvana if Kurt Cobain doesn't blow his head off. They probably do one more album, Dave Grohl leaves to do Foo Fighters, Kurt and Dave end up hating each other, basically they become the grunge version of the Smiths. Hopefully Kurt would not become as hateful and xenophobic as Morrissey did.
 
HoKogan said:
Green Day got signed to a major label because those major labels were looking for the next Nirvana. There was a huge boom in labels trying to sign any band from Seattle, any indie or underground band of any repute, including punk acts like Greenday, or NOFX, or Offspring or Bad Religion. Grunge wasn't a detour from punk or hardcore, it was just a different interpretation of those same movements, all those bands listened to the Sex Pistols, and then Black Flag, just like Green Day did.

I'm not arguing Nirvana started alternative music, I know The Clash, and REM and the Cure had big radio hits. U2 came from the same background, they were the biggest band on the planet at the time. But none of them created the "alternative music" gold rush that followed Nevermind, that lead to several bands getting major label deals, this isn't debatable. Could Green Day have been signed to a major without the whole Nevermind phenomenon? Maybe, but there's no way they get pushed as heavy as they were without it. There is no Alternative Nation on MTV during prime viewing hours without Nirvana (120 minutes existed well before them but it was like Sunday night at 10pm IIRC).

I've always found it interesting that people want to separate Grunge from the other movements as if there was some huge difference in the audience. Most of the kids I knew who liked Nirvana, also liked Green Day and Offspring and Smashing Pumpkins. You might find some who weren't super into Soundgarden or Alice in Chains because they were too metal or whatever. Grunge was a short lived moment in rock, its not hard to see why that happened. Pearl Jam stopped making videos, Soundgarden went on hiatus after 96, Alice in Chains essentially went on hiatus in 95, Nirvana ended before Green Day even became a household name. All the other movements you listed were also short lived in terms of defining the zeitgeist, and by 98-99 the kids want total request live, Britney and NSYNC.......and Korn (yeesh). Green Day is still trucking along, so is Pearl Jam. Hard to say what happens to Nirvana if Kurt Cobain doesn't blow his head off. They probably do one more album, Dave Grohl leaves to do Foo Fighters, Kurt and Dave end up hating each other, basically they become the grunge version of the Smiths. Hopefully Kurt would not become as hateful and xenophobic as Morrissey did.
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All fair points and apologize for pigeonholing you unfairly. Though I would argue that the pop/punk/ska wave lasted well into the next decade (and had more legs than grunge as a result). Not just Green Day, but blink-1982 and the Offspring, among others, were charting well and getting airplay in the early 2000s, and a new cohort sprang up on the East Coast in that timeframe, too, with bands like the Strokes and Interpol that have had durable success, especially the Strokes. And who knows how big Sublime might have become if Bradley Nowell had not OD'd. YMMW but I personally consider him on par with Kurt Cobain as a songwriter and visionary. Not sure where Weezer fits in exactly but I always considered them at least loosely part of that 90s West Coast zeitgeist and they've certainly had longevity.
 
luvdahops said:
And who knows how big Sublime might have become if Bradley Nowell had not OD'd. YMMW but I personally consider him on par with Kurt Cobain as a songwriter and visionary.
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I saw Sublime with Rome a few years ago and it was a great show. It made me wish I had seen Sublime with Nowell, but not sure if he would have put on as a good a performance, depending on what state he was in.
 
cato said:
If you are like me, you have a long-standing goal. You want a definitive answer to a burning question: what was the best album of the 90s?

Why Now?

It’s been 25 years since we left the 90s. 35 years since it started.

During the decade from 1990-1999, lots of people moved from cassettes to CDs. Walkman to discman. One friend of mine bought Nevermind on cassette because that is what his car played. I bought it on CD because I could connect my discman to my cassette player in the car using one of those tape-to-cd converters.

And I listened to a lot of music.

4 or 5 years ago, I realized that I didn’t listen to much of that music anymore. Just a few albums that I would dip back into from time to time.

Ten by Pearl Jam. Gov’t Mule.

Maybe Nevermind.

Exile in Guyville.

So those must be in my top 5, right? The only ones I actually have listened to all the way through in the past 5 or 10 years?

No! You can’t decide a high-stakes question like this just by looking at one metric. You need depth. You need rigor.

You need this contest to determine a winner.

The Contest

Name the top best album of the 90s. Contenders will be considered and entered into a tournament format.

The format will be international football style, with a round robin group stage and then a knock-out round.

The Stakes

Glory

The Contenders
  • Ten - Pearl Jam
  • Nevermind - Nirvana
  • OK Computer - Radiohead
  • Automatic for the People - REM
  • The Miseducation of Lauren Hill - Lauren Hill
  • The Downward Spiral - NIN
  • Grace - Jeff Buckley
  • Endtroducing - DJ Shadow
  • Exile in Guyville - Liz Phair
  • Dig Me Out - Sleater-Kinney
  • The Chronic - Dr. Dre
  • Dummy - Portishead
  • Ready to Die - Christopher Wallace aka Frank White aka Big Poppa aka Biggie Smalls aka the Notorious B.I.G (RIP)
  • Enter the Wu Tang (36 Chambers) - Wu Tang Clanh
  • Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain - Pavement
  • Sublime - Sublime
  • Gov’t Mule - Gov’t Mule
  • Siamese Dream - The Smashing Pumpkins
Submissions

What other albums should be entered into this contest?
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You got it right by choosing Pearl Jam “Ten”, which is an incredible album, but you got it wrong by not also including “Vs.”, which is arguably even better than “Ten”.

And you got it right by choosing “Siamese Dream” by The Smashing Pumpkins, but you should have also included their amazing album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. Oh, and no Soundgarden “Superunkown”?? That album is downright scintillating.
 
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Steven43 said:
You got it right by choosing Pearl Jam “Ten”, which is incredible album, but you got it wrong by not also including “Vs.”, which is arguably even better than “Ten”.

And you got it right by choosing “Siamese Dream” by The Smashing Pumpkins, but you should have also included their amazing album “Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness”. Oh, and no Soundgarden “Superunkown”?? That album is downright scintillating.
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I specifically recommended Superunknown. You need to look at the post with the final list. Also, to each his own, but Ten is much better than Vs to me.
 
I don’t remember who on this thread recommended 60 songs that defined the 90s podcast. Dude is entertaining but I trialed one and he didn’t start talking about the title song for that podcast until like halfway through the 90 minute episode time!
 
AGDukesky said:
I specifically recommended Superunknown. You need to look at the post with the final list. Also, to each his own, but Ten is much better than Vs to me.
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I just made a Pearl Jam playlist and I cannot stop listening to it. I have iTunes Apple Music and it allows me to listen to playlists on shuffle so the songs play randomly. It’s fantastic.

Anyway, the songs I chose from Vs. were Go, Daughter, Dissident, W.M.A., Rearviewmirror, Elderly Woman, Leash, Indifference, Hold On, and Crazy Mary. That’s ten songs.

From the Ten album I chose Once, Oceans, Garden, Deep, and Release. All five songs are awesome and I love to listen to them often. However, I did not select Alive, Evenflow, Black, or Jeremy. Those songs just seem kind of redundant and used up at this point. No need to put them on a playlist.

The bottom line is as good as Ten is — and it’s very very good — Vs. is just a fresher-sounding, more consistently-great album.
 
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