|
|
Ten Albums that Shaped the 90’sFeb 08 '03 Write an essay on this topic.
Popular Products in Music
The Bottom Line Why read this when you can read the review? You just wasted three seconds. Five now.
Choosing ten top albums from the 80’s was quite a challenge, and looking back on my list, I keep thinking that I should’ve included Dire Straits, Love Over Gold, X, More Fun in the New World and Fugazi, 13 Songs. But I didn’t – it turns out that the 80’s were a far richer decade than anyone would have given them credit for. So, I thought I’d make myself an even taller order by attempting to isolate 10 landmark albums from the 90’s, a decade where the soundscape opened itself up so wide that so many artists and musicians became considered geniuses, borrowing from punk, prog-rock and even pop to create hybrid styles that yielded more complicated, challenging and accomplished. It seems almost impossible to cull a list of well over 50 excellent albums into a top ten, but I have tried, and here come my, for the most part, uncontroversial picks. And I still think that pop in the 80’s was just better. 1991 & 1994 Nirvana - Nevermind and… Oasis - Definitely Maybe It galls me to include either one of these albums in a top ten list, as I’ll explain in a moment. But the fact remains that they were both immensely important albums for different reasons, so I decided to count them as half a choice each. You see, I still think that Nevermind was overrated, an album superseded in every way possible by In Utero. Plus, Soundgarden and Mudhoney had been around for ages before this - and they were better, as was the debut album from The Smashing Pumpkins, Gish, which also appeared before Nevermind. But anyway, the fact is that this album interested the whole world in a style of music which had been underground up until that point – excepting of course the Pixies, who were also around for ages before this album appeared. Not only was it overrated, I also think half the album at least is disposable, but it’s position in history is, nevertheless incontestable. I remember a friend in 1991 lent me a mix tape in which he alternated the songs Black and White by Michael Jackson and Smells like teen spirit. Like I said, it changed the face of rock in a massive way, even though the seeds for change had been sown long before. Oasis, on the other hand, brought the whole world back to basics, with the spectacular rock and roll of their debut effort, coincidentally their best album by absolutely miles. So why are they on my black list? Because they’re a bunch of pr*cks, plain and simple. Aside from throwing all their talent away after this album, they made absolutely everyone all over the world listen up and take note. Again, they couldn’t have been successful if the arena rock of U2, the angular riffage of R.E.M. and the guitar army of The Black Crowes hadn’t been around, but this album has probably outsold all of the above, which rather saddens me actually. 1991 Pearl Jam Ten Really the best album in the first wave of grunge bands, the band have just kept bettering themselves since their explosive first appearance. The album is packed with intensely felt pieces of Seattle-sound rock, all of them resting against the backdrop of intelligently constructed rock & roll, picking and choosing from Led Zeppelin-esque grooves (Alive, Once) and Neil Young influenced sad-guitar noodlings (Black, Oceans), and even late 80’s metal (Evenflow). It got overplayed, yes, but deservedly so. Nirvana may have interested a mass audience to the other Seattle bands, but Pearl Jam, for me, have had the more lasting effect, although they did last a lot longer. All post 91 rock owes more than a little to Ten. 1991 U2 Achtung Baby Rock & roll veterans, as venerable as they come, U2 had already released a career defining album and enough hits to earn them a high seat in the hall of fame, but they weren’t done with us by a long shot. Achtung Baby does two very difficult things: it surpasses the almost unsurpassable The Joshua Tree, and blends an interest in electronica with an interest in grunge. The opening chords of Zoo Station prove that the Irish quartet listen to the radio, and learnt a few tricks, leading to the electrifying rock workouts of Even better than the real thing, The Fly, and Mysterious ways. Distorted chords dominate the album, the angular hallmarks of grunge, and yet they are clean cutting and clinical, flying in the face of the anarchic live feel of most Seattle bands - Achtung Baby also represents the band’s first foray into electronic bleeping music, an interest magnified tenfold by the dense and intricate Zooropa. But without waiting for someone else to get in there before them, U2 bridged the gap between visceral rock & roll and the clean pop sound that had preceded it. And they emerged with a masterpiece, the influence of which is still felt today, not least in bands like Grandaddy, later Oasis, Gomez and, of course Radiohead. 1992 R.E.M. - Automatic for the People No surprises there. R.E.M. became superstars via their mainstream breakthrough Losing my religion only the previous year. Curiously, in the swamp of grunge bands that exploded in the early 90’s, R.E.M. traded their indie-rock roots for more circumspect light rock, eventually putting the electric guitar front and centre again with Monster. Still, the result of their ‘softer’ albums, was that the band became superstars, this album alone yielding such hits as the anti-suicide anthem Everybody hurts, one of the most uplifting songs ever committed to disc, and almost as recognised worldwide as Eagles, Hotel California. My personal favourite is the raw-sounding Monty got a raw deal, along with the magnificent piano led Nightswimming. It made a pleasant change of pace at the time, and it has become one of the most influential and powerful records to ever have been released. 1992 Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted Only one year on from the Seattle blast, probably the most important musical event of the decade, and already the music world had formed a counterattack – lo-fi. Pavement’s debut borrowed the punk pose, swamped the production with white noise and tinny recordings, and broke away from the bass storm of hard rock. Instead we got, quite possibly, the very first Indie album, in which serrated angular guitars replaced the crunch-time of big bands, and a weedy little singer who could barely make himself heard over the noise. Stephen Malkmus’ strengths lie elsewhere, but this album re-invented punk for the 90’s, and allowed albums like Pablo Honey to have an audience. From the dark damaged lament of Summer babe (winter version) to the politicised In the mouth a desert, it’s almost entirely perfect. People talk of today’s wave of garage bands – quite frankly, with early Pavement, been there, done that. It’s interesting to listen back to this album, considering how massively produced and upbeat the band’s last album, Terror Twilight, actually was. Full of surprises. 1993 Counting Crows - August and Everything After This is a bit of a personal choice, but I’ll stand by it come hell or high water. The Crows amply deserve all the hype that surrounded their early careers, although nowadays they are slightly forgotten and overlooked. August and Everything After was almost as subdued as Automatic for the People, but almost twice as emotive and heartfelt, and definitely much more immediate. This is mostly thanks to the untrained honesty of passionate vocalist Adam Duritz, boasting one of the most spectacular voices of his generation, and of most other generations come to that. Feeding on the same anxieties and tensions as the Seattle bands, Counting Crows took a far more subdued and folky take, looking to other 70’s landmarks for inspiration, most notably Van Morrisson and The Band. They immediately hit big with Mr. Jones, back when MTV used to be worth watching. Since then the songs and compositions have steadily gained in instrumentation and majesty, but their quiet and infinitely miserable debut album is still one of the best of its type, enabling many other bands to develop afterwards, including The Wallflowers, Matchbox Twenty, Ryan Adams, Hootie and the Blowfish, and other such rock orientated acts. 1993 The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream Noise is back in, with the Pumpkins’ second album, after the oft-overlooked Gish. Billy Corgan shaped music throughout the 90’s, and is in my opinion the most consistent visionary of the decade, each of his albums adding something new and unique to bloated rock & roll. Siamese Dream is considered by most to be the crown jewel, and it’s hard to disagree. An album without a single misstep (although I’m not overly fond of Geek U.S.A.) is hard to come by these days, much less one that reaches such a high degree of consistent brilliance that the b-sides were just as good, yielding the wonderful Pisces Iscariot disc. Corgan also penned one of the most instantly recognisable and uplifting alt-rock anthems of the decade with Today, and is well on his way to accomplishing the same feat in this decade with the almost as outstanding Honestly with new band Zwan. But the album isn’t just well-directed wall of sound noise a la Silverf*ck and Cherub rock. The album actually closes with two saddened hushed pieces, and two of the most successful and memorable tracks on the album were acoustic - Disarm and Spaceboy. Corgan simply found a way of connecting with youth and angst by combining rock with far more subtle and devious methods, mostly borrowed from prog-rock acts like Pink Floyd and Genesis and more gothic-punk infused giants like The Cure and Siouxsie and the Banshees. The result was an album of songs that got under your skin, and made you feel understood and connected. That in itself is almost unique. 1994 Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral Almost unique, in that Trent Reznor went and improved on it with the spectacular The Downward Spiral the following year. Granted, Trent’s, industrial take lacks the same subtlety (a subtlety he is rediscovering on such experiments as Still), but it does pack a hell of a wallop. Let’s face it, metal was out of favour, with hard rock acts taking over the early 90’s and evicting hair metal poseurs. Trent brought metal back, combining it with industrial and electronic music, sounding initially a lot like Depeche Mode with debut Pretty Hate Machine. But Trent wasn’t a happy camper, and he has taken great pains to make sure that everyone is aware of that. The only reason his overblown angst works so well is that the music is so pompously arranged and deadly serious that it take immediate effect. How else can you explain the huge success of Closer, a deadly thudding beat set against practically novelty-song lyrics which makes you feel utterly disarmed. Then you have such off-beat gems as March of the pigs, spectacular building monoliths like Eraser, and extremely screwy mind-games like The Becoming. And capping it all off is one of the most touching, affecting and gentle admissions of self-fault, the incalculably beautiful Hurt. No one made hurting ever sound so sexy, and once again someone reached out and dealt out a lifeline to a generation who thought no one understood. 1994 Jeff Buckley - Grace Genius. Sheer genius. Not just a top ten 90’s album, a top ten ever album, an album you should cradle in your arms while you sleep, a monumental recording that reminds us that we are human and that we have emotions and that from time to time we need to get back in touch with those same feelings. Every single song is a work of art, perfectly arranged and set into a playing order that grabs your attention from the dreamy opening moans. And you have such perfect pieces of rock as Grace itself, the astoundingly effective reworking of Hallelujah, the tear-inducing all-consuming loneliness of Lover you should’ve come over. And over it all, one of the most beautiful voices to ever have walked the earth. No overstatement is too overstated. This album is perfect. In every way, in every message that it strives for, in every emotion that it captures, and in every note that you hear. Perfect. Imitated by many, never bettered. 1997 Radiohead - OK Computer For the longest time, I didn’t get Ok Computer. For me, it marked my transition from youth to intelligent up-to-date music. It was like a coming of age, beyond the straight ahead emotional connections of The Smashing Pumpkins, The Cure and NIN that had kept me going until that point. One of the most successful concept albums since the 70’s, the album uncovers the emptiness of modern society in a few simple chords, a few more not so simple chords, and a wailing lyrical twist not so far from Buckley himself. The most familiar faces are the uncomplicated No Surprises, and Exit Music, reacting archly against the almost perfect indie based rock of second album The Bends, which could just have easily been included in this list. Almost all of the rock-electronic crossover bands to have emerged since 㤅 can be traced back to this album (although U2 opened the floodgates), and more than a few imitators have surfaced, all of them good (Coldplay, Muse, Elbow, Ours), but none of them capable of lifting themselves out of the mundane. An incontestable message about our dwindling humanity, impossible to ignore. You may have noticed that only one album goes beyond the midway of the decade. Why? There were loads of perfectly good albums in the late 90’s. Yes. There were. Could they have happened without all the early albums I mentioned, and then some? (I’m thinking Black Crowes, Dave Matthews Band, Primal Scream, My Bloody Valentine). I think not. Besides, music really changed at the beginning of the decade, evicting 80’s pop and replacing it with something far more lively. Likewise, we are currently in a period of flux, as new bands emerge and excite us all. Godspeed, The White Stripes, At the Drive In, The Strokes, Bright Eyes, will all be in my best of the 00’s review in seven years time. For now, I think my next port of call is a good twenty-odd years ago, in the 70’s.  |
| Read all comments (1)|Write your own comment |
- Top 1000|
Ads by Google
|
by George_Chabot
by kiwifella
by starcollector
![Jersey Boys [Original Broadway Cast Recording] by Original Broadway Cast Reviews](http://di2.shopping.com/images/pi/95/a4/8a/2006752046-100x100-0-0.jpg?p=p13.1a59c6c02e5c8ba14e42&a=2&c=1&l=8071320&t=120602191950&r=1)
