Update: A grievous omission has been rectified at #23.
To some, the end of the 90s signaled the end of the album era. With the rise of the Internet, mp3s were the wave of the future, not LPs, and all the new software (shuffling playlists!) and hardware (iPods!) completely changed the way we listen to music—you don’t like half of the songs on an album? Delete ‘em and make your own EP! But even if that’s true, the 90s offered a terrific last gasp, and the first (and perhaps last) time when music on popular radio could match the stuff on the college stations. Of course, it helped that I grew up in the suburbs before file sharing was the rage, so the majority of the stuff I bought and listened to during the decade was major label-accepted. Even though my plate grew much wider playing catch up during this decade, the fact remains—there was a time when modern rock radio and MTV actually played good music. And even the stuff out of the norm wasn’t really that far removed from the catapulting alternative scene among the masses. But that makes this a confounding list in its honesty—there’s stuff on here gobbled up by consumers that critics loathed right next to semi-obscure stuff that became fodder for “name dropping” among the elite that the average listener will never give a chance. Luckily, that whole Internet “fad” I mentioned earlier has corrected some of those injustices and access is nearly unlimited. Poised to satisfy and upset many in equal amounts, here are the Top 100 Albums of the 1990s.
Oh wait, first the last twenty-five to miss the cut, listed in alphabetical order:
69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields [1999 / Alternative]
Ágætis byrjun by Sigur Rós [1999 / Alternative]
Alien Lanes by Guided by Voices [1995 / Alternative]
Badmotorfinger by Soundgarden [1991 / Metal]
Either/Or by Elliott Smith [1997 / Pop]
Emergency & I by the Dismemberment Plan [1999 / Alternative]
Fear of a Black Planet by Public Enemy [1990 / Hip Hop]
Frank Black by Frank Black [1993 / Alternative]
Gish by Smashing Pumpkins [1991 / Alternative]
Hissing Prigs in Static Couture by Brainiac [1996 / Alternative]
The Hot Rock by Sleater-Kinney [1999 / Punk]
in/CASINO/OUT by At the Drive-In [1998 / Alternative]
I See a Darkness by Bonnie “Prince” Billy [1999 / Folk]
Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space by Spiritualized [1997 / Alternative]
Laughing Stock by Talk Talk [1991 / Alternative]
Millions Now Living Will Never Die by Tortoise [1996 / Alternative]
Modern Life Is Rubbish by Blur [1993 / Alternative]
Moon Pix by Cat Power [1998 / Folk]
The Real Ramona by Throwing Muses [1991 / Alternative]
The Richard D. James Album by Aphex Twin [1996 / Electronic]
Ruby Vroom by Soul Coughing [1994 / Alternative]
Secaucus by the Wrens [1996 / Rock]
To Bring You My Love by PJ Harvey [1995 / Rock]
Trompe le Monde by Pixies [1991 / Alternative]
Violator by Depeche Mode [1990 / Alternative]
Now to the hundred that made it:
100. Mezzanine
by Massive Attack
1998
Electronic
There will always be the debate: Blue Lines or Mezzanine? The former was more innovative and groundbreaking, the latter more polished and professional—whichever details appeal to you more probably answers the question. But Massive Attack ride such a high during the early passages of Mezzanine that you can forgive it for ending on “(Exchange)” instead of the more suitable (and eerily dramatic) “Group Four” and for 3D’s rather unremarkable raps. The foursome of “Angel,” “Risingson,” “Teardrop” and “Inertia Creeps” rivals anything else in the canons of trip hop’s acclaimed statesmen (even Portishead and Tricky), and the fact that the drop-off after that isn’t severe keeps you invested. Dark and brooding, it’s ability to straddle the wide line between catchy, low-key rave and moody, opium den-depression detailed a new depth to the trio. 
99. Flood
by They Might Be Giants
1990
Alternative
The hooks may be abundant, but They Might Be Giants always suffered from problems with editing, which is still true of their best (and most popular) album, Flood, but is too much worse than not enough? Side A charms top to bottom while the flip side finds them indulging in even more bizarre experiments that sometimes work (illusory, seedy jazz parody “Hot Cha”), sometimes don’t (chintzy, reggae-meets-Morrissey shrugger “Hearing Aid”). But as jokey nerd pop masquerading as a genre mash free-for-all, any disc that can get you to smile and bounce your head for most of its running time still usually trumps even the most consistent downers around. It’s quite fitting that the first time I heard the very “uncool” TMBG was in a very “uncool” way: an episode of Tiny Toon Adventures.
98. RTFM
by Poster Children
1997
Rock
Poster Children were among the very first groups to launch the band blogging trend, did webcasts before outfits with budgets bothered to, and casually released the greatest CD-ROM package I’ve ever seen on a music disc in 1997—not bad for a group that most have never even heard of. Judging by the album title (RTFM stands for Read the F-cking Manual), it was a signal that the band was once again changing their frame of reference, and reignited a love for stark/dark post-punk time signatures without sacrificing the lovely melodies of their last couple of releases. It was also one of the most eclectic collections in their catalogue at that point, swerving through hard-biting new wave, fits of shoegaze drone, angular dance punk and vigorous power pop. It became the template for their next three albums (but never topped in that span), and there was something quite liberating about how it sounded at that time—an excitable, refreshing and effortlessly catchy hodgepodge of winners small and large. Won’t change your life, but will certainly change your day (for the better, natch).
97. Liquid Swords
by GZA
1995
Hip Hop
RZA promised the rest of the Wu-Tang Clan that if they put him in charge of the group’s direction, he’d make them so big that every member would be granted the freedom and label support to promote whatever solo project they cared to. Of all the Wu solo albums, it should be no surprise that it was GZA who delivered the best of the bunch in ’95 with Liquid Swords (taken from the title of a Hong Kong kung fu fantasy flick, Legend of the Liquid Sword)—his flow and lyrical style are both near or at the top of the game. But as complex and literate as many of his rhymes are, it’s in RZA’s top-notch production that it really shines. The title track and “Shadowboxin’” are both mesmerizing (on the latter: “Flying guillotines, here they come, bloody bastards/Hard times and killer tactics, spittin’ words plus/Semi-automatic slurs, peep the graphic/Novel from the genie bottle, hit the clutch”), “Dual of the Iron Mic” and “4th Chamber” not far back, and the beats, hooks and Stevie Wonder sample on “Cold World” puts that one on a level rarely reached by anyone else in the Shaolin set.
96. Adore
by Smashing Pumpkins
1998
Alternative
Looking back now, it’s hard to figure why Adore shocked alternative nation as much as it did. The loop-and-sample hit “1979” was the highest charting song in SP’s career, and in the interim between Mellon Collie’s massive tour and the next album, they released a pair of soundtrack cuts: the electronic-edged rocker “The End Is the Beginning Is the End” and the synth-and-drum-machine-driven “Eye.” But with Adore, Billy Corgan believed he was looking at the future of music and brushed off electric guitars and alt-rock angst almost entirely in favor of synthetic equipment and gothic grandeur. It certainly wasn’t a deft commercial move (or a prophecy fulfilled) as it sold only about a tenth the number of copies as their last and polarized the fanbase. But aside from a few limp stretches (“Once Upon a Time,” “Annie-Dog”), there’s a fine mix of stately acoustic ballads and tense electro-rockers, even blending both in the same decadent stew, and it rivals Siamese Dream as being Corgan’s most consistently strong display of lyrical ambition.
95. Tiny Music… Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop
by Stone Temple Pilots
1996
Alternative
Perhaps the most unfairly maligned “derivative” band to emerge from the Ten/Nevermind explosion, STP seemed to be actively trying to distance themselves from the grunge scene by their third album, inflecting their songs with heavy doses of starchy, psychedelic pop (yes, some of these songs could even be characterized as being Beatles-esque). They don’t disavow tense and rhythmic hard rock entirely—hits like “Big Bang Baby” and “Trippin’ on a Hole in a Paper Heart,” as well as the grinding “Tumble in the Rough” (which should’ve been a hit)—but tastes of arch, wavering drama (“Adhesive”), lounge soul pop (“And So I Know”), low-key instrumental interludes (“Daisy”) and elegant psych-cabaret rock (“Lady Picture Show”) display both broader range and more mature ambition. These changes to the formula (and Scott Weiland’s drug/law problems) kept most of Tiny Music from getting radio/MTV overkill saturation; there has to be some irony to the fact that this “copycat” record sounds fresher today than almost all of the first-wave grunge behemoth LPs of the early 90s.
94. American Water
by Silver Jews
1998
Alternative
What began as a Pavement side project (even though both acts sprung up at approximately the same time), Silver Jews eventually eclipsed the decade’s indie rock kings’ current crop in the late 90s. With the master of slack guitar on hand (Mr. Malkmus) and a variety of populist slack genres being blended in (blues, country, honky tonk), they have their Pavement moments (“Blue Arrangements,” conveniently co-written by Malkmus), but really, this is David Berman’s show. With lyrics that sting gently one moment and wrap an arm around your shoulders the next, tied to misleadingly meandering, mid-tempo melodies, American Water is one of those classic “grower” albums. Still, whether you prefer a western tonk gallop (“Smith & Jones Forever”), dusty and pastoral folk-blues (“We Are Real”), fiery guitar riffs (“Night Society”) or bright country rock (“Honk If You’re Lonely”), there’s plenty here to admire right away.
93. Whatever and Ever Amen
by Ben Folds Five
1997
Pop
Ben Folds had his sentimental side, the prankster version and the wry smartass buried somewhere in his unimposing shape, but his worth as a songwriter will always vary from person to person. Lyrically, Whatever and Ever Amen is not his strongest outing (but he had a tendency to be hit and miss in that department anyway). Musically, though, he was never as consistently engaging, catchy and lovely as here. As a smart and well-sequenced mix of infectious pop-rockers and tender ballads, either upbeat or morose, the album is stocked with genuine affection for both irony and 70s AM singer/songwriter romanticism (wow, what a concept). Even the lone weak link (the half-formed and ultimately unsatisfying “Cigarette”) is over in about a minute-and-a-half, and that’s the price to pay for some of BFF’s all-time best numbers (“Selfless, Cold and Composed,” “Fair,” “Evaporated,” “Smoke”). And if you need a reference point, this was the disc where even your parents knew who Folds was because of “Brick,” a (holy crap) abortion-themed mega-hit—and if you loved that one, well, damn, there’s half a dozen here even better, so you’re in luck!
92. Keep It Like a Secret
by Built to Spill
1999
Rock
Sort of best-of-both-worlds, sort of their most accessible outing, Keep It Like a Secret found Doug Martsch and company converting their Perfect From Now On big rock jam tendencies into a series of (mostly) three and four minute nuggets. Frontloaded with instant compact classics like “The Plan,” “Center of the Universe” and especially “Bad Light,” they do manage to open up a bit on the back nine, including the classic rock-quoting “You Were Right” and the woolly epic “Broken Chairs,” but efficiency is their strong suit here. The guitar riffs trade off between Tom Verlaine’s extra-terrestrial minimalism and J Mascis’s TNT fuzz, which, of course, sounds like a great idea, which is helpful since, uh, this is a guitar album. Brett Nelson (bass) and Scott Plouf (drums) don’t just “play keep up,” which is the best compliment you can really offer. Calling this better than their major label debut will surely upset some of the diehards, but Perfect didn’t have “Time Trap” or “Carry the Zero,” now did it? 
91. Clarity
by Jimmy Eat World
1999
Rock
I resisted Clarity at first since my first experience with Jimmy Eat World was with their underwhelming breakthrough album Bleed American and because they were one of the chief scapegoats in the pop punk emo craze that terrorized the new millennium. I can hear some correlation in the vocal pitch (though Jim Adkins yelps and whines much less than the norm) but JEW had a gift for complex melody that’s lacking in much of emo’s most recent famous faces. The dynamics are subtle, too, rarely raging into hard rock or pulling back towards weepy ballad, but creating a startlingly elegant rise and fall when it’s not content to simply crawl and whirl with lush precision. The midsection can drag a bit, but the steady buildup of “Table for Glasses” is effective, “Believe in What You Want” surprisingly moving, “Lucky Denver Mint” a driving and catchy rocker (the closest they came to a bonafide hit before American’s second single, the overplayed “The Middle”), and everything from the epic “Just Watch the Fireworks” to the end is superb. Speaking of epics, the sixteen minutes of “Goodbye Sky Harbor” just fly right by, either jarring in its transitions or hypnotic in its repetition.
90. Aquemini
by OutKast
1998
Hip Hop
Somehow, I didn’t get around to this one (or even hear of it) until after Stankonia—to put it bluntly (and generically), that one had the better singles but this one had greater consistency. Which means that at almost seventy-five minutes, it’s still out-of-control on the sprawl and contains plenty of that most useless of rap album trademarks—superfluous spoken word interludes—but if “Slump” and “Y’All Scared” translate as filler, you still take them over future aimless exercises. And on the brilliant end, there’s Andre 3000’s virtuosic and catchy chorus on “Skew It on the Bar-B,” the fabulously rich and robust production of “SpottieOttieDopaliscious” (oh, horns to melt in your ears), “Chonkyfire”’s Hendrix/Clapton wah-wah guitar inferno, the menacing quality of the eerie intergalactic “Da Art of Storytellin’,” and the transposition of civil rights activism with “club [getting] crunk” on “Rosa Parks”—Big Boi: “Ah ha, hush that fuss/Everybody move to the back of the bus.” 
89. Check Your Head
by Beastie Boys
1992
Hip Hop
With initial commercial dud Paul’s Boutique gathering steam among a devoted cult base as the 90s wore on, it must have been tempting for Beastie Boys to try for another earth-shattering party record, but instead they brought back live instruments and squeezed all the lo-fi grit they could muster over the bruised face of Check Your Head. It’s as eclectic as any other Beastie record, but genuinely focused on the grime of reality, whether that leant itself to hardcore punk, jazzy bossa nova, the dirtiest funk to ever show up on commercial radio, or Bob freakin’ Dylan. But that reality is the authority of style, so don’t expect them to show up with too much verbal message—despite the best efforts of “So What’cha Want,” “Something’s Got to Give” and “Professor Booty,” this is not a “rhyme record”—but do expect a sonic collage (in gritty mirage) for another post-modern trip that can’t easily be described. It’s a down-and-dirty moshpit to Boutique’s wall-shaking house party, but a good time is a good time. 
88. Queens of the Stone Age
by Queens of the Stone Age
1998
Rock
Bouncing back with a kind of cackling menace appropriate for the circumstance, the disbandment of Kyuss yielded the sort of gift you just can’t ask for come Christmas time—Queens of the Stone Age. Joshua Homme prefers “robot rock” to “stoner rock,” which I guess makes sense since I love them even when I’m not stoned, but barring some Hollywood-formula twist, I’m pretty sure that neither I nor Homme is a robot (but, boy, does he love to get stoned). But, really, this is just heavy metal-size riffs riding pounding grooves virtually unseen since the height of T. Rex and Led Zeppelin. The words are entirely basic (either inscrutable or boilerplate), but the language of the guitar crunch and pummeling rhythm section is so aggressive that you have no choice but to raise a white flag (while steadily shaking sweat from your hair in seismic gyrations). The jarring dynamic is there, but the songwriting ambition is still in the womb—nevertheless, early QOTSA tunes like “Regular John,” “Walkin’ on the Sidewalks,” “How to Handle a Rope” and “Avon” are all head-banging brilliance and the piano throb and supernatural effects of “I Was a Teenage Hand Model” hinted at future psych-freak-outs. 
87. Urban Hymns
by the Verve
1997
Alternative
Some pinpoint Oasis’ Be Here Now as the collapse of Britpop, but a couple of months after its release, the UK (and the rest of the world) got a fine last gasp…from a record not that far removed from the Gallagher brothers’ latest. Urban Hymns is just as bloated (in terms of sonics and songwriting both), but in better ways. Stately, emotive ballads like “Sonnet,” “The Drugs Don’t Work” and “Space and Time” compete for the spotlight with psychedelic pop epics like “Catching the Butterfly” and “Bitter Sweet Symphony.” They do a little Stones, a little U2 (Bono confessed that he really wished he had written “Lucky Man”), a little Zeppelin, and, yes, some Oasis, but considering that Richard Ashroft disbanded the band about a year before and after this record (notice how guitarist Nick McCabe is staring in the opposite direction as everyone else on the cover?), it’s something of a miracle that it exists at all. A shame, then, that more than ten years later, it’s been reduced to “the LP with ‘Symphony’ on it”—drenched alternately in guitars or strings (or both), half of these songs are as “instant classic” as that one.
86. Metallica [The Black Album]
by Metallica
1991
Metal
A point of contention among metal “purists,” Metallica (aka The Black Album) has outsold virtually every LP released in the last two decades, becoming the very definition of “crossover hit,” and through years of relentless touring after its release, became the band’s outsider calling card and flagship album for all brands of newbies. A reversal of the enormous prog compositions of their last effort (…And Justice for All), this time Metallica recruited Motley Crüe producer Bob Rock and crafted more compact and less indulgent jams (what, no epic instrumental?) that resulted in more traditional radio fodder. Which isn’t to say that it doesn’t still rock hard or that they began churning out three-minute pop tunes, but whether you call this refinement a step of maturity or a watering down of their speed-thrash roots, there really isn’t any denying the fact that several cuts are still terrific. “Nothing Else Matters” really split the fanbase, but is solid; “The Unforgiven” even better so long as you ignore the misbegotten sequels. Take the overrated hits “Enter Sandman” and “Sad But True,” if you like, but “Through the Never,” “Of Wolf and Man,” “My Friend of Misery” and especially “Wherever I May Roam” are all excellent.
85. Endtroducing…
by DJ Shadow
1996
Hip Hop
I probably should have put “None” under the genre line since Endtroducing… is like everything and nothing else—it makes the style-splicing of Miles Davis (esoteric) and Prince (madcap) seem downright timid. Composed entirely of samples, DJ Shadow created a love letter to record buying (hence the cover art), building sprawling collages of mostly obscure jazz, funk, soul, folk and psychedelic sounds, and making it sound as naturally cohesive as any other artist on the planet. Almost too seamless during long stretches to even believe, it transformed the pioneering works of electronic/hip hop producers into a singular phrase of both turntablism-styled beat shifting and expansive ambient. It wasn’t the “sound of the future,” as some predicted upon its release, but the fact that almost nothing released since sounds like it makes Endtroducing… an even more everlasting, omniscient force. Almost by requisite, some passages are less gripping than others, but “Midnight in a Perfect World” and “Stem/Long Stem/Transmission 2” are worth double charge admission rate by themselves. 
84. Different Class
by Pulp
1995
Rock
Pulp joined the Britpop wave in the mid-90s despite the fact that they were on album no. 4 by the time they broke through (and had been working since the end of the 70s!). Their last, 1994’s His n’ Hers, was practically a Serge Gainsbourg tribute album in terms of its sleepy, Euro-soul pop musical sound, but just a year later, they began penning ultra-catchy and even anthemic polished rock tunes that would see their stock rise to levels previously reserved solely for Oasis and Blur. Terrific smash hits like “Common People” and “Disco 2000” helped, so did lithe ballad “Underwear,” sunny string rocker “Something Changed” and a dispiritingly less-loved single called “Mis-Shapes,” but, really, their greatest selling point was that they weren’t like the rest of Britpop. They’d been around long enough to have lived through George Michael, New Wave and archly fey rave pop—fusing them and being as staunchly British as any group inspired by Ray Davies was the masterstroke.
83. Rubberneck
by Toadies
1994
Rock
Like almost every hard rocking band to debut after the mainstream explosion of grunge in ’92, the gulf between Toadies’ critical reception and the frothing of fans was wide; this is definitely one of the cases where the “snobs” got it wrong. Sure, these Texans wore their influences on their sleeves (a lot of Pixies, a little Nirvana, who was already a lot of Pixies), but it was also a good time for simplicity and umbrella aesthetic—all eleven tracks are catchy, crunchy and gnashing. What Toadies brought to the table was a sinister, palpable darkness (Black Francis sans surreal insanity), where the edges of the distorted guitars were cleaner than the thorny, malevolent words being yelped by Todd Lewis. Their über-hit, “Possum Kingdom” (one of the four or five most played songs on modern rock radio during the decade), is their calling card, either about vampirism or lakeside murder, and it gets worse from there. Typical lyrics: “If I could find the will to kill,” “I burn the air you breathe,” and “You hurt me, you cunt.” Something about depravity, yes, but more about strong and believable performance.
82. Automatic for the People
by R.E.M.
1992
Rock
Sandwiched between their wildly uneven Out of Time (producing a career great in “Losing My Religion” and a career embarrassment in “Shiny Happy People”) and the oft-garish (and even ghastly) Green albums is Automatic for the People—to date, the last truly great R.E.M. record. It’s also one of their darkest and most melancholy, concentrating on moody, bittersweet ballads, grim elegies and transitive, even sweeping, pop. Rock songs like “The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonite” and “Man on the Moon” are more than agreeable (the latter remains one of their catchiest tunes), but it’s the stark but shimmering ballads like “Drive,” “Nightswimming” and “Try Not to Breathe” that dominate. John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin) was brought on to perform string arrangements for several of the tracks, but Automatic is defined as a true “band album,” and the most consistent in terms of both overall sound and general quality since 1984’s Reckoning. If “Everybody Hurts” is one of the album’s weakest tracks, you know you’ve got a strong collection.
81. Time out of Mind
by Bob Dylan
1997
Blues
After Time out of Mind, no one worth their salt used the phrase “best since Blood on the Tracks” in regards to a new Dylan LP. Suddenly, twenty years of mostly mild and inconsequential output were redeemed by a shot at past glory. By this point, his nasal whine had been worn down to a nub of whiskey-and-nicotine stained grime (he could impersonate Tom Waits if he liked), but what’s most striking about Time out of Mind is how the weary pace and slow-burn blues atmosphere is more fascinating than the words Dylan gargles. Highlights like the pungent, metallic rockabilly of “Cold Irons Bound,” the weary, folksy “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven,” the Bad Seeds-esque drama on “Love Sick”’s organ, and the languid, bitterly mourning “Not Dark Yet” are all essential, and more than make up for a few lulls in its 72-minute set. Despite that rich and smoky sound, Dylan was unsatisfied with Daniel Lanois’ production (who had worked with Dylan on the rare peak in that two decade valley: Oh Mercy), and he self-produced his next two studio originals. No matter—they were both very good, too—and Mind signaled a late-career renaissance that only his most optimistic of fans could have predicted.
Top 100 Songs of the 60s
Top 100 Albums of the 60s
Top 100 Songs of the 70s
Top 100 Albums of the 70s
Top 100 Songs of the 80s
Top 100 Albums of the 80s
Top 100 Songs of the 90s
