1995 in music. • Page 3

Tetra’s post counts as a vote for Mellon Collie at 1

 

i counted it as such

it’s happened in other years too. if people just random drive by praise an album i give it the full 5, despite not ranking others.

 

1. Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie

I know the popular narrative favors Siamese Dream, but I think MCIS is the best SP album. In spite of its absurd scope, virtually all of it is essential. It has the highest highs of any SP album imo and is Billy at his most over the top, which is a good thing.

2. Pavement - Wowee Zowee

I generally favor cohesion and a tight edit, but for some reason 1995 is a year where I'm all for excess. I think Wowee Zowee is the best and most impressive Pavement album. It might not have the most iconic Pavement songs, but it has some of the best and most varied material they ever made.

3. Jewel - Pieces of You

The first album I ever bought, and the one that really started to shape my music taste.

Conflicted feelings on my honorable mentions not making the cut. What's the Story might have the greatest singles of any album of my lifetime, but I've never given it its due as an album. The Bends is mostly excellent but is pretty low on my Radiohead ranks comparatively. Same with s/t Elliott Smith.

Dare I say s/t Foo is a bit boring as a whole? Big Me and Exhausted are incredible, and most of it is good, but it doesn't really hold my attention for a whole listen.

 

I bought Pieces Of You at the gas station by my house with saved up lunch money

 

there are several foo fighters albums i find to be quite boring but s/t is far from one of them

 

The first three FF albums are varying degrees of great.

 

I've only ever listened to self-titled and The Colour and the Shape. I think I liked them both, but never felt like I needed to dig any deeper with them

 

1. SP - Mellon Collie
2. Alice in Chains - Tripod
3. Foo Fighters - S/T

 

@Craig Manning please cast a vote for the correct album

 

The cavalry is coming, don’t worry.

 

Yeah @phaynes12 same for me - I will post my list tomorrow.

How many points is each ranking worth again?

 

Still bitter about a noteworthy now banned poster telling me I was stupid for thinking Wonderwall is a good song and not just a punchline in the final days of ap

 

I also just have to add - Oasis has aged SOOOOOO much more gracefully than even classic Pumpkins. And I say this as a massive fan of both from childhood.

some of y'all are seriously seriously sleeping on Oasis. Timeless tunes, really.

 

"Live Forever" came on Lithium SiriusXM on a long car drive sandwiched between some STP, Offspring, and PJ.... and my wife (younger and not privy to the 90s grunge/alt-rock zeitgeist whatsoever) was like "uhhh why is this station playing this song? Isn't this too happy for Lithium?" Not realizing that all of those bands shared airtime on the same FM stations in the 90s.

was pretty insightful. Again , Oasis rules.

 

Noel has even said Live Forever was written in response to all the depressing songs that were so popular in that era. Radio needed some optimism.

Timeless song. The first two albums are 10/10 perfect. (I'd argue about the rest of their discography being amazing, but I'll save that for when their year threads come haha).

 

Touching to see @phaynes12 find his soulmate.

 

1st - 5
2nd - 4
3rd - 3

 

please let your voice be heard at the polls

 

First listen to Foo Fighters' debut, which is pretty decent. Foo Fighters are generally a solid, middle of the road 6/10 band for me. I usually listen to their new albums, but don't listen to them often, but whenever I hear them on the radio or in a bar, they're good fun in small doses. Their debut definitely feels like a demo as opposed to a real album, which makes sense seeing as Grohl played everything here, and each song took 45 minutes to record supposedly.

There's some good stuff on here, perhaps sounding closer to Nirvana than any of their subsequent stuff, and just feeling rougher and rawer around the edges. You can definitely hear his songwriting talent stand out, even in this pretty no-frills sounding record. Enjoyable, but like Foo Fighters in general, I don't think I'm in a massive hurry to hear it again.

 

Listening to Rancid's And Out Come The Wolves, which won't be a first-time listen, but a first listen in more than 15 years I guess. There's some good tunes on here (Timebomb, Ruby Soho, Roots Radical), but I absolutely cannot stand Tim Armstrong's voice, particularly when he's doing some sort of horrendous version of an English accent. Whole album is a bit samey, but there are some good moments, mixed with some excruciating ones.

 

I was going through a weird transition of friends in 6th grade and this one strange kid had that album on a school trip to Baltimore, so I went out and bought it and my mom and grandmom basically held an intervention about me not turning into a weird mohawk guy.

 

Bone Thugs- E 1999
Alice In Chains- S/T
GZA- Liquid Swords

 

Good year.

1. Palace Music - Viva Last Blues
2. Son Volt - Trace
3. Vic Chesnutt - Is The Actor Happy?


4. Guy Clark - Dublin Blues
5. Mobb Deep - The Infamous
6. John Prine - Lost Dogs & Mixed Blessings
7. Golden Smog - Down By The Old Mainstream
8. The Jayhawks - Tomorrow The Green Grass
9. Emmy Lou Harris - Wrecking Ball
10. Goodie Mobb - Soul Food
11. James Mcmurtry - Where’d You Hide The Body
12. Wilco - AM
13. DC Talk - Jesus Freak

 

Alright alright alright alright. Here we go.

1. Oasis - (What the Story) Morning Glory?
2. Alanis Morrissette - Jagged Little Pill
3. Radiohead - The Bends

Morning Glory is one of the albums in my life that I’ve loved the longest. I got so hooked on it as a kid, and listened to it so many times that I wore out my cassette. Before that, I’d never heard anything where the guitars sounded like THAT, or where the singer sounded as sure he was a god as Liam. “Hello” and “Champagne Supernova,” especially, blew my six-year-old brain. I still love the record for all the reason I did back then—how loud it is, the brashness, the way it makes you feel like you can punch giants—but I love it most now for just how much of a masterpiece it is from a pop songwriting perspective. Oasis got undone a bit on Be Here Now by their own hubris (and the drugs) but here, they knew that if they were going to be the biggest band in the world—or if they were going to be worthy of being compared to the Beatles—they needed to write some damn good melodies on every single track. And say what you want about the lyrics, or the Loudness War mastering, or how overplayed “Wonderwall” is, but the melodies on this record are goddamn unimpeachable. I still can't believe how good "Don't Look Back in Anger" is, or how gorgeous that chorus hook on "Cast No Shadow" is. Just a flawless record.

Jagged Little Pill is one of those albums where it's so influential that my head kind of starts to hurt when I think about all the other records that probably wouldn’t exist if it hadn’t been the pop cultural phenomenon it was. From Avril to Kelly Clarkson to Paramore to Taylor Swift to Katy Perry to Olivia Rodrigo, it feels like this album is the blueprint for so many massive, important female artists over the years. Even beyond influence, though, Jagged Little Pill is sensational. Just jam-packed with huge, undeniable pop songs sung by someone who sounds like her life depends on it. An explosion of emotion, charisma, and songcraft that hit at just the right time.

I don’t think it’s a particularly hip pick, but The Bends is probably my favorite Radiohead album. Them at their most Britpop before they shed their clear U2 influence, and packed with songs like “Fake Plastic Trees,” “High and Dry,” and “Bones” that just soar for days. I get why they grew more acclaimed as they got more adventurous, but this is the Radiohead album I come back to the most. (It’s also gotten a bit of a second wind for me in the last year-plus, in the wake of Rosie Carney’s awesome quarantine cover version.)

Honorables:

No Doubt – Tragic Kingdom: Like Jagged Little Pill, this is another hit-machine album from my childhood that I love. It sticks around about four songs/15 minutes too long, but the best stuff here is transcendent. They would never reach these heights again, which makes this album that much more special.

Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie: I’ll be honest and say that I kind of struggle to get through this one. An argument could be made that that’s part of the point: there’s a certain inevitable exhaustion that sets in with an album this ambitious and this outsized. But I know I always think I like this album better than I do. That said, some of the best songs of all time are on this thing.

Bruce Springsteen – The Ghost of Tom Joad: For a long time, I wrote this album off. A few years ago, when Jason Isbell started namedropping it as one of the albums that had influenced him most, I came back to it and fell in love with it. If you’re in a mood to just focus completely on the lyrics and lose yourself in the stories, they’re transcendent. If you’re not, this album can really, really come across as boring. I still wish the musical arrangements were a bit richer here. But it’s an album I reliably come back to once a year and have my mind blown by how intense and unflinching the storytelling is.

 

I’ve never heard a smashing pumpkins album but I’m positive Oasis is better.