Pitchfork Rates the 90s
September 30, 2022 12:30 AM Subscribe

There was a time where there was nothing like the feeling of walking into your local Tower Records or Sam Goody and heading straight for the new releases section [... ] Here are 150 albums that were more than worth it at the time, and that shaped the way music would sound in the decades to come. The always contentious Pitchfork team has put together their definitive list of the 150 best albums of the 90s

Given recent ranking threads, this felt appropriate and timely. See also their best songs of the 90s, their full 90s package of articles, and how this list was put together.

The Top 25, as a preview, are :

25. Belle and Sebastian: If You’re Feeling Sinister (1996)
24. Dr. Dre: The Chronic (1992)
23. Elliott Smith: Either/Or (1997)
22. Nas: Illmatic (1994)
21. Silver Jews: American Water (1998)
20. D’Angelo: Brown Sugar (1995)
19. Fiona Apple: When the Pawn… (1999)
18. Cocteau Twins: Heaven or Las Vegas (1990)
17. Erykah Badu: Baduizm (1997)
16. PJ Harvey: Rid of Me (1993)
15. Aaliyah: One in a Million (1996
14. The Notorious B.I.G.: Ready to Die (1994)
13. Daft Punk: Homework (1997)
12. OutKast: Aquemini (1998)
11. Portishead: Dummy (1994)
10. Nirvana: Nevermind (1991)
9. A Tribe Called Quest: The Low End Theory (1991)
8. Hole: Live Through This (1994)
7. Janet Jackson: The Velvet Rope (1997)
6. Björk: Homogenic (1997)
5. Wu-Tang Clan: Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
4. Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville (1993)
3. Radiohead: OK Computer (1997)
2. Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)
1. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless (1991)

posted by revmitcz (163 comments total) 28 users marked this as a favorite

You know what they say about the 90s: "if you can't remember them, you were there."
posted by chavenet at 1:14 AM on September 30, 2022 [15 favorites]

Faith No More's 'Angel Dust' not present therefore I give this list 5/10.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 1:53 AM on September 30, 2022 [27 favorites]

Faith No More's 'Angel Dust' not present therefore I give this list 5/10.

Ah! my people! FNM is brutally forever underrated, in any period. Pitchfork forgetting that album is one of many sins in this list. Putting Nevermind lower than Live Through This is one of many others, such as the dismal ranking of Dookie and Downward Spiral.
posted by revmitcz at 2:02 AM on September 30, 2022 [8 favorites]

A lot of boring dross in that top 25. I agree with number 1, 13, 16 and 18 only. And maybe number 23, although I haven't listened to it in years.
posted by dydecker at 2:27 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

All such lists are grimly terrible. This list is particularly grimly terrible.
posted by fallingbadgers at 3:20 AM on September 30, 2022 [25 favorites]

Exile in Guyville is my favorite album on that list, but I can't convincingly argue against the 3 records ahead of it either. I like how their choices weave several musical subcultures of the time together, although there's a distinct lack of Power Pop.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 3:21 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

The always contentious Pitchfork team has put together their ~~definitive list of the 150 best~~ subjective, purposely contrarian and click-baity list of personal favorite albums of the 90s
posted by bassomatic at 3:30 AM on September 30, 2022 [26 favorites]

...purposely contrarian and click-baity list of personal favorite albums of the 90s...

To be honest this top 25 seems extremely uncontroversial to me. Like, fair enough, but also aggressively uninteresting. I guess this is a good list for people who weren't there.
posted by Alex404 at 3:38 AM on September 30, 2022 [12 favorites]

Not a single metal album! Silver Jews better than Illmatic! Unreal. What losers.
posted by saladin at 4:17 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Pretty fucked up that The Lonesome Crowded West didn’t make the cut.
posted by MisantropicPainforest at 4:17 AM on September 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

All of these ‘best of’ lists are being commissioned because engagement rates for online things are dropping - and nothing drives clicks like people arguing about the best X of Y era.
posted by The River Ivel at 4:35 AM on September 30, 2022 [12 favorites]

Man, do I have some opinions about this shit, lol. As always, though, I try to look at the good things and overlook obvious ragebait like Hole. I do like that Exile and Guyville and Enter the Wu-Tang are so close to the top of the list, though I think they should be at the top of the list, probably, and I have no idea which should come first.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 4:39 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Hardly any electronic in that top 25 blegh. From Autechre alone, Chiclisuite is in my top 5 and some combination of more than one of Tri Repetae, Chiastic Slide, and the Garbage and Anvil Vapre EPs also make my top 25.
posted by juv3nal at 4:52 AM on September 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

These lists would be improved if, instead of claiming to be a ranking, they were simply a list without ordering, or maybe a different ordering - chronological would at least give us the story of the 90s?
posted by jjderooy at 4:54 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

A lot of boring dross in that top 25.

Did you just call Björk boring ?
posted by Pendragon at 4:59 AM on September 30, 2022 [9 favorites]

Ain't impressed by this list, largely American pop or hip pop dross like others said..

I definitely loved some albums listed here, like ones by Massive Attack, R.E.M., Aphex Twin, Depeche Mode, Tori Amos, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, PJ Harvey, Björk, and Nine Inch Nails, but..

I'd happily try new albumbs by those bands, and I enjoy when one comes on randomly, but aside from a couple exceptions I've mostly lost interest and rarely seek these out anymore, so should I care much? If you google "90s electronica" then you'll find more useful lists, maybe other genres too.

Around almost wholly omitting genres like metal and non-Americans..

Rush and Pink Floyd hails more from the 70s and 80s, but their 90s albums Roll the Bones, Counterparts, and The Division Bell are all far better than these.

Nightwish improved continually through the 2000s, 2010s, and 2020s but even their 90s albums were better than a fair bit of this.
posted by jeffburdges at 5:02 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Roni Size is in there, but no love for Goldie's Timeless? No Fatboy Slim, Prodigy, Underworld or Leftfield? Pah. 2000s 'EDM' would have shaped up very differently without those guys storming a trail across the 90s musical landscape.
posted by tomsk at 5:25 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

it’s really really surprising to me that they don’t have sonic youth in the top ten, this is not the pitchfork i remember (from the 90s)
posted by dis_integration at 5:27 AM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

also the list has 150 albums so what you’re looking for is probably there, just not in the top 25
posted by dis_integration at 5:28 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

135.
Jeff Buckley: Grace (1994)

I was about to give up on this right at that point, but thought I'd plow through, just to see if any of Bowie's 90s stuff made the cut.

sadly, no.
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:33 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

I used to check Pitchfork once in a while for new music, but I haven't in years. I found some great stuff via their site, but a list of "best" '90s albums from them is the opposite of interesting to me.

I'd rather read comments about great '90s albums on Metafilter.
posted by SoberHighland at 5:36 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

If they called it “150 most influential”, as is suggested by this description from the link

What are the albums and songs from the ’90s that our current writers and contributors find indispensable? That have made a lasting impact on the way music is made and how we listen to it now? And what just doesn’t hit the same way it once did?

that would probably be a more accurate description of the list, as well as a framing that would elicit interesting discussions with actual substance. Calling it “150 best” is just fighty.
posted by eviemath at 5:45 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Where's Rump's “Hating Brenda”?
posted by acb at 5:46 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

I thoroughly support Miseducation over Illmatic, but One in a Million over Baduizm is a little harder to swallow.

Nevermind is (perennially) overrated--to paraphrase I think it was Chuck Klosterman, it wasn't the best grunge album of the '90s, it wasn't even the best grunge album to come out of Seattle in 1991. Live Through This is a better album. Kurt and Courtney were both in many respects terrible people, but, in the public imagination, one seemed to gain points for it while the other lost them.

I was too snobby about major labels and shit to get it at the time, but I'm thrilled that Fiona Apple has regained her rightful place in music history. If there's a theme here, maybe it's that in the '90s, we didn't always treat women very well.
posted by box at 5:46 AM on September 30, 2022 [6 favorites]

It's a pretty poopy list. Omitting Viva Last Blues is ridiculous. Omitting all Will Oldham and Palace is absurd.

Scott Walker's Farmer In the City is one of my favorite songs ever, but putting Tilt at 56 is laughable.

Anyway, yeah... poopy.
posted by dobbs at 5:47 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

The lack of Underworld, Prodigy, Chemical Bros and Orbital might be forgivable but no Propellerheads' Decksanddrumsandrockandroll? A single glorious album that defined a year of cinema and games and soundtracked one of the best scenes in the Matrix, and which stands up today as a piece of music that identified a musical cul-de-sac, defined it, explored it, and filled it so completely that nobody else dared to enter it ever again.
posted by Hogshead at 5:58 AM on September 30, 2022 [13 favorites]

I was about to give up on this right at that point, but thought I'd plow through, just to see if any of Bowie's 90s stuff made the cut.

sadly, no.

I have such a visceral reaction to what was included, where things were ranked, what beat out what, and some of the absolute tripe finding a place on this list. I've come to conclude that David Bowie's death is now far enough from people listening to music and creating lists like this for zines (ha!) that they don't listen to his music - and that was only 2016... I mean... 'best' implies order and this list is the embodiment of poor justification for placement. I don't think I would have made a best of the 60s list in the 90s... and reading this, if someone did - I bet it is cringeworthy as heck.

This isn't positioned as a most influential list. This isn't positioned as a great songs, this is supposedly the 'Best'. There are too many albums on this list that have absolutely god awful songs on them (also some great ones) that are bad enough to ding the whole album off a best of list. I'd bet the author of this list just found Coolio and they're really regretting not including 'It Takes a Thief' from this list... because... every song on that album is good. And here's the thing - I don't think that is even in my top 25 to add to this list, but it is undeniably a great album. Dookie at 111 and Superunknown at 148 and TEN not even making the list just put this to the round file.
posted by Nanukthedog at 5:59 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

This list didn't bother me as much as I expected it to. I don't see anywhere that suggests this is a ranking and not just a list.

My two takeaways: I haven't listened to Tricky in years and I need to revisit Maxinquaye.

And this line is brilliant and accurate: "Polly Jean Harvey comes on like an unstoppable pestilence on her second album, a wretched presence attacking from every angle who will never let you rest."
posted by archimago at 6:02 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

a poopy list.

but let me tell you about my favorite things...

there's something futile and silly about calling any one album better than another - at a certain level

I can't say any one album is better than any other (I mean, aside from XXXXXXX which everyone knows is gar-baaage (!) - it's like, seriously.) but some have more resonance with my life than others - and that you can't change. I was listening to Lauryn Hill yesterday and good god that's a tremendous album. And then last week one of the kids came to me with DeLaSoul and I was so stupidly happy for him for having found that. And at some point they'll fall down the Björk hole and then ... you know? "If it sounds good, it IS good." and there was a lot in the 90's that was good.
posted by From Bklyn at 6:02 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Bowie's post-Berlin output was a bit meh, to be honest (though one could give points to Let's Dance as a pop record). It picked up with 🟊, though that means it probably took the cold fingers of Death on his shoulder for him to make something vital. Bowie got venerated as an elder statesman because of his early-70s output and because he's the sort of figure people should assert an admiration of.
posted by acb at 6:05 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

My two takeaways: I haven't listened to Tricky in years and I need to revisit Maxinquaye.

Weirdly enough, Tricky is one of the headliners of the Synästhesie festival in Berlin in November, which is usually in a post-punk/krautrock/psych-rock vein (last year, one of the incarnations of Faust reprised their fourth album, and A Place To Bury Strangers also played). The other headliners are Slowdive.
posted by acb at 6:08 AM on September 30, 2022

Yes, I know lists like these are rubbish, but 4 Non-Blondes? Really?
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 6:09 AM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

2000s 'EDM' would have shaped up very differently without those guys storming a trail across the 90s musical landscape.

right, simply the omission of '2nd toughest' and 'leftism' says something about the author(s) / editor(s) ... something not so good ... to rank these 2 albums below even half of these choices demonstrates ... something ...

All of these ‘best of’ lists are being commissioned because engagement rates for online things are dropping - and nothing drives clicks like people arguing about the best X of Y era.

right, damn it! ! I keep taking the bait knowing that it's bait ... I swear, I will steer clear of these 'top x' lists on mefi for the rest of the year, doing a favor to both myself + the mefi community... unless they pertain to film, those might be a little more helpful +/or accurate ... maybe
posted by clandestiny's child at 6:09 AM on September 30, 2022

This is a very strange list. It seems like it's engineered to simultaneously mollify and anger people. Many of my favorite 90s albums are on the list, albeit in strange spots (Little Earthquakes at #124?), but the omissions are truly bizarre and indefensible.

150 best albums of the 90s and you include no Stone Temple Pilots? No Alice in Chains? No PEARL JAM?

Sure, I get a kick out of "I, Jonathan", but is it a better album that both "Ten" and "Vs."?
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 6:27 AM on September 30, 2022 [10 favorites]

I think The Chronic should be much higher - its influence was fairly major.
posted by gt2 at 6:27 AM on September 30, 2022

“It’s likely that no album on this list had less impact on the actual 1990s than American Football, but few loom larger right this moment”
Was that movement 2005? Or this moment being the launch of the nostalgia driven “When We Were Young festival?

The 1990s contains multitudes.

This is an interesting diverse list, an certainly makes we want to go back and revisit some things. Is it the correct order he’ll no.
posted by CostcoCultist at 6:29 AM on September 30, 2022

At least Nevermind deserves some credit for Weird Al Yankovic's relaunch, box.

I suppose Conde Nast's Pitchfork's "current writers and contributors find[ing these] indispensable" might say more about their corporate strategy than about anything too relevant to my future listening.
posted by jeffburdges at 6:35 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Yes, I know lists like these are rubbish, but 4 Non-Blondes? Really?

Cut them a little slack. They try! Oh my god, do they try.
posted by phooky at 6:35 AM on September 30, 2022 [41 favorites]

You know what I really liked about the 1982 thread? So much music I hadn't heard! Sure, it's fun to argue about the placement and presence/absence of particular songs but a year is a long time and there are going to be more than like 100 great songs, even if you're literally just talking about the US.

Anyway! More 90s album recommendations!

So here's a couple of things I liked in the nineties, not from the US in fact:

Essence Ordinare and Le Bruit et L'Odeur by mostly French North-African group Zebda. They had a big hit with Tomber La Chemise which is fun enough to enjoy even if you don't know French.

Also A Dream Return To Tang Dynasty by Chinese metal band Tang Dynasty, which even people who aren't especially into metal, like me, can easily enjoy.

I think a lot of people would enjoy Dou Wei's 1990s albums and Zhang Chu's Shameful Being Left Alone, in particular Big Sister, another one where you can enjoy it without really knowing any Mandarin. (With Tang Dynasty and Zhang Chu in particular, if you are learning Mandarin they are great - I remember listening to Tang Dynasty (my Mandarin was never good and is really faded now) and just having the chorus to "The Sun" pop out at me into words that were as transparent to their meaning as English - tai yang ni zai na li, sun where are you!)
posted by Frowner at 6:36 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

You can tell this is an American list because if it were in a revived Select, the #1 would be Different Class, and you can tell this is not my list because there would be more Belle and Sebastian in the top five.

I have to say--I'm a huge Belle & Sebastian fan. Huge. I've seen them live pretty much every single opportunity I've had in the past 23 years, which at this point is probably in the range of 8-10. I was on the Sinister Mailing List back in the day (I met my first serious boyfriend on there!)

What other B&S album from the '90s would you put on here? Tigermilk is fantastic but it's mostly fantastic because it was a test ground for IYFS. Arab Strap is... half a good album, I guess? And that's it. This list doesn't include EPs (if it did, yeah, more Belle & Sebastian, please. LLPJ? Fuck yes.)

I actually think it's more criminal that only one Stereolab album is on this list. Every single one of their '90s albums save Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night and Peng! belong on this list. Not putting Transient Random-Noise Bursts with Annoucements on this list is... a choice.
posted by rhymedirective at 6:45 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

150 best albums of the 90s and you include no Stone Temple Pilots? No Alice in Chains? No PEARL JAM?

The top half of the list seems like they're intentionally avoiding anything that plays when you fire up your Spotify lists of 90's hits. Like, I love me some GY!BE, but putting F♯ A♯ ∞ at 85 while leaving out everything that was on the radio during the Clinton years (except for Kurt Cobain, I guess) has to be deliberate.
posted by Mayor West at 6:47 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

No Teenage Fanclub, no Charlatans, no Happy Mondays, no Screaming Trees, no They Might Be Giants, no The Orb, no Steve Earle, etc. The list definitely leans heavier on rock in general, though surprisingly it also skips some bands that had pretty huge records in the 90s, like Jane's Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers. Also a little surprising to be missing bands where the 90s was their key decade, like Pearl Jam or Black Crowes.
posted by snofoam at 6:49 AM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

So, it's possible to think this list is terrible without thinking artists like Erykah Badu, Nas, and Fiona Apple are boring and terrible. They're not! Sometimes popular things ... are good.

What I'm hung up on is the ranking of When the Pawn... over Tidal. I think it's a good album, but Tidal was deeply interesting and far more influential. When the Pawn... was just not nearly as boundary-pushing - not just because it came after, but also because it was a lot less adventurous. The weird edges are filed off. I have both albums, but while I can instantly recognize songs on Tidal, I can only name a couple of them from When the Pawn... because they all kind of blend together to me.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 6:52 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

150. Salt-N-Pepa: Very Necessary (1993)
149. Bratmobile: Pottymouth (1993)
148. Soundgarden: Superunknown (1994)
147. Whitney Houston: The Bodyguard (1992)
146. Boredoms: Super æ (1998)
145. Fugazi: Repeater (1990)
144. Iris DeMent: Infamous Angel (1992)
143. Aimee Mann: Whatever (1993)
142. Boyz II Men: II (1994)
141. Sparklehorse: Good Morning Spider (1998)
140. Three 6 Mafia: Mystic Stylez (1995)
139. Toni Braxton: Toni Braxton (1993)
138. American Football: American Football (1999)
137. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony: E. 1999 Eternal (1995)
136. Depeche Mode: Violator (1990)
135. Jeff Buckley: Grace (1994)
134. Gillian Welch: Revival (1996)
133. Jonathan Richman: I, Jonathan (1992)
132. Oval: 94 Diskont (1995)
131. Prefab Sprout: Jordan: The Comeback (1990)
130. Maxwell: Maxwell’s Urban Hang Suite (1996)
129. Tom Petty: Wildflowers (1994)
128. Drexciya: Neptune’s Lair (1999)
127. Sinéad O’Connor: I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got (1990)
126. Ol’ Dirty Bastard: Return to the 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version (1995)
125. Modest Mouse: The Lonesome Crowded West (1997)
124. Tori Amos: Little Earthquakes (1992)
123. Guided by Voices: Bee Thousand (1994)
122. Roni Size / Reprazent: New Forms (1997)
121. Garbage: Garbage (1995)
120. Rage Against the Machine: Rage Against the Machine (1992)
119. Sarah McLachlan: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy (1993)
118. U2: Achtung Baby (1991)
117. The Notorious B.I.G.: Life After Death (1995)
116. Mazzy Star: So Tonight That I Might See (1993)
115. Arthur Russell: Another Thought (1994)
114. The Pharcyde: Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde (1992)
113. The Cranberries: Everybody Else Is Doing It, So Why Can’t We? (1993)
112. Selena: Amor Prohibido (1994)
111. Green Day: Dookie (1994)
110. Gang Starr: Moment of Truth (1998)
109. Elastica: Elastica (1995)
108. Mary J. Blige: What’s the 411? (1992)
107. Smog: Knock Knock (1999)
106. Tortoise: TNT (1998)
105. Digable Planets: Blowout Comb (1994)
104. Pet Shop Boys: Behaviour (1990)
103. Air: Moon Safari (1998)
102. Wilco: Summerteeth (1999)
101. Built to Spill: Keep It Like a Secret (1999)
100. Jim O’Rourke: Eureka (1999)
99. The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin (1999)
98. Smashing Pumpkins: Siamese Dream (1993)
97. A Tribe Called Quest: Midnight Marauders (1993)
96. Primal Scream: Screamadelica (1991)
95. Ice Cube: Death Certificate (1991)
94. No Doubt: Tragic Kingdom (1995)
93. Beck: Odelay (1996)
92. Autechre: Amber (1994)
91. Weezer: Weezer (Blue Album) (1994)
90. Ghostface Killah: Ironman (1996)
89. Sonny Sharrock: Ask the Ages (1991)
88. Sonic Youth: Goo (1990)
87. DJ Screw: 3 ’N The Mornin’ Part Two (1996)
86. Spiritualized: Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space (1997)
85. Godspeed You\! Black Emperor: F♯ A♯ ∞ (1997)
84. OutKast: ATLiens (1996)
83. Slint: Spiderland (1991)
82. The Chicks: Fly (1999)
81. Radiohead: The Bends (1995)
80. Bikini Kill: The C.D. Version of the First Two Records (1994)
79. DMX: It’s Dark and Hell Is Hot (1998)
78. The Magnetic Fields: 69 Love Songs (1999)
77. The Roots: Things Fall Apart (1999)
76. The KLF: Chill Out (1990)
75. Nirvana: In Utero (1993)
74. Missy Elliott: Supa Dupa Fly (1997)
73. Yo La Tengo: I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One (1997)
72. De La Soul: De La Soul Is Dead (1991)
71. Pulp: Different Class (1995)
70. Pavement: Slanted and Enchanted (1992)
69. GZA: Liquid Swords (1995)
68. Bob Dylan: Time Out of Mind (1997)
67. Beastie Boys: Check Your Head (1992)
66. Cat Power: Moon Pix (1998)
65. MF DOOM: Operation: Doomsday (1999)
64. Tricky: Maxinquaye (1995)
63. R.E.M.: Automatic for the People (1992)
62. Juvenile: 400 Degreez (1998)
61. Massive Attack: Blue Lines (1991)
60. Mariah Carey: Butterfly (1997)
59. JAY-Z: Reasonable Doubt (1996)
58. Slowdive: Souvlaki (1993)
57. Mobb Deep: The Infamous (1995)
56. Scott Walker: Tilt (1995)
55. Madonna: Ray of Light (1998)
54. Scarface: The Diary (1994)
53. Aphex Twin: Selected Ambient Works Volume II (1994)
52. Sade: Love Deluxe (1992)
51. Alanis Morissette: Jagged Little Pill (1995)
50. Elliott Smith: Elliott Smith (1995)
49. DJ Shadow: Endtroducing... (1996)
48. Fugees: The Score (1996)
47. Sleater-Kinney: Dig Me Out (1997)
46. UGK: Ridin’ Dirty (1996)
45. Destiny’s Child: The Writing’s on the Wall (1999)
44. Stereolab: Emperor Tomato Ketchup (1996)
43. Le Tigre: Le Tigre (1999)
42. TLC: CrazySexyCool (1994)
41. Raekwon: Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… (1995)
40. Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral (1994)
39. 2Pac: All Eyez on Me (1996)
38. Janet Jackson: janet. (1993)
37. Fiona Apple: Tidal (1996)
36. Lil’ Kim: Hard Core (1996)
35. The Breeders: Last Splash (1993)
34. Aphex Twin: Richard D. James Album (1996)
33. Talk Talk: Laughing Stock (1991)
32. Lucinda Williams: Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (1998)
31. Neutral Milk Hotel: In the Aeroplane Over the Sea (1998)
30. Mos Def: Black on Both Sides (1999)
29. Pavement: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (1994)
28. Björk: Post (1995)
27. Public Enemy: Fear of a Black Planet (1990)
26. Boards of Canada: Music Has the Right to Children (1998)
25. Belle and Sebastian: If You’re Feeling Sinister (1996)
24. Dr. Dre: The Chronic (1992)
23. Elliott Smith: Either/Or (1997)
22. Nas: Illmatic (1994)
21. Silver Jews: American Water (1998)
20. D’Angelo: Brown Sugar (1995)
19. Fiona Apple: When the Pawn… (1999)
18. Cocteau Twins: Heaven or Las Vegas (1990)
17. Erykah Badu: Baduizm (1997)
16. PJ Harvey: Rid of Me (1993)
15. Aaliyah: One in a Million (1996)
14. The Notorious B.I.G.: Ready to Die (1994)
13. Daft Punk: Homework (1997)
12. OutKast: Aquemini (1998)
11. Portishead: Dummy (1994)
10. Nirvana: Nevermind (1991)
9. A Tribe Called Quest: The Low End Theory (1991)
8. Hole: Live Through This (1994)
7. Janet Jackson: The Velvet Rope (1997)
6. Björk: Homogenic (1997)
5. Wu-Tang Clan: Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)
4. Liz Phair: Exile in Guyville (1993)
3. Radiohead: OK Computer (1997)
2. Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998)
1. My Bloody Valentine: Loveless (1991)
posted by 1970s Antihero at 6:56 AM on September 30, 2022 [14 favorites]

Man, there was a LOT of good music in the 90s. But, there are not 98 albums better than The Soft Bulletin in a any decade.
posted by HumanComplex at 7:05 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

There are a handful of bands who have sold out shows on the basis of playing their big iconic '90s album, front to back: Matthew Sweet's Girlfriend, Lemonheads' It's a Shame About Ray, They Might Be Giants' Flood. And Ben Gibbard loved Teenage Fanclub's Bandwagonesque so much that he recorded an entire cover album! I get that these sorts of lists are almost purposely terrible but this is terrible.
posted by AgentRocket at 7:12 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

No Mudhoney??? Oh, FFS!
posted by AJaffe at 7:13 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Someone upthread mentioned Chuck Klosterman, so here's his 20 favorite 90s albums (and, contra that poster, Nevermind is indeed on the list, but what's a discussion of 90s music without cooler-than-thou posturing?).
posted by star gentle uterus at 7:19 AM on September 30, 2022

I'd swap the positions of Post and Homogenic, but that's just me.
posted by gimonca at 7:19 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Hard to believe Hole at #8 but Nevermind at #10 was not an intentional Pitchforky troll. I mean...c'mon.
posted by mcstayinskool at 7:21 AM on September 30, 2022 [15 favorites]

Honestly there are too many genres on this list for it to be at all meaningful, in my opinion. Nevermind the inherent absurdity of comparing albums to one another on some sort of absolute scale, how do you compare a hiphop album to a grunge album to a mainstream pop album and have it mean anything at all? I was hoping for... I dunno, I'm not sure why I click on these lists any more.
posted by restless_nomad at 7:24 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

I'm looking at it this way: If someone gave me this set of 150 albums, I'd be happy because there's a lot of terrific music here. Sure, they missed a lot, several of them my favorites from the decade. But as a survey of the 1990s, this is pretty damn good.
posted by martin q blank at 7:24 AM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

142. Boyz II Men: II (1994)

I'd have chosen a different album representing early-90s R&B; maybe a Teddy Riley production like Guy's The Future. Or even Boyz II Men's debut, for that matter. By the time they hit their second album, they (who, it must be said, were prodigiously talented vocalists with impressive coordination as a group) had given up on trying to do anything interesting and gone for the big payoff of big Vegas-ready ballads.
posted by acb at 7:26 AM on September 30, 2022

Uncle Tupelo ushered in a new wave of country rock that made up a huge part of my music listening in the 90s. I really ecpected to see them on this list.
posted by Quonab at 7:26 AM on September 30, 2022 [12 favorites]

With the current editorial makeup of Pitchfork, I get the impression they're trying to outgrow/distance themselves from the caustic tone and indie/alt (read: predominantly white) coverage of their formative years. I appreciate that they've included a lot of rap and R&B, and the artists they've chosen strike a good balance between what was popular at the time and what's been influential on the current generation of musicians. (Source: grew up in the 1990s, remember a lot of this rap and R&B on the radio and in stores.)

I was going to say I was surprised at the lack of Lilith and Lilith-adjacent artists, but they got a better representation than I expected.

The list of 250 best songs was more annoying, especially in light of what was left off. They included a larger-than-expected number of one-hit wonders, seemingly at the expense of more influential artists. So many bands spent the following decade trying to write their own versions of "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", which wasn't on the best songs list... how many bands were trying to write their versions of "Steal My Sunshine" or "Summer Girls" or "You Get What You Give"?

This is probably an unpopular opinion, but these lists would work better if each artist or band had one entry per list. That would give more room for lesser-known artists whose work became influential to later generations of artists.
posted by pxe2000 at 7:29 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

The other thought I had about the lack of Elephant 6 representation is that it was initially surprising, but the influence of E6 in general and Neutral Milk Hotel in particular seems to have waned since the 2013 Neutral Milk Hotel reunion and Bill Doss's death. I have a feeling they'll have a higher profile on the 2035 list, when we'll be nostalgic for a lot of the artists they influenced in the 2010s.
posted by pxe2000 at 7:32 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

I am not cool in the 2020s; I guess I was not at all cool in the 1990s either.
posted by stevil at 7:32 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

[Tom Hardy in Fury Road gif, saying "That's bait."]
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:36 AM on September 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

Maybe slowcore was just never cool enough, but the lack of any Ida album (especially I Know About You) is disappointing, and makes this list completely invalid.
posted by boisterousBluebird at 7:38 AM on September 30, 2022

No Presidents of the United States of America or The Refreshments? Ah well.
posted by General Malaise at 7:39 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Little Earthquakes at only 124???? I can't even...

I do agree with the opening statement, though. Wandering into a record store and browsing the bins was so much more fun and full of the excitement of an unexpected find than endlessly clicking through whatever streaming/online music ~~store~~rental source I can use today. Doubly-so for the small independent record stores. That's where the true finds lived.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:43 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

All of the very worst and best Metafilter posts, in reverse chronological order! Discuss.
posted by umber vowel at 7:44 AM on September 30, 2022 [19 favorites]

The top half of the list seems like they're intentionally avoiding anything that plays when you fire up your Spotify lists of 90's hits.

Some of these takes seem to have a bit of a disconnect with both what pitchfork is now and definitely with what it was in the 90s; this has never been a site that is intended to represent a list of 90s hits.

Example, Stone Temple Pilots? They barely even deigned to review something like this, but when they did, e.g. they originally gave a comically low 0.8 to this 1996 stone temple pilots album. Modern pitchfork backtracked -- with a 7.4 for the reissue -- which is good for the site, but not exactly indicative of deep love. Pearl Jam? They've occasionally given not-completely-terrible scores, but that's about the limit. On preview, POTUSA? I can't find a 90s review (which I suspect exists somewhere) but in 2004 the pitch was "It's been nearly 10 years since anyone's cared about mid-90s novelties Presidents of the United States of America".

(If I have a complaint about this list, it's that I guess modern pitchfork forgot about the memory-holed perfect 10 they gave Amon Tobin's Bricolage. I think nearly every other 90s perfect score they have assigned does make the cut. At least my "why didn't they include X" is grounded in some kind of expectation about what the site is likely to actually prefer...)
posted by advil at 7:45 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

It's almost like this is some alternate timeline where the whole Britpop thing never happened. No Oasis or Blur? At least Pulp's "Different Class" is on there. (And yes, there are British and UK-oriented individual acts on there, but still....)

I mean, if Mariah Carey can be on there, so can the Gallaghers....
posted by gimonca at 7:45 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Are there that many people that actually listen to Loveless? Not appreciate it for it's groundbreaking or whatever, actually listen to it. I don't think so. It's only got 1 great song (when you sleep) and 2 or 3 other actual songs on it. And Sugar's redoing of Blown a Wish as My Favorite Things is a much better song, so that knocks one song back.

Ok, if you are driving through the desert going from LA to Las Vegas with no A/C and it's only cd you have, it's a transcendental experience you may not survive. But just sitting at home? Nah.

Best CD of the entire 1990s? Not even close. Not only that, their '80s material when they were a proto-goth band (and the name made sense) was way more fun, and doesn't sound that different musically except it has intelligible lyrics and --hooks!
posted by The_Vegetables at 7:49 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

I mean, if Mariah Carey can be on there, so can the Gallaghers....

I understand this wasn't the original point of your post, but I've seen a few people express surprise that Mariah Carey is on the list... she's had a reevaluation as a songwriter, and while I'm not a huge fan of hers, she's a credible writer in a genre that doesn't get a lot of respect. A lot of vocalists cite her as an influence, including a few who are more aligned with the Pitchfork editorial slant, like Lovefoxx from the band CSS and Grimes. Given the way Pitchfork's editorial slant and its readership have shifted, the inclusion of Mariah Carey isn't surprising. (To me, anyway.)
posted by pxe2000 at 8:05 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Are there that many people that actually listen to Loveless? Not appreciate it for it's groundbreaking or whatever, actually listen to it.

I mean, yes? In fact those listening stats hold up against everything else in the top 10 way better than I even expected (as someone who does indeed listen to this album) -- beaten out by ok computer and nevermind, comparable to the Hole album.
posted by advil at 8:06 AM on September 30, 2022

Not appreciate it for it's groundbreaking or whatever, actually listen to it.

That's always the fundamental problem with these lists, the interplay between "great" and "important".
posted by star gentle uterus at 8:08 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think one of the big clues is that it’s clickbate is targeting of the 90s, aka the generation who now have jobs that allow them to sit in an office and read a 150-deep list. It’s also irredeemably American and guitar-biased, but even within those two areas it misses huge swathes. For instance, Bill Frisell’s jazz visit to country territory, the acclaimed album Nashville, released in 1997, shows the limits of the pitchfork worldview. If there’s any critical effort behind this list it’s the sound of a website trying to get itself out of being a byword for snobbery.
posted by The River Ivel at 8:09 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

If there’s any critical effort behind this list it’s the sound of a website trying to get itself out of being a byword for snobbery.

I don't know that 'snobbery' is quite the correct word -it's just that in the 1990s, nobody needed to read Pitchfork to hear how great STP, Oasis, or Pearl Jam were because they were literally inescapable. And then Blur with that pandering piece of crap Song 2 - they deserve to be memory holed! Now, Pearl Jam's (for example) been reduced to 2 songs, so a critical re-evaluation is fair. You aren't going to hear them every 5 minutes - you are going to have to seek them out.
posted by The_Vegetables at 8:13 AM on September 30, 2022

the inclusion of Mariah Carey isn't surprising

As long as it's post-Mottola/Affanasieff Mariah Carey, rather than the MOR pabulum she made before.
posted by acb at 8:14 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

MetaFilter: All of the very worst and best
posted by chavenet at 8:37 AM on September 30, 2022

Needs more Beautiful South.
posted by Jessica Savitch's Coke Spoon at 8:42 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

One more point and then I'll stop thread sitting:

I was a little surprised (in a good way) at the lack of jam bands on the albums list, in light of their relative popularity in the 1990s (HORDE Tour, Phish selling out New Year's Eve at Madison Square Garden several years in a row, etc) and the attempted popular and critical re-evaluation of bands and artists like Phish, Dave Matthews, etc. They never really went away, but you have Vampire Weekend citing Phish as an influence on Father of the Bride, Ryley Walker covering an unreleased Dave Matthews Band album, Pitchfork hiring a writer whose sole purpose is to polish turds like DMB's best-selling album and the new Jack Johnson album, etc. Despite everyone's best efforts, it doesn't seem like the attempt to rehabilitate jam bands for a wider indie audience, at least if this list is any indication.

More than anything, I feel like lists like these are a barometer for how music and art of the previous generation has influenced the next. This isn't a reflection of what is truly the best of the 1990s, but what is the most meaningful to contemporary audiences.
posted by pxe2000 at 8:43 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

They had the good sense to go ask Jia Tolentino to write up Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, so that's something.
posted by sockshaveholes at 8:46 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

This stuff always seems both wrong and irrefutable.

Like, I think Automatic for the People is way better than at least half the albums above it, *and* there's no way I'd win an argument about why it should be higher.
posted by Caxton1476 at 9:00 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

"These are the best 150 albums of the 90s."
posted by shenkerism at 9:06 AM on September 30, 2022

Are there that many people that actually listen to Loveless? Not appreciate it for it's groundbreaking or whatever, actually listen to it. I don't think so. It's only got 1 great song (when you sleep) and 2 or 3 other actual songs on it.

I also listen to it regularly, and I kind of feel like looking for whatever "actual songs" are kind of misses the point.
posted by LionIndex at 9:07 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Pitchfork hiring a writer whose sole purpose is to polish turds

That is really not the vibe I got from that author's album review history?? It's super broad, goes back 15+ years, and the stuff they rate highly is generally like Sunn O))) and Andy Stott.
posted by advil at 9:08 AM on September 30, 2022

A good part of this list is taken up with echoes of things that made the 80s great.
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:20 AM on September 30, 2022

I like #1. And notice some other pretty solid selections here and there.

But no Sigur Ros? Ágætis byrjun to be specific. Somebody is being silly.
posted by philip-random at 9:24 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Hard to believe Hole at #8 but Nevermind at #10 was not an intentional Pitchforky troll. I mean...c'mon. L

I really like that album but yeah I don’t think there’s any convincing argument for the ranking.

Electronic selection is weird but that’s P4K (and to be fair can be tricky to represent in “albums”).

Related, a few entries here look like they just want to represent an important artist who is actually hard to represent in “albums” (like DJ Screw). Or who actually did their best work a little outside the year window.
posted by atoxyl at 9:28 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

RE: do people listen to Loveless yes absolutely that was my guess going in for the #1 spot because it has only become more popular and more influential since the last time they did one of these.

NMH slipping surprised me a bit though because that one also has a pretty steady cult. But perhaps the kind of bands influenced by it are not so in these days.
posted by atoxyl at 9:31 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

I've come to conclude that David Bowie's death is now far enough from people listening to music and creating lists like this for zines (ha!) that they don't listen to his music

I've been thinking about this lately, with the release of Moonage Daydream...As a younger Gen-Xer, my first exposure to Bowie was really as a 70s-excess-dude-trying-to-hang-onto-relevance. A good chunk of Let's Dance is, even if it got heavy play on MTV, pretty cringy (and what isn't, like "China Girl," is forever tarred by its being used by a generation of little shits to torment their Asian classmates). I put him in the "should've stopped in 1979" category. It took a good while for his earlier work to creep up on me, and even now I'm indifferent to aspects of it that are terribly important to serious long-time fans (I just don't care about male androgyny). I suspect that the relative decoupling of music from presentation that comes from playing single tracks rather than entire pompous concept albums is what made my increased appreciation possible. The other day I was listening to "Starman" and thinking about how perfect a song it is...but I wouldn't put him on 90s lists.
posted by praemunire at 9:33 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

The always contentious Pitchfork team has put together their definitive list of the 150 best subjective, purposely contrarian and click-baity list of personal favorite albums of the 90s

Couldn't have said it better. The write-up for Low End Theory is pretty interesting. In addition to influencing Dr. Dre to write The Chronic, I remember reading interviews with Portishead, Soul Coughing and some other "off the wall" band about how influential the album was in recording their next albums.

Mind bendingly good album.
posted by a non mouse, a cow herd at 9:33 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

You combine best of album/song lists AND Pitchfork.... what is anybody expecting really? Except becoming angry reading the list.
posted by WaterAndPixels at 9:38 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

My suggestion for digesting this is to ignore that your fave wasn't included (No Dave Matthews Band), and try listening to a few of the albums which you have not heard. And don't worry about reading the descriptions they wrote either. Just scroll right on through.
posted by shenkerism at 9:53 AM on September 30, 2022 [5 favorites]

Another omission is Cypress Hill’s Black Sunday. Still fun, was ubiquitous, and could not be any more 90s.

And surely the list should include some reggae / dancehall / reggaeton.

The lack of Underworld, Prodigy, Chemical Bros and Orbital might be forgivable

For me, absolutely not; I might put Orbital’s brown album at #1, based solely on its perfect first side. Just thinking about Michael Dorn saying “There is the theory...” gives me a frisson. And Underworld just slams.

Also Amber is far from Autechre’s best album in the 90s, and has almost nothing of what later set them apart from the rest of their Warp peers. For me they just kept getting better and better, but Tri Repetae was arguably the breakout.
posted by mubba at 9:56 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

insert strongly worded opinion* about 90's music.

*Happy to see Rid Of Me in the top 20.
posted by djseafood at 10:00 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

I am not cool in the 2020s; I guess I was not at all cool in the 1990s either.

Cool is a trap
posted by cubeb at 10:20 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

If I was going to pick one Massive Attack album for a list like this, I'd take Mezzanine over Blue Lines, but if I were going to make a list of 150 '90s albums I'd be sorely tempted to put the Mad Professor remix No Protection on there as well.

Between dancehall songs being remixed with hip-hop breaks and some of the folks who were incorporating dub techniques into their music, it was an interesting time for Jamaican music's ongoing dialogue with the European and American kinds.
posted by box at 10:26 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

These lists are designed to be argued over, but anyone who calls Aquemini "dross" does not deserve to have opinions on music. There is more funk, more music, more originality and emotion, more beats, more grooves, more brilliance, more LIFE on that album than anyone could ever hope to achieve in a single work of art.

Also, the 90s had a ridiculous amount of good music, and a list like this is always going to be a compromise between warring factions.
posted by chaz at 10:26 AM on September 30, 2022 [7 favorites]

Amber is far from Autechre’s best album in the 90s

Amber was a good release in its day, but a bit boring and perhaps the most accessible along the road to Chiastic Slide, where they pretty much split off entirely from conventional 4/4 IDM and made their own kind of sound from there on out.

It would have been brave to put Chiastic Slide in place of Amber, but I don't think as many readers of this list would have listened to it, and lists like these need to line up with what readers are familiar with, so that arguments can ensue.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 10:26 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm a huge fan of Hole in general and Live Through This in particular. It deserves a high rank and that's good to see. Courtney Love takes a lot of shit for being complicated and hard to like personally, and for a decline in her later work, even as male rock stars get free passes for that.

I'm not real convinced that album should be above Nevermind, though. Even the non-single tracks from that Nirvana album (and hell, even the B-sides) continue to be foundational.

I mean, yeah, Hole is influencing even pop music these days. That is amazing. But if Post Malone can raise X million dollars for COVID relief playing Nirvana covers in his living room, it's not like they left the zeitgeist.

I get how its ubiquity can make a person take it for granted, but real talk: most of the albums above it on this list will slide down in another ten years and Nevermind will still be exploding the heads of teenagers, no matter what else the contrarians at Pitchfork slot ahead of it next time around.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:28 AM on September 30, 2022 [8 favorites]

As a younger Gen-Xer, my first exposure to Bowie was really as a 70s-excess-dude-trying-to-hang-onto-relevance. A good chunk of Let's Dance is, even if it got heavy play on MTV, pretty cringy (and what isn't, like "China Girl," is forever tarred by its being used by a generation of little shits to torment their Asian classmates). I put him in the "should've stopped in 1979" category.

I know this thread is about 90s music BUT let's dance is one of bowie's best albums. Modern love, the title track, fucking CAT PEOPLE!, even ricochet and shake it have grown on me.

You know those what-if scenarios where you imagine two of your favorite brilliant musicians doing a cross-genre collab, and then you sigh and say if only? That shit actually happened with bowie and nile rodgers
posted by cubeb at 10:39 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

let's dance is one of bowie's best albums

"one of," sure, as long as there are at least 22 others
posted by chavenet at 10:43 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

No Toy Matinee, but lots of chart-toppers. Pitchfork is confused about what it is these days.
posted by snuffleupagus at 10:49 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Keep It Like a Secret is on there, so I am good.
posted by Windopaene at 10:55 AM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

METAFILTER: this is always going to be a compromise between warring factions.
posted by philip-random at 11:08 AM on September 30, 2022

I somehow overlooked Heaven or Las Vegas at 18 and I have to say that one makes me glad. That album was the sound of idiosyncratic artists absolutely mastering their craft in the most accessible way imaginable. That's hard.
posted by Caxton1476 at 11:12 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Given the way Pitchfork's editorial slant and its readership have shifted, the inclusion of Mariah Carey isn't surprising.

I'll buy that, you have some decent points there.
posted by gimonca at 11:23 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Tragic Kingdom was the first album I ever owned and I love it dearly but leaving No Doubt as the sole standard bearer of 90s ska validates my high school era persecution complex WAY too much.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 11:24 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Amber is far from Autechre’s best album in the 90s

Amber which I quite liked at the time (still do really -- Yulquen has never really left my playlist) nevertheless marked a major split for me; not just from Autechre but from "smart techno" (for lack of a better term) in general. Suddenly (and it did happen very suddenly) I just couldn't really stomach entirely machine driven music anymore. It left me (you guessed it) cold. Yes, I really liked Amber -- No, I didn't want to chase music any further down that particular avenue.

It wasn't sampling or electronic beats or midi-driven textures that put me off per say, it was music that only had that going on -- that had zero analog (ie: non digitally produced) components. I didn't care anymore how machines fucking felt about things.

sorry, machines.

Which doesn't mean I didn't spend a huge chunk of the rest of the decade listening to all manner of (what a friend termed) spaced out groove music. Anything but. That was my main drug. Stuff like the just mentioned Mad Professor remix of Massive Attack's Protection ... and vast galaxies of similarly spaced out stuff coming from all manner of bedrooms and basements and whatnot. This for me ends up being the real legacy of the 90s. So much brilliant "soundtrack" music that wasn't either entirely machine driven nor entirely human. It was a fusion of both, but not greedy either way. It wasn't slapping me in the face, demanding I PAY ATTENTION. It was happy to linger in the background, provide the kind of mood I needed (and I still do I guess) to take on the problems and challenges of the future ... which just keeps on increasing in velocity.

One of these days I'll get a proper playlist organized.
posted by philip-random at 11:26 AM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Regarding "Loveless": a reminder that Shonen Knife covered When You Sleep with great success.
posted by gimonca at 11:27 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

Hmmm, no Black Secret Technology, no The Mystery of Love is Greater Than the Mystery of Death, not even a hint of Ambiant Otaku.
Not a terrible list otherwise.
posted by thatwhichfalls at 11:38 AM on September 30, 2022

I would have to cheat and pick compilation albums that were meaningful at the time, e.g.

"...One Last Kiss" (SpinART, 1992): Swirlies, "Chris R"; Suddenly, Tammy! "Lamp"; Lorelei, "Mimesis"; Veronica Lake, "Daisy Kiss"; Magnetic Fields, "100,000 Fireflies"; White Town, "Hair Like Alain Delon"; Honeybunch, "Arm in Arm"; Swirl, "Helicopter"; Our American Cousins, "One Wish Too Many"; Tree Fort Angst, "The One That Got Away"; Crayon, "All the Stars"; Jane Pow, "Shutdown"; Whorl, "I Love Her All the Time"; Small Factory, "Hey Lucille"; Velocity Girl, "My Forgotten Favorite"; Courtney Love, "Baseball Bat"; Lilys, "Any Several Sundays"; Black Tambourine, "We Can't Be Friends"; Wimp Factor 14, "Change of Address Kit" (live, because the album version is unavailable on YouTube).

or MTV's Amp (1997): Chemical Brothers, "Block Rockin' Beats"; Fluke, "Atom Bomb"; Underworld, "Pearl's Girl"; The Future Sound of London, "We Have Explosive"; Photek, "Ni Ten Ichi Ryu"; Aphex Twin, "Girl/Boy Song"; Orbital, "The Box"; Tranquility Bass, "We All Want to be Free"; Goldie, "Innercity Life"; The Prodigy, "Voodoo People (Chemical Brothers remix)"; Josh Wink, "Are You There?"; The Crystal Method, "Busy Child"; Atari Teenage Riot, "Sick to Death."

or Doctor Death's Volume V: "Hearts Lust in Limbo" (1991 and still very 80s-ish) or Untouchable Outcaste Beats, vol. 1 (Tommy Boy, 1997), compiled here and here, which included a couple of older songs too.
posted by Wobbuffet at 11:48 AM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

okay, just to pick some stuff that I, a weirdo, was listening to at the time...

any of Johnny Cash's American Recordings, most obviously his version of Soundgarden's Rusty Cage off the second album, an intentional syncretism of grunge and metal and country that at the time seemed like it could have very interesting places (instead, rap and metal decided to make weird misogynist babies together)

The entire Rock en español movement, apparently. You can't claim that Shakira was obscure in the 90s, let alone more established acts like Cafe Tacuba, Los Fabulosos Cadillacs, Aterciopelados.

Also, Outkast's Stankonia might have come out in 2000, but B.O.B. and its incessant 155bpm is a direct result of all the 90s EDM that André 3000 was mainlining by the end of the decade.
posted by ivan ivanych samovar at 12:01 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

no Ani DiFranco? She was, like, *sainted* back in the 90s.

There's been a bit of a Lilith revival over the past year or so, and I would guess DiFranco is going to get some kind of reappraisal in the next few years. That said, the Pitchfork editors probably know her more for this than for any music she's made over the past two decades.
posted by pxe2000 at 12:03 PM on September 30, 2022

Yep, that’ll do it. Open mouth, insert foot. What a shame.
posted by ducky l'orange at 12:13 PM on September 30, 2022

Good to know that jam bands, like 80’s metal and ska revival, still mark the outer limits of Pitchfork’s post-poptimist revisionism. Meet the new snob, same as the old snob.

Also, no Ani DiFranco? She was, like, *sainted* back in the 90s.

I don't really know 80s metal that well, but jam bands and Ani DiFranco and the ska revival all seem like they're more about the live experience than they are the album. At least on the Ani/jam-band end of things, if your critical and fan favorite albums are live ones, maybe you're not an 'album' kind of artist.

(Most early rock'n'roll and Motown artists were more about singles than they were about albums. It always bugged me when Rolling Stone or whoever would throw in some Chuck Berry compilation because they wanted to shoehorn his name into their 'albums' list.)
posted by box at 12:57 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Are there that many people that actually listen to Loveless?

I have a home planetarium thing that I used to turn on and blast shoegazey noise rock directly into my brain with a set of nice headphones and just disassociate for a while and it was REAL good for that. Before you ask, no my hearing is not very good anymore and yes I was a character from an early 2000s quarter-life crisis movie.
posted by Phobos the Space Potato at 1:04 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

I know this thread is about 90s music BUT let's dance is one of bowie's best albums. Modern love, the title track,

Counterpoint: "Put on your red shoes and dance the blues."
posted by praemunire at 1:07 PM on September 30, 2022

I only own 54 of these CDs. And yes, I still own CDs.
posted by Chuffy at 1:10 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

Also, too, Wyclef Jean's The Carnival is very good and could easily replace several CDs on this list. I'm sure there are more.
posted by Chuffy at 1:21 PM on September 30, 2022

I still own CDs
Yeah, I was gonna say, isn't any 'best albums of the 90's' list basically also a 'best albums originally issued on Compact Disc' list?

Sure, there are a few years at the end of the 80s and the beginning of the 00's.

But I feel like the 90s music reminiscences should also include longboxes, and car-sun-visor disc wallets, and the sense memory experience of using your fingernails or one of those little plastic gadgets to cut through the wrapper and the label sticker holding the 'jewel case' shut.
posted by bartleby at 1:26 PM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

Sonny Sharrock's 1991 album 'Ask the Ages' is a really great album. However, its inclusion on this list seems really out of place as it's a far out jazz album. I can't help but wonder if it's on this list because Pharoah Sanders (who plays sax on the album) just died.
posted by SystematicAbuse at 1:27 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think you’re right about the live event rather than the album as the unit of creative output for some genres, Box. But I think PF’s distaste for jam and ska is probably that they’re both retro genres with relatively non-discerning/normie fan bases (personally, I think ska’s history is more interesting than that, but by the late 90’s a lot of mediocre acts had turned it into the new jock rock, thereby cringe-ifying it).

As for Ani, I was sad to read pxe2000’s link. Even before that incident, I can recall her fan base being passionate to the point of… turning on her vengefully for any and all mis-steps, real or perceived. Maybe I just answered my own question.
posted by ducky l'orange at 1:36 PM on September 30, 2022

Yeah, it's definitely weird that there's one jazz album on your list and it's that one.

The Soundtrack from Twin Peaks was a lot more popular (and, even with the monster hit, it's much better than the soundtrack to The Bodyguard). Naked City was probably more popular, and it's not what you'd call a popular album. I'm not sure you'd call it popular music.

And the '90s were peak career years for Henry Threadgill, Matthew Shipp, and William Parker, and others. Jazz is another genre that Pitchfork doesn't always do very well.
posted by box at 1:48 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Working my way through the list. Happy to see Blowout Comb instead of Reachin' (A New Refutation of Time and Space), annoyed to see Things Fall Apart instead of Do You Want More?!!!??! Overall and so far, it's not as good as the other music ranking list posted this week.

Also, it gave me whiplash to see "Every decade gets the punk rock it deserves" leading the description of Dookie just nine places after "Every generation gets the rap-metal it deserves" on Rage Against the Machine. Yes, different writers, but come on.
posted by May Kasahara at 3:11 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Cmd-F "Cardiacs"
Cmd-F "Sing to God"

Nope. Fuck this.

It's nice that Pitchfork muted their love of Radiohead a little. And it's nice that this list undoes the sheering list they did a decade ago where Loveless took the #2 spot, and the #1 OK Computer review opened with a snide little "finally we can see clearly that Loveless's achievement is just... limited and feeble, compared to Radiohead's great accomplishments." Which I know is a deep-cut grudge to hold, but still: payback, in a way.

Laughing Stock is too low; In the Aeroplane Over the Sea shouldn't have been buried that deep; it's kinda funny that they pushed The Soft Bulletin that far down, given it was their #3 or #4 album last time around. Heh.

But seriously, this is Tim Smith erasure, and until we acknowledge that Airbag's chord progression is ripped directly from Dirty Boy, we will deserve the fallen world we live in.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:16 PM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's also generally just irritating to see Pitchfork continually establish the myth of its own relevance, when it started out as a hacky rag with no real beliefs and evolved into a much glossier version of the same hacky, opportunistic rag.

It's had some great writers, but the publication as a whole is still such tripe. Blergh.
posted by Tom Hanks Cannot Be Trusted at 3:18 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

This list is completely unsurprising for Pitchfork, which means riling people up is its function.

But for what it’s worth, I personally 100% prefer Live Through This to Nevermind.

Also, I listen to Loveless, like, all the time. It’s one of my favorite records ever.
posted by thivaia at 3:21 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

I still own CDs

I have two of the largest IKEA BILLY shelves of them, plus some five boxes in storage in Melbourne. Though since leaving the latter behind and moving to Europe in 2004, I have very rarely listened to a CD directly, but instead ripped them to MP3s and later FLACs and listened to those. Which made it easier to transition to a mostly Bandcamp-download-based flow for buying music, with CDs being only for the stuff that's not on Bandcamp (mostly hostages to the major label system) that I can be bothered tracking down and ripping.
posted by acb at 4:15 PM on September 30, 2022

using your fingernails or one of those little plastic gadgets to cut through the wrapper and the label sticker holding the 'jewel case' shut.

Slide a key or a credit card down the inside of the hinge to get rid of the wrapper, and there was a particular place you could prise open the case that would snap the top seal cleanly. About 2/3 of the way up the opening side.

I still have Case Logic CD binders in the living room and the jewel cases boxed up somewhere, even though I probably haven't played a CD in the house in over a year, or more.

The CD player (and even the tape deck) in my car still gets use though.
posted by snuffleupagus at 4:15 PM on September 30, 2022

I feel like you weren't truly alive in the 90s unless you have your own "someone stole my CD wallet" story.

Weirdly, having always driven shitbox cars in that decade (a '74 bright orange VW bus, a bright yellow '75 corolla, etc), it only happened to me once and it was my "day trip" wallet (so, like, 12 CDs maybe - and luckily none of my obscure imports or bootlegs).

But, oh man, so many friends of mine had their entire month ruined when their massive "holds up to 120 CDs!" binders were jacked from their car. And the crime itself always seemed dumb - you can't sell any of them, you don't have the lyric sheet or liner notes or cool-ass cover art, you're just ruining someone's day and getting maybe a few CDs you don't already have.

_{something something kids today can't get their spotify playlists stolen}
posted by revmitcz at 4:46 PM on September 30, 2022

More than a few of the twentysomething hipster or hipster-adjacent folks I work with are into CDs (and/or VHSs), not unlike the way I knew folks in the ‘90s who were into collecting 8-tracks (I flirted with this myself for a minute—do you know what it feels like to come across an 8-track of Metal Machine Music in a thrift store? I do).

There’s a certain subset of Gen Z that really appreciates physical media—no algorithm decided to show it to you, and no streaming service can take it away.
posted by box at 4:58 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

No Toy Matinee, but lots of chart-toppers. Pitchfork is confused about what it is these days.

I was surfing for any Bill Bottrell productions, and this was the glaring at omission. Aliens ate my Buick was a couple years too early, and Baerwald’s Triage just didn’t make a splash, despite being incredible…

Kevin Gilbert’s Thud was also hugely influential despite being a commercial failure.

Would have loved to seen Midnight Oil’s Earth And Sun And Moon make the list because it’s also absolutely monumental, but unnoticed in America.

Sowing the Seeds of love was just 1 year too early.

I dunno, I guess I was listening to something else.
posted by Devils Rancher at 5:12 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

But, oh man, so many friends of mine had their entire month ruined when their massive "holds up to 120 CDs!" binders were jacked from their car.

Happened to me, to the tune of around 200 discs (with their liner notes). At the airport baggage claim. I replaced most of the stuff that mattered to me, but there were some imports and rarities that I still miss, not being in streaming libraries (or...elsewhere).
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:33 PM on September 30, 2022

oh man, so many friends of mine had their entire month ruined when their massive "holds up to 120 CDs!" binders were jacked from their car.

I have a friend whose tape deck was torn out of their car in the early 90s...with the Bruce Springsteen tape that had been within neatly ejected and left on the seat.
posted by praemunire at 5:39 PM on September 30, 2022 [2 favorites]

A surprising bit of Human Touch, must have been a Lucky Town.
posted by snuffleupagus at 5:45 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Thanks, that's great! I missed most of the nineties, so this is perfect. Also the writing in some of those reviews is a fantastic bonus.
posted by sneebler at 5:45 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

And don't worry about reading the descriptions they wrote either. Just scroll right on through.

Years ago I came to the conclusion that music review writing was, of all arts reviews, the most pretentious, the most self-serious, the most cringey. With book or movie reviews, you have some concrete aspects of the craft to focus on, but writing about music? How does one write about an art form that is more or less impossible to convey with the written word? So music critics write in almost pure abstraction. It's mostly just masturbation with the written word.
posted by zardoz at 6:16 PM on September 30, 2022 [3 favorites]

I mean, if Mariah Carey can be on there, so can the Gallaghers....

I am entirely serious when I say that if Mariah Carey had only written All I Want For Christmas, and nothing else, ever, she would still be more deserving of a spot on the list than anything by the Gallaghers.
posted by Jon Mitchell at 6:41 PM on September 30, 2022 [4 favorites]

I enjoy a listicle. I can't agree with the ordering/inclusions/exclusions but also acknowledge a lot of it is down to personal taste and nowadays varying levels of critical evaluation - the 90's were a few decades ago now in a previous century even.

Also reminded me that the listening dynamic back then was very different. In NZ you'd be lucky to hear singles from 1/3rd of these on AM or FM radio. The others would probably appear on specialist student-radio or late-night TV shows. You'd also have to hunt pretty hard for some of them in record stores, if they didn't make it to a name brand retailer you were often completely out of luck unless someone dropped it onto a tape for you.

On top of that, albums were pricey so you had to really know what you were getting into, trust a reviewers opinion or listen to it in-store before buying it. Definitely an act of faith to pop down $20-30NZ on a band un-heard based on a review in NME, Option, Spin or Melody Maker (or whatever your personal taste-maker was back in the day).

I'd say a few film sound-tracks definitely popularised a bunch of bands that never would have broken out beyond the indie/student crowd back then - Cardigans from Romeo & Juliet, Underworld from Trainspotting, a bunch from Natural Born Killers etc etc
posted by phigmov at 6:45 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

a bunch from Natural Born Killers etc etc

I will never stop hating that soundtrack for putting that dumbass voiceover on top of "Sweet Jane."

Of 90s soundtracks, Pulp Fiction's might have been the most iconic. Though mostly not new music.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:47 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

Underworld also got a boost from "Cowgirl" in Hackers.

The Matrix's soundtrack and score both got a ton of play; especially Clubbed to Death.
posted by snuffleupagus at 6:55 PM on September 30, 2022

I had U2, REM and Metallica Cassettes, but Green Day Dookie and Tom Petty Wildflowers were among the first CDs I owned. I sold most of them back when the record stores were still paying something and I ripped all my music to iPod.
posted by CostcoCultist at 7:29 PM on September 30, 2022

But do we kick butt?
posted by praemunire at 9:03 PM on September 30, 2022

Fugazi Repeater at the bottom of this list. Hmmmmmmmm........

Yes, the list is terrible, and yes, for the first time I think ever I did not click on the link so at least there's that.

One has to always approach Pitchfork lists with the idea that's Pitchfork's bonafides are the most important thing in any list making going on.
posted by Phlegmco(tm) at 9:28 PM on September 30, 2022 [1 favorite]

I can't fix a list I didn't write but I'll offer some "if you like this list" suggestions -- we've already noted:
The Chemical Brothers (first two records: Exit Planet Dust and Dig Your Own Hole)
The Propellerheads -- Decksanddrumsandrockandroll
Amon Tobin (and also as Cujo)
Underworld
Orbital

How about...
Texas
Fatboy Slim -- You've Come A Long Way, Baby (though I prefer Better Living Though Chemistry, this is more accessible banging pop)
The Prodigy -- The Fat of the Land (also more pop-tuned than previous records)
Boards of Canada -- Music Has the Right to Children
Moby -- Play (if we're going to raise Decksanddrumsandrockandroll for cultural impact, same goes for Play)
posted by k3ninho at 12:40 AM on October 1, 2022

I get all the complaints about The List, and agree with many. But let me say this in The List's defense (conceptually, at least):

The last time Pitchfork attempted this list was 20 years ago and before that, 23 year ago. I was a teenager in Australia whose high school years unfortunately coincided with a pretty lame period for music, and those former iterations of The List just opened up my world. I went back to them again and again and downloaded the bands on... Limewire, maybe? I know I listened to them on WinAmp. The Lists introduced me to so many great bands. Last night I got to see Sunny Day Real Estate for the first time, a band I discovered from The Lists more than two decades ago.

Now, the New List is not the same as the Old Lists -- namely, it has more hip hop and pop and women, which is good. But I hope some kids now find this list and it introduces them to some music they otherwise would've missed.
posted by retrograde at 1:01 AM on October 1, 2022 [4 favorites]

Following on from the Tricky anecdotes above, I was deep in the filthy bowels of the Berghain New Year’s Eve house and techno marathon a few years ago - one of the only times literally the whole building is open including at the time a giant basement hall. Having technoed myself to exhaustion with my partner among the more-techno-than-thou black clad scenesters around hour 12, my partner and I went to sit down in this hall and rest a bit. We were very surprised to hear the dj playing a Pharaoh Monche track and got up and danced American-rap-fannishly while the rest of the crowd didn’t seem to know what to do as it wasn’t 4x4 music appropriate for the euro zombie shuffle dance.. and then she turned to me and said… “is that dj.. Tricky??” Reader, it was.
posted by thedaniel at 2:04 AM on October 1, 2022 [7 favorites]

I remember Fatboy Slim displacing James Brown as the standard dudebro party music. Which I'm guessing was the purpose of the “big-beat” subgenre he helmed: to make a more efficient music for getting drunk in a performatively masculine way to. If every form of dance music had a psychoactive drug associated with it, big-beat's was alcohol.
posted by acb at 4:13 AM on October 1, 2022

Oh man, Fatboy Slim's "Praise You" came on the radio the other day and I had such flashbacks to high school.(The local radio scene includes one station where the DJs play whatever the fuck they want from Spanish hip-hop to deep-cut Americana, and one that appears to be a top 40 station except when it plays the 80s and 90s pop hits that Clearchannel has not authorized for its stations. It's often startling and sometimes delightful.)
posted by restless_nomad at 5:34 AM on October 1, 2022

I remember hearing that Fatboy Slim had licensed every single song on You've Come A Long Way, Baby for use in commercials. This seemed kind of unsavory at the time, but he could definitely put some samples together--dude had an ear. Not too long after, that album was briefly ubiquitous in used-CD stores.

There were a couple 'electronica' (a made-up genre, but I guess they're all made up, but this one was made up by marketing people) albums that seemed to have the same fate--Moby's Play, the Prodigy's The Fat of the Land, probably others I'm forgetting. A lot of people tried that stuff, but it didn't always stick.
posted by box at 6:05 AM on October 1, 2022

probably others I'm forgetting

Amon Tobin's Supermodified was everwhere.
posted by juv3nal at 9:49 AM on October 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

For electronic compilations, you could look to the superstar DJ mix album phenomenon, like Sasha & John Digweed — Northern Exposure.
posted by mubba at 11:01 AM on October 1, 2022

Come to me/run to me/do and be done with me
("Walking on Broken Glass" off Lennox's Diva did make Pitchfork's "250 Best Songs of the '90s" list, as #75)
posted by Iris Gambol at 11:14 AM on October 1, 2022

Ok... I'll tell you an artist I hate, an album I hate, and is absolutely utterly terrible in every way, but came out in 1997 and we all know, all secretly love, and every single song is filled with high production value and listenability

I'm a Barbie girl, in a Barbie world...
posted by Nanukthedog at 2:19 PM on September 30 [3 favorites +] [!]

The other week I had to get a MRI and was asked what music I wanted on the headphones. I asked for examples of what was available and she rattled off “classical… 90s…” so I said sure let’s do 90s. It started off with Nirvana, good, good… some Garbage… okay sure… then BARBIE GIRL comes on and what torture to have to lay completely still and endure that ENTIRE song.
posted by Bunglegirl at 12:35 PM on October 1, 2022 [6 favorites]

I'd be thinking malpractice.

Reminds me of the time I got taken for a birthday dinner to a genuinely superb seafood restaurant ... except for some fucking reason they had 80s Hits blasting the whole time, and not the good kind. We Built This City popped up more than once. I don't normally bother to complain about anything at a restaurant that isn't life threatening but I'd had a few drinks and eventually wandered over to where the wait staff were hanging out and told them, "If your food was as bad as this music, you'd all be in jail."
posted by philip-random at 1:10 PM on October 1, 2022 [3 favorites]

A decade is not a genre.
posted by acb at 1:19 PM on October 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

I'm quite frowny at the lack of appreciation of The Refreshments and Emmylou Harris, but I'm pleasantly surprised to see Lucinda on the list. 32 feels too low, but it could have been far less respectful.
posted by wintermind at 2:03 PM on October 1, 2022

@Wobuffett, AMP!!!!!!!!
posted by rrrrrrrrrt at 10:02 PM on October 1, 2022 [1 favorite]

Fantano: Pitchfork's 90s List Isn't Bad.
posted by Pendragon at 12:35 AM on October 2, 2022

It’s 1982 and someone is publishing a list of the top hits of the 60s.

I live in the 90s in my head as much as the next gen x techno kid but they were actually a long time ago now.
posted by ead at 9:42 PM on October 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

(Also citing a single random 99 Drexciya record is worse than just admitting you totally ignored techno, it’s ok nobody expects pitchfork to go there you don’t need to pretend)
posted by ead at 9:53 PM on October 2, 2022 [2 favorites]

It’s 1982 and someone is publishing a list of the top hits of the 60s.

I actually really appreciated the variety of songs played on '60s radio stations in the '80s and '90s. It was actually a lot more like this pitchfork list than '90s radio stations played, which was the start of the heavy genre-based segmentation.
posted by The_Vegetables at 12:12 PM on October 3, 2022 [2 favorites]

Kinda interesting to look at only the artists who had more than one album in that list:

Notorious B.I.G.
A Tribe Called Quest
OutKast
Radiohead
Nirvana
Pavement
Aphex Twin
Elliott Smith
Janet Jackson
Fiona Apple
Bjork

I think it represents the 90s pretty well
posted by secretseasons at 1:01 PM on October 4, 2022

I'm not necessarily convinced that the second-best Aphex Twin album is better than Wu-Tang Forever--this two-album thing seems like a more efficient way to argue about lists.
posted by box at 1:58 PM on October 4, 2022

Why I HATE 90’s Music winds up being kinda this thread, but structured and concise.
posted by jeffburdges at 10:46 PM on October 4, 2022 [1 favorite]

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