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Another list! Pitchfork’s 150 Best Albums Of The Nineties

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All I will say is, in no universe, parallel or otherwise, is Hole’s “Live Through This” a better album than Nirvana’s “Nevermind.”

https://pitchfork.com/features/lists-and-guides/the-best-albums-of-the-1990s/?utm_brand=p4k&utm_social-type=owned&utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&mbid=social_facebook&fbclid=IwZXh0bgNhZW0CMTAAAR2Pfg1eBbl7oCmdDkMLpYfJ_kHPwlU5a_RY_jDeW6qINaWgKnNARcy-F1U_aem_ATI8HoTBuzaEFJbUbp-lBxWsshAquPQ2t-Vr4sRT_6d8dUxwYNc-n1DpjUE247BCPwJz3SqpCk6b6sYKBFIKSai3

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Comments

    • Not very nice, and will have middle-aged Swiftie-Hat Dads© frothing at the mouth and shouting OBSSESSED!! But note she’s a Kate Bush fan, so that should endear her to the elderly Bush Babies who lurk at t’Word.

  3. Of these 150 long-playing elpees, I know only Achtung Baby, Moon Safari, The Soft Bulletin, Screamadelica, Ladies & Gentlemen, Chill Out, Automatic, Ray Of Light, Selected Ambient, and am superficially familiar with maybe ten others. Of these, only Screamadelica has remained a close pal. So much for Pitchfork. Wankers.

    “At its heart, Loveless is terribly uncertain. It is the primo example of an auteurist studio album—glacially pieced together …” [contd. p94 – Ed.]

    • Not sure I trust that list.
      They put Morning Glory above Definitely Maybe – stop getting Oasis wrong!
      They place Parklife above Modern Life Is Rubbish AND 13 – stop getting Blur wrong!

      and slaughtering the sacred cows: Nirvana at 10 and Jeff Buckley at 16 – nope

      • Agree on all of that really. Was surprised to see Modern Life is Rubbish so high even if it is a fine album. Buckley would be way lower for me. Oasis is probably a toss-up for me.

  5. There has obviously been a mistake. Both of these esteemed publications seem to have forgotten that Sigur Rós – Ágætis byrjun was actually released in 1999 not 2000.

    Over time, I’ve lost all love for Loveless. Portishead and Massive Attack remain as brilliant as ever. Car Wheels On A Gravel Road improves as the years tick by and I, Jonathan is a timeless work of genius that never fails to bring joy to the world. Rap had a great decade, didn’t it.

    • I agree with every word of that, Tigger..

      Portishead, Lucinda and Massive Attack were a revelation then and continue to be a source of great joy in 2024,

      And Jonathan Richman is such a magnificently talented chap.

      I don’t know his back catalogue so well, and therefore this weekend I, Jonathan will be getting a serious Tigger-testing on Spotify.

      Testing is the wrong word. I already KNOW that I will love it.

      • @Kaisfatdad If you’re really looking for his best album then Rockin’ and Romance with the Modern Lovers is the one. Hard to get but, as my vinyl copy is in a frame, I found that Rounder Records (correction Twintone Records) will send you your own CD version, very nicely done through their website. It was a few years ago now so hopefully they still offer that service. It really is a joy from start to finish.

          • That’s my vote cast above. I did a thing on here once where it was a list about your specialist subject artist and you had to identify their best album, their best known album, one to play to anyone who doesn’t know them etc. but I can’t remember the name of the thread to find it. I seem to remember some agreement with my choices but I’d imagine Jonathan polarises opinion and people’s choices can be limited by whether they’ve heard some of his harder to find stuff. I’ve picked up most of it on vinyl over the years because it’s not available in any other format. Certainly there’s very little of his stuff on Spotify. I don’t know about other streaming platforms.

  7. My sense is that the records of the 60s, 70s, 80s mean more to me right now than the 90s. The 90s I think of often as evoking those earlier decades but less effectively. What was new was impressive then but after the novelty wore off were lacking in tunes. There is a style, a texture or 90s quality that has faded. Maybe that will change. Probably. I think the Radiohead albums are built to last. They stand up. Other things have dated quickly.

  9. I suspect that the Pitchfork staff team’s 5-step method was thus:

    Sit around the office table with some refreshments and some notepads;
    Try to write down as many albums from the 90s as they can remember;
    Make a list, taking one record from each notebook in turn;
    Repeat, until 150 slots have been filled;
    Go to lunch.

    I don’t know if it was exactly like that, but I suspect that it wasn’t far off. How else to explain that one of the finest records of the 1990s sits at number 141?

    • Looks like it was a vote. Uncut one certainly was.

      “The result is a massive amount of incredible music, represented by hundreds of artists and carefully considered by 112 critics from our staff, contributor pool, and writers and editors who influenced the discourse around music in the ’90s in real time”

      Just like what we did a few years ago, although we covered 2 decades

      Final Score – 1980 to 1999 – Afterworders Top 500 Albums

      • In that case, it’s lucky I was referring to the Pitchfork 150! 🙂

        I don’t think it matters – individuals will always disagree with the ordering – subjective, innit? I suppose if the list gets people talking and relistening, the final order becomes irrelevant (except, of course, where my own favourites are concerned).

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