The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Q Albums of the 90s: 1995

Q Albums of the 90s: 1995

by 159 Comments

Welcome back to the Q Albums of the 90s thread. If you weren’t here for 1990-94, this is a thread where we get the chance to review Q’s choices for the top albums from each year between 1990 and 1998 as published in the December 1999 edition of Q.

So, let’s see which 10 albums Q thought were the pick of 1995 (“The Year of Britpop”):

Blur – The Great Escape
Leftfield – Leftism
Alanis Morrissette – Jagged Little Pill
Pulp – Different Class
Radiohead – The Bends
Teenage Fanclub – Grand Prix
TLC – CrazySexyCool
Tricky – Maxinquaye
The Verve – A Northern Soul
Oasis – (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

What do you think of the list? Does it represent 1995 for you? What’s missing? And of course, how many have you got?

1

Comments

  4. That is the peak Britpop top 10 isn’t it? Liked Pulp but gave up on Blur and Oasis at that point (I was such a snob): I still rate the Tricky album as a great one-off. This was actually a vintage year, I think, and I spent a lot of it dancing to techno, but here are additions (often chill out records, I notice):

    Yo La Tengo–Electr-O-Pura (They may have made better albums, but this remains my favourite)

    Movietone–Movietone (Love this Bristol band; I bought the reissue and recent Peel Sessions album)

    Flying Saucer Attack –Further (late Shoegaze)

    A Guy Called Gerald –Black Secret Technology (His drum n’ bass record)

    Oval–94 Diskont (Glitchcore electronica: I should have also mentioned “Systemish” for 1994)

    LaBradford–A Stable Reference (Lovely US space rock; an alternative mid-90s genre )

    Tortoise-Rhythms, Revolutions and Clusters (a remix of the debut album )

    Stereolab–Music for Amorphous Body Study Centre (actually a mini-album, but a good one)

    V/A–Macro-Dub Infection (great collection of electronica selected by Kevin Martin)

    V/A –Routes From the Jungle (excellent dance comp from the Virgin Records muso period of albums compiled by Wire magazine writers)

  5. I have the Blur, Leftfield, Pulp, Radiohead, Tricky, Verve and Oasis – but only really enjoy the Leftfield these days.

    These were the 10 albums I most rated from that year apart from that:
    The Moonflowers – Colours & Sounds
    Massive Attack vs Mad Professor – No Protection
    Banco da Gaia – Last Train to Lhasa
    Baka Beyond – The Meeting Pool
    Neil Young – Mirror Ball
    The Grid – Music for Dancing
    Luna – Penthouse
    Red Snapper – Reeled and Skinned
    Chumbawamba – Showbusiness
    Laurie Anderson – The Ugly One With the Jewels

    • I only have one album on your list @salwarpe.

      I haven’t heard any of the other albums.

      The Branco da Gaia album Last Train To Llasa intrigues me, I will investigate.

      My comments on these Q Albums Lists may give the impression that I didn’t buy many albums in the 90’s. Those impressions would be very wrong.

      • The Banco da Gaia is one of those ambient concept albums like Chill Out, which I would pleasantly drift off to, then wake up when the train whistle blew and then drift off again too. It’s not a very eventful album.

        – The Moonflowers were great live- crazy and shambolic, yet with an amazingly tight rhythm section.
        – No Protection is a great companion piece to the earlier Protection, and is one of the several Massive Attack-linked albums from that year (along with the Tricky and Shara Nelson’s Friendly Fire, which just fell out of my top 10)
        – The Baka Beyond album is led by Martin Cradick and is a further opportunity to hear his beautiful guitar work after his time in Outback
        – Though not a classic, Mirror Ball is an agreeable album = not least for I am The Ocean.
        – I love The Grid album because it has so many remix versions of their dance pop hits, most of which I also bought as singles.
        – The Luna album I bought as a white label cassette in Boston, USA, and was a great slow burn for me – I grew to love every one of the idiosyncratically worded and gently-guitared songs.
        – The Red Snapper album is worth it almost for One Legged Low Frequency Guy alone – a deep, double bass-led track.
        – The Chumbawamba album is live in Leeds (a home crowd) and captures their concert feel, intersong badinage and is fantastic
        – The Laurie Anderson album is spoken word and is full of her typical witty anecdotes.

        Leftism – with Open Up, Original and Release The Pressure in particular, was an extraordinarily good album. Some of the others in my list above almost reached that peak, but apart from that, it wasn’t a great year musically for me. I’ll be interested to read if others have different, more positive readings from then.

        • Thanks for that, I’ve sampled some of Banco’s album and yes it is somewhat sleepy and I may put it to good use whe I’ve posted this.

          The Chumbawamba album is one of those albums you probably don’t have to hear to know what it sounds like. They are also a band whose music I like and whose opinions I mostly agree with.

          The album I have is Mirror Ball not Shakey’s best.

          • You may not need to hear the Chumbawamba album (er, released in 1994!), but this track is one I’d hope would go down with any fan. It has it all: horns, northern wit, a great (I know I overuse that word) bassline, chanting, audience participation. I love it!

        • Open Up was hands-down the single of the year. Its vocal is extraordinary and incendiary. The rhythm is earth-shaking. It works best as a single, too. On the album, they add a four minute piece of instrumental, laidback dub. They might have been going for a Layla vibe but end up diluting the song’s impact.

          • I’ll have to check that out. Lydon’s vocals were amazing and were well-matched by the musical bed. I had Release The Pressure as a cassingle, and all the versions on that were really bass-rumbling. And I love the way Original starts “Film starts. Film ends. Nothing happens in between”.

            Rhythm and Stealth seemed like such a drop in quality after all that – it was Leftfield’s Be Here Now, or Second Coming.

            • Except for the first minute or two of this which promised – a bit like Love Spreads – that they would carry on with the quality of Leftism.

              I seem to recall – pre-Shazam – the Guinness ad which features this came out before the album.

    • I’m a big fan of Baka Beyond’s The Meeting Pool. Still listen to it a lot. In fact, probably my most frequently played album from that year.

      • It was one of many albums of that time that I got into through an particularly lovely musical relationship, so it’s bittersweet whenever I hear it. But it hasn’t lost its wonder, and people do seem to love it when I include it in compilations.

  6. I have 6 from this year – Blur, Alanis, Pulp, Radiohead, Verve & Oasis.

    Missing albums from me….

    Boo Radleys / Wake Up
    – not listened in ages. but a good fun album

    David Bowie / 1. Outside
    – another of his 90s “return to form” albums 🙂

    Dadawa / Sister Drum
    – a Tibetan singer (I think!) that my wife introduced to me. Still enjoy

    Ben Folds Five / Ben Folds Five
    – the first of many great albums

    McAlmont & Butler / The Sound Of…
    – Yes, its really only one song, but what a song.

    Natalie Merchant / Tigerlily
    – always dependable

    Porcupine Tree / Sky Moves Sideways
    – I came to this later, and probably prefer their later Deadwing / In Absentia phase, but this is still a regular listen. Their most “Pink Floyd” album

    Supergrass / I Should CoCo
    – another vote

  7. Most of these haven’t worn well over time. I still like Tricky, Radiohead (both made better albums later in my view) and TLC.

    However, my absolute favourite was the utterly gorgeous Charlie Haden & Hank Jones – Steal Away (Spirituals, Hymns And Folk Songs).

    I also thoroughly enjoyed Black Grape – It’s Great When You”re Straight….Yeah! more than I should. As did my kids.

    It was the year of The Beatles – Anthology 1 and Miles Davis – The Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel 1965.

    I bought Scott Walker’s Tilt. It’s 28 years since I played it.

  8. The accolade album of the decade was the peak of the Oasis collective delusion. I bought into it as well. I still like a couple of tracks. Some Might Say sounds pretty good. Overall it was limited material stretched rather thin. There are clearly better albums from that time.

    • In 1995 I remember I saw Paul Weller play on the main stage at T In The Park in Glasgow, and being thoroughly bored. The friends I was with seemed to be enraptured by the Modfather, but I just couldn’t see the appeal. I went off to the Massive Attack Dub Tent, which was much more my thing at the time!

      • 94 or 95 was the time when Paul Weller took the mid-afternoon slot at every festival, replacing Billy Bragg. I second your boredom. I actually quite liked his records, but live he was just dull.

            • 2nd one was at a festival actually, Out in the Green in Frauenfeld, Switzerland. Hell of a line-up (didn’t see everybody)

              R.E.M, Clawinger, Bo Diddley, The Beautiful South, Paul Weller, Elton John, Inner Circle, Silverchair, Ugly Kid Joe, Pat Travers, The Kelly Family, Rod Stewart, Dream Theater, George Thorogood & The Destr., Vanessa Mae, Faith No More, Oasis, Belly, Megadeth, Sheryl Crow, Page/Plant, The Neville Brothers, Shane Mc Gowan & The Popes, Warrant, Kix, Walter Trout Band, Nathan Cavaleri Vand, Status Quo, Chuck Berry, Slash’s Snakepit, The Dubliners

      • Arthur, T in the Park ’95 was a great festival, very heavy on the Britpop that year (Elastica, Supergrass, Menswe@r, Boo Radleys, Charlatans, Weller). My favourite act that weekend was probably Tricky, or possibly dEUS. The weather was really good too.

        • Yes, weather was tremendous. Don’t get me wrong, it was a fantastic weekend all round. Highlight was seeing Supergrass (queues backed up to get into their tent as Alright had just been a hit). And the Massive Attack Dub Tent was a stroke of genius: I spent hours in there, hiding from the hot sun.

  10. I have Leftfield and Tricky. Hell Is Round The Corner freaked me out when I first saw the video on TOTP.

    Very surprised Black Grape’s It’s Great When You’re Straight… Yeah isn’t on the list.

    In Italy, Ben Harper’s Fight for Your Mind was very big that year. The track Excuse Me Mr seemed to be everywhere.

  11. My album of the year I think was Pure Phase by Spiritualized (or Spiritualized Electric Mainline as they rechristened themselves). I’m always surprised it’s not more widely praises, but maybe it was overshadowed by their next album a couple of years later.

    • For what it’s worth my opinion on Pure Phase is that the there are better versions of a lot of the songs that were all previously released a few years earlier (medication, good times, lay back in the sun). It’s not helped by being preceded by Lazer Guided Melodies, which for me is a 10 out of 10 LP. Pure Phase feels more like a 6 out of 10.

      • I admit hindsight might be a factor. It was the first Spiritualized album I bought, I had just seen them live at the QM union (Glasgow Uni) and I wasn’t aware of their previous releases. But it totally utterly blew me away. I still think it’s their best, but it’s also the middle album in a great trilogy.

  12. Grand Prix is still a stone cold classic.

    My votes:
    The Sound of McAlmont and Butler
    I Should Coco (though In It For The Money is their high water mark)
    Ben Folds Five
    Jayhawks – Tomorrow the Green Grass
    Aimee Mann – I’m With Stupid
    Squeeze – Ridiculous
    Whiskeytown – Faithless Street

    • I was obsessed with Ben Folds Five for most of 95/96 and their appearance in a tent at Phoenix Festival ’96 (no Glasto that year) made up for missing Bowie’s set.

      And Supergrass, Stereolab (see above) and Aimee Mann got a lot of play.

      Also: I met the future Mrs F in June 1995, and she’s still tolerating me. Quite the year!

        • We weren’t the only ones! Blistering sunshine all afternoon, sitting in my car on the A46 for hours, putting up my tent in the dark. No wonder I let of steam the next day! Ben Folds Five played a tent mid-afternoon, the moshpit sent up a cloud of dusty soil, and I came out sweaty and covered in brown powder.

  13. I thought the Blur album was poor, and the Oasis one was a massive disappointment. The next Blur album was good, though; I gave up on Oasis at that point.

    I will echo the praise for I Should Coco: a fab album.

    • The Oasis album was immediate, but bar a couple of tracks has no longevity.
      The Blur album was disappointing, but you could see/hear they were trying to move on from the mediawank Britpop wars – 1997s Blur confirmed this.

  14. This is the year I started buying music. Had six of these records. I remember getting Grand Prix from that Universal Music Club or whatever it was called. Heady days!

  15. My album of the year, maybe even the decade, was Emmylou Harris’ Wrecking Ball, where the country legend teamed up with Daniel Lanois for a record that swerved away from trucker cliches into spooky rattly late night ambience as Nashville twang gave way to endless reverb and delay. It’s a perfect marriage of a beautiful voice, a distinctive atmosphere and some impeccable song selection (songwriters here include Neil Young, Steve Earle, Bob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch, and Kate and Anna McGarrigle as well as Harris and Lanois themselves). One of my favourite albums ever, it’s an astonishing record, a melancholy, haunting masterpiece.

  16. I have all 10, but the Tricky one was not purchased until about 2002 I reckon. Not something I got at the time but did learn to appreciate.

    The 4 in the middle (Pulp – Different Class / Radiohead – The Bends / Teenage Fanclub – Grand Prix / TLC – CrazySexyCool) are the only ones that I feel have aged well & as I mistakenly posted in the 1994 thread, I think that TLC still sounds incredibly fresh & would be a hit album if released today.

    Missing items that I enjoyed from this year;

    Gene – Olympian. My favourite of the Britpop era. I will be putting it on shortly

    PJ Harvey – To Bring You My Love. She did Down By The Water on Jools & a love of all things PJ Harvey started that is still strong today (our daughters middle name is Polly due to her!)

    Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie & The Infinite Sadness. Some great songs on this, By Starlight & Zero still get a regular airing.

    The Presidents Of The United States Of America – POTUSA. It was daft & I knew it was not a classic, but I listened to it a lot in 1995.

    Faith No More – King For A Day…Fool For A Lifetime. Digging A Grave was the high point of a pretty poor album, but I did love it at the time.

    Supergrass – I Should Coco. Another vote for this. Their set at Glastonbury in 1995 (which i watched on TV & had on VHS for years after) is excellent. A great Kinks cover IIRC.

    No Doubt – Tragic Kingdom. Not thought of fondly by many, but as soon as I hear Don’t Speak I am back working on a market stall in Oldham on a baking hot sunny day in 1995.

    Aztec Camera – Frestonia. Maybe not a classic, but On The Avenue is sublime & when I saw it performed on Jools Holland (see below) I fell in love with it & it’s still one of my favourites 28 years later. Oasis were on the same episode and i remember everyone at school raving about it, but my tastes had changed overnight thanks to Roddy Frame. 1996 was when I discovered Dylan & I think this was the first step on that path

  17. Loving these posts.

    1995, for me, was the year of Timeless, Wu Tang solo albums, Tricky and Exit Planet Dust.

    Timeless was the year’s great monolith. I was already listening to a lot of DNB/Jungle, but I hadn’t heard anyone really “do an album”, or treat the form particularly seriously. Timeless arrived perfect – it had that ultra processed production that made it sound like the beats had been recorded in an airtight room, it was impossibly expansive, it veered wildly between moods and it seemed to signal a way forward for the genre where anything might be possible, not least because a number of other classics were released in the genre that year (Your Sound by J.Majik, Angels Fell by Dillinja, Pulp Fiction by Alex Reece). Obviously, that’s one of many futures that were never actually realised, and Goldie was never able to follow it up, but it remains one of my all time favourite records. I think it’s just about perfect, I still listen to it and that opening swirl of the title track transports me back to a time and place like very few pieces of music. If you want to understand the 90s I think it’s a great place to start – Jungle: The Opera.

    95 was also the year the Wu released seminal albums by GZA, Raekwon and Liquid Swords. Three records, from the same group and with the same producer, in one year, all of them absolute classics. The Wu were, at this point, quite simply the most exciting thing happening in music anywhere. I still remember getting Liquid Swords home, sticking it on and just being absolutely blown away by it. That run from the title track to Shadowboxin is just absolute fire – the beats are completely on another level and GZA was peaking. It’s just one absolute killer after another, one of the most exciting half hours I’ve ever spent with recorded music. I don’t think I listened to any song more than Living In The World Today in 1995.

    Tricky was an enormously big deal to me that year. That whole album is just wild, and nothing else really sounds like it. The interplay between him and Martina TB is like nothing else I can think of – two super distinct voices doing all sorts of crazy shit, egging each other on. Obviously Hell Is Round The Corner is the one everyone remembers, but the ones that stick with me are Abbaon Fat Tracks (great name), Suffocated Love, Black Steel and – most of all – Brand New You’re Retro. Always hated the Trip Hop label, I never felt this belonged in the same bucket as Dummy – that was Jazz and this was so clearly the last great Soul record of the century.

    Exit Planet Dust is my favourite Chems record. I found the follow up a disappointment, in that it too obviously courted the serious Rock establishment. EPD is just an absolute buzz saw – it doesn’t care about critical approval or any of that nonsense, it’s just one utter banger after another. It’s aged great too – In Dust We Trust and Three Little Birdies Down Beats are just crazy good. I span that record to death and spent the next few years hunting for anything else like it. It really got in the bloodstream.

    Smashing Pumpkins followed up Siamese Dream and I was intensely disappointed that they had not simply delivered additional Siamese Dream. I still have a lot of time for Melon Collie, but it was a switch in sound I wasn’t looking for back then, and even to this day it exists in my Spotify account as a deeply edited version under a playlist pointedly entitled Melon Collie and the Finite Sadness.

    Away from all the above, I was 15-16 at this point and starting to dig out all sorts of weird music at local record shops. 1995 I stumbled on a vinyl copy of In/flux by DJ Shadow and was blown away. Blown away to the extent that I always felt that everything that came after (with a couple of exceptions) was a bit of a disappointment. I also copped Blow The Whole Joint up by Monkey Mafia, which was a mainstay of those years, and The Western by PFM and MC Conrad. The latter remains a top 10 all time song for me, probably a Desert Island Disc. Conrad would go on to be a huge part of my 90s experience, but this was the first time I ever heard him. I love his flow, I love how it fits the record like a glove, I love the mad shit he’s spitting (“babies having secret orgasms” – wut) and I love how ethereal and otherworldly the whole tune sounds. I will never stop listening to that record.

    Beyond the above, spent many happy days with D’Angelo’s Brown Sugar, an absolute classic that cemented my love of RnB (although the follow up is even better), loved I Should Coco (another “these guys are our age! record, and their best), pretended not to like Alanis Morrissette and Mariah Carey (only grew up a bit later), thought Oasis released two thirds of a brilliant album and will still defend that shit, Pulp were the true winners of the Battle of Britpop, releasing not only arguably their best album, but also one of the greatest singles to ever win the heart of the nation, Bjork released Hyperballad and blew me away, Hip Hop crosser over in the UK courtesy of the one two punch of the undeniable I Got 5 On it (what a beat) and Gangsta’s Paradise (fun fact: the song was originally offered for the soundtrack of Bad Boys, but was turned down) and I spent far more time listening to Naughty by Nature than I should probably admit.

    It was also a year of great singles; Set You Free by N Trance remains the single best song ever recorded to hug your mates to in the middle of the dance floor, Fantasy by Mariah, Freak Like Me by Adina Howard, Keep Their Heads Ringin by Dr Dre, Dear Mama, Waterfalls, Don’t Speak by No Doubt, that stupid run of amazing singles by Bon Jovi with his new, mature haircut (Always – what an absolute beast), and last but certainly not least This Is How We Do It by Montell Jordan. Everyone loves This Is How We Do It by Montell Jordan.

    Most of all, it was the year of Yes by Mcalmont & Butler. A ridiculously good record, completely out of time with everything around it and all the better for it.

    Of course, 1995 was also ostensibly the year of the Beatles – Anthology 1 got a massive media push and saw the release of Free As A Bird. I liked and still like Free As A Bird – it’s gloriously throwaway, and the harmonies are nice enough. So, this was the year I decided to explore further. Typically, I was able to rely on my parents’ record collections for such things, but on this occasion a blank was drawn – Mum had evidently loved the Beatles when she was about 13, but had moved on and not bothered to retain any of the records, whereas Dad had what I now understand in retrospect to have been a total hipster vinyl collection that he wouldn’t have sullied with such things (although he did own a copy of Revolution In The Head, presumably a guilty shame). So, I bought some of the records myself starting with the Blue album. 1995 was the year I sat with an open copy of Revolution In The Head listening to Fool On The Hill and asking myself the immortal question “what is this shit” – the gap between the myth and the reality never loomed so large. Perhaps because of that experience I have always remained suspicious of attempts to intellectualise music into being any good – as a great poet later wrote, the hips don’t lie, and those particular hips are replacement. Maybe one day it will all click, but 30 years on I can’t say my original feelings have changed. Perhaps there was simply too much other great new music around and I was spoiled for choice.

    Full list below of the albums from 1995 I really enjoy.

    Different Class – Pulp
    Timeless – Goldie
    Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness – Smashing Pumpkins
    Maxinquaye – Tricky
    Only Built 4 Cuban Linx – Raekwon
    I Should Coco – Supergrass
    Liquid Swords – GZA
    Brown Sugar – D’Angelo
    Exit Planet Dust – Chemical Brothers
    Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters
    Me Against The World – Tupac
    Jagged Little Pill – Alanis Morrissette
    The Infamous – Mobb Deep
    Elastica – Elastica
    What’s The Story Morning Glory – Oasis
    Poverty’s Paradise – Naughty by Nature
    Daydream – Mariah Carey
    Post – Bjork
    Clear – Bomb The Bass
    Tragic Kingdom – No Doubt
    Smoker’s Delight – Nightmares on Wax
    Mark’s Keyboard Repair – Money Mark
    70 Minutes of Madness – Coldcut
    Return to the 36 Chambers – ODB
    Elliott Smith – Elliott Smith
    Til Shiloh – Buju Banton
    These Days – Bon Jovi
    To Bring You My Love – PJ Harvey
    Pure phase – Spiritualized
    Wrecking Ball – Emmylou Harris
    The Ghost of Tom Joad – Springsteen
    Labcabincalifornia – The Pharcyde
    Meiso – DJ Krush
    Grand Prix – Teenage Fanclub
    Red Medicine – Fugazi
    CrazySexyCool – TLC
    History – Verve
    Wake Up – Boo Radleys

  18. The big winner from the Q list for me is The Bends. I still play it and their live act includes several of the tracks that sound pretty mighty in that context too. A perfect album really. High and Dry is a bit meh if I am being picky. They also had Lucky from The Help charity album. A magnificent song.

    Otherwise I Should Coco and Grand Prix are also great albums I’ve not played in a while. Other missing favourites would be Dubstar and The Cardigans. Wonderfully tuneful records.

    A strong year for singles. Born Slippy is like 1995 in a nutshell for me. Shouting lager lager lager. Singing along to Wonderwall on the jukebox in The Blue Posts. Seemed like everyone was mad for it for a while. At least in my world. EBTG Missing, Todd Terry mix was also big and I thought it was pretty ace. Never bothered about anything else by them though.

    • Ooh – I forgot Born Slippy. That’s one of those songs that became so ubiquitous that it’s really hard to remember how incredible it was on first release. Strong shout to being the keystone sound of 1995.

    • I love the intro to Born Slippy, but the rest of the song goes on for too long. I have edited it to fade after three mins. Big improvement.

      Porcupine Tree made an odd comment about The Bends. I’m never sure if it was a compliment or an insult:

      You keep me waiting
      You keep me alone in a room full of friends
      You keep me hating
      You keep me listening to The Bends
      No amount of pointless days
      Can make this go away

      • Steven Wilson is a Radiohead fan. I think he is aware the lyrical content does not reflect a happy vibe.

        Born Slippy the single edit is what I am thinking of. It’s about 4 and a half minutes. I’ve not thought that it needs cutting by 1 and a half minutes though. But yes the original version does go on a bit so I share the sentiment.

  19. Of the Q 10, the only one I bought during the year would be Grand Prix – I still play it.
    I subsequently bought The Bends and Different Class, and I was given the Oasis album for a gift, some years after its release.

    Others have mentioned 1. Outside, To Bring you My Love (still my favourite Polly Harvey album) and Wrecking Ball.

    But my own top ten would have to include:
    Throwing Muses – University
    King Crimson – Thrak
    Palace Music – Viva Last Blues
    Tindersticks – 2nd
    Sparklehorse – Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot

    The Sparklehorse album would be my album of the year, maybe my album of the decade. Still an absolute favourite, still played regularly and still hits the spot…RIP, Mark.

    • I’m exploring Sparklehorse after Mojo had an article on them a few months back. I picked up It’s a Wonderful Life and From Inside the Belly of a Mountain on CD. I’ve listened to the first and it’s good stuff. It’s a shame thar Gen X musicians need to die before Mojo devote space to them.

      • Those are both great albums, but Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot is their best. An absolute, stone-cold classic. Still gets regular plays in my house. In fact I think it will get one this evening.

  20. Only four this year…Blur, Tricky, Pulp and Radiohead.

    Blur was a real letdown after Parklife. It was alright but, in hindsight, even they seemed to think it was the final chapter in that era of their existence. There’s a lot to love on Different Class, particularly Underwear, Sorted… and, obviously, Common People but I’m not a fan of I Spy, Disco 2000 nor F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.O.V.E And, yes, I am one of those people for whom Radiohead begin and end with The Bends.

    A bit like Bingo Little above, this was the year of Tricky, The Chemical Brothers and the Wu.

    Simply put, that run of Wu releases from Enter, through Tical, Only Built, Gravediggaz and then Liquid Swords is up there with any run of releases in any genre, by any artist, ever. Scoff at that but the sheer creativity and inventiveness of those two years is right up there with anyone. Artistically, it culminates with Liquid Swords in which a grimy New York is cast against Shogun-era Japan and a dark, unsettling, violent cityscape emerges. It’s an incredible, timeless album.

    Also fell hard for Exit Planet Dust, Maxinequaye and It’s Great When Your’re Straight. Exit Planet Dust is an album of huge dance tracks that sounds great any season and at any hour while Maxinequaye is a late-night classic. It’s Great was a late release in the year, if I remember right, but really came into it’s own the summer of ’96, when it was made for sunny streets, beer gardens and barbecues.

    Otherwise, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness wasn’t bad but it was no Siamese Dream. Would have made great Siamese Dream-length single CD but, at the time, I did admire Corgan’s chutzpah in making it a double. Throwing Muses’ University was better than Red Heaven, with Hazing and Shimmer being a couple of the best songs they’ve recorded.

    Also a note of disappointment was with See You On The Other Side. It’s good…but it’s clearly backing away from the insanity of the Baker-era Mercury Rev. I always dismissed the Flaming Lips as Mercury Rev for straights and here were Mercury Rev becoming that very band.

    All in all, pretty much agree with Bingo Little above…once again he’s got it spot on. It’ll be interesting to see where we diverge.

    Finally, Peel Slowly and See was out this year and is the box set of Velvet Underground that, since first discovering them, was all and more that I had wanted. An absolute treasure trove of things to discover.

    • I suspect we’ll diverge in 97 or 98, unless you also went down an ill-judged yet enjoyable Digital Hardcore rabbit hole.

      I have the same memory of It’s Great When You’re Straight. There was about a month in 96 that it sounded perfect, and I think there may have been a couple of appearances on TOTP where it looked like the band were having all the fun, but otherwise it’s not an album I’ve particularly enjoyed. Nothing wrong with having a moment.

      Also agree on the Wu. 6 classic albums between November 1993 and November 1995. Ridiculous.

  21. 1995 is a fine year. I’ll put a vote in too for I Should Coco. Mansize Rooster nearly put me off Supergrass but my word, it’s a fine album.

    Was trying to think what I listened to loads in 1995 – and the Help Album sprung to mind. There was some weird and wonderful stuff on there, but also some crackers and it was all for a very good cause.

  22. 7 again. The one I still play today is The Bends, certainly one of the albums of the decade or of all time. Just an amazing step up after Pablo Honey

    Bit embarrassed that I bought Alanis after hearing it, don’t think I will be listening to that one again or going to the musical that is playing in my city. The Great Escape was hyped up before release, but wasn’t as good as Parklife.

    You are not telling us which was album of the year as seen in the photos, here I see Oasis is “album of the decade”, probably not, but it’s a fine album that doesn’t sound as brilliant today as it did then.

    • I think by having Oasis as album of the decade, they are also assigning it as album of that year. I’ll mention the album of the year more clearly in the remaining years.

      • I also think you’re being hard on Alanis! I didn’t buy it at the time, but picked it up cheap a couple ofyears back (it’s one of the most ubiquitous second hand CDs). Good album! Lots of good tunes and You Oughta Know is just fantastic. The follow up is much harder work.

        • You Oughta Know has a shout for being THE emblematic song of the 90s.

          I pretended so hard to dislike it when it first came out, but it’s so ace, and so completely of that decade.

            • I think it was held against her that she’d had a previous incarnation as a dance pop artist. She wasn’t “authentic”. Plus, the songs were nakedly commercial and absolutely everywhere. And then the “record for the girls” stuff is probably true as well.

              Alanis also didn’t fall into any known camp. She clearly wasn’t Britpop sounding, nor was she really a remnant of Grunge. She wasn’t overly arty, and she wasn’t messing around with genre. She was kind of in a little category all of her own, maybe even a category she invented. That’s partly what allowed her to have such enormous mainstream success, but also what alienated “serious music fans” such as myself circa this time.

              • I seem to recall a grumbling that Alanis Morisette co-wrote her material with a fella, which was judged as somewhat negating the strong female message of her songs. Nonsense, of course – she wrote the lyrics, and the best thing about living in our post-Woolworths/Top 40/Radio 1 stranglehold is very simple: if it’s good, who bloody cares how the song came to exist?

  23. Most of these were ubiquitous at the time but the only ones I actually bought were the Morrisette and Radiohead.

    Others that year
    Pieces of You by Jewell, and Relish by Joan Osborne, but discovered that both were classic cases of an album with a great single which turns out to be far and away the best thing on it
    Days Like this by Van – claimed at the time to be a Return to Form, but apart from a handful of tracks, it really wasn’t
    Ghost of Tom Joad by Springsteen – tends to get dismissed but it remains one of my favourite albums by him
    Stanley Road by Paul Weller – played a lot at the time but can’t remember when I last gave it a spin

    But like what Kid Dynamite says, Emmylou Harris’s Wrecking Ball was and remains one of the truly great albums of the decade. It still sounds as brilliant as it did when I bought in 1995.

          • Well opinions. My Best … is one of the worst things he ever did for me and doesn’t fit the album at all. Generally he was lacking inspiration in the 90s I think, only released 3 albums and none were completely satisfactory. Ghost is more of a set of poems than songs, but 3 or 4 tunes are great, title track, Youngstown, Highway 29, rest of the album is a bit samey and difficult.

            • The overall sound and melodic character is fairly one dimensional but I think it fits entirely what he’s trying to do with the songs which capture an. American underclass struggling to make things meet, and to find meaning in their lives. As well as the songs you mention, The Line and Across the Border are heartbreaking and absolutely up there amongst my very favourite Springsteen songs. ‘My Best’ is a little throwaway at the end of the record which seems like a bit of light relief, but actually once again is about someone whose life hasn’t turned out the way he wanted. I bow to your much greater knowledge of Springsteen @dai, but I honestly think the album’s an under appreciated masterpiece.

                  • Makes my top 12:

                    1 Born to Run
                    2 Darkness
                    3 WIESS
                    4 Born in the USA
                    5 Tunnel of Love
                    6 Nebraska
                    7 Western Stars
                    8 The River
                    9 Magic
                    10 The Rising
                    11 Devils and Dust
                    12 TGOTJ
                    13 Greetings from Asbury Park
                    14 Lucky Town
                    15 Letter to You
                    16 Wrecking Ball
                    17 Seeger Sessions
                    18 High Hopes
                    19 Working on a Dream
                    20 Human Touch

                    Greetings may be a bit low actually

                    • I like Born To Run, Darkness and Nebraska as whole albums. But apart from those three, while there are many very fantastic tracks, there are no other whole albums I like.

                    • Bruce Springsteen currently getting A LOT of stick in the Italian media for going ahead with his concert in Ferrara tonight regardless of all the flooding that has caused 13 deaths and left so many people (estimated 20,000) homeless.

                • Nebraska is a great album, but for me the edge is always taken off slightly by the knowledge that it was essentially Bruce’s failed first draft for the album that eventually became Ghost of Tom Joad. Sometimes you have to get all the mistakes out of your system before you produce a true masterpiece.

                  • First draft for Born in the USA actually. Allegedly the band tried to record it but he preferred the solo versions, and same sessions produced Born in the USA

  24. Bought 5 of those. Only listen to one still. But so glad to finally see some love for my beloved Fannies which I still listen to on an almost weekly basis. Great album, but not their greatest. But I imagine it will be the only one to appear in this series.

    20 Mothers by my other great 90s love Julian Cope is surely worth a mention. Don’t listen much these days but it was both bonkers and great and a pretty good indication of were he was heading. His TOTP appearances both performing and presenting at the time were priceless. Interpreter must surely make the 96 list…

  25. A profusion of decent albums in ‘95, although nothing of Holy Bible level. I bought six of the Q list, the biggest overlap so far: career best efforts from Tricky, Teenage Fanclub, Radiohead and Leftfield as well as The Great Escape and Different Class.
    TGE is, in my view, unfairly maligned, although it does suffer from the 90s disease of being indulgently long due to the legroom provided by the CD format.
    The songs from Different Class never sounded better than during Pulp’s triumphant and unexpected Glastonbury set which, I think, was the high water mark of B*****p.
    I also bought and enjoyed/enjoy Dubstar, The Boos, Elastica, Gene, Black Grape (although it does sag in the middle and would have been a breathtaking 6 track E.P.) and Goldie, which, as Bingo has suggested is the one album that makes a virtue of its extended running time. (His singles round up is spot on too).
    I didn’t mind Oasis in ‘94 – I even bought Whatever as I liked the tune and viewed the song as a gleeful celebration of their own limitations, but by the end of 1995 I really couldn’t stand the way their dumbed down ramalama was taking all the oxygen in the room..

    • One of the fun parts of being a teenager in 1995 was having the parents of friends ask who we thought was winning the great Britpop battle between Blur and Oasis, all the while knowing that the war had already been won by Pulp.

      I agree about the dumbed down Ramalama thing. I still have time for a lot of the early music Oasis made, but all the cokey blokey nonsense that eventually went with it was boring at best.

  26. I have 9 of those, all but the TLC, but I only ever play the Pulp, Tricky and Leftfield albums relatively frequently.

    The others I haven’t heard for some considerable time. The Radiohead I liked sufficiently well at the time, but I don’t believe it has aged well. For me, to a certain extent, The Bends became a victim of the shade cast by the later OK Computer, which I quickly grew to loathe as a wallowing whine-fest of epically dull angst and crushingly pompous proportion, particularly once I’d ill-advisedly made the effort to hear them play the thing live.

    A Boombastic ’95 shout from me, though, for the Aimee Mann album, the Porcupine Tree, Del Amitri’s ‘Twisted’ and Morphine’s ‘Yes’ as others from that year that I still rate highly.

  27. Own three (but one of those I put in my -94 list).

    1. Radiohead – The Bends
    2. Wilco – A.M.
    3. Michael Nyman – Live
    4. Brainpool – Painkiller (those Swedes again)
    5. Tricky – Maxinquaye
    6. The Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
    7. Björk – Post
    8. D’Angelo – Brown Sugar
    9. The Jayhawks – Tomorrow The Green Grass
    10. Emmylou Harris – Wrecking Ball

  28. Of the Q10:
    – I bought the Blur album, but didn’t rate it
    – I borrowed the Oasis album, but didn’t rate it.
    Years later I acquired the Teenage Fanclub album, and have always loved it.

    My favourite album of 1995 was “Kate Rusby and Kathryn Roberts”. It was the first time I’d heard the Barnsley Nightingale, and my mind was blown. A genuine classic English folk album.

    I’d also echo what Tigger said about “Steal Away” by Charlie Haden and Hank Jones. Wonderful record.

    A special mention to “Djelika” by Toumani Diabaté. You like kora music? ‘Ave some ‘o this!

    Mentioned in dispatches:

    Natalie Merchant – Tigerlily. A fine solo debut
    Bruce Springsteen – the Ghost of Tom Joad. Contains one of my favourite Bruce songs: “Youngstown”
    Paul Weller – Stanley Road. Played it a lot then. Not so much now.
    Elliott Smith – Elliott Smith. He was getting better and better
    Emmylou Harris – Wrecking Ball. Yeah – very nice.
    Bert Jansch – When the Circus Comes to Town
    Mike Scott – Bring ’em All in. Can’t believe I’m the first person on this thread to mention this album!

    Token jazz album: Myra Melford – Even the Sounds Shine

  29. My first daughter was born in 1995 – my disposable income was NIL.
    But I managed 4 from the 10 at the time (Blur, Oasis, Pulp & Radiohead), plus Supergrass, Paul Weller and Elastica, and more 1995 releases arrived later.
    Late arrivals (which may not be in the 10, but would probably inhabit a Top 40):
    Black Grape – Its Great When You’re Straight … Yeah!
    Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters
    Cast – All Change
    Niuck Heyward – Tangled

    Just looking at my spreadsheet, I notice I own Ocean Drive by The Lighthouse Family.
    How was that not in the Top 10 …

  30. From my list of Top 28 of 1995 i can spot the following not yet discussed….
    Love Story – Lloyd Cole (melodic, jangly, very Commotions like…)
    Gorgeous George – Edwyn Collins (everyone talks about A Girl Like You but If You Could Love Me was way better
    Scream Dracula Scream – Rocket From The Crypt (saw them on TV perform On A Rope, was blown away…)
    The Buddha of Surburbia – Bowie (better than Outside)
    The Charlatans – The Charlatans (they were the Stones while Oasis thought they were the Beatles)

  31. Of course, you’re all wrong. I spent quite a bit of that and the following year working in warehouses or driving vans, listening to commercial radio. We were really all listening to Seal’s Kiss from a Rose and the Lighthouse Family.

  32. Bought Blur, Alanis, Tricky, Oasis, Pulp and Radiohead. All strong albums but I can’t remember the last time I played any of them. Maybe when I ripped them?
    Off to check out some of your other suggestions further up.

  33. What a great year! I have 6 all bought at the time Blur, Pulp, Radiohead, Teenage Fanclub, Tricky, Oasis. Through in Emmy Lou, Black Grape, the Jimi Hendrix Blues album and more …

    I had plenty of time to listen that summer too as I was off works for a few weeks after an operation. Towards the end of that time I came to Essex where I now live for the wedding of some old friends. I remember meeting my now-partner at the reception, possibly the first time we met though it was another 14 years before we got together as a couple.

  34. NME top 20:

    1. Maxinquaye – Tricky
    2. (Whats The Story) Morning Glory – Oasis
    3. It’s Great When You’re Straight..Yeah! – Black Grape
    4. The Bends – Radiohead
    5. Grand Prix – Teenage Fanclub
    6. I Should Coco – Supergrass
    7. Different Class – Pulp
    8. To Bring You My Love – Pj Harvey
    9. The Great Escape – Blur
    10. Timeless – Goldie
    11. Elastica – Elastica
    12. Foo Fighters – Foo Fighters
    13. The Second Tindersticks Album – Tindersticks
    14. Wake Up! – The Boo Radleys
    15. Hot Charity – Rocket From The Crypt
    16. Wowee Zowee – Pavement
    17. A Northern Soul – The Verve
    18. The Charlatans – The Charlatans
    19. Garbage – Garbage
    20. Exit Planet Dust – The Chemical Brothers

  36. I didn’t actually listen to them until 1996, but I just realised that both Delete Yourself by Atari Teenage Riot and the Digital Hardcore compilation Harder Than The Rest both came out in 1995.

    Opened up a two year window in which I listened to lots of drill and bass with teutonic screaming overlaid.

    That said, Harder Than The Rest did include a track by Christoph De Babalon, whose icy, post-industrial soundscapes and determined minimalism were 10 years ahead of their time.

  37. It was a fantastic year for electonic music. In addition to the above, and the Coldcut mix album regularly features in the ‘top 10 mixes of all time ‘ lists, it is amazing, there was..
    Aphex Twin – I care because you do…
    Spanners by Sheffield wierdos Black Dog (are they the UK Residents?)
    Everything Is Wrong by Moby (pre-Play he was bearable, this also had a lot of stuff about animal rights in the notes)
    Tri Repetae by Autechre
    and of course Mixmag Live! by Richie Hawtin. Minimal techo miracles.

  38. This is the greatest year ever for 1990s albums. I own all 10.

    1979 was the greatest year ever for singles…buy the Now 79 4 CD set and the accompanying 3 CD add on and you will see how great and diverse we were as music listeners back then as well.

  39. Is everyone forgetting the true musical geniuses at the heart of 1995? The duo who capped off a terrific year with a classic single that went straight to everyone’s heart?

    Oooooooh maaaaaeee luuuuv, muh daaaarlinnnng, ah hunger for your luuuuuuuuv….

    I worked at the record counter in Woolworths that year and we had a drawerful of those CDs that sold out in about an afternoon. And ONE copy of the Beatles single that no one bought.

      • And how utterly bizarre that the single came out two weeks ‘after’ it was on Anthology 1.
        Doesn’t the record company go, two weeks ‘before’ Anthology 1…
        “Let It Be… 1970… Bang, there you are, Free As A Bird… first Beatles’ single for 25 years!! Fill yer boots!!!”
        It would have got to No. 1 then.

        • Did have some bonus additional tracks on the CD single I think. Also Baby It’s You had been released as a single from the BBC album (and there were a few others in the 70s,as well as the best forgotten Movie Medley). However, yes, first “new” single since 1970, although in a contrived way

    • I think it’s Up on The Roof by R&J I heard some time last year or so on Pick of the Pops having studiously avoided it in 1995.

      How it was possible to suck so much soul out of a record, I do not know. Liked Soldier, Soldier though.

Leave a Reply