The best albums of the 1990s

published 29 September 2024

The 1990s was the most eclectic and downright transformative decade of popular music yet seen. It's an argument. Admittedly, the person making such an argument is a geriatric millennial who was very much of that time, but hear me out.

This was a decade that started with the fragile digital purity of the compact disc (that’s the CD) taking over from vinyl as the format of choice, and ended with the emergence of the MP3 format and online file sharing.

In musical terms, the ’90s saw dramatic swings and developments in the types of music people listened to. It saw the emergence of so-called "indie" or "alternative" music into the mainstream, while at the same time hip-hop and R&B took turns dominating the pop charts.

This was also the decade electronic music started mutating in weird and wonderful ways, into rave, trance, drum ‘n’ bass, trip hop, and countless variations of house and techno. And let’s not forget all that wonderful glossy pop.

The ’90s was an interesting time for music, alright, and it also marked arguably the last full decade where the album format truly mattered. All of which is why a consideration of the best albums of the ’90s is such a fascinating – and hotly contested – thing. How on Earth can you even hope to cover everyone’s tastes with such a list?

You can’t of course, but we’re going to have a good go. Let’s start with a restrained list of 20 and, via future updates, hopefully go from there. Be sure to vote for your favourite below – or just wait patiently until your favoured ’90s artist (or even genre) gets some recognition.

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The best albums of the 1990s

To their many fans, Radiohead effectively completed rock with OK, Computer before moving on to more interesting things. After two relatively conventional guitar albums, the band seemed to get restless and started playing around with unorthodox sounds and elaborate song structures.Paranoid Android continues to be one of the most out-there songs to ever trouble the top of the pop charts, while Karma Police and No Surprises effectively pre-empted a decade of sensitive rock anthems, few of which would get anywhere close to the majesty of the source material.

Nirvana die-hards would no doubt argue Nevermind isn’t even Nirvana’s best album of the ’90s, let alone one of the best albums of the decade. But it was such a seismic achievement, it would be crazy to omit it.This was the album that truly broke the hard rock sub-genre of grunge into the mainstream, paving the way for Nirvana’s contemporaries and countless successors with sludgy guitar riffs and self-lacerating lyrics to fill out stadiums. None of the wannabes could ever match Curt Cobain’s way with a melody though, nor his visceral vocal performances.

The recent fuss over the Oasis reunion is all the more remarkable when you consider the Manchester band only made two decent albums in seven attempts. As even band leader Noel Gallagher would accept, their 1994 debut was the best of the lot.That’s a testament to the swirling, snarling, cocksure energy of Definitely Maybe, which starts as the band would mean to go on with the boisterous Rock ‘n’ Roll Star. Live Forever, Slide Away, Supersonic, Columbia, and Cigarettes & Alcohol all ensure that any truly honest and chronologically ordered Oasis Best Of would be comically front-loaded.

You won’t have to scour too many music forums to discover a disgruntled Gen Xer asserting REM were only good in the ’80s. It’s pure snobbery to dismiss the band’s commercial peak out of hand, of course. It’s also patently inaccurate, as a listen of Automatic for the People will confirm.The band had largely stepped away from their original jangly sound, but the stately majesty of Drive, Nightswimming, and Find the River can’t be denied. That’s not even to mention that two of the band’s biggest hits live here in Everybody Hurts and Man on the Moon.

Pulp may not have kicked up as much dust as Oasis or Blur (though stage-invading a Michael Jackson performance certainly made a splash), but they were a lot of people’s favourite Britpop band of the mid-’90s. Different Class was their breakthrough moment. Its roster of perfectly poised guitar pop songs sent their popularity soaring.Common People was arguably the defining anthem of the entire scene, but Mis-Shapes, Disco 2000, Sorted for E’s & Wizz, and Underwear all match it for hooky choruses and witty class-conscious lyrics.

In between defining UK rave with 1992 debut Experience, and crossing over to the music festival circuit with 1997’s The Fat of the Land, The Prodigy released arguably their most important album. Music For The Jilted Generation was a dance record with a political purpose, that being to kick against the UK government’s high profile clampdown on the burgeoning rave scene.The group’s response to heavy handed policing and draconian legislation was a full on frontal assault of pounding drums and screeching electronics, all designed to get young people dancing in defiance.

Like Bristol contemporaries Massive Attack, Portishead managed to break the restrictive shackles of the "trip hop" label. There was some kind of alchemy to the mixture of Beth Gibbons’s keening vocals, Geoff Barrow’s scratchy soundtrack atmospherics, and Adrian Utley’s languid guitar.With Dummy, they showed they had the songs to back up such a singular sound. It all starts with the spooky sci-fi of Mysterons and the spy movie intrigue of Sour Times, then runs through the pulsating Wandering Star and the devastatingly funereal Roads, ending up with the sultry hip hop noir of Glory Box.

Jeff Buckley only released one album before his tragic death at 30, and it didn’t exactly rip up any trees amidst a 1994 music scene dominated by grunge (in the US) and Britpop (in the UK). The right people were listening, however, including bands like Radiohead and esteemed artists such as Bowie and Dylan.Appreciation for Grace has only grown in the years since its release. The album is anchored by impeccably performed rock epics like the title track and Last Goodbye, while Buckley’s sensitive rendition of Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah has arguably become the definitive version. That voice…

Metallica’s self-titled 1991 album came to be known as The Black Album – chiefly a reference to the LP’s pitch black cover and unadorned nomenclature, but also perhaps a sly nod to its monumental significance in the band’s wider library by way of a cheeky Beatles reference.The album was a landmark example of mature, ambitious hard rock, containing two of the band’s most iconic singles in Enter Sandman and Nothing Else Matters. The riffage is undeniable, James Hetfield’s vocals are on rumbling form, and the production signalled the band was about ready for that stadium tour.

None of the bands associated with the so-called trip hop movement of the ’90s wanted anything to do with such a gauche label, and you can see why when you listen to Massive Attack’s Mezzanine.Here is an album that truly crosses genre boundaries, melding clattering hard rock drums and brooding alt-rock guitars to throbbing dub bass lines, moody hip hop verses, and classic reggae-inflected melodies. Opener Angel rocked hard and dark, while Teardrop is one of the most gorgeously unorthodox ballads of this or any other decade.

Having dispensed with the obnoxious proto-rap-rock of their early days in the kaleidoscopic Paul’s Boutique, and then forged a new commercially viable path with Check Your Head, Beastie Boys made arguably their defining statement with 1994’s Ill Communication.With this album the New York group’s varied influences were allowed to flow and meld, harmoniously combining elements of hip hop, rock, funk and jazz to thrilling effect. This sprawling hour-long album covers a lot of musical ground, but also features arguably the band’s signature single in Sabotage.

As the only ’90s album to come from one of dance music’s biggest and most influential acts, Homework was always likely to be in with a shout of inclusion on this list. Fortunately we can say that it’s here on merit, the band’s irresistible "French Touch" sound arriving fully formed.In tracks like Da Funk and Around the World, Daft Punk laid the groundwork for repetitive beats to be dragged out of the clubs and into the light of music festivals and daytime radio stations the world over.

Public Enemy kicked off the ’90s with one of the major accomplishments in all of hip hop. The unique formula of Chuck D’s searingly political rhymes layered over a dense collage of samples from ace production outfit The Bomb Squad proved irresistible at the time, and still holds considerable power today.Hearing Fear of a Black Planet back in 1990 must have left listeners in no doubt this was going to be the decade when hip hop blew up. When final track Fight the Power rolled around, they might even have have expected a revolution.

This debut effort from Wu Tang Clan announced the talents of one of the biggest and most influential rap groups of the ‘90s – if not all time. Members such as RZA, Method Man, Ghostface Killah, and Ol’ Dirty Bastard would go on to become foundational figures for modern hip hop – and it all started here.Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) demonstrated the group’s aggressive style from the off, with nine distinct voices vying for lines. Meanwhile, the influence of classic kung fu movies proves as pronounced as anything from their musical antecedents.

Loveless manages to hit a state of musical nirvana, freed from staid concepts of form or genre. It’s a mass of gorgeous, overwhelming sound, combining dream pop ambience with alt-rock guitar noise, while finding space for dance music’s synthesised wooziness.Tastemakers would come to call the result "shoegaze," but this wasn’t music to stare at the ground to. Stargaze was already taken as a phrase, of course, and innerconciousnessgaze is a bit of a mouthful, but both together get closer to the way My Bloody Valentine’s masterpiece makes you feel.

It’s all too easy to forget just how massive The Fugees were in the ’90s, but it took core member Lauryn Hill to make the group’s defining musical contribution with her one and only solo album.The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill is a stunning concept album positively bursting with lushly orchestrated, soulful hip hop. It’s also shot through with insightful lyrics touching on love, race, feminism and spirituality, ultimately making it a touchstone for subsequent generations of hip hop artists looking to make it big while having something to say.

DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing is a key text in the emergence of a new brand of sample-heavy instrumental hip hop, arriving at a time when hip hop itself seemed to be steering towards glossier, simpler productions.California native DJ Josh Davis headed to the UK and put his eclectic record collection to expert use, fusing together disparate elements of funk, rock, metal, and disco. It remains an absolute crate digger’s delight, and you can hear its audio collage influence in countless subsequent productions throughout the 2000s and beyond.

British band Talk Talk were in a curious situation by the time Laughing Stock rolled around in 1991. Having caught a glimpse of pop stardom in the mid ’80s, band leader Mark Hollis had banked hard left, producing the critically acclaimed but commercially disappointing Spirit of Eden.For their final album, Hollis and co doubled down and let their creative juices flow. The result is Laughing Stock, one of the most painstakingly produced, impeccably recorded albums of the decade. Its songs ebb and flow, ranging from whisper-quiet to a finely orchestrated maelstrom – but always sounding heart-breakingly beautiful.

Who on Earth are Boards of Canada? And what in heaven’s name is Music Has the Right to Children, the duo’s genre-eschewing debut album? They’re two questions that still require some answering some 30 years on from the group’s enigmatic emergence.We’re definitely in the realm of electronic music here, with breakbeats and synths forming the core components. But the album also sounds resolutely analogue, underpinned by dusty samples taken from old public service recordings, seemingly distorted by time and the elements. This is head music of the most transportive variety, from an album that still sounds totally fresh.

After starting her solo career with a pair of hyperactive UK club-inflected albums, Icelandic artist Björk took herself and her sound to other shores. The influence of her home country, in particular, is clearly felt in Homogenic.Swooning strings, sparse arrangements and stuttering electronics are very much the order of the day here, lending it the feeling of an avant-garde movie soundtrack. The resulting body of work represents one of the lushest, most concise and most cohesive albums in Björk’s formidable oeuvre.

Jon Mundy is a freelance writer with more than a dozen years of experience writing for leading tech websites such as TechRadar and Trusted Reviews.

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The best albums of the 1990s

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The best albums of the 1990s