Millennial lists the best albums of the 90s. Older commenters are furious!

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itsmestanard@reddit

Lol at everyone in this thread. Is it a pretentious list? Yes. Is it more of just a personal favourites list? Yes. Is it a bad list? No.

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My problem with the list is it feels like they made a list and then worked backwards tweaking it to make it more subversive. A good chunk of these picks are the bands second best album of the 90s or a slightly deeper indie/pretentious pick than you normally see on lists like this. Almost every pick seems like the 2nd best option for what they were picking for that specific thing. So it’s not a bad list of music but almost every album wouldn’t be in the top 5 (or 10) of the specific genre they are in.

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idio242@reddit

It’s a list for people who put Animals over Dark Side of the Moon. Ie - me.

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itsmestanard@reddit

Yeah that's a great way of putting it. Other ones I can think of - Vitalogy over Ten. White Album over Sgt Peppers. 13 over Parklife. Portishead s/t over Dummy. This is Hardcore over Different Class. Pornography over Disintegration...

I think it's a pretty great list and I'd already saved it even before this thread to remind me to check out the albums I hadn't heard yet.

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idio242@reddit

Pornography over disintegration - oooooooooooooooooooooh. Idk! So different / so great.

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Inevitable-While-577@reddit

I haven't heard of half of them and that means a lot as a music nerd.

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Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit

Half of them? Maybe change music nerd to music enthusiast.

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itsmestanard@reddit

🤣 harsh but true

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SurrealAle@reddit

It's actually a pretty solid if constrained list. It's definitely not what I was listening to for most of the 90s and feels more turn of the millennium though includes some of my now favourite post rock albums. Definitely try them out, all classics in their own way

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theflush1980@reddit

I was super surprised to see Björk, Boards of Canada and Sigur Ros on this list because I love those albums!

I am really into 90s electronica

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itsmestanard@reddit

Never heard of those last two - but based on the rest they've been added to my list of what to listen to next 😎

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idio242@reddit

Hell yeah! Awesome list

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Lil_Elf81@reddit

Ignoring hip hop and rap off the 90s is a mistake. We undoubtedly got some of the best sound for the genre out of that decade. Albums Dr Dre produced were record-breaking. The genre also has such a variety of sounds and hits. I would say Miseducation of Lauryn Hill- Lauryn Hill, Doggystyle-Snoop Dog, Me Against the World- 2 PAC, The Chronic- Dr Dre, Missy Elliot- Supa Dupa Fly, Nas-Illmatic, Eminem- The Marshall Mathers LP, Wu-Tang Clan- Wu-Tang Forever, and artists like LL Cool J, Public Enemy, And many more had incredible influence on today’s hip hop and R&L.

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temporary_bob@reddit

What a weird list. It did remind me of a few things I hadn't thought about in ages (boards of Canada, neutral milk hotel) but it's missing most of the truly great music changing stuff of the decade.

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pnjtony@reddit

Feels like an art school kids list. Probably valid for them.

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No_Foundation1136@reddit

The problem with the list isn’t that it leans indie and pretentious, it’s that it doesn’t even include the best of those type of albums. No pavement, Portishead, Pixies, Elliot smith, sonic youth, Belle and Sebastian, Wilco.

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catjuggler@reddit

That’s why it must be someone young- they haven’t found a full scope yet but are arrogant enough to think they can declare what was best

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pnjtony@reddit

Probably just rage bait then.

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catjuggler@reddit

Or just whatever we call hipsters now.

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Significant-Rush-129@reddit

No The Chronic? Or 2001 (which came out in 99 so it counts)

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Bland_Boring_Jessica@reddit

Jagged Little Pill was not on it?!

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ToeJamFootballer@reddit

Isn’t it ironic?

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CloseButNoChicory@reddit (OP)

Insufficiently eerie.

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sophietehbeanz@reddit

My top albums at the time would be Blink 182 chesire cat, Smashing Pumpkins Mellon Collie and Infinite Sadness, En Vogue (the very best of), Selena Amor Prohibido, Luis Miguel Romance album, U2, 7 Year Bitch Viva Zapata!, Nirvana (was huge everyone listened to them), The Offspring, and Garth Brooks.

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justforkicks28@reddit

I love Meatloaf! I think I might have been on an island as a kid with that one but I loved Meatloaf.

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idio242@reddit

Solid list. Feel like I should check out the few albums on that list I don’t know, because the others are so great.

Can see how it’s not what most people would expect.

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KittyFun@reddit

C'mon, no Jeff Buckley, Grace?

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deowolf@reddit

Nobody bought that cd - it just magically appeared in everyone’s collection

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lukin5@reddit

Try hard list

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sabremetric@reddit

This list starts really well (and it’s great to see a different list from all the others) - music has the right to children is amazing, low end theory is brilliant - and then we get the bloated, massively disappointing follow up to Siamese Dream, Bjork is a worthy inclusion, and you have to have OK Computer; violator is barely a 90s album though, and hardly represents the decade

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Taupenbeige@reddit

Kinda sad that the album that Radiohead admitted was a heavy influence on the sound of Kid A and Amnesiac is sitting at #10, though

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sabremetric@reddit

MHTRTC and OK Computer are my two favourite albums of the 90s/all time so would definitely place Boards of Canada higher. But this is the highest I’ve ever seen it

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sejenx@reddit

Boards of Canada, wtf is this list? Some of this stuff is from the 80s and also Sigur Ros is for sure early 00s.

🍅 🍅 🍅 to this list

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Taupenbeige@reddit

Boards of Canada, wtf is this list?

See, I didn’t even think that they had bothered to put that album on the list, but seeing that they put it at 10 instead of 1… now I have to start shitting on the article along with everybody else.

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sejenx@reddit

I think this list is skewing heavily non-US and makes a very loose definition of 90s music. While i do enjoy Boards of Canada and recognize they come from the late 90s, they're definitely not on my 90s top 10, not even considered. Im glad Reddit is here to tell me differently.

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Taupenbeige@reddit

As far as I’m concerned, there were crude caveman grunts, twangs and bangings until the Brothers Sandison appeared bearing the Holy Yamaha CS-80, elevating humanity out of the primordial soup. The 90’s began in 1998.

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10J18R1A@reddit

No Nirvana is insane, and that's not even the best Tribe album

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LemurCat04@reddit

It’s fucking Collider. It’s not a mainstream publication like Spin or Rolling Stone. Of course there’s no Nirvana.

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No_Foundation1136@reddit

If they are only going to include one rap album to be cool they shouldn’t even include rap because even if your just using it to have the “look at me, I’m so cool” pick like tribe it’s nuts to leave off illmatic, fear of a black planet, enter the wu tang. I would respect the list and author a little more if they pandered better.

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CloseButNoChicory@reddit (OP)

Yeah, I was thinking reading that: if every single one of the albums on that list I've never listened to is better than either In Utero or Nevermind, it would have been IMPOSSIBLE to escape encountering them.

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kl1n60n3mp0r3r@reddit

That was a horrible POS “article” slapped together by an AI (or human with AI) with horrendous music taste and absolutely nonsense of anything about the 90’s whatsoever.

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Underfyre@reddit

Incredibly pretentious list of albums.

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LemurCat04@reddit

True “unsubscribe me from your mailing list” type shit.

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BritOnTheRocks@reddit

Appreciate the heads up.

gif

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ThresholdSeven@reddit

Do you think that in the 90s, that people were writing bullshit articles about oldies music, and we were none the wiser, but our parents were like, "did you read this fucking bullshit list of "Songs of the 60's"? It's a bunch of crap no one listened to."

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Twanlx2000@reddit

To some degree, yes. If you read any of those old “best ever” Rolling Stone articles, they’re laden with the classic bands that we’d listen to now, but the run-of-the-mill boomer (i.e. my parents), listened to whatever the radio was playing and loved it.

I remember the first day I thought to have an interest in my mom’s vinyl collection, only to be greatly disappointed that it was so standard 60s. But now I understand how that feels from the other side.

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sweat-it-all-out@reddit

Yeah, this article is terrible. If you're going to list Mellon Collie, you have to at least try justifying not listing Siamese Dream instead.

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jiyoungle@reddit

I'm more bothered by the terrible writing style that requires the use of parentheses in every sentence. And the opening paragraph doesn't feel like anything resembling human thought.

With that said, I don't mind the list overall as a list of great albums from my high school and college days.

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Negative-Wrap95@reddit

Violator, Mellon Collie, OK Computer, sure.

I like Björk, but top 10?

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sweat-it-all-out@reddit

Homogenic is a perfect album.

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sudi-@reddit

Unserious list. You can tell by the lack of Coolio that absolutely terrorized every high school in 1995 for months straight.

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IWouldntIn1981@reddit

Maybe in Germany or somewhere else in Europe... definitely not the US.

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GGarlicBreadd_@reddit

We all grew up in different locations with different influences, my top 10 for me would be-

Doggystyle, Enter the wu tang, Its Dark and Hell is hot, Black Sunday, Roots, Slipknot, anti christ superstar, blood sugar sex magic, fat of the land, follow the leader.

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Konnorwolf@reddit

This is a good example of how different things can be. Aside from the radio or MTV I never played any of those. Even your family can influence things in different ways.

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CloseButNoChicory@reddit (OP)

True about family. I first encountered REM because my dad had Automatic for the People at home. Later in my teens I started buying the rest. Plus my own copy of that one!

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testmonkeyalpha@reddit

Their editor probably told them to come up with a list that would piss off as many people as possible to get them to not only engage but get people so angry they share the list with others so they would look at the ~~ads~~ list too.

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CloseButNoChicory@reddit (OP)

They got me. 😭

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three-sense@reddit

Trash

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robotpepper@reddit

I personally think this list is solid.

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goongumpus@reddit

Agreed - many of these albums would have received very little American radio/MTV play, but they were all critically lauded at their time, and are hugely influential on music being made today.

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