This is a list of 1990s music albums that multiple music journalists, magazines, and professional music review websites have considered to be among the best of the 1990s and of all time, separated into the years of each album's release. The albums listed here are included on at least four separate "best/greatest of the 1990s/all time" lists from different professional publications (inclusive of all genres and nationalities) as chosen by their editorial staffs or by a sample size of an entire publication's audience, and/or hall of fame awards and historical preservation measures.
NME's "The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time": #234[2]
Uncut's "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1990s": #254[3]
Grammy for Best Alternative Music Album[147]
Praised for the lyrical "realism" that Snoop Dogg delivers on the album and for his distinctive vocal flow.[233][235]
Uncut's "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1990s": #122[3]
Uncut's "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1990s": #27[3]
Uncut's "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1990s": #141[3]
Uncut's "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1990s": #330[3]
Paste's "The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time": #175[14]
Uncut's "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1990s": #246[3]
(CD Version: June 8, 1998)
Paste's "The 300 Greatest Albums of All Time": #300[14]
Uncut's "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1990s": #139[3]
Diariocrítico's The 100 Best Albums of the 90s: #69[456]
NME's "The 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time": #181[49]
Uncut's "The 500 Greatest Albums of the 1990s": #224[3]
From #1 to number nowhere, Cauty and Drummond turned their attention away from the mainstream and concentrated, instead, upon ambient music. While Cauty founded The Orb, Chill Out (1990), an album still regarded highly by dance-trance aficionados, was released by the band under the new name of The KLF. Sadly, like the other records the band released during their ambient phase, it didn't sell particularly well.
The KLF's 1990 Chill Out album had pioneered the tautological 'ambient house', mixing train noises, post-punk dub and pre-punk Floyd.
An audio collage of everything from Elvis to the Tuvan throat singing of Siberia, the album tells the story of an imaginary night-time journey from Texas to Louisiana.
The KLF's extraordinary 1990 ambient sonic collage Chill Out was the landmark: a forty-five-minute, distinctly tongue-in-cheek odyssey through sound effects and environmental noise..
By 1990, when Cocteau Twins released Heaven or Las Vegas—their final album for 4AD, the independent UK label that had shepherded their journey from post-punk mystics to ambient-pop dream-weavers...
...the complex, pastoral post-rock of final two albums Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock.
...the Scream's urban-guerrilla guise was as much a fleeting phase as the acid-house love-in of 1991's Screamedelica...
Lovey is certainly not the confident, accessible grunge of Ray
With G-funk crumbling pavements in the Wild West, Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde offered a breezier boom-bap alternative.
Arguably it was Orbital, and this album in particular, that cemented the idea of a dance long-player as a cohesive artistic statement...
Siamese Dream is a powerful collection of the Pumpkins' psychedelic indie-rock sound mixed with Billy Corgans and doomy lyrics.
Last Splash thrust the Breeders...into the surf-grunge sunshine.
Pavement's decision to graft a shadow history of '60s and '70s California folk-rock and psychedelia onto the abrasive, Fall-inspired noise of their previous sound made total sense...
Outside of all those particulars, though, and applying the narrative to Britain itself as well as how Britpop figured in here, is the fact that Definitely Maybe was the final shot in the first round of the genre's peak.
...his second solo record was a turning point for the then-44-year-old rocker into a wiser era, strolling through folk, blues, and rock...
...Different Class, a full-length that alchemized bubblegum, glam, and luxe new wave into artful pop.
All that this record represents has basically fallen from grace rather awkwardly, and the few truly great albums of the whole Chicago Instrumental Post Rock Jazz Fusion scene...
the lush g-funk of All Eyez On Me
...these songs set the standard for pretty much all indie pop that was to come.
Without Björk, electronic and art-pop music would not exist in the same capacity that it does today.
Coincidences aside, though, "Love and Theft" cemented Dylan's late-era resurgence, assuring listeners that 1997's Time Out of Mind hadn't been a fluke. Even grittier and dirtier than its blues rock predecessor, the record roars through an old-time South whose gentility has been corrupted and sullied by an album's worth of rogues, scoundrels, and treacherous women who bring only pain.
The music calls back to ancestral country and roadhouse blues, but it's not a retro sound.
If one single event could be identified as triggering the refurbishment of Dylan's fading reputation, it was his 1997 album, Time Out Of Mind. A haunted collection of blues, rockabilly and ballads apparently reaching out from beyond the grave, it confirmed that he hadn't, after all, lost the ability to hypnotise his listeners, nor to mine an indefinable sense of spiritual profundity from the simplest of musical tools.
Lucinda Williams was two decades into her career at the cross-section of country and rock when she finally released her full-length opus...
...this is where the Kentuckian's eccentric vision comes into sharp focus: Appalachian-inspired country-folk, existential musings, vivid storytelling...
...Summerteeth aspired to be nothing less than the alt-country Pet Sounds.
...The Soft Bulletin [provides a] breathtaking symphonic-rock rapture [that] is ultimately a function of escapist fantasia...
This album blew the fuck out of anyone who heard it back in '99. The result, of course, was backlash against overstated hype. No one wants to hear about how (s)he must hear the BEST POP ALBUM OF OUR TIME...