[nostalgia trip] SPIN Top 20 of 1991

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by CraigVC, Dec 15, 2011.

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  1. CraigVC

    CraigVC Senior Member Thread Starter

    Location:
    Portland, OR
    http://www.spin.com/articles/spins-20-best-albums-1991

    20. Hole - Pretty on the Inside (Caroline)
    19. Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion I & II (Geffen)
    18. Mudhoney - Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge (Sub Pop)
    17. De La Soul - De La Soul Is Dead (Tommy Boy)
    16. Seal - Seal (Virgin)
    15. Pearl Jam - Ten (Epic)
    14. Urge Overkill - The Supersonic Storybook (Touch and Go)
    13. Fugazi - Steady Diet of Nothing (Dischord)
    12. Massive Attack - Blue Lines (Virgin)
    11. Metallica - Metallica (Elektra)
    10. P.M. Dawn - Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience (Island)
    9. Smashing Pumpkins - gish (Caroline)
    8. Soundgarden - Badmotorfinger (A&M)
    7. Public Enemy - Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black (Def Jam)
    6. Robyn Hitchcock - Perspex Island (A&M)
    5. Pet Shop Boys - Discography (EMI)
    4. Pixies - Trompe le Monde (Elektra)
    3. Nirvana - Nevermind (DGC)
    2. R.E.M. - Out of Time (Warner Bros.)
    1. Teenage Fanclub - Bandwagonesque (DGC)
     
  2. Interesting list. It surprises me that so many of these albums still have an excellent reputation 20 years later.
     
  3. Tangledupinblue

    Tangledupinblue Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    I take it My Bloody Valentine and A Tribe Called Quest weren't that well known back in 1991 then?
     
  4. mfp

    mfp Senior Member

    Location:
    Paris, France
    Loveless was on every year-end list in my country, often on topping it.
     
  5. GetHappy!!

    GetHappy!! Forum Resident

    Location:
    NYC
    Not in the states. A huge disconnect at that point - forgetting albums for a second, the only two singles from the UK I remeber being big around NYC in spring/summer '91 were Blur's "There's No Other Way" and The Charlatans "The Only One I Know".

    And as for mainstream tastes, it was truly abysmal, this being the time of MC Hammer and his oversized pants.

    Still love Bandwagonesque. Listened to Out Of Time so much that summer, that I haven't really felt the urge to listen to it much since. You could feel how big Nirvana was going to hit, but I never held a place in my heart for them. :sigh: I'll go hide now...:hide:
     
  6. ARK

    ARK Forum Miscreant

    Location:
    Charlton, MA, USA
    I gotta say that I'm shocked that Achtung Baby is not on there.
     
  7. Davey

    Davey NP: Hania Rani/Dobrawa Czocher ~ Inner Symphonies

    Location:
    SF Bay Area, USA
    Not that it really matters, but might've been one of those late in the year type releases. Loveless and Achtung Baby did wind up on their best of the 90s list.

    Spin: Top 90 Albums Of The 90's
    1. Nevermind - Nirvana (Dgc, 1991)
    2. Fear Of A Black Planet - Public Enemy (Def Jam, 1990)
    3. To Bring You My Love - Pj Harvey (Island, 1995)
    4. Odelay - Beck (Dgc, 1996)
    5. Slanted And Enchanted - Pavement (Matador, 1992)
    6. Live Through This - Hole (Dgc, 1994)
    7. Post - Bjork (Elektra, 1995)
    8. The Chronic - Dr. Dre (Death Row/Interscope, 1992)
    9. Ok Computer - Radiohead (Capitol, 1997)
    10. Dig Your Own Hole - The Chemical Brothers (Astralwerks, 1997)
    11. The Downward Spiral - Nine Inch Nails (Nothing/Interscope, 1994)
    12. Check Your Head - Beastie Boys (Grand Royal/Capitol, 1992)
    13. Exile In Guyville - Liz Phair (Matador, 1993)
    14. Maxinquaye - Tricky (Island, 1995)
    15. Endtroducing... - Dj Shadow (Mo' Wax/Ffrr, 1996)
    16. Loveless - My Bloody Valentine (Sire, 1991)
    17. The Score - Fugees (Columbia, 1996)
    18. In Utero - Nirvana (Dgc, 1993)
    19. Achtung Baby - U2 (Island, 1991)
    20. Play - Moby (V2, 1999)
     
  8. walrus

    walrus Staring into nothing

    Location:
    Nashville
    Neither was Primal Scream, apparently. Then again, most of my favorite music of the 90's was virtually ignored by everyone here.
     
  9. Tremaindous

    Tremaindous Forum Resident

    Pet Shop Boys #5 - Love it!
     
  10. gmku

    gmku Active Member

    Location:
    Asheville, NC, USA
    Wow. yeah. I was all over about 90 percent of that list! A great year in music!
     
  11. thebunk

    thebunk Senior Member

    I think Bandwagonesque may actually have held up better then all of those albums. Criminally underrated band.
     
  12. Jeff K

    Jeff K Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Eastern, PA. USA
    It really has. Sounds as wonderful now as the day it was released.
     
  13. hi_watt

    hi_watt The Road Warrior

    Location:
    San Diego, CA
    Yep, takes me back to middle school. Guns N Roses, Pearl Jam, P.M. Dawn, all of that. Sniff...
     
  14. Tangledupinblue

    Tangledupinblue Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    Looks a much better list than the 1991 one, but still a few genres are underrepresented (there are many better hip hop albums that could and should have been on the list, notably Illmatic, Liquid Swords, either of the first two 90s A Tribe Called Quest albums) and no Massive Attack and Portishead are glaring omissions.

    In fairness to Loveless though, it wasn't released until November in 1991, so maybe that list had already pretty much been compiled by then.
     
  15. Davey

    Davey NP: Hania Rani/Dobrawa Czocher ~ Inner Symphonies

    Location:
    SF Bay Area, USA
    Well, it is Spin, but I only posted the top 20. Massive Attack and Portishead are on the list, just not top 20.

    http://www.rocklistmusic.co.uk/spin100.html#Spins Top 90 Albums of the 90s
     
  16. Tangledupinblue

    Tangledupinblue Forum Resident

    Location:
    London, UK
    OK, but I still maintain all of the ones I listed should be top 20 - but then not everyone is going to agree with me there!

    Interesting how differently the 90s albums are ranked in the 1985-2005 list than in the 90s one itself - also forgot to mention Jeff Buckley's Grace earlier, very surprised it didn't even make the 90s top 100.
     
  17. Mechanical Man

    Mechanical Man I Am Just a Mops

    Location:
    Oakland, CA, USA
    Strange to see P.M. Dawn rated so high, but the rest of the list holds up quite well I think. Certainly most of these artists were all over MTV at the time with just a few exceptions. Even songs like Teenage Fanclub's "The Concept" and P.E.'s "By the Time I Get to Arizona" were in heavy rotation on that channel.
     
  18. Captain Groovy

    Captain Groovy Senior Member

    Location:
    Freedonia, USA
    Boy - I've been "out of it" for a long time now. And I was only 16 in '91!

    Jeff
     
  19. mschrist

    mschrist Forum Resident

    Location:
    Madison, WI
    You can read the December 1991 issue of Spin at Google Books here. From reading it over, with an eye toward the omissions mentioned above:

    - U2's "Achtung Baby" is reviewed in the issue, and it's an ambivalent review, almost maddening in its refusal to really commit in the positive or negative direction. The most telling passage is "an ambitious failure and by almost any standards an excellent record", two mutually exclusive things if I've heard them. The review seems to lean negative, so I suspect that the album's exclusion from the best-of list was a conscious decision.

    - MBV's "Loveless" is also reviewed in the issue's "gift guide", and it gets a yellow on a red-yellow-green (bad-OK-good) scale. Again, the album was probably excluded from the best-of list as an editorial decision. (In fairness, I don't think people in the U.S. really grasped what they had in MBV at the time.) Both the "Achtung Baby" and "Loveless" reviews are written by senior editor Jim Greer, so if you want to send some bewildering hate mail, consider sending me money instead.

    - Primal Scream got a write-up in the issue, so it's not like they were invisible to Spin's staff. I remember the video to "Movin' On Up" airing as a Buzz Clip on MTV, although that had to be late in 1991--if it was in 1991 at all--since the Buzz Clips didn't start until that fall. Unlike "Loveless", however, I don't think people in the U.S. even to this day really think of "Screamadelica" as a masterpiece the way people in the U.K. do.

    For comparison, here's a link to the Village Voice's "Pazz and Jop" poll from 1991, where U2's "Achtung Baby" appears at #4, MBV's "Loveless" at #14, and Primal Scream not at all. What a spectacular year for pop music that was. (Not so much for designer clothes--looking through the magazine, ugh, those ads!) I got to be a teenager during that time--lucky me.
     
  20. agentalbert

    agentalbert Senior Member

    Location:
    San Antonio, TX
    Never heard of Teenage Fanclub or Robyn Hitchcock. These days I'm not surprised to find I've never or barely heard of most artists on any best of list, but for a 1991 (year I graduated H.S.) list, I'm surprised any of those are beyond my awareness.
     
  21. BRush

    BRush Senior Member

    Location:
    Los Angeles
    Young Adult Soundtrack

    I just got back from seeing the film "Young Adult" and was very surprised to hear Teenage Fanclub's "The Concept" from Bandwagonesque as it's theme song, alongside tunes by the Replacements, Lemonhead, Dinosaur Jr, Cracker....

    Teenage Fanclub ("The Concept" is arguably the theme of the film
     
  22. Driver 8

    Driver 8 Senior Member

    Yeah, Loveless came out very late in the year, much as the Black Keys' El Camino did this year. Among the Anglophile crowd here in the States, Loveless was a Big Deal, although it took awhile for magazines like Spin to pick up on that, iirc. At the time, I got my music news from the Melody Maker, not from Spin.
     
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