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The 90 Greatest Albums of the ’90s
This article originally appeared in the September 1999 issue of SPIN. “You must be high.” We heard that a lot during the time we spent preparing this issue. Which is understandable. Pronouncing the 90 greatest albums of the ’90s is a somewhat presumptuous thing to do. When you’re measuring the music this decade is offering to history—the sounds we partied with, copulated to, fought about, and wept over—everyone has an opinion. That ours should be more valid than yours is debatable. But hey—it’s our magazine. What, then, you ask, constitutes “greatest”? Don’t even start. Suffice it to say that, after much heated discussion and countless veiled insults, it came down to the factors of both remarkable artistry and cultural shock value. Sometimes a record’s knock-you-off-your-Skechers impa...
30 Overlooked 1991 Albums Turning 30 This Year
1991 was a transformative year for rock music, a time when alternative rock and heavy metal entered a new era of commercial dominance. Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden ushered in the explosion of Seattle grunge alongside blockbuster albums by Metallica, R.E.M. and Red Hot Chili Peppers, to say nothing of influential indie classics by My Bloody Valentine, Primal Scream and Slint, or SPIN’s album of the year, Teenage Fanclub’s Bandwagonesque. But while 1991’s hits set the agenda for alternative rock for the rest of the decade, the year was brimming over with fascinating career footnotes and debuts from other promising new bands. In England, the music press was excitedly hyping up genres like shoegaze, baggy, and whatever “grebo” was, while American indie bands like fIREHOSE, the Meat Puppe...
