To commemorate the 1990s, Pitchfork has published our list of the best songs, albums, and one-hit wonders from the decade. Now, artists weigh in on their favorite album picks. Here are answers from Jewel, Maxwell, Damon & Naomi, Built to Spill, and more.
For more of Pitchfork’s 1990s coverage, head here. And read our Editor-in-Chief Puja Patel's note about our ’90s package here.
Beth Orton
This record brought the ’90s in and told us everything we needed to know about the best of what was to come. Nothing could touch their expansive beauty, the seamless gorgeousness of their collective sound. Heaven or Las Vegas heralded a new era of music that has been being born ever since. I will forever feel the hope of being 19 when I hear this record.
Chrystia Cabral (SPELLLING)
Portishead is easily one of my all time favorite ’90s bands. They sound like an extraterrestrial telegram spitting back an amalgamation of all of Earth’s musical grime. The way that they command atmosphere is so raw and mystical. I listened to their ’97 self-titled album obsessively while working on Mazy Fly. In true ’90s fashion, I still have the CD copy of it floating around in my car somewhere.
Damon Krukowski and Naomi Yang (Galaxie 500)
When we first heard Ghost, from Tokyo, we couldn’t believe they were a band in the present tense. At the time, we were immersed in folk and psychedelic classics from the ’60s and ’70s—and here were new recordings that fit right alongside them, not in some revivalist way, but simply in shared spirit. Masaki Batoh sang in a weird English filled with curious vocabulary and grammatical choices, more Shirley Collins than Shonen Knife. It was like he had tapped into an earlier, more flexible version of our language. The arrangements by Taishi Takizawa were wildly free as well, unselfconsciously mixing traditional acoustic instruments with acid rock, and even—this was the last thing anyone expected in the ’90s!—flute. The bass and drums moved with a fluidity and dynamics like we always strove for in our own playing. We were smitten, listening to their first two albums endlessly on repeat. But this was pre-internet, pretty much, and Japan felt very, very far away. We never imagined we could meet Ghost, any more than we could meet the Incredible String Band… until lo and behold, a crowd of Japanese hippies showed up at O’Hare Airport to tour with us and we became best friends forever.
Dawn Richard
This album had a lot of layers for me. It was the lyrical journey that I found myself loving the most. Also, the album art was fucking flawless. A sleeper album that still gets plays today.
Doug Martsch (Built to Spill)
This is one of those rare times when your favorite band makes a new record and it's even better than whatever they had done in the past. I had been listening to Caustic Resin for years and loved all their recordings, most of it four-track stuff. Body Love Body Hate was their first studio album and it was incredible hearing what Brett [Netson] could do in a studio. But Fly Me to the Moon was Brett teaming up with Phil Ek at Reciprocal Studios, taking it to another level. At this time Brett's songwriting and singing voice had reached another level too, and this recording captures it all perfectly. Brett is the best guitar player in the world—he's kind of a less flashy Hendrix. The entire Caustic Resin catalog is amazing but this is the pinnacle to me and the best album of the ’90s. Actually, The Medicine Is All Gone is just as good.
Douglas McCombs (Tortoise)
Warm and Cool is an instrumental guitar record by Tom Verlaine in 1992. He had spent most of the ’80s following up on the groundwork of Television by releasing a series of albums that showcased his knack for inventive guitar arrangements and poetic turns of phrase. Warm and Cool seems to be something different. The song arrangements and guitar playing are casual at times, but not tossed-off or indifferent. They’re sublime and occasionally verging on virtuosic but not for virtuosity’s sake. I guess it’s the kind of playing he’s known for, using tone and selection of notes to build a framework of expression rather than a showcase of skill. In any case, description will not do it justice, so I’ll stop, but I know for sure that Warm and Cool has affected everything I’ve done since 1992.
Gregg Gillis (Girl Talk)
Excellent noisy pop album, every song’s a hit! The production works really well with the style of songwriting. I also love the 33 minute and 15 second run time.
I saw the Breeders in 1997 in Pittsburgh, and they played a bunch of this album. Amazing show! I had to leave as soon as the concert ended because my dad was waiting to pick me up. My friend Richard was able to hang around outside of the venue for a while. Kim Deal eventually came out, and he got her autograph on a T-shirt.
Haley Fohr (Circuit Des Yeux)
Laughing Stock is an album that can steady the darkest of hearts. It is grounding and transformative in a full body way. It changed my life and I want everyone to hear it.
On Laughing Stock, Hollis’ voice hits like a secret someone wishes they weren’t speaking, while the post-rock accompaniment of feedback and clanking drums gives its message a towering magnitude. The arrangements on Laughing Stock encapsulate what we all love so much about the ’90s. There was a real bleeding of colors and borders. There was a hidden optimism found in expressive expansion…a kind of foggy sprawl that naturally alluded to an ability to explore.
Talk Talk utilized light, time, and space as major tools for composition during the making of this record. I read that they brought their own lighting rig, including an intense strobe light, and recorded only to these light sources for months on end. They had dozens of LS sessions only to erase it all later, looking for the right consequence of minimal sound. It’s good to remember that back in 1991 it took as much time to erase something as it did to record it. So essentially, engineer Phill Brown worked with Mark Hollis on erasing for over one year to a constant strobe light in order to arrive at the final edgeless kingdom of Laughing Stock.
Horsegirl
This is one of the coolest punk(ish) albums ever. We have all gifted each other Blonde Redhead records in one way or another over the years and this one is our collective favorite. Experiencing these songs swing from near-silent whispers to shrill screams so organically is truly magical. The energy of this album is so cool––ultimate walking down the street music.
Jewel
Nirvana saw a gap between where culture actually was and what was being played on the radio. They were part of the real world—the world that didn’t think it was a shiny happy place, a carryover of the glitz, stadium rock and material girl realness of the ’80’s. Kids were in pain. And Kurt and Dave and Krist were those kids. And they gave a voice to a generation that felt the same as they did. Outsiders.
I was that generation. How I felt on the inside wasn’t what I saw on TV or heard on the radio. But as the decade progressed, and a disengaged apathy began to set in, I couldn’t afford to be hopeless. As the whole world was saying “I am in pain,” I began to say, “I’m in pain...now what?” Kids needed to hear a new truth—that no one will save your soul if you aren’t willing to save your own. And after one and a half years of working, my song “Who Will Save Your Soul” got played between Belly and Soundgarden. A singer-songwriter. A folk singer. Talking about being sensitive at the height of cynicism.
When I was on the cover of Time and the headline read “Macho music is out. Empathy is in,” I knew I was part of the new punk rock. You see, Punk Rock isn’t a genre—it is a ferocity of authenticity. It’s the outrageous belief in your own voice’s value, even in the face of impossible odds.
Flash forward to now. With all the marches and protests and gun violence and political upheaval and division, I kept thinking, well, here comes Punk Rock again. Here come the songs and songwriters who will galvanize a generation to pull the rug from beneath a slick smug facade to give a voice to what’s really going on.
All of you reading this love music because one song at one time changed your fucking life.
Songs like “What’s Going On,” “American Pie,” “Blowing in the Wind,” “Redemption Song,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” The ’90s had an undeniable vibe. And I see Gen Z picking up where Gen X left off. So here’s to the shit-stirrers. Here is to the disenfranchised. Here’s to those who have gone so far inside themselves to stay alive. We are coming.
John Flansburgh (They Might Be Giants)
Soul Coughing was a great band and Ruby Vroom was a great debut—a new light shining bright right as the music scene seemed to be burning out. Every player brought something completely their own to the sound, but when combined with Mike Doughty’s totally original and phenomenal lyrical style, they achieved a unity as a band that other musicians only dream of. So often critics praise musicians for their authenticity as if inspiration can be spoiled by worldliness, but on Ruby Vroom, Soul Coughing makes a solid argument for the rawness achieved by being musically informed. Drawing on funk and New Orleans rhythms, the hypnotic power of a rock riff, the sonic mystery of an audio sampler being played live as a keyboard through an amp, and lyrics informed equally by beat poetry and contemporary hip-hop, Soul Coughing's Ruby Vroom introduced us to a band like no other before or since.
Maxwell
With Brown Sugar, D’Angelo opened the door. In the UK, you have Omar and Joey P and Soul to Soul—musicians that bring together cross sections of music, cross sections of culture within the music. But I think Brown Sugar was, interestingly enough, the first album to really make that stamp here.
I can speak about The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill in tandem: She combined incredible songwriting and hip-hop seamlessly. I feel like those two records are bookmarks of the era. We, of course, have Mary J. Blige, who’s incredible, and has so much to do with the ‘90s, but something about those two bookmarks was very unique. You can see the effects on modern day music: There’s Alex Isley out there right now, H.E.R. And then Lauryn Hill and D’Angelo ended up doing a duet, which is pretty amazing.
Mike Kinsella (American Football)
Back in the ’90s, hamburgers sucked, moms and dads weren’t ironic, and “’90s albums” were just called “albums.” The one album that probably influenced me the most is Loveless by My Bloody Valentine.
Loveless came out in 1991—the same year Nirvana smelled like teen spirit and Pearl Jam was alive, and, subsequently, every male between the ages of 13 and 33 decided they, their rage, and the four power chords they knew how to play were plenty enough to start a band (including me…) But Loveless threw those four chords into a blender—mixing notes, bending tones, liquifying melodies. The result is all at once lush and heavy and beautiful and loud and restrained and somehow quietly soaring. It’s controlled, lovely chaos. A whisper being screamed.
I’ve been returning to Loveless for over 30 years now, and every album I’ve played in by every band I’ve been in at that time has either politely paid homage to it (see: “Silhouettes” by American Football) or boorishly ripped-off elements of it (see: “Corbeau” by LIES…) All the notes between the notes were truly mind-bending and groundbreaking at the time, and continue to be so as new melodies bubble up with each new listen.
Nick Chaplin (Slowdive)
In the late ’80s and early ’90s when everyone was salivating over the prospect of another My Bloody Valentine album and “shoegaze” was still a genre that NME decreed it was OK to like, we became aware of a strange band from just down the road in Portsmouth who we felt were a bit like us in spirit, but a much more frightening version. And they had cellos. Their mini LP Self-Non-Self was a very dark and uncomfortable listen, with obvious melodies in short supply and an emphasis on noise and what sounded like metal pipes being bashed together to create rhythms—getting to know Jim [Shaw] later, that was probably exactly what was happening. The sound was loud, scary, dense and claustrophobic. There was nothing fey indie whimsical about it. No floppy fringes or bowl cuts in this band. We would later borrow the feel of the massive guitar from “E.G. Shining” for our own song “Spanish Air” from our first album Just for a Day.
Wings of Joy was released in September 1991, and it was glorious. The melodies were still effortlessly sad and beautiful, but in place of the constant aural assault of a couple of years previously, there was suddenly so much space. It is one of those rare records where if I had to pick one song as a favorite, I would genuinely have to consider all of them before making a decision. Today it's “Tomorrow’s Tears.” Tomorrow it might be “Adoration.” Or the re-recorded “Starblood.” Alison’s vocals were like a combination of Liz Fraser and Clare Grogan (she will probably hate me for that description) and her words were hard to make out. The boys looked intimidating in photos—all pseudo metal scowls and dreads. When we finally met them in Amsterdam in 1992 (we were booked to open for them on a European tour) I remember literally hiding backstage from Jim as he looked so fierce. Likewise Matt and Mark—here we were in our stripy T-shirts and desert boots up against these aggressive looking punks who looked like they wanted to attack us with those metal pipes they used for percussion on their first EP.
Luckily, appearances can be deceptive. We loved our times in the early ’90s with Cranes. We ended up touring with them several times—most notably in 1993 after they had opened for the Cure on the Wish tour and world domination beckoned. I think we felt that we'd found our perfect band—musically we were quite different, although there were definite overlaps, and as human beings they were the best. I would go out into the crowd and watch them every single night and they were always magnificent. Powerful and unsettling, yet vulnerable and melancholic—and to this day, they sound like nobody else.
Phil Elverum (The Microphones, Mount Eerie)
I love the way it feels to listen to a film score when not watching the movie, the way a few key musical motifs are re-voiced in many different ways, like characters appearing and disappearing, evolving. Have you seen the movie? It’s about the wife of a recently dead famous composer, her grief and growth constantly interrupted by bursts of music. It’s so powerful. You see the internal world of a music creator, the way a composition grows from flashes of intrusive inspiration and is built up and given layers of instrumentation (“Olivier and Julie - Trial Composition”), and how music can echo out culturally and how we all die and it all gets crushed in the garbage truck. Plus, the sound of the very huge distant dream bass on “Julie on the Stairs” is the best. It’s so much a product of the 1990s, being set against the background of European unification. This was a potent world to glimpse at for teenage me, way out in rural Washington. These melodies are lodged in deep.
Porridge Radio
This album was regularly blasting in the house when I was a child, and feels like such an integral part of how I understand what music can do. It’s so powerful and raw and emotive. Dolores O’Riordan’s voice is so beautiful. This album taught me so much about putting your whole self into a song and how something can be both so deeply personal and so universal at once.
Nick Buxton (Dry Cleaning)
As a child, I did not become aware of Björk until her second album, Post. She is one of the few artists I encountered at an early age who I still choose to listen to. In my late twenties, when house music really began to make sense to me, this record came to the fore as my favorite of Björk’s many brilliant albums.
Debut is a virtual window into the liberating world of dance music and the ecstatic nature of club culture. It makes me want to dance in whatever environment I listen in—I feel it moving me physically. It is a joyful record, with songs that feel like they would have been such a pleasure to work on and arrange. The harmonic and structural twists and turns within the music are both surprising and comforting to me—the effect is that I feel both at home and as if exploring something new at the same time. There is an invigorating clashing of analog and digital environments, pastoral and industrial, organic and man-made, intricate songwriting and ecstatic recklessness. This album is a thrill from start to finish.
Tobi Vail (Bikini Kill)
I tried to pick one, but I couldn't do it. They are both magic. It’s music that is beyond description—like a waterfall when you stand next to it, it makes you feel closer to God. Or like a UFO sighting you swore happened but aren’t sure if it’s a dream or real and this is the residue that is left behind. Sometimes I feel jealous when I listen to them, like I wish I could step outside of ideology and culture and into this river of life and capture its sound using my voice and my hands on strings, on sticks, on knobs and a recording machine. But maybe they are witches and these recordings were made from human hair and teeth and bone under a full moon at midnight. It’s a mystery and I try not to think about it too much. Maybe someday a record like that will happen to me. But probably not. I believe they were conjured more than written. I’m not saying that to diminish the artistry of Kim Deal or Mary Timony as authors of these works. They are both truly sublime.
