1996 in music.

Smashing Pumpkins' Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness won 1995. Biggest winner yet. Let's see who wins 1996.

Billboard chart-topping albums of 1996:
Mariah Carey - Daydream (cont. from 1995)
Whitney Houston - Waiting to Exhale (cont. from 1995)
Alanis Morissette - Jagged Little Pill (cont. from 1995)
2Pac - All Eyez on Me
The Beatles - Anthology 2
Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire
Hootie & the Blowfish - Fairweather Johnson
Fugees - The Score
Metallica - Load
Nas - It Was Written
A Tribe Called Quest - Beats, Rhymes and Life
Pearl Jam - No Code
New Edition - Home Again
Celine Dion - Falling Into You
Nirvana - From the Muddy Banks of Wishkah
Counting Crows - Recovering the Satellites
Van Halen - Best Of
The Beatles - Anthology 3
Makaveli - The Don Killuminati
Snoop Dogg - Tha Doggfather
Bush - Razorblade Suitcase
No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom (cont. from 1995)

Billboard chart-topping singles of 1996:
Mariah Carey and Boyz II Men - One Sweet Day (cont. from 1995)
Celine Dion - Because You Loved Me
Mariah Carey - Always Be My Baby
Bone Thugs n Harmony - Tha Crossroads
2Pac - How Do U Want It / California Love
Toni Braxton - You're Makin Me High
Los Del Rio - Macarena
Blackstreet - No Diggity
Toni Braxton - Unbreak My Heart

What are your top three albums for 1996? We will keep a running tally and eventually have some sort of bracket. For me it would be:
1. Weezer - Pinkerton
2. Outkast - ATLiens
3. Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album

What are some of the forgotten gems from the year? What is overrated? What did you discover at a young age and what did you discover later?

YEARS IN MUSIC • forum.chorus.fm

 

Some absolutely foundational albums from '96 for me. Will post later.

 

remainder of the top 20:
4. The Wallflowers - Bringing Down the Horse
5. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
6. Jay Z - Reasonable Doubt
7. Wilco - Being There
8. UGK - Ridin' Dirty
9. Pearl Jam - No Code
10. Fugees - The Score
11. Beck - Odelay
12. Descendents - Everything Sucks
13. Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire
14. Belle and Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister
15. 2Pac - All Eyez on Me
16. Low - The Curtain Hits the Cast
17. Failure - Fantastic Planet
18. Counting Crows - Recovering the Satellites
19. The Wrens - Secaucus
20. Guided By Voices - Under the Bushes Under the Stars

honorable mentions:
A Tribe Called Quest - Beats, Rhymes and Life
The Afghan Whigs - Black Love
Archers of Loaf - All the Nations Airports
At the Drive-In - Acrobatic Tenement
Bad Religion - The Gray Voice
Belle and Sebastian - Tigermilk
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Take It from the Man
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Their Satanic Majesties’ Second Request
Bush - Razorblade Suitcase
The Cure - Wild Mood Swings
Fountains of Wayne - Fountains of Wayne
Godflesh - Songs of Love and Hate
Jimmy Eat World - Static Prevails
Matchbox 20 - Yourself of Someone Like You
Modest Mouse - This is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About
Neurosis - Through Silver in Blood
Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island
R.E.M. - New Adventures in Hi-Fi
Red House Painters - Songs for a Blue Guitar
Refused - Songs to Fan the Flames of Discontent
Sebadoh - Harmacy
Silver Jews - The Natural Bridge
Soundgarden - Down on the Upside
Spoon - Telephono
Stone Temple Pilots - Tiny Music … Songs from the Vatican Gift Shop
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Unwound - Repetition

stuff to check out:
2Pac - The Don Killuminati
The Cardigans - First Band on the Moon
Cat Power - Myra Lee
Cat Power - What Would the Community Think
De La Soul - Stakes is High
Fiona Apple - Tidal
Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go
Nada Surf - High/Low
Nas - It Was Written
Nick Cave - Murder Ballads
The Roots - Illadelph Halflife
Sleater-Kinney - Call the Doctor
Snoop Dogg - The Doggfather
Steve Earle - I Feel Alright
Super Furry Animals - Fuzzy Logic
Tricky - Pre-Millennium Tension

 

1. Weezer - Pinkerton
2. Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island
3. Aphex Twin - Richard D. James Album

 

1. Nas - It Was Written
2. Lil Kim - Hardcore
3. Mobb Deep - Hell on Earth

4. UGK - Ridin’ Dirty
5. Jay Z - Reasonable Doubt

2Pac - All Eyez On Me
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
Bahamadia - Kollage
Eminem - Infinite (the best Eminem album)
Foxy Brown – Ill Na Na
Mad Skillz – From Where???
Cella Dwellas - Realms 'n Reality
Maxwell - Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite
Aaliyah - One in a Million
AZ Yet - Az Yet
Donell Jones - My Heart
112 - 112
New Edition - Home Again
Mark Morrison - Return of the Mack

For things other than rap or R&B, I'll need to see other lists first.

 

Big year for me!

1. Bad Religion - The Gray Race (In my top 3 Bad Religion albums. Has some extremely cheesy moments, but some of their best songs as well and the energy is unmatched. Pity the Dead is one of the saddest songs of all time.)
2. Descendents - Everything Sucks (My first Descendents album, as it probably was for a lot of people. One of their most consistent and full of classics)
3. Fountains of Wayne - Fountains of Wayne (An all-time great power-pop album.)
4. Weezer - Pinkerton (I liked this album more in high school than I do now, but it is pretty obvious how good it is.)
5. Weird Al Yankovic - Bad Hair Day (The biggest celeb I've ever met and possibly my favorite artist of all time. Not his best album, but a damn good one.)


Other albums I like from '96:
Outkast - ATLiens
Cake - Fashion Nugget
Rage Against the Machine - Evil Empire
Jimmy Eat World - Static Prevails
Failure - Fantastic Planet

Album I feel bad I liked as much as I did:
The Bloodhound Gang - One Fierce Beer Coaster


I should listen to Counting Crows, Matchbox Twenty, Fiona Apple, The Fugees, and Bush.

 

really really good year for rap, probably the first one for me where theres more than a handful that i go back to regularly

 

Pretty absurd year. I really need to dig into this year in hip hop a bit, I know threre's multiple classics I've only heard singles from.

1. Wilco - Being There

Disc 2 meanders a bit. It's a double album but it all fits on one CD. So what. It's the first of 3 masterpieces from Tweedy and Bennett and one of the best albums of the decade.

2. Weezer - Pinkerton

Not much to say without starting a Weezer ranking sidebar this thread doesn't need. Sometimes I'd probably have this my #1 for this year. I don't think it's perfect, though, I'm a nerd and I'd rank at least a couple of the bsides better than most of the album tracks. Even as is it's a classic.

3. Belle and Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister

Honorable mention: Matchbox Twenty - Yourself or Someone Like You

I think Matchbox Twenty is a little underrated two and a half decades later. None of their other albums are truly great and Smooth is as much meme as song, but the debut is 90s pop rock in a nutshell. Unreal run of singles. It probably would have cracked my list if it didn't fall off a bit toward the end, but even still I'd put it up with any album by the Gin Blossoms, Goo Goo Dolls, and Wallflowers - I'm sure I'm forgetting someone, but the point is is that it's as great of an example as there is of a genre I hold dear to my heart.

 

1. Weezer - Pinkerton
2. Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island
3. Wilco - being there

 

1. Ghostface Killah - Ironman
2. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
3. UGK - Ridin Dirty

 

Just looking at the all the stuff that came out that year, this is going to be tricky. I love Endtroducing. Pantera released one of my favourite metal albums of all time. Pinkerton obviously. Ænima by Tool, House Of GVSB by Girls Against Boys, Fantastic Planet by Failure, Murder Ballads by Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds. I haven't listened to that Fugees record in forever, need to go back to it, and I don't think I've even listened to that particular Nas record. Aphex Twin, Fiona Apple, the debut Kool Keith album, Roots by Sepultura...holy shit, that's a lot of stuff and I'm really only scratching the surface.

 

1. Wilco - Being There
2. Fugees - The Score
3. Silver Jews - The Natural Bridge
4. Gillian Welch - Revival
5. Outkast - ATLiens
6. Eels - Beautiful Freak
7. Lyle Lovett - The Road To Ensenada

 

1. Fugees - The Score
2. Weezer - Pinkerton
3. Manic Street Preachers - Everything Must Go

 

My son wasn’t named after Ghostface Killah but he does share the same name so I like to think that he was. Which is fine by me after my wife turned down the name Raekwon.

 

I'm outta town till Thursday so I'll post my stuff then! Mine is sure to be controversial this year though

 

A bit of a strange year for me this.

1. Neurosis - Through Silver in Blood
2. Kula Shaker - K
3. Sleater-Kinney - Call the Doctor

Through Silver in Blood is a monstrously heavy album, slow and lumbering with a real sense of menace and dread about it. It's a difficult, horrible listen at times, but a fantastic experience.

Kula Shaker are a very underrated brit pop band - taking the sounds of Brit Pop, but adding a big Indian spiritual psychedelic sound to it. Would highly recommend it to anybody into the usual Brit Pop suspects, a great album.

Sleater Kinney's second album is a super fun, energetic piece of punk rock. Direct and to the point, with almost all songs under the three minute mark, it's a great listen, and shows them at their most blunt and potent.

Honourable mentions;

Weezer - Pinkerton: A nakedly confessional album, full of lust and self loathing, a very different album to Blue, but a fantastic raw picture of Rivers and the band.

Refused - Songs to Fan the Flame of Discontent: Not anywhere near as interesting as The Shape of Punk to Come (or the massively underrated follow-up, Freedom), this is still a great straightforward aggressive post-hardcore album.

DJ Shadow - Endtroducing: A brilliant instrumental hip-hop album, with plenty of trip-hop influences. A great work of production and sampling.

Jimmy Eat World - Static Prevails: By far my least listened to JEW album, but even as a fairly standard second wave emo band, they could really do it better than most - with great tracks like "Seventeen" and "Digits" standing out.

Descendents - Everything Sucks: A great fun pop-punk album, silly and light by design, but a blast to listen to.

Heatmiser - Mic City Sons: Elliott Smith's indie rock band, a lovely collection of indie / alt rock tracks.

Jay-Z - Reasonable Doubt: Jay at his leanest and possibly his best album from a pure rapping perspective.

Texas is the Reason - Do You Know Who You Are?: Included this by mistake last year - a great emo album, probably the best of second wave emo.

 

Subliiiiiiiiime S/T !?

 

HOLY SHIT YES !!!!!

Probably not in my top 3, but I was almost positive I would be the only person in this thread that remembers this album.

Awesome!

 

Bingo, baby

 

1. Weezer - Pinkerton
2. Fugees - The Score
3. At the Drive-In - Acrobatic Tenement

HM:
Spice Girls - Spice
The Blue Nile - Peace at Last
Jay-Z - Reasonable Doubt
Ghostface Killah - Ironman
UGK - Ridin' Dirty
Tupac - All Eyez on Me
Outkast - ATLiens
Sublime - Sublime
The Roots - Illadelph Halflife
Modest Mouse - This is a Long Drive...
Keith Sweat - Keith Sweat
Ginuwine - ...the Bachelor
The Cure - Wild Mood Swings

 

I'd have been 4 or 5 when this album came out and my parents were massive fans of it, so was always playing in our house. A very formative and influential album for me - lots of memories associated with it!

 

I didn’t even bother looking what came out this year just shot from the hip.

 

Same story - was always on around the house - I was 10 going on 11-ish.

Kinda crazy that they pretty much flopped after the debut album, but understandable at the same time.

 

1996 had some of the BEST oddball hit singles on the modern-rock chart. I truly can't pick just one.

All such wonderfully weird songs that I cannot even fathom becoming "#1 songs" in this day in age. (FUCK I sound old). And possibly my favorite of the bunch peaked at #12, but STILL.

The 90s were the fucking best, for real.

 

pepper is a+