In Hindsight...Worst Top 3 Pazz and Jop Album: 90s

Moby easy

Two to choose from!

Those Pavement records are pretty much everything I hate about indie "rock", but I once walked out of a record store without buying anything because I couldn't take one more second of whatever Sleater-Kinney album they were playing. Tough choice.

None are terrible, though if I bothered to play them Midnite Vultures and the maligned Arrested Development albums would most irk me.

I pulled out Play recently and it has aged like a carton of milk accidentally left behind in the trunk of a car over the summer.

A few days later I happened to listen to the Heavyweight podcast about the guy that let Moby borrow his cds
of field recordings and whatnot that he went on to sample for Play. Moby never returned the cds and he was a dick about it when he was finally tracked down and asked about it. “Oh, I don’t know, they’re probably in a storage unit and I can’t get them for you.” You fuck, get your assistant to order a copy from discogs and sign it “THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME MORE MONEY THAN GOD, I APPRECIATE IT SORRY I WAS AN ASSHOLE.”

What a jerk.

Out of Time. Really, I don’t get it. The other two R.E.M. albums here are much better—yes, even Monster.

I'm the opposite: Out of Time has deepened over the years, the second side in particular.

OK Computer. Should have been an EP with Airbag/Paranoid Android/Subterranean Homesick Alien/Electioneering - everything else is boring.

xp

I can’t stand ‘Shiny Happy People,” and I never really liked “Losing My Religion.” Most of the album tracks feel like throwaways to me. I realize I’m deeply in the minority, though.

xp interesting take -- "No Surprises," "Karma Police," and "Exit Music" are three of their biggest songs. And "Let Down" is one of their best.

Wow! I have no idea what to pick here. I love or like a lot of these and don’t know a bunch.

Ultimately maybe Moby, but I don’t know if I really loathe those records.

Probably Midnite Vultures or Arrested Development. The Moby albums…Play seems pretty minor and gimmicky, I should relisten to Everything Is Wrong, though.

I like all those R.E.M. albums, I think OOT sounds a bit minor because there are def a couple wacky tracks on there and some that feel a bit more mood and vibe than full songs but I think mood and vibe is one of their strengths, every one of their albums has some of those.

I've never felt the need to listen to a Moby album.

i like all of these tbh

the worst stuff on midnite vultures is so bad, i always forget that there's actually some cool stuff on it.

I do wanna revisit that Moby album someday, I was really into it as a teenager

amusingly the song that got me into it was "Bodyrock", I remember seeing the video on MTV and thinking the whole album was going to be like that. the song I really liked though was "Porcelain", I wonder how that's held up

the worst stuff on midnite vultures is so bad, i always forget that there's actually some cool stuff on it.

― brimstead

another album with a better flipside

I still kinda like “Porcelain.”

I only heard this recently - idk something like “Honey” might be formulaic but there's at least some effort there, but with “Run On” he's barely doing anything!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rvG8JPl4Hlc

I ended up not voting. Even the ones that people have turned on still have strong merits that were always there - the flaws may be apparent and they may fall short of their best work, but I personally can’t dismiss any of them.

yeah I can't even remember what he does with "Run On", I think at the end there's like some strings layered over it or something

seems quite a bit lazier than anything Daft Punk did, even "Robot Rock" at least sounds like a proper remix

A few days later I happened to listen to the Heavyweight podcast about the guy that let Moby borrow his cds
of field recordings and whatnot that he went on to sample for Play. Moby never returned the cds and he was a dick about it when he was finally tracked down and asked about it. “Oh, I don’t know, they’re probably in a storage unit and I can’t get them for you.” You fuck, get your assistant to order a copy from discogs and sign it “THANK YOU FOR MAKING ME MORE MONEY THAN GOD, I APPRECIATE IT SORRY I WAS AN ASSHOLE.”

Moby comes off like a giant prick in every story I've ever heard about him, if I were a vegan I'd be pissed, there are so few famous vegans out there and one of them happens to be this fuckin guy

Sleater-Kinney (grating) or Magnetic Fields (too long, far too patchy - and i am a "points for ambition" guy)

after Midnite Vultures, of course. its presence here is like watching LeBron James play against high schoolers.

Sleater-Kinney were one of the first bands who had to teach me how to listen to them cuz I too found Dig Me Out abrasive on third listen.

Pavement and Sleater-Kinney are the only bands I don't actually like very much. Not bothered about several others - the Dylan, Neil Young or Lucinda records esp.

Play ofc a major critical hit before it actually started selling - arguably quite a long time before - but Moby likes to pretend both of these albums (but especially Play) were slated or ignored and that nothing happened for the latter until The Beach came out. (Tbh the story of Play is a total mess and I've never seen it told coherently) (though I do buy the idea of him making an album as though no one would be listening, certainly as by the time you get to the half-asleep doodles in the second half it hardly resembles a mega-acclaimed 12-mil selling blockbuster in any sense at all. It might as well be Echoboy or someone).

i still like "porcelain" (also "bodyrock" to a degree) but even at the time there was very little else i actually enjoyed on play. "south side" had that gwen stefani version as a moderate radio hit but i have never been compelled to return to any version of it since

Odelay

No real obvious clunkers here. But I feel bad for Moby. All the haters seemed to drive him over the edge. Face tattoos over age 50 are a cry for help, people.

69 love songs is basically three novelty records

still voting for 'play' tho

Dont truly hate anything here, but among the records I dont like I guess 69 Love Songs wins by default just because it contains the largest amount of music that i dont like

God bless ILM, the only place where people shit on 69 Love Songs.

Odelay has not endured for me. I don’t know if I played it to death because it was one of my favorites once upon a time, but there’s not much there for me anymore.

I voted Play, but would argue that Everything Is Wrong is vv good

I listened to Ragged Glory for the first time yesterday, and while about half of it moved me, the best album of 1990? (I'm admittedly ambivalent to Young's work, but no doubt this is one where critical consensus has since been revised.)

It appeared on the most submitted ballots, therefore it's the best album of 1990. Nothing more than that. Also, critics were so damn happy to have Young back after Freedom. I listen to Sleeps With Angels more.

Really interesting to contrast this thread with the other one. Ilxors were earnest followers of the critical canon in the 90's, heroic foes of critical orthodoxy ever since.

oh just wait til you see what i voted for.

Ilxors were earnest followers of the critical canon in the 90's, heroic foes of critical orthodoxy ever since.

You might be shocked how many old-school ilxors shaped the critical canon of the '90s.

critics were so damn happy to have Young back after Freedom

while ragged glory is a better album, wasn't freedom the one that brought neil back for most critics? (an A from christgau! "a classic neil young album," he wrote! and he was definitely not alone.)

That's precisely what I meant, though re-reading it I guess it looks like I exempted it.

(btw the comeback for me began with Life, no better or worse than Freedom, and accelerated with Eldorado)

voting for the dylan royal albert hall show, not bc it’s bad but bc it’s a bad choice

and in 1998!

ah, yeah, i read it the other way :)

i liked about half of life and maybe a third of this note's for you. eldorado knocked me out cold, and then the tour that preceded freedom was really special. freedom arrived basically as a given. i liked it a lot when it came out. but ragged glory was the one that really delivered on the promises of eldorado.

I am a proud Landing In Water stan

ON

(xpost to soto/neil, obviously)

Dylan's Royal Albert Hall show is his greatest record, IMHO, but I also think there should have been a rule that prohibits a recording of a decades-old concert (22 years in this case) from being eligible for the main poll. The reissues poll could've been rechristened as an "archival release" poll and that would've been fine.

Terrible math - 32 years.

I am a proud Landing In Water stan

― brimstead

otm

Landing on Water is one of three Neil albums I ever actually listen to

The dry bottom-heavy mix suits this track just right:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pybVRgMG7T0

I love how the guitars are either a shoegaze fog or these ostensibly big AOR solos that are stead hollowed out and buried in the mix like ambient debris reminding me (to use a comparison I've made before) a bit of "Eruption" on Chill Out

Steve Jordan sounds pretty awesome on it, imo, like what if Bonham played in the 80s or something

Young said at the time that his concept was to use Kootch to record the loudest drums in rock history.

[https://popluck736076116.wordpress.com/2022/03/24/synth-surfing-with-rock-1983-86-part-1/,What I wrote about the album once]

fixed

Public Enemy were influential and iconic, and I'm probably alone on this, but those are the albums I would be least interested in listening to today. I would rather listen to Moby than sit through all of Apocalypse '91.

I love how we've covered most of Young's most pilloried albums. I'll stand up for the Bluenotes (the live album even moreso).

What's so fascinating to me about an album like Landing On Water is imagining Neil Young listening to it and saying to the producer/engineer, "Yep. That's exactly what I want. Fantastic job."

Those Moby albums are great, wake up sheeple

It's gotta be one of those Pavement albums

Though it should be said that Midnite Vultures def aged *very* poorly

Odelay has aged the worst IMO based on esteem circa 1996 vs. realizing how terrible it actually is

Surprised Monster placed so high - I was turning into a teenager at the time so it was right up my alley but I was under the impression that critics hated it at the time.

Unhinged takes from Whiney but what do I know?

i was thinking it's maybe unfair to look at these lists without the context of the singles charts that accompanied them - that's where more of the hip hop, r&b and catchy rock songs are. but the top 3 singles include a lot of dross too like seether, gangsta's paradise, you oughta know, fantastic voyage, come on ride the train, tubthumping, intergalactic, etc.

was gonna vote moby play as that is the only record i hate on this list, then got curious about what everything is wrong sounds like, i know i must have heard a bit of it back at the radio station in iowa when it came out, my high school buddy steve was a huge moby fan and into techno way before i was. gosh... this is some of the worst music i've heard in a long time.

u just named 6 good songs

I like nearly all of these albums. "Live Through This" was very much of its time -- feeding off the fading momentum of grunge and through sympathy for the next Nirvana record that would never come. I was never much of a fan, although I did listen to it a lot in 1994 because you kind of had to.

I voted for "Midnight Vultures". The 90's were partly about surviving the ordeal of crappy Beck songs on every radio station, coffee shop, and student pub.

No R.E.M. album released before 2004 was ever critically reviled.

a lot of dross too like seether, gangsta's paradise, you oughta know, fantastic voyage, come on ride the train, tubthumping, intergalactic, etc.

?? These are good songs.

Live Through This might be my favorite album on this list.

Went for Apocalypse '91 as it's the first album I remember being really disappointed by on first listen.

Banger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0Ps_bHQYlc

I should relisten to The Score and see how it holds up. Otherwise I might be in the Moby camp, or maybe Odelay. I like most of these albums

In terms of how frequently I listened to it then vs now, Nevermind has probably fallen the farthest though

there's the right attitude!!

(though I do buy the idea of him making an album as though no one would be listening, certainly as by the time you get to the half-asleep doodles in the second half it hardly resembles a mega-acclaimed 12-mil selling blockbuster in any sense at all. It might as well be Echoboy or someone).

ya I've always wondered how many of those 12 million actually listened to the second half more than once, I know I've listened all the way through many times (it was one of my paper route CDs, lol) but I remember very little outside of Run On and the final track being kind of nice

bc of this thread i'm gonna listen to these moby records

I can enjoy midnite vultures more than most on this thread but would def agree that its one of the poll options that have aged the worst, i would be absolutely mortified if someone overheard me listening to it in my car or something

because you're a full-grown man but not afraid to cry?

I can admire Midnight Vultures because it felt like a risk. So much of Odelay feels corny now. “Where It’s At” is dorky as fuck and i’m not sure if it knows it.

"Where It's At" is dorky and also fun as fuck to karaoke.

Moby/Beck are interesting artifacts of the time for me with regards to technological development in some way, both felt like “wow how did they do that?” at the time, but in 2025 one could make a 90s Moby album in an afternoon with naught but a computer; Odelay in particular would still take weeks/months of work to put together

Hole is my favourite of these albums but I’d be most inclined to put on Cornershop rn

because you're a full-grown man but not afraid to cry?

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, February 19, 2025 9:00 AM (six hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Nice

midnite vultures is the best beck album

Moby has his own little logic with chord structure and sound choices and a history in techno/punk/hip-hop/ambient that give him a very unique sound and personality beyond "I could make this in Ableton." Putting field recordings on beats may no longer be "novel" but he did it in a way that's very "him." I still rock Play and the Play B-sides, it's fucking great music that only got devalued because of the crazy licensing scheme and Moby's more cringy public moments

I thought "God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters" in 'Heat' was regarded as one of the all-time best sync choices, no?

The two Moby albums are two of my favourite things here, but then I like that he's hard to pin down, it's always been very much 'him' as you say. As I and frogbs alluded to earlier, after Run On there are still another seven songs of Bandcampy ad-hoc-y bedroom scribbling to get through before Play ends. Even before that it feels like he's intently not using everything at his disposal. If he really wanted to make a cunning big beat partystarter he could made something that kicked a lot harder than "Bodyrock", something that wasn't stuck in the mid-range and all boxed in, using cliched vocal samples and wah-wah, but then that gives that track a certain air, he doesn't make faithful reproductions of anything. So I'm gonna have to assume he set out to make exactly what he ended up making.

Really my only problem with Everything Is Wrong is that he stuck on the edit of Feeling So Real rather than the real thing (tbf, both that and Everytime You Touch Me being Spin's joint single of the year 1995 is, well it's something - I can't find the list now but I'm pretty sure there were no hardcore or handbag bangers to be found elsewhere)

midnite vultures is the best beck album

Agreed. Apart from "Debra". I just pretend it ends before that.

At my last workplace I had a crush on a woman named Debra and that song popped into my head constantly.

There's a whole second CD of Play b-sides that I've probably revisited more than the original, with sample-free/light songs like this and this.

I don’t categorize Moby in the “I could make this in Ableton” category, more the “I could make this with General MIDI” category— if anything he anticipates the chintz of vaporwave. I don’t think he is doing anything compositionally revelatory but that’s just me. “Porcelain” remains lovely even with its car commercial sync history put out of mind.

Idk maybe I’ve just been revisiting a lot of 90s classics recently and I’m over-biased toward actual Big Beat and actual Industrial rn… my recent listens to Fatboy Slim and NIN stuff left me gobsmacked at how technically brilliant it still sounds, now. Moby sounds the opposite

I guess that's why the 'this'll be my final unheard album' line really does feel real. Even the 'club' songs don't sound made for any actual dancefloor*. Almost everything sits in the middle frequencies, bottom end rounded off, everything's 3-4 mins long. He's made a bunch of fairly simple etudes to cheer himself up, not really worrying about overusing the same sources (the Lomax tapes) or using fairly underpowered sounds (I have heard MIDI covers of Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad? with a much more red-blooded piano tone). And yet it's maybe why selling every song to advert agencies makes as much sense as it does.

*though I don't know if that was really much of an aim after '93 or so, except when being asked for remixes. This might tally with my comment about Spin going mad for those EIW singles despite nothing about the European club music modes they're based on being on their radar at all.

the first thing nicolas jaar reminded me of was play

I loved Moby's debut and the Move EP is the best thing he ever recorded.

Wow the mix on that Neil Young record is hilarious. The snare is so close and tight, yet pushed sooo far up in the mix. It's the dumbest possible way to make the drums sound 'loud', so dumb that it's weird & cool, respect.

According to Young in a 2009 interview, "one record company president in Europe told me it was the most claustrophobic record he had ever heard, and I thought that was pretty cool. He put it on in his Porsche and would turn it up real loud. He just felt like it was all over him."

There was that amazing article a few years ago by a roadie who was on a pre-Play tour with Moby and Aphex, Moby certainly sounded like a dick before he was mega-famous. I voted for Play instinctually but may regret it after listening to those b-sides a few posts up.

I had my first edible (in my 40s!) late at night alone and listened to this, so it has some sentimental value for me. Some of those Play b-sides are on my "elliptical jams" playlist, so that's sentimental for me in a different way.

As far as "it's too simple to be good," my brother is a session musician of the Zappa/prog variety, and my own music is mostly a couple of chords per song, so maybe that builds my tolerance for the Moby template of a simple chord progression with layers and layers added over 5+ minutes (worked well with that edible).

The apex of Moby having a loop and doing almost nothing to it was either his Minimal House Mix of Beetlebum or, alternatively, this B-side from a few years before Play

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1PuF4MFLlE

(Tbf this is a pretty neat techstep drone, hinting at a more dynamic sideways shuffle I don't think he ever really pursued, and in someone else's hands it would have made for a great piece of cod-No U-Turn dnb, and yet it still has Moby's DNA all over it - is it the moody sustained chord or?)

Whoosh I was poking around Moby's wiki and I found this excellent post-Play takedown, I am impressed

https://web.archive.org/web/20001018090414/http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/record-reviews/m/moby/mobysongs.shtml

I thought "God Moving Over The Face Of The Waters" in 'Heat' was regarded as one of the all-time best sync choices, no?

i might actually go w/Mann's use of Moby's cover of "New Dawn Fades" (the instrumental version iirc) over a most excellent brief Mann moment -- Pacino catching up to De Niro on the 10 freeway and pulling him over.

As this compilation proves, he's musically unadventurous (case in point: "First Cool Hive" is propped up by the same beat as Milli Vanilli's "Girl, You Know It's True").

Not to dunk on on a 25 year old Pitchfork review, fgti, but this is a pretty reductive thing to say about the "Ashley's Roachclip" break

utterly baffled by the Moby stanning itt

the dude sucks, I haven't wanted to listen to Play in over 20 years, gtfo it is clearly the worst/most mercenary of these choices

Appropriate for a 90s poll that anything that isn't slamming is stanning.

I tried Everything is Wrong. What a slog! "All That I Need is to Be Loved" is awfully ugly. "Bring Back My Happiness" is so frenetic as to be unpleasantly disorienting. "What Love" is high school band proto-punk; I've not heard Moby's other forays into punk rock, nor will I be exploring them. "First Cool Hive" sounds like a mere warm up to Play, which seems quite strong by comparison.

There was that amazing article a few years ago by a roadie who was on a pre-Play tour with Moby and Aphex, Moby certainly sounded like a dick before he was mega-famous. I voted for Play instinctually but may regret it after listening to those b-sides a few posts up.

― Jordan s/t (Jordan), Wednesday, February 19, 2025 4:59 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

was this the guy who was hired basically to mime behind an unplugged keyboard? that was a fun article, I agree Moby came off like a dick (as he does in basically every story I read about him), RDJ on the other hand seemed pretty cool

my tolerance for Moby really extends exclusively to a couple of brief snippets used in HEAT, i don't want to inadvertently find myself in an accidental stanning. i did try revisiting Everything Is Wrong but got bored. it does kind of makes sense that he emerged as the critically approved human face of techno music prior to the breakout of some of the much better acts because it was something to grasp onto a little bit more and they certainly marketed him as a very specific guy and he wasn't just a name somewhere in the credits. but i think his primary use for me was as a brief gateway drug, and once i picked up Underworld, FSOL, Orbital, etc there was no looking back.

Yeash, I would theorize that a listener's reaction to Moby c. 1999 was largely dependent on how much electronic music they'd previously been exposed to. By the time Play was released, the Future Sound of London's "Papua New Guinea" was already eight years old. It remains one of the foremost examples of how something really magical can be alchemized from a handful of samples and a synth or two. I was fairly incredulous at the time that anyone was impressed by Moby's basic-as-fuck approach to the concept. I didn't think the singles were terrible, just kind of half-assed.

I'll always have my reservations about Moby, but I still enjoy Everything Is Wrong, Play, and likely quite a few singles outside of those two albums. When I was growing up at the end of the '90s, I was NOT a fan of the pop music that was dominating the media landscape, but Moby was a big exception, and for a kid who had limited exposure to electronic music and rarely heard folk records outside of Smithsonian anthologies, Play was a great novelty. There were better and more innovative artists to discover, but as a reverse gateway from strictly mainstream listening to more adventurous corners of the music world, I thought his work fit that role perfectly.

(That should probably be just gateway, not reverse gateway.)

Cornershop 100%

You just say that because the chorus name checks Trump

Album on the list that's aged best in how I think about it now vs then might be Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

there's a good thought ― i have so much vitriol in my heart for over half of these choices that i didn't consider which ones i still ride for...

...enh, pj and public enemy, i guess. same as it ever was lol. some other decent stuff here, but wow what a lot of albums i really wanted to vote for in this category.

Crooked Rain is the one I didn't like back then that has really grown on me

Albums from this list that I liked at the time:

Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert
Bob Dylan - Time Out of Mind
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
Moby - Play
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet
Public Enemy - Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black
Sinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got
Tricky - Maxinquaye
Radiohead - OK Computer
Neil Young - Ragged Glory

Albums I still listen to: Harvey, PE Fear, Tricky, Radiohead, Neil

I bought Play for a couple of its blues sample tracks when I was DJing a lounge/downtempo night. I think the day I bought it was the only time I ever listened to it front to back, so tonight is spin number two in 25 years.

And that indicates my interest in it. It’s… okay.

"Ragged Glory" is so good I could make a case for it being my favorite Neil Young record, and the guy has made a lot of good records.

gotta say i'd be fine never hearing a fugees song for the rest of my life

Ragged Glory is great, yeah. tons of great stuff here! even the Moby records aren't actively objectionable to me, just overrated

the ones I have never actually heard to this day: Cornershop, Fugees (aside from the hit), Lauryn Hill (ditto), Radiohead, Magnetic Fields

#old #onethread

I love The Score except for that one hit.

Album on the list that's aged best in how I think about it now vs then might be Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

I love The Score except for that one hit.

and the song that has police sirens baked into the intro or outro, used to give me a heart attack every time

Never hearing The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill or OK Computer in 25+ years is a choice.

no, it's just how it happened

Moby is obviously a dick but I think those albums are fine (Everything Is Wrong is better than fine).

The only one on the list I've never listened to is Cornershop — is there much to it besides the hit? I like the hit but I don't feel like I've ever heard much about the album.

xp I don't understand. There's nothing stopping you from listening to them both right now. They are two of the most celebrated albums of the last three decades. Aren't you a little curious what they sound like?

tipsy, if you like the hit, you'll like the album.

Aren't you a little curious what they sound like?

nope!

I feel like the Arrested Development album is retrospectively a victim of its own P&J success. I love "Tennessee" and I liked the album fine at the time; it also opened my cloistered mind to the idea that there could be Southern hip-hop, about Southern life. If it had placed #32 on the poll I don't think it would be remembered with as much critical vitriol.

That said, it's probably still the right answer here. A lot of the albums on the list are overrated imo in the sense that they shouldn't have been top 3 albums, but I don't think any are terrible.

i'm listening to early moby and it's really good oops

The Arrested Development album is still great

Remove it from critics saying it’s going to “save hip-hop from itself” or whatever and it’s still a unique statement lyrically, musically and aesthetically and a quantifiable pop smash to boot

yeah I would still enjoy listening to that if it came on somewhere

I can’t stand ‘Shiny Happy People,"

i was with you on this for a long time! there is probably already a thread for "songs you appreciated once you tried to play the song", and for me i absolutely fell in love with the song once i had to play it and really think about how it's put together (i am now the drummer for r.e.m. btw). just an absolutely brilliant song. (note, i had the same experience with steely dan, "do it again", and guitar hero)

i revisited Play recently and it was fucking terrible, voting for that

wild to not see Stereolab on here anywhere

way too European for that crew

The ones that hold up, for me:

Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road (#1, 1998)
Neil Young - Ragged Glory (#1, 1990)
Nirvana - Nevermind (#1, 1991)
Pavement - Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (#2, 1994)
Pavement - Slanted and Enchanted (#2, 1992)
PJ Harvey - Rid of Me (#3, 1993)
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love (#1, 1995)
Public Enemy - Fear of a Black Planet (#3, 1990)
R.E.M. - Automatic for the People (#3, 1992)
The Magnetic Fields - 69 Love Songs (#2, 1999)

wild to not see Stereolab on here anywhere

It looks like Emperor Tomato Ketchup was #7 in the 1996 poll, which is actually higher than I would have thought.

Gonna cut anyone who votes for I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got and Apocalypse '91: The Enemy Strikes Black.

whiney otm, that one album is great. everything everyone in the group did immediately after was questionable, but i've always considered that first arrested development kind of a 'one album wonder.' todd in the shadows did a video essay about this period of the group and it's worth listening to if you're already a fan or curious.

i have nothing but love+respect for that album. not my favorite anything, but its prominence on top 40 radio and the album's lack of a parental advisory sticker meant that it was one of the few hiphop tapes i was allowed to call my own and absorb.

i certainly have my challops, but i can't fathom how anyone could single that album out of this list, especially in this context.

relistening to Play right now, probably the first time I've listened in full for 20 years, way more amateurish than I remembered, there's only a few tracks where it seems like he's trying at all, but those are all pretty good. in particular Porcelain, Bodyrock, Machete, and South Side

idk that Arrested Development to a degree did arrest my hip-hop-listening development. The following year it took me a minute to love Digable Planets, Midnight Marauders and even quite different albums like, to name two random examples, Black Sunday and The World is Yours. But it might be a Me Problem.

It definitely felt like the Hip Hop community was pretty cool on AD. Like they seemed like a rap group put together by Paul Simon fans.

Mr. Wendell has freedom
A free that you and I think is dumb

All I've heard of Moby is Play and a couple of other singles. Based on that, I'd say he's good at crafting pretty instrumental miniatures, indifferent at turning old blues songs into dance music, and pretty bad at writing and performing songs.

oh and "Rushing" that track is really nice, captures that ideal Pure Moods sound better than almost anything on the actual comp

That one's my favourite on the album.

Arrested Development also topped the first Wire albums poll.

concession: it was probably overrated at the time. i was only 11, so my awareness of the critical canon was nonexistent. i knew they were popular, but when i look at the accolades and reception in hindsight? enh.

it's preachy and heavy-handed, but it's still held up better than most pop rap of the time.

pop rap from 1992? I'd take Kriss Kross and House of Pain.

TS: speech post-AD vs everlasr post-HoP

everlast obvs

If I could I'd vote for the '97 top 3 collectively, because under them in the top 10 you have Dig Me Out, Supa Dupa Fly and Homogenic — a much better top 3 imo.

It definitely felt like the Hip Hop community was pretty cool on AD. Like they seemed like a rap group put together by Paul Simon fans.

― Iza Duffus Hardy (President Keyes), Friday, February 21, 2025 1:39 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

I know Ice-T hated them but Jay-Z/Pac/Digital Undergrouns were all interpolating/sampling/referencing "Tennessee" in the early '90s, so they def had impact

Also, the Source covered them like any other rap group at the time

did Speech ever do a feature on anyone's album?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y_Uo_IFYi-E

Speech also said Ice Cube and Snoop didn't like them because they dissed gangsta rap.

Prince Be got into some shit with KRS-One the following year, recall.

one of those deja vu things

Cornershop - not terrible, but top 3?
Liz Phair Exile in Guyville - never got the appeal
Moby Play - if you can skip the ones that are just folk songs with house beats added, the rest are fine
REM Monster - this one

I don't think I've ever heard these:
Moby - Everything Is Wrong (#3, 1995)
Neil Young - Ragged Glory (#1, 1990)
PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love (#1, 1995)
Sleater-Kinney - Call the Doctor (#3, 1996)

oh man that PJ Harvey is fantastic, her best imo

I'm partial to Ragged Glory since I saw Neil & Crazy Horse on that tour. The new songs completely stood up against all the classics he played.

I don't think the lo-fi recording aspect works with that kind of singer-focused material.

That sentiment could be applied to 1993's #3 "Rid of Me."

Or Pet Shop Boys' Very.

My favorite from the Ragged Glory sessions is the b-side Don't Spook The Horse.

I'm still waiting for the 2CD expanded version of Ragged Glory included in this box set to be released as a standalone. (Although I should probably just buy the thing; I mean, I like Freedom and Weld, and Arc is a fun throwaway.)

Ooh I should get that, I only have those albums on cassette

The Acclaimed Music site purports to tabulate not only contemporary critical response to records, but also the judgement of posterity. Based on that, the lowest rated album on this list is Monster, ranked as #44 of 1994 and #315 of the 1990s. Perhaps not surprising, in that in retrospect the album was most notorious for clogging used CD stores, though I thought the recent re-release changed some people's minds about it.

I’m familiar with 24 of these, and there’s a large number of those where I’m sated by listening to one or two favourite tracks.
At the time, I’d have said Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, which still strikes me as run-of-the-mill Americana with a couple of evocative songs. Now I’d probably say Ragged Glory cause that monotonous Crazy Horse chug is my least-favourite side of Neil. Oddly, my favourite Neil and Crazy Horse song was yet to come - “Change Your Mind”.

I loved Monster, still do.

I'm not too much a fan of Monster but I didn't consider voting for it here, because it's at least interesting, more of a fascinating mess

Monster's a fun listen. I didn't like remixed re-release because it stripped out so much of the distortion effects when one of my favorite things about it was the overall sound.

*didn't like the

I didn’t love Monster when I bought it and had a classical disappointed fan response, but I like it much more now, and would definitely take it over Document or any of their subsequent records.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

I miss Pazz and Jop polls :(

Me too. Uproxx just isn't the same for many reasons.

I thought Tom Hull might be the one to revive it, but he has his hands full running the Francis Davis Jazz Poll. (P&J would be a much bigger endeavor as well, maybe too much work unless it's part of your day job.)

I guess this is as good a place as any to express my enjoyment of Animal Rights but idk maybe “Alan Moulder hardcore” has a broader appeal in 2025 than it did in the 90s

On further review I’m not voting because honestly that’s a good group of albums. Not all great or classics, but solid. It would feel unfair to single one out.

I wouldn't vote for it but Time Out of Mind at #1 for 1997 seems a little high. 5 excellent songs, one very funny one, and a nifty atmosphere, but there are some pretty dull points on it.

xxp same here. tbh most of these albums are great albums IMHO, and I'd be more than happy to listen to any of these, even the lesser ones, if I was in a car with an hour drive ahead of me.

listened to every moby single/album from the beginning to play ok here we go:

s/t: grab-bag techno debut, clearly this guy was playing a (most likely one-sided) game of chicken with the prodigy from the jump. it's pretty good still
ambient: uhhh this guy is really good at moody spacious stuff, maybe that should be his thing
everything is wrong: '90s album sequencing whiplash!!!!! it's good but i also feel like he's like, almost deliberately trolling about the nature of the music he makes, like he's pushing everything beyond 100 to fuck with everybody. fun, disorienting, but really becomes something when it trades the manic approach for the depressive on the last few tracks
animal rights: least dynamic rock music i've heard in some time!!! perverse but i'm sorta with fgti, there's something here, especially when he slows down. too many songs about pussy though. bonus ambient disc could be his best work if packaged with "alone" from the u.s. release
play: this album is fucking great??????? the sequencing and stylistic diversity actually works and the songs are either blister packs of hooks or are really beautiful meditations that could go on indefinitely

idk i couldn't in good conscience vote for moby here

also listened to that cornershop album for the first time and it's fucking sick :)

Yessss ivy. please join the Cornershop fan club there are dozens of us

Animal Rights is a potentially-terrific concept let down by some horrifying decisions in its execution. I can't remember the name of the song (edit: it's "Come On Baby") but it is so bad (and it's def about pussy). Checking the UK track listing yesterday I was like "that's the first rock song on the UK issue? what was he thinking"?

Gotta say, its telling how much better this set of albums hold up compared to the '00s list

it's a really good list, it makes me want to listen to a lot of these albums, even the ones which aren't really my usual speed. the '00s list just makes me feel tired for some reason.

ivy! Listen to Move!

It is a good list! I've been listening to a lot of them and consider ~2/3 as classics

In terms of later day Moby I'm really fond of Last Night, although apparently it was made during unhappy times of heavy boozing and he feels nothing for it. Its nostalgia for late 80s/early 90s mainstream house was pretty spot on for its (2008) time and (for instance) I'd happily slip "Everyday It's 1989" next to Black Box, or "Disco Lies" next to Ce Ce Peniston, in my listening today.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Hole - Live Through This (#1, 1994) 7
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville (#1, 1993) 7

really?

Not surprised by Phair, feels like an album/artist that is going to be a pure love/hate split on ILM with no inbetween.

I'm surprised Arrested Development managed to limit the backlash to one vote. I remember when I got my copy for free from someone who didn't want it anymore - by then it was already a common dollar bin find.

Moby was a given but I’m really surprised by Hole and Phair.

Moby was a given but I’m really surprised by Hole and Phair.

Especially since there was absolutely no discussion. People really wanted to keep their "fuck that bitch" votes quiet till the very end...

fuckin lurkers

in retrospect I should voted for the other Moby, not Play which I at least cared enough about to rip 25 years ago

On that score, I was more surprised by:

Sinéad O'Connor - I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got (#2, 1990) 3

yes please lurkers tell me why the fuck I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got deserved three votes.

no votes for pj i see.

nice.😎

transparencyv i was the in utero voter

v=:

Hole - Live Through This (#1, 1994) 7
Liz Phair - Exile in Guyville (#1, 1993) 7

fantastic albums; absurd

I didn’t vote in this poll because I still have at least a liking for all of the ones I have heard. Nothing stuck out like “what was I thinking, how did I ever like this?” I’m pretty easily pleased I guess.

If I'm going to shit on an album from the '90s, it's not going to be any of these. There are tons of far more deserving records.

otm

14 voters misread the poll and voted for the best option

This is pretty clearly bots, no? There are more voters than in the end-of-year polls, iirc, it seems kinda absurd.

Bob Dylan - The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Live 1966: The "Royal Albert Hall" Concert (#3, 1998) 6

I mean, ... eh?

Get the “lol Radiohead sux” votes but what is that Hole and Phair contingent.

This is pretty clearly bots, no? There are more voters than in the end-of-year polls, iirc, it seems kinda absurd.

hmm, I didn't vote for Hole, but I never liked that album.

yes please lurkers tell me why the fuck I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got deserved three votes.

― the talented mr pimply (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, February 25, 2025 9:06 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

Made my jaw drop! Nevermind has four votes, too...

I voted for Everything is Wrong and would like to know why so many of you seem to prefer it to Play. Or is it that you think Play's importance was more overblown at the time?

yeah that was my line of thought

(the latter)

There are more voters than in the end-of-year polls

We've had 25 to 35 years to listen to these records, instead of one year.

My choice for worst I only heard last year.

I like Nevermind, but I understand how one might classify it as overrated in 2025 in way that I don’t understand taking that position on the Sinead album.

I voted for Nevermind, as the honest answer to what's aged most poorly for me personally of the choices (not what's worst, not what shouldn't have been praised at the time). I was way into Nirvana, have the cassette from when it came out, was devastated when Kurt Cobain died, and I understand why they were important to people. But if I put that album on now I get very little out of it

Nirvana feels like lost potential, more so than a group that made masterpiece/classic albums

jesus if these are the numbers we make when bots are helping...

Has there ever been such dismay with poll votes that the mods have made them public, to unleash the mob against the heretics?

LOL

I dont hate the Hole album but there's abt 20 albums on this list I like better (incl Exile which is one of my top faves). Surprised to find ilm thinks so highly of it tbh

Maybe people got Sinead confused with Moby because of the hair thing.

I like you, Halfway, but that was some 90s SNL shit.

Sorry, it's the testosterone

I didn't vote for it, but I don't think it's anything close to unreasonable to vote for the Hole album.

Phair, on the other hand ... it still feels fresh and new and stunning every time I listen to it.

didn't vote. ctrl+F "hole" the second i saw the result because wtf that album rules. glad to see sufficient consternation for that and others. back to lurking!

that hole album gets at the experience of being a woman that no album in its genre or general time period remotely touches, except for, of course, that phair album

sorry if that statement's a little too grandiose or broad but it's how i really feel!!!

love OK Computer but i find the almost-as-many votes there easier to grasp. lot of people find Radiohead annoying and it is tied to the music. I get if someone is like 'courtney love lol' but like... have you heard the record?

hey i don't wanna argue, but i had a longass post typed up about how much i hate that album for purely musical reasons that have nothing to do with anything other than how much i think sounds like not good music. it doesn't deserve to be mentioned alongside the best of its peers imo. i don't mean to be malicious about it at all. i just wanted to say re:grunge+90s radio rock haters: we exist. we mean no malice. we prefer dummy and ladybug mecca on blowout comb for good 94 sounds.

i do appreciate moby with the runaway win. that album's alright, but so mid in retrospect. i guess there's a reason it fit into commercials and stuff so well; just kinda becomes part of your surroundings. he's just a doofy uptight guy anyway. remember when he was all mad at eminem? i'm glad he made animal rights (maybe he has a sense of humor in the end?).

i'm listening to Live Through This for the first time in 30 years

to be clear, i don't believe the old urban myth that Kurt wrote these songs. i understand that myth discredits and dismisses CL and her band mates. i know some pre-date their relationship, and Erlandson/Pfaff wrote some.

but, like ... structurally, lyrically, dynamically, hook-ily ... they sound like Kurt songs. right?

The only Hole album I return to is the first one. I like the abrupt bursts of tape noise and found soundery and so on - wasn't that what Kurt wanted Bleach to be more like before feeling like Sub Pop were telling him to knock it off??

Not really. He liked being obscurantic, often effectively. Courtney Love, as ivy remarked, is precise.

xpost to myself (and agreeing w/ Alfred) - maybe less so lyrically, i should say. although there are echoes of him in there, imo.

I mean, to say that John and Yoko influenced each other will surprise no one. It's not a stretch to say, "Courtney influenced the shift in Cobain's writing."

but, like ... structurally, lyrically, dynamically, hook-ily ... they sound like Kurt songs. right?

― alpine static, Wednesday, February 26, 2025 1:53 PM (eleven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

who cares!!! and no i don't really agree

also i guess hate grunge music if you want but i can't think of an album that reflects my inner gross rat girl more than live through this, musically *and* lyrically

who voted for guyville? sheesh

that hole album gets at the experience of being a woman that no album in its genre or general time period remotely touches, except for, of course, that phair album

genuinely no shade if Live Through This does that for you, peace & love, but I would just say that ime the 1990s were an extremely rich time for such albums, LTT doesnt stand alone there imho. i like it fine but theres just a bunch of other records i reach for first when i want to go there

LTT doesnt stand alone there imho

I don't think ivy made this claim?

does "no album in its genre or general time period remotely touches" mean something else?

You're not used to ivy's posting style? Also, there's still this weird thing on ILX where "the best" and "my favorite" gets people's innards twisted.

You find other albums addressing the feminine experience more interesting? Awesome! No need to keep insisting on the point

i was really exaggerating!!! sorry. i already apologized lmao

my innards arent twisted, chill out alfred, tbh i was hoping to prompt discussion of other good albums that in the same vein, but i'm sorry for posting twice in 3 hours about liking an album a different amount than ivy likes it, jfc man

like i said, no shade ivy, i am glad you like that album and i like it too!

LTT might be my favourite album of the 90s, and if Kurt did write it all (he didn’t) then it’s the best album he was involved in imo

as soon as i made that post i thought "oh yeah, boys for pele," anyway i regret making a grandiose statement about womanhood as reflected through popular music of the '90s, there is just something about how gross live through this is that i do not get anywhere else

pee girl gets the belt :(

again i'm sorry if it sounded like i was nitpicking your statement of praise ivy, i didnt mean anyone to read that post & think "ivy is RONG" but rather "oh yes i am reminded of another good album like that from back then, perhaps i shall post abt it", much love to u

Jagged Little Pill would like a word!

I had a girlfriend that would blast Jagged Little Pill every time she was angry with me. All of those songs immediately trigger my fight or flight response.

Hole aside, I'm still waiting for the cowardly Sinead voters to step forward.

I hope they sleep with a clear conscience.

I didn't think they'd be hanging around here, but I've encountered a few Catholics who still demonize O'Connor for ripping up John Paul II's photo (without ever speaking a word about the church's protection of its sexual predators, which says a lot).

Catholic bots!

lol

Catholic Schoolbots Rule

I got a Catholic bot/Inside my head...

Stop killing the pope Sinead

Didn't vote, but I think I have and like most of these, some a lot. The result that surprised me was only one vote for Arrested Development. I've always loved "People Everyday" (my #1 single that year), liked "Tennessee" too, so the rest of the album never mattered that much to me. (Also, the album version of "People Everyday" is barely the same song as the single.) But I remember a time when there was a clear backlash against that album winning P&J--started almost immediately. I guess it's regained some stature over the years, or is so forgotten no one cares enough to think it's overrated anymore.

I think it’s hard to hate that album even if it was overrated at the time.

I don’t vote in worst threads but this was actually a good idea because of the discussion.

Bots can't vote, lol. 107 votes is actually pretty normal for these bigger polls.

i don't know that the arrested development album is forgotten necessarily, tho i doubt most people can recall any album cuts from it. (nb i've never heard the album)

i heard "mr. wendal" in a restaurant a couple weeks ago. it has some truly, shockingly bad lyrics like one noted above and the one that says slavery and genocide happened "over a racist grudge". but it's still a cute track to tap your foot along to

kind of love how 90s the result of this 90s poll is

also on team live through this is better than any nirvana record

are ppl actually serious about bots swaying ilm polls

Didn't realize that about "People Everyday." I guess this is the single mix:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Rp090dLRbo

Says "video unavailable"...The great version is the one that accompanies the official video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEEINM01G7U

Yup, same one.

I still don't get how "Dylan Live 66” can be voted worse than anything, let alone the albums on this list. I mean, most of this list is pretty good (I didn't vote) but.

are ppl actually serious about bots swaying ilm polls

― mookieproof, Thursday, 27 February 2025 03:14 (nine hours ago)

Only the catholic bots sent out by the mother superior

Googling Arrested Development I was astounded to learn they’ve had a dozen releases since 2000.

First time I thought of them in decades was when Speech turned up on a DJ Koze album. I had no idea they were still going.

When the Roots were touring with Digable Planets and the Jungle Brothers last year, certain stops had Arrested Development on the bill as well. It was tempting to see a second show just to catch them. (They weren't at the NYC show.)

questlove and speech are homies. not joking. back when quest used to post like a music fan on okp, there were several instances of him giving props (and also kind of implying that arrested development was one of the consensus picks among the members of the roots back in the 90s). when okayplayer was making an intentional effort to be a competitive online music hub, it used to be whenever speech released one of his new projects he got an automatic feature.

i got clowned relentlessly for liking them back in the day, so it was cool years later to see someone i really respected give them props also.

also xpost/clemenza otm- single mix of "everyday people" with the bob james beat is way better.

I will rep for a couple of these albums (yes even Moby) but taken as a whole, this list makes the 90s look absolutely godawful.

I like you, Halfway, but that was some 90s SNL shit.

― cryptosicko, Wednesday, February 26, 2025 4:04 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

I didn’t mean to make fun of her or his appearance. I did mean to make fun of far-fetched theories why the “wrong” records received votes.

Austin: I thought the video and single were one and the same...I actually have a 45 of "People Everyday" bought from this company that was actually still making singles for jukeboxes in the early '90s (I think "jukebox" was in their name). I'll check that.

nice! i had this one. good one-stop shop for anybody who doesn't have time for the whole album. it was the video mix on this 45.