Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 1995 poll

this is the last one before it becomes all about Spoon.

another excellent year, going to have to think about it.

"Liquid Swords" by some distance.

Went for 'Til Shiloh as it's my favourite album in the genre. Seriously his voice fills me with awe the whole way through... Buju's my Celine.

Favourite not on the list is Ani DiFranco - Not a Pretty Girl. (pre-emptive fuck you guys she had a string of classics)

Wow, I was surprised to see the Pumpkins rank so highly so went to Wikipedia to see... 5/5 at CoS, 9.3 at P4K, 10/10 at PopMatters, 5/5 at Slant. A masterpiece in some circles, I had no idea.

So we're up to the point where I'm able to remember these albums being released

Liquid Swords is the correct answer btw

the bends

one of my friends used to try to convince me the bends was better than ok computer and I was always like are you crazy do you know nothing of critical consensus until years later I realized there's quite a bit of consensus around the bends, listened to it again and it is amazing, great songwriting, very fun to airguitar

but the album I put on after reading this very impressive list is jagged little pill, listening rn

is it really just hindsight that makes it seem like 1995 was a better year in music than 2014?

Surprised to see Mellon Collie rank so low.

This is the first of these where I actually heard/owned some of the albums at the time. Voting for Alien Lanes (which I didn't hear until much, much later) but like '94 nearly all of these are good-to-great. Cuban Linx, Mellon Collie, Maxinquaye, Liquid Sowrds, Post, Tri Repetae, To Bring You My Love, I Should Coco... all classics to me.

This has to be The Bends, which meant more to me at the time than any other album on this list. Runner up: Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. Third place: Different Class.

Alien Lanes and Wowee Zowee are the only things on this list that I kinda love, but there are a lot of really solid A-/B+ albums here. And I acknowledge that Alien Lanes and Wowee Zowee are, objectively, also hovering around A-/B+ at best.

This list feels way out of sync to me, too, because I didn't hear most of these albums until like '97.

The Bends should've been on my list as well, for ages I thought it was one of the weaker Radiohead albums but I appreciate it a lot more now, probably because the singles don't feel so overplayed anymore.

Great year but, gah, that top 3.

Also, Everything is Wrong maybe the worst "acclaimed music" of the '90s.

this is Pulp vs. Scott Walker, i guess

and yes, Liquid Swords is one of the better ones too

Maxinquaye vs. Leftism vs. Exit Planet Dust vs. Timeless vs. Only Built 4 Cuban Linx... vs. Liquid Swords

didn't see Alien Lanes in there. that's obv in with a shot too.

i dislike/ have no interest in exactly a third of these.

one Fannies vote - who will join me?

Interesting how little overlap there is between this list and the number one albums list.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Billboard_200_number-one_albums_of_1995

Just Mellon Collie and Alanis. Must have been a soundscan thing. By the way, WTF is Dogg Food?

i'd sooner listen to other choices on the list these days, but the bends was so important to me at the time. i felt like it was made for me, and made to haunt me. i think teenage me taped over my taped copy at one point because i was worried it was exacerbating my already introspective mood.

November 11	Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness	The Smashing Pumpkins
November 18	Dogg Food	Tha Dogg Pound

That's a thing of beauty right there.

The 13-year-old me is stunned that The Presidents of the United States of America by the Presidents of the United States of America is nowhere on this list.

Liquid Swords is almost certainly the correct answer but I'm still voting for Tilt.

Me Against The World

Largely indifferent to most of these albums. Only The Bends and Alien Lanes seemed to have had any lasting impact on me.

Mobb Deep? Luna? Matthew Sweet?

Usually happy to join a Fannies pact but have to go with Pulp.

Wrong, Everything Is Wrong still great.

I kinda didn't (and still don't) get what the big deal was with Everything Is Wrong when I got around to hearing it a year or so after the fact but it did lead me to Moby's Ambient which is a much better album, I must say.

Could go Post or (What's the Story) Morning Glory? here. Not a great Springsteen record, but a phenomenal tour.

(What's The Story) Morning Glory? is a great rock record if you can just pretend that the Gallagher brothers speak English as what barely passes for a second language. Although I realize that kinda also applies to Mellon Collie and the Foo Fighters' debut and also pretty much every other rock record I like.

The lyrics are totally not the point, is my point.

Pygmalion...

Post definitely

15 823 Genius/GZA - Liquid Swords
22 1112 Scott Walker - Tilt
25 1287 Autechre - Tri Repetae

^ I could happily listen to any of these right now.

I find it difficult to extract Tri Repetae from the Garbage and Anvil Vapre EPs, but the whole Tri Repetae++ package is very good indeed.

Tilt for sure, it's probably my all time favorite record at this point, but this list has a bunch of rly great records on it.

90s a pretty barren decade for me but this year super sticks out.

Tough choice between I Should Coco, Liquid Swords and Wowee Zowee.

I enjoyed (What's The Story) Morning Glory? at the time, but I haven't really listened to it much since roughly 1998 or thereabouts. I Should Coco is fine, but the follow-up is one of their best ever records, IMO, and miles ahead. A Northern Soul was seen as The Verve's masterpiece for many years, though I vastly prefer A Storm In Heaven. I never listen to Grand Prix, anymore, and the last time I listened to it I was struck by just how "mid '90s" it sounded, production-wise it's very much of its time.

Autechre, easily.

This'll be a coin-toss between The Bends and Wrecking Ball for me.

Surprised to find that I actually bought five of these at the time (Oasis, Pulp, Tricky, Alanis Morissette, and Garbage). I also bought the single 'History' by the Verve (but not the album), and several Supergrass singles (but not the album). I'd forgotten that I was still a relatively active music buyer at that time. I listened to 'History' yesterday for the first time in years and it goes on a bit but still sounds good to me. On the other hand, I shudder when I think back to how much time I spent back then listening to WTSMG (and even more so because I have a memory of only really liking maybe half of it -- it just seemed to go on for ever).

I think I'm most surprised to see Garbage in this list. Thought the name was fairly apropos twenty years ago when my musical taste even more questionable than it is today.

I voted for Tilt, which I discovered two years ago, just over Wowee Zowee, which I have been listening to for nearly 20 years. Tilt is really good.

I was tempted to vote for Timeless but I almost always feel like drum'n'bass albums drag at some point in their running time, and Timeless is no exception. otoh I've been listening to a lot of drum'n'bass dj mixes lately, which seem to keep pretty lively, even if the great parts aren't necessarily as the great parts of Timeless.

Looks like I will be the only vote for I Should Coco but could have easily voted for Elastica or A Northern Soul.

Went with Tilt; could've gone with Maxinquaye, Liquid Swords, The Bends, Grand Prix, or I Should Coco.

I always hold '94 up as a banner year, but '95 gives it a good run for its money by the looks of things.

Electr-o-Pura by Yo La Tengo is certainly one of the 30 best records of 1995. So is Mirror Ball by Neil Young and Pearl Jam.

Deep dark secret: I actually prefer Saturnz Return to Timeless.

4 159 Tricky - Maxinquaye
5 174 PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love
6 243 Björk - Post

I mean these three alone

Man, Owen Morris' productions on (What's The Story) Morning Glory? and A Northern Soul haven't aged very well.

Leftism v Liquid Swords: the two albums I have listened to most (out of all the albums, not just the albums in this poll). Voted Leftism. Now thinking I regret that.

everyone should regret voting for Leftism, that album is terrible

Haha, I love every bit of it! Regret now washed away by righteous indignation.

I just listened to it. It's okay? I don't get why it's here, but I wasn't there.

Does Acclaimed Music tend to reflect contemporaneous reception rather than legacy? These lists read like what might have appeared in Spin for those years.

i'm not sure how he does it but i think he uses a lot of data from the UK for these list. i think he is Swedish?

from Wiki:

Acclaimed Music is a website created by Henrik Franzon, a statistician from Stockholm, Sweden. Franzon has statistically aggregated hundreds of published lists that rank songs and albums into aggregated rankings by year, decade and all-time. Lists that are submitted by readers to magazines or websites are excluded from the aggregation. Author Michaelangelo Matos writes that "Franzon's methods are imperfect, but as indicators of overall critical appeal go, it's hard to beat.

i also know that he lists this board along with some IlXor's boards in the links reference.

There's a substantial amount of post-hoc weighting going on at Acclaimed Music to get "satisfactory results." Generally in favor of albums I liked at the time.

Maxinquaye has by far the most listens from me, though I might put on Tilt to impress/disconcert.

here are the next 20 or so:

31 A Guy Called Gerald - Black Secret Technology
32 Mobb Deep - The Infamous...
33 Tindersticks - Tindersticks (II)
34 Rancid - ...And Out Come the Wolves
35 Black Grape - It's Great when You're Straight...Yeah
36 Aphex Twin - I Care Because You Do
37 Yo La Tengo - Electr-O-Pura
38 Oval - 94 Diskont
39 The Jayhawks - Tomorrow the Green Grass
40 Fugazi - Red Medicine
41 Son Volt - Trace
42 Blur - The Great Escape
43 Tocotronic - Digital Ist Besser
44 No Doubt - Tragic Kingdom
45 Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
46 Mouse on Mars - Iaora Tahiti
47 Cassandra Wilson - New Moon Daughter
48 Palace Music - Viva Last Blues
49 Sonic Youth - Washing Machine
50 You Am I - Hi Fi Way

53 Neil Young - Mirror Ball

this second twenty is a lot easier and going with a very Bee like answer, Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot.

voted liquid swords over maxinquaye. when i think of 1995 i think of wu-tang. mobb deep and fugazi from that runnersup list.

36 Aphex Twin - I Care Because You Do
37 Yo La Tengo - Electr-O-Pura
38 Oval - 94 Diskont

I'd probably actually vote for any one of this series if they were available.

I would like to vote for Mirrorball

one Fannies vote - who will join me?

― BlackIronPrison, Thursday, July 23, 2015 6:15 AM (3 days ago)

Me.

TILT

Soul Food

pac

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Watch it be Pavement again

nah, probably Scott Walker on top here. (my #2 after Pulp)

Hmmm, Leftfield or Bjork I guess. Quite a drop-off from 94.

Actually the album I listen to most today is probably I Should Coco.

voting Radiohead as i couldn't get past that album. could have voted Pulp, Smashing Pumpkins or even Elastica.

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

Well, totally saw that coming.

Can we just skip the '97 poll?

100 votes wow and i wasn't expecting Pulp to get that many votes. a pleasant surprise.

yeah 1996 is weak but it will have to wait as i'm putting this on hold for a week until i'm done with Spoon.

Peak Underworld vs. Aphex vs. DJ Shadow isn't weak

That's a really strong top 10 even if IDGAF abt the radiohead

5 174 PJ Harvey - To Bring You My Love 2

sadface

9 425 Leftfield - Leftism 1

1 vote too many IMO

I never understood why To Bring You My Love (while great) received so much more praise than Rid of Me. TBYML may have been a little more focused/refined, but ROM felt kinda revolutionary.

It's a shame the Foo Fighters album didn't get a vote. It only took an album and a half for me to get my fill of them, but that first record is pretty killer.

Leftism was my vote. Best dance album ever imo

Which means that I didn't actually vote for Leftism. Bugger.