poll: megaselling rock albums released in 1994

Wow. Monster, I think?

Kinda shocked to say that, TBH.

dookie

of the ones I know: Superunknown > Vitalogy > The Downward Spiral > Purple > Dookie > Weezer > Jar Of Flies > Unplugged > Under The Table And Dreaming > Voodoo Lounge > Wildflowers > Monster > Four

quite frankly Monster is a terrible choice and I don't know how you could know and like that album and none of the others

Hm. Well, I guess I'd take the Soundgarden over it. But nah, I always thought Monster was underrated (tho a totally second-rate disc for REM).

And then the other thing is I kind of dislike many of the other albums on the list.

it has some really good songs, I guess, just overall rubs me the wrong way

Holy shit the 90s were awful. Under the table and dreaming, I guess.

Probably going to have to go with the Pearl Jam just narrowly over Green Day and Soundgarden. But then again I loved that Live album and that Alice in Chains EP. Fuck, 1994 was when I was huge into this stuff.

The megaselling 90s were awful. Its my favorite decade for music otherwise.

I get that; in some respects, I feel the same way. But stripped of the crappy, antiquated-sounding production techniques, it has some killer rock songs: Let Me In; Circus Envy; I Don't Sleep, I Dream; Strange Currencies; and I Took Your Name.

My other big problem with it is that it is the disc where, for me, it really sunk in that REM wasn't special, anymore. They had long shed their Southern Gothic Rock roots, but somehow I had found ways to ignore or overlook that. But this disc drove that point home for me, so I was overly-harsh on it when it was released.

(xp)

And yeah to this: "The megaselling 90s were awful."

the 90s had way better megaselling rock albums than the 00s, though that's not saying much

Holy shit the 90s were awful. Under the table and dreaming, I guess.

― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, January 14, 2010 3:33 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

WTF!!!

imo... Dookie.

Right; that's not saying much. The 70s -- 80s were much better eras for megaselling rock albums.

(xp)

All I own/enjoy is Monster and The Downward Spiral. Of those, voted the latter.

Superunknown, followed by Weezer, PJ and NIN.

only heard 3 of these in entirety - numbers 3 to 5 down ship's list - and the answer sure as hell ain't pink floyd

original poll idea was superunknown versus downward spiral, gonna have a short think about this and then vote superunknown

Superunknown

LOL Ian - before I read your post I had copied Snub's and was going to write this:

Holy shit the 90s were awful. Under the table and dreaming, I guess.

― Mr. Snrub, Thursday, January 14, 2010 3:33 AM (13 minutes ago) Bookmark

WTF!!!

― Joint Custody (ian), Wednesday, January 13, 2010 10:46 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark

But probably would have added an LOL.

Anyway . . .

Dookie - no contest

Although there are several there that aren't far behind.

Vitalogy is #2 for me, but it's not my fave pearl jam record.

At the time, I probably listened to Weezer and Throwing Copper the most. I don't know which one I go to first now, but probably either Weezer or Vitalogy or Dookie.

Nirvana, then Green Day.

Not the biggest Pearl Jam fan, but Vitalogy is a really good album. Probably Vitalogy > MTV Unplugged > Wildflowers > The Downward Spiral > Sixteen Stone > Korn > Dookie > the rest for me, but it's been so long since I heard ANY of them. Jar of Flies probably fits in there somewhere around the middle but I can't remember a single note of it at the moment.

Going with what I listened to most as a 14 year old at the time, Dookie, followed by Weezer, with Unplugged a distant third, and Monster an even more distant fourth. Never liked Pearl Jam or NIN, don't care for the Soundgarden album, hate the Pink Floyd, and haven't ever listened to any of the others.

freshman year :)

ranked in order of what I would have said at age 14

THESE ALBUMS ARE AWESOME!!!!
Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
Korn - Korn
Nirvana - MTV Unplugged In New York
Pearl Jam - Vitalogy
Weezer - Weezer ('The Blue Album')
Soundgarden - Superunknown

THESE ALBUMS ARE PRETTY GOOD
Alice In Chains - Jar Of Flies EP
The Offspring - Smash
Green Day - Dookie
Stone Temple Pilots - Purple

THESE ALBUMS ARE CRAP (UNRANKED BUT FUCK LIVE AND BUSH!!!!)
Pink Floyd - The Division Bell
Live - Throwing Copper
Hootie & The Blowfish - Cracked Rearview
The Rolling Stones - Voodoo Lounge
Blues Traveler - Four
R.E.M. - Monster
Dave Matthews Band - Under The Table And Dreaming
The Cranberries - No Need To Argue
Tom Petty - Wildflowers
The Eagles - Hell Freezes Over
Bush - Sixteen Stone

downward spiral was some epic ish for me

While at first glance this list looks pretty sad, listening to bits of the Green Day and Weezer again, I'm impressed by the way they seem custom designed to be an introverted, 14 year old boy's favorite albums.

its so telling that i was big into the NIN/Korn/Ministry/Jane's/FNM/Helmet axis instead of the Weezer/Oasis/Bush/Live/GreenDay axis because it basically had the artiness of alternative with the macho of metal--and here i am, still making fun of corny indie fuxx0rs 15 years later for listening to sufjan instead of pissed jeans.

I mean my top 10 of 09 had Yob, Pissed Jeans, SunnO))) and Zu--and I'll be damned if that just isn't the snobby 30-year-old version of the same alt-metal beloved by a fat 14-year-old whiney

Weezer - Weezer ('The Blue Album')

I think this would have been even more huge if it came out today

"Finally someone is making music that sounds like Jimmy Eat World and OKGo!"

actually, fuck, you know what? wildflowers is really good. i just got a copy of it. didn't see it on the initial list.

94 was one of my favorite pop/rock years:

Beck
Silver Jews
Weezer
Guilded By Voices
Built To Spill
Ween
Pavement
Stereolab
Palace Brothers
Portishead
Beastie Boys
Dog Faced Hermans

SMASH!

Ah, airguitaring along with that awesome backwards Buck solo in "What's the frequency, Kenneth?" & bobbing along with "Basket Case" - two favorite recurring crank-up-the-volume moments with my housemate in '94. Weezer was played loud on walkman during bike rides to and from university. Man I love(d) that album madly.

(twelve years later my first car would be a VW Golf...Pink Floyd)

'Let Me In' is one of my favourite REM tracks...
went for Vitalogy, but with Superunknown and Jar Of Flies just below.

smash

I love that first Weezer album an awful lot still. It hits my nerdy punky buttons more than Dookie b/c it doesn't have Dookie's self-loathing. Pretty much nothing else by Weezer does anything for me but that first album is totally epic.

Monster is great too.

1994 kinda set the pace for rock for a long time thereafter: I mean big poppy rock bands are still kinda mining a core of Green Day/Weezer/NIN, it seems to me.

A ton of this list is a 1995 thing for Britishers - Korn, Weezer and Bush def didn't come out until the year after here and Offspring and Green Day didn't really break until then. I guess for a variety of reasons there isn't that slow drip of hype/popularity between the US and Europe too often anymore (even fucking Owl City has a sold out tour of like 1,000 capacity venues coming up)

Anyhoo, voted Soundgarden

Dookie, narrowly over Unplugged.

Anyway kids in my school were totally caning both Dookie and Smash in 1994, although Green Day didn't really hit big until Basket Case was released the following year and I don't remember The Offspring doing much until Pretty Fly For A White Guy came out in 1999.

The Weezer album was definitely a 1995 release in the UK though from what I remember.

i loved dookie at the time, but it sounds hella tinny now, and very filler-heavy, and more indebted to the jam than the descendents

offspring's self esteem was pretty big on mtv in 1994

really? it was so obviously going to do well that i almost disqualified it.

Weezer? I figured Nirvana and NIN would dominate. I didn't know ILM held the Blue Album in any regard.

I was a radio DJ at the time, and the first time someone called up requesting Korn, I thought they were talking about the vegetable, and asked them if they wanted corn on the cob, or creamed corn, or the corn niblets that come with peas and tiny mushy carrot pieces.

blue album nerds are in way higher supply than NIN nerds on ilx

yeah I was thinkin Weezer would win

(could never fucking stand them myself)

Nirvana win not surprising. I'm surprised at how many people still carry the torch for the Blue Album though. Have they listened to it lately, or is it a nostalgia vote? Because I really liked that album in the late 90s, but ...

I voted for it and listened to it semi-recently (last year at some point). I think it still holds up.

lol who voted for Floyd? that's awesome

Blue album is a great listen, my copy vanished a while back but I was still rocking it in the late 00s.

interesting to see where these albums landed on Pazz & Jop in relation to their performance on this poll:

3. R.E.M.: Monster (Warner Bros.) 634 (66)
4. Nirvana: MTV Unplugged in New York (DGC) 552 (50)
9. Nine Inch Nails: The Downward Spiral (Nothing/TVT/Interscope) 460 (43)
11. Soundgarden: Superunknown (A&M) 411 (37)
12. Green Day: Dookie (Reprise) 368 (35)
25. Pearl Jam: Vitalogy (Epic) 192 (19)

only list Weezer placed on was the videos poll, surprisingly.

Unplugged winning this was some bullshit, wish i'd made it a 'studio albums' poll

answer for me would have been Jar of Flies by some margin. bought it the day it was released iirc and still play it a hell of a lot. the opening notes of "rotten apple" have a warm, resonating glow that lures me in every time. "Purple" is also an excellent album.

i liked Jar Of Flies when i first got it but i basically forgot it existed when i heard Superunknown a couple months later

superunknown towers above everything else

really liked Superunknown at the time (particularly some of the album tracks like "limo wreck" and "4th of july"), but these days i'll consciously skip over it in favour of Badmotorfinger every time.

i never got around to buying nirvana unplugged. I bet it's great, but I can't really think about it now without remembering when the chili peppers become a sensitive acoustic alternative band surrounded by candles in the "dani california" video. wishkah's more how i'd like to remember that band anyway.

Superunknown sounds a lot better to me now than it did at the time, and I still like Monster, but it's Blue Album all the way for me.

Superunknown still wins because they figured out how to successfully use "whatsoever" in a song.

superunknown is a 70 minute album that i can listen to straight through without ever getting bored. god it's great

coincidentally listened to Jar Of Flies for the first time ever in the last month, "No Excuses" is the only AiC song I've ever really liked but it's an interesting EP. 1994 is when I started reading music magazines hardcore and getting into indie rock, so I actually own pretty few of these. They were either too overtly teen-punk or classic rock, Weezer at least seemed to aim for indie cool, and succeeded well enough for a high school freshman who cared about that kind of thing.

i never got around to buying nirvana unplugged. I bet it's great, but I can't really think about it now without remembering when the chili peppers become a sensitive acoustic alternative band surrounded by candles in the "dani california" video.

until you got to "dani california" i thought you were talking about "my friends"

superunknown is a 70 minute album that i can listen to straight through without ever getting bored. god it's great

― buh, Friday, June 29, 2012 9:48 AM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

this is otm, prob the best rock album that runs over an hour since Daydream Nation

"Got Me Wrong" from the first Alice In Chains acoustic EP was a hit on the Clerks soundtrack around the same time and i like that more than anything on Jar Of Flies now

Would now rank them:

Superunknown
Vitalogy
Monster
Wildflowers
MTV Unplugged in New York

and settle for the Dookie singles included on Green Day's comp.

is wildflowers actually worth checking out?

too long but it's damn tuneful. It's not accepted Petty orthodoxy but not even DTT had so many good ones in a row – and he's learned how to sing. If you can get it for a buck, why not

vitalogy also really hold up well imo. in hindsight, it was sort of the last hurrah of the whole grunge thing

yeah, kinda. pretty sure it was the last time a Seattle band sold more than 3 million copies of an album.

Pretty sure the Foo Fighters have done that since

FF have never had a multi-platinum album. also it's a stretch to call them a 'seattle band,' nate mendel is probably the only member who's had a home in washington for virtually all of the band's run.

FF have never had a multi-platinum album

Maybe not in the US, but they have definitely have in a bunch of other countries.

my first post said "3 million copies of an album," it doesn't take 3 mil to go triple platinum in australia, stop lawyering me for fuck's sake

terrible results in this poll

Ain't lawyering you some dudez, just speculating that multi-platinum sales albums combined across several territories conceivably total more than 3 million. Why is everyone so aggro on ILX today?

Dave Matthews Band - Under The Table And Dreaming 7
Pearl Jam - Vitalogy 5

i honestly feel like i don't even know you people

FF have never had a multi-platinum album

Maybe not in the US, but they have definitely have in a bunch of other countries.

it's kind of amazing colour and the shape hasn't sold 2 mil, or at least been honored for the accomplishment. "everlong" ffs.

i mean candlebox sold 4 mil.

FF have never had a multi-platinum album

But most of their run took place after people stopped buying albums -- seems like complaining that Green Day never sold a million 8-tracks

Apparently The Colour and the Shape has sold "2.13 million U.S. copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/12/music-foofighters-dc-idUSN1037869920070812

But most of their run took place after people stopped buying albums -- seems like complaining that Green Day never sold a million 8-tracks

their first three albums happened in the 90s, it's still kind of surprising a band as era-reigning as them couldn't crack double-plat. though considering colour and shape got the platinum disc IN the nineties, it's also not surprising they got another million sold in the last decade

I'd vote for Superunknown over Unplugged now but I still think Unplugged is really good and a close second (though it's a bit played out as well)

some dude otmfm about Got Me Wrong

man the more i think about it the weirder "complaining this big mid-'90s-into-present band didn't sell 2 million CDs is like complaining this big mid-'90s-into-present didn't sell 1 million 8 tracks" is.

CDs were quite popular in the late '90s!

Whenever I'm reminded of Purple's existence, I tend to think, "It can't be as good as I remember, can it?". And then I listen to it and confirm that it actually is pretty effing solid. I mean, the lyrics are mostly terrible, but STP are hardly unique among '90s alt bands in that regard. Honestly, as much as I like a lot of the albums here, that and Jar of Flies are probably the ones that have held up the best in my estimation. Or at the very least, they are (surprisingly, to me) the ones I return to most often. I still love a lot of songs on Superunknown or Vitalogy, but I can't remember the last time I listened to either one front to back.

i still have never heard vitalogy all the way through, though between the radio and friends saying "dude, you gotta hear Bugs, what the hell" in high school I heard most of it

Division Bell, most overlooked album of the 90s i think

makes you think

Apparently The Colour and the Shape has sold "2.13 million U.S. copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan"

http://www.reuters.com/article/2007/08/12/music-foofighters-dc-idUSN1037869920070812

― gonna send him to outer space, to hug another face (NickB), Friday, June 29, 2012 11:57 AM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark

my bad -- but that still has zero effect on my comment on SEATTLE bands selling THREE million so i feel like i'm in a maze or boring technicalities

Sorry if the existence of the rest of the planet counts as a boring technicality, but yeah lets drop it.

the thread is ABOUT u.s. sales, i shouldn't have to qualify every single reference i make to sales figures because you didn't read the first post

Scratching my head at my past post in this thread. The answer is obviously Superunknown. Still fond of my other picks but less and less likely to put them on with each passing year.