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The 10 Best Albums of 1995

These are the best albums of 1995 as selected by Slant’s music writers.

The 10 Best Albums of 1995
Photo: Stephane Sednaoui

In my introduction to Slant’s list of the 100 Best Albums of the 1990s, I described nostalgia for the decade as “an idealized vision of a time when Bill Clinton was the fresh, young Democrat on the block, beepers were the hottest new tech items, and every major record label and Top 40 radio station was scrambling to discover the next big alternative to run-of-the-mill pop.” I went on to lament: “It’s human nature to look back on things with irrational fondness and nostalgia, overlooking the bad and romanticizing the good. But while the ’90s had its fair share of ‘crap,’ it’s hard to deny that the ‘good’ was exceptionally good.” So good, in fact, that we decided to dust off our lovingly curated list of over 400 albums to compile individual Top 10s for each year of the ’90s. Many of these titles are already widely—and rightfully—celebrated, but these lists also give us the opportunity to honor some typically overlooked gems. Sal Cinquemani

Honorable Mention: Vanessa Daou, Zipless; Leftfield, Leftism; Ani Difranco, Not a Pretty Girl; Moby, Everything Is Wrong; Goodie Mob, Soul Food; The Chemical Brothers, Exit Planet Dust; No Doubt, Tragic Kingdom; D’Angelo, Brown Sugar; Kim Richey, Kim Richey; Goldie, Timeless


The 10 Best Albums of 1995

10. Oasis, (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?

(What’s the Story) Morning Glory? is an album of such astonishing hubris it would be shocking if it had come from practically anyone else other than Liam and Noel Gallagher. Oasis’s 1994 debut, Definitely Maybe, may have been wildly aspirational, but their sophomore effort saw the Gallaghers making a sincere and concerted effort to be the biggest rock band in the universe. Their goal seemed to be to out-rock the Beatles themselves, adding screaming distortion and massive, anthemic choruses on top of Noel’s Lennon-esque melodies. This approach would have easier to dismiss as hot air if those hooks weren’t so damn good, but ultimately, it’s (What’s the Story) Morning Glory?’s audacity that makes it as fun as it is. Liam’s cocky Manchester brogue is a perfect avatar for the band’s public persona at the time, whether he’s hyping up raging vamps like “Some Might Say” and “Morning Glory” or adding cheek to the natural sensitivity of “Wonderwall.” By the time the band gets to the closing “Champagne Supernova,” they sound at once brawling and beautiful and big enough to actually justify their egos. Jeremy Winograd


The 10 Best Albums of 1995

9. Alanis Morissette, Jagged Little Pill

To paraphrase my blurb for Alanis Morissette’s breakthrough hit, “You Oughta Know,” for our list of the 100 Best Singles of the 1990s: In a seething, hypocritical letter to Spin in 1996, then-closeted Madonna fan Courtney Love called Alanis, who was signed to the queen of pop’s Maverick label at the time, “a Product of Madonnas [sic] Fatal Flaw, contrivance at every level.” What with Alanis being a former pop tart and with Wilson Phillips producer Glen Ballard on board as songwriting partner, it isn’t hard to see Love’s point. But Alanis was able to harness the rage of a movement that had already sold itself out and record a pop album that captured the zeitgeist, chewed it up whole, and spit it back out. That Love, who turned down a deal with Maverick, was never able to sell 16 million must have been a jagged little pill to swallow indeed. Cinquemani


The 10 Best Albums of 1995

8. Pulp, Different Class

Jarvis Cocker may have found an updated role as one of pop’s most urbane dirty old men, but Pulp’s appeal was always more wholesome than raunchy, working off the juxtaposition between his willowy cocksman character and the sympathetic sweetness of his lyrical sketches. These songs use sex as a blurry lens for character elaboration, best shown on a track like “Live Bed Show,” whose surface vulgarity is all cover for a forlorn tale of lost love. The band grants the same depth to blackout drug use (“Sorted for E’s & Wizz”) and social exile scene (“Mis-Shapes”), establishing new depth in the most tired examples of rock ‘n’ roll excess. Jesse Cataldo

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The 10 Best Albums of 1995

7. Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

The grungy art rock of Smashing Pumpkins’s Siamese Dream laid the groundwork for the baroque opus Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness—perhaps not their most concise work, but one in which the band fully realized the potential of their darkly romantic sound. The ambitious concept album is notable for its contributions to the increasingly angsty, emo-ish direction of alternative music in the mid-’90s, but its real heart lies in the beautifully peculiar pieces that meld turn-of-the-century art-nouveau visuals with Billy Corgan’s hot-and-cold emotions. Full of moments where abrupt emotional swings are the norm (the archaic, harp-driven ode that is “Cupid De Locke” next to the children’s book tale of “Stumbleine” next to the relentless machine gun riffs of “Fuck You,” for example), Mellon Collie is a graceful, wonderfully moody rock symphony. Kevin Liedel


The 10 Best Albums of 1995

6. Tricky, Maxinquaye

Tricky’s breakthrough album remains a uniquely evocative experience at once chill and chilling. According to Martine, the government is sending her letters, but does the government even exist? In a time that’s seemingly gone, where uncertainty reigns supreme, armies are recruiting and the landscape of Earth—and mind—is riddled with schisms. Having given up on a civilization that sounds as if it’s barely survived an apocalypse (nuclear warfare, perhaps, maybe even zombies—it’s all the same), Tricky Kid and Martine trudge through industrial playgrounds, not only lost in thought, but suffocated by it, victims of resentment and regret, banging their feet against pipes and bopping their heads as they turn corners, afraid of the danger that awaits them. These sad sacks fear the planet’s perils, from heartache to racism, but they refuse to let you see them sweat. They funk their way through an aftermath of discontent, and though they’re angry and cynical, they always seem to see a light at the end of their rusted memories and nightmares. Ed Gonzalez


The 10 Best Albums of 1995

5. Genius/GZA, Liquid Swords

The splintering of Wu-Tang’s original eight-headed incarnation created a diverse series of glittering shards, with the group’s penchant for malice and pitch-black ghetto noir settling into Liquid Swords, which finds RZA twisting his trademark samurai movie samples into atmospheric hedging for a lean, claustrophobic nightmare. Unlike Ghostface Killah’s multihued true-crime narratives, the stories here are harsh and muscular renderings of a grim gangster underworld, with drug deals and murders painted in chiaroscuro austerity, absent of the bluster and fuss that has dominated so much of the genre’s fascination with crime. Cataldo


The 10 Best Albums of 1995

4. Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx…

It was difficult for any of the nine Wu-Tang MCs to really stand out on Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), which made the Clansmen’s first round of solo efforts an all-the-more exciting prospect. And for Raekwon, Only Built 4 Cuban Linx… cemented his reputation as the group’s most captivating storyteller. RZA’s beats have a rich cinematic quality, which endow these tales of death and drug-fuelled excess in New York’s criminal underbelly with an especially grand scope. Ghostface Killah co-stars and features on almost every track, his immeasurably strong chemistry with the album’s major player on “Knuckleheadz” and “Crimonology” standing out as cast-iron highlights. Then there’s “Guillotine (Swordz),” a group track where Inspectah Deck and GZA join the party for one of the most searing displays of rhymes-over-refrain in the Wu-Tang canon: Staten Island wordplay at its stark and chilling best. Huw Jones

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The 10 Best Albums of 1995

3. PJ Harvey, To Bring You My Love

Moving away from the punk and blues formalism of her first two albums, Polly Jean Harvey embraced theatricality on To Bring You My Love. If not her most accessible recording, it’s perhaps her most sweeping and epic, at turns delicate and vile in its explorations of love. Whether she’s equating sexual desire with religious fervor on “Send His Love to Me” or subverting gender archetypes on the furious, ecstatic “Long Snake Moan,” Harvey’s songs teem with a deep hunger. To Bring You My Love recasts lust as both emotional and physical violence, as Harvey tries to reconcile the need for the titular “You” with her supreme desires for attending to her own needs. It’s an album that trades in power dynamics, and Harvey fights tooth and nail to keep the upper hand. Jonathan Keefe


The 10 Best Albums of 1995

2. Radiohead, The Bends

The Bends signaled the end of the mucky post-grunge Radiohead of Pablo Honey and embraced the quirky sense of experimentation that has defined them ever since. Tracks like “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” “Bullet Proof…I Wish I Was,” and “Fake Plastic Trees” suggest that the album was a stepping stone to the groundbreaking OK Computer, and many have dismissed it merely as a prequel to a much more refined sound, but The Bends is a fantastic album in its own right: “Just” is a storming rock jaunt, “Black Star” and “Planet Telex” are impassioned apocalyptic epics, and “High and Dry” is a beguiling alternative anthem despite Thom Yorke’s protests that it sounds like a Rod Stewart song. Jones


The 10 Best Albums of 1995

1. Björk, Post

Björk’s second album, Post, was designed as a mixtape of communiqués to friends and family from the singer after she migrated from Iceland to Europe: “Army of Me,” a kick in the pants to her little brother; “Enjoy,” a love letter to London; “Possibly Maybe,” a farewell to ex-boyfriend Stéphane Sednaoui; “Cover Me,” a message to producer Nellee Hooper (“This is really dangerous…but worth all the effort”); “Headphones,” a Stockhausen-inspired electronic tone poem dedicated to 808 State’s Graham Massey. From the industrial-strength “Army of Me” to the lush and cinematic “Isobel” to the eccentric big-band cover “It’s Oh So Quiet” (which, if not for brass arrangements on songs like “I Miss You” and “Enjoy,” would sound completely out of place here), Post is Björk’s most scatterbrained work to date, but it’s tied together flawlessly by the singer’s singular whimsicality. Cinquemani

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