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The 10 Best Albums of 1990

These are the best albums of 1990 as selected by Slant’s music writers.

The 10 Best Albums of 1990
Photo: Columbia Records

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: LL Cool J, Mama Said Knock You Out; The Sundays, Reading, Writing and Arithmetic; Enigma, MCMXC a.D.; World Party, Goodbye Jumbo; Galaxie 500, This Is Our Music; Jane’s Addiction, Ritual de lo Habitual; Cocteau Twins, Heaven or Las Vegas; Neil Young and Crazy Horse, Ragged Glory; Lou Reed/John Cale, Songs for Drella; Uncle Tupelo, No Depression


The 10 Best Albums of 1990

10. Fugazi, Repeater

Counter to the righteous-fury claustrophobia of Ian MacKaye’s earlier band, Minor Threat, he and Guy Piciotto’s guitar work on Repeater, Fugazi’s debut, feels expansive and free, creating a universe unto itself. While that certainly doesn’t mean MacKaye was done with his sociopolitical ranting (he rails characteristically against capitalistic greed throughout the album, including on, uh, “Greed”), it did allow him to tap into a broader and richer sonic and emotional palette than what can usually be attributed to hardcore. While the dive-bombing riffs of the title track, the shouted refrains of “merchandise!,” and Joe Lally and Brendan Canty’s urgent rhythm section provide more than enough evidence that MacKaye hadn’t gone soft, the manner in which the album straddles MacKaye’s hardcore past and then-burgeoning alt-rock is what makes it sound unique, even so many years later. Indeed, it’s on the slower tracks—the murky, unsettling “Shut the Door,” the slow burning highway rocker “Blueprint”—where Repeater finds both its emotional core and the reason why it stands alone in the punk canon. Jeremy Winograd


The 10 Best Albums of 1990

9. Sonic Youth, Goo

Rather than try to one-up Daydream Nation’s ambitious sprawl, Sonic Youth narrowed their focus on their follow-up, Goo, producing an album that’s tighter, edgier, and, yes, slicker. As the band’s debut for Geffen, Goo predictably caught flak from fans for its cleaner, more professional production style, which stood in contrast to the avant-garde noisiness of Sonic Youth’s indie days. But the album’s glossy production did nothing to diminish the captivating balance of melodicism and dissonance that defines Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo’s guitar interplay. In fact, the band may never have produced a better showcase for that interplay than “Dirty Boots,” which squeezes almost every defining facet of Sonic Youth’s sound—hypnotic chug; distorted swagger; slow, mesmerizingly lilting arpeggios—into just five-and-a-half minutes. And yes, “Kool Thing” may have been an MTV hit, but it’s still fucking weird, with its Chuck D cameo and Kim Gordon sneering about “male white corporate oppression.” Winograd


The 10 Best Albums of 1990

8. Ride, Nowhere

The early ’90s witnessed the rise of a new crop of artists whose grandiose sonic aspirations were tempered by serious introspection, bands capable of suffusing the strident sumptuousness of stadium rock with the quietude of lo-fi bedroom pop. Chief among these was Ride, whose thunderous debut, Nowhere, offered a packed roster of aggressive material cut through with an essential airy gentleness, songs which struggled to reconcile their reflective cores with a consistent impulse toward transcendent intensity. Epic in scope while humble in topic and tone, tracks like “Seagull,” “Polar Bear,” and “Vapour Trail” grapple with everyday problems by summoning up lyrical fantasias rife with eccentric imagery, an approach that bleeds over into the music’s majestic confluence of mumbling vocals and soaring melodies. Rich and bombastic, the album meshes sadness and elation in a twinned celebration of emotional expansiveness, evoked via slithery, sinuous rhythms encased within a wistful haze of shimmering atmospherics. Jesse Cataldo

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The 10 Best Albums of 1990

7. Pixies, Bossanova

Despite the growing rift between Pixies frontman Black Francis and bassist Kim Deal, Bossanova united the disparate sounds found on the band’s first two albums, bringing back the garage-band rawness of Surfer Rosa while maintaining Doolittle’s increased emphasis on melodicism. For the first time, Francis wrote every song on the album, in some instances claiming to have scribbled lyrics onto a napkin in the studio five minutes before recording. Deal’s tempering backup vocal is relegated to an afterthought amid Francis’s power grab over the group, but her thrumming bass remains the pulse of tracks like “Is She Weird” and “Velouria.” At the time, no one juxtaposed quiet and loud like the Pixies, a groundbreaking approach that would go on to influence alternative rock throughout the ’90s, and Bossanova oscillates from chill surf-rock inflections to shrieking, distortion-laden fury. Despite the band’s acrimony, which would lead to a protracted hiatus within a few short years, Bossanova roils and quakes with the intense energy of a volatile band barely holding together its fraying edges. Josh Goller


The 10 Best Albums of 1990

6. George Michael, Listen Without Prejudice, Vol. 1

That there never was a second volume of Listen Without Prejudice would speak poorly upon us all (e.g. we apparently failed to live up to the title, and weren’t deemed worthy of more), except that maybe the problem was that it was a summit George Michael found himself unable to match. Certainly few side ones from the first vinyl era compare to this one, from the widescreen torment of “Praying for Time” to the unapologetic swagger of “Freedom 90,” from the ballsy choice to cover one of Stevie Wonder’s most musically and philosophically uncompromising compositions (“They Won’t Go When I Go”) to the heady implications of “Cowboys and Angels.” A clear manifesto when it was released, the album’s truths only continue to emerge with time. Pray for more. Eric Henderson


The 10 Best Albums of 1990

5. Madonna, I’m Breathless

Yes, it technically has “Vogue” on it. And even though we get a kick out of imagining what Elliot Ness would’ve made of the four-on-the-floor rinse and those performance-enhanced piano chords (we’re reasonably certain his limbs would’ve put out an all points bulletin), that epochal pop-house smash is effectively a bonus track on what was, at the time, maybe the ballsiest move Madonna made at that point. Who else but the queen of pop could fold under her wing both Stephen Sondheim and Shep Pettibone? And though Evita gets all the ink, this caffeinated big-band stomp of an album is where she truly started pushing outside her vocal comfort zone. Not that she had much choice. Loopy from front to back, I’m Breathless is a Disney-approved retro boilermaker, where the lovelorn sincerity of the Oscar-winning “Sooner or Later” and the eager-to-please showmanship of “More” somehow nestle perfectly alongside the naughty S&M electro-swing of “Hanky Panky.” This album will get its due—it’s just a question of when. Henderson


The 10 Best Albums of 1990

4. Sinéad O’Connor, I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got

Breakup albums rarely come as spiritually and politically charged as Sinéad O’Connor’s breakthrough sophomore effort. The album’s title may be wishful thinking, but the Irish firebrand is a convincing actress. She “feels so different” on the orchestral opening track and likens her split with the father of her son to a business transaction on “The Last Day of Our Acquaintance,” her seemingly fragile brogue fracturing with despondency and erupting into fury with equal license. It’s only on the one song she didn’t write, the Prince-penned “Nothing Compare 2 U,” that she’s “willing to give it another try.” Cinquemani

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The 10 Best Albums of 1990

3. Deee-Lite, World Clique

World Clique’s thesis is simple: The answers to all the world’s problems can found in our hearts, our smiles, and of course, a good beat. Born out of the club and rave culture of the late ’80s and early ’90s, the album is a time-preserved mission statement of a movement that, not unlike the hippie counterculture before it, collapsed beneath the weight of its unattainable ideals and increasingly hard drug use. That Lady Kier’s answer to the titular query of the track “What Is Love?” disintegrates into a series of unintelligble scats is confirmation that maybe she didn’t have all the answers—and you know all those publishing royalties went right up her nose. But failed utopian revolutions aside, World Clique, with its mix of funk and deep house, tribal rhythms, jungle sounds, and a seemingly bottomless arsenal of pop hooks, is a rare, damn-near-perfect house record. Cinquemani


The 10 Best Albums of 1990

2. Depeche Mode, Violator

Just three months after the ’90s officially began, Depeche Mode dropped Violator, effectively bringing their dark, decidedly ’80s new wave brand of music into the young decade. What came to ultimately define the album were three tracks that went on to become the group’s biggest hits: the drumming, droning “Personal Jesus”; the climb-up/climb-down pop song “Enjoy the Silence”; and the sliding, seductive “Policy of Truth.” What all three clearly demonstrated is that Depeche Mode’s synth-pop thrusts reached well beyond the genre’s usual limitations: The triumphant Violator is gothic, jazzy, beguiling, and most of all, a nuanced marriage of pop, rock, electronica, and dance. Kevin Liedel


The 10 Best Albums of 1990

1. Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet

Less revolutionary a statement than It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back, Public Enemy’s Fear of a Black Planet holds up as a superior album years later, thanks to the Bomb Squad’s most ambitious and most fearless production job, which pushed sampling into the realm of a legitimate art form. Informed by the controversy surrounding anti-Semitic comments made by Professor Griff and the subsequent fallout, Fear of a Black Planet is an incendiary album of political rage, with tracks like “Power to the People,” “Revolutionary Generation,” and “Fight the Power” tackling matters of disenfranchisement and oppression with a ferocious intelligence and vision. Jonathan Keefe

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