The Cubist’s Favorite Albums of the 90’s

Ok, so music may not be Nerd Bacon’s specialty, but that doesn’t mean that we, as individuals, don’t have a few other interests that we engage in from time to time.  As both an exercise in diversity and creativity, I’m opening up section as a vehicle for something I enjoy almost as much as video games – music.  And in order to provide some focus, I’m going to do by best to stick to the 1990’s.  In fact, I’m even using “of the 90’s” in the title so that I’m less tempted to veer off course.  However, there may just be a record or two on either side of the decade that I absolutely can’t resist listing among my favorites.

Why the 1990’s?

If you discuss music long enough with most people, you’ll find that there’s a direct correlation between age and the years in which a person is typically most familiar with and fond of popular music.  I was born in 1985, so even though I was a little young for a good portion of the 90’s, it was during my teenage years that many popular and acclaimed albums from earlier in the decade were becoming fully ingrained into cultural consciousness.  The early 90’s saw a significant shift if the sound of mainstream music, and as such, records like Nirvana’s Nevermind and Nine Inch Nails’ The Downward Spiral were still making ripples (waves even!) years and years later.  Such is the nature of music that listening to one album often leads to discovering several others from the same time period and related genres.

I was only 15 when the year 2000 rolled around, and I have my share of favorite records from then as well (Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP is almost sure to make the list, despite its 2000 release date), but I continued to explore the 90’s landscape of alternative rock, grunge, and my favorite sub-genre of the decade, industrial metal.  I’ve always been fairly open when it comes to music though, and I in no way intend to limit myself to these genres.  However, neither do I feel compelled to include one record or another just because it falls into some extant genre.

These albums are covered in no particular order, though I will admit that the staples of my CD player tend to fall towards the top.  To keep things interesting from one “issue” to the next, I’ve promised myself to only touch on one album per artist until I hit at least 30 issues.  That’s not to say that there weren’t particular artists that I was immensely fond of, I’d just like to keep up the variety for a while.

So if you will, put down the controller for a minute, grab your headphones, and see if you agree with my take on these awesome records.