Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s
by 
buzzdainer 
The nineties were an adventure-filled, geographically complicated decade for me. I began the decade in college, where I hosted a weekly alternative rock show on the campus radio station and worked part-time at an independent record store. After that I worked in various jobs--high school social studies teacher, naturalist, ESL instructor, food service flunkie, wilderness trip leader, outdoor program director, and (believe it or not) children's television game show host. During the nineties I lived in places as far-flung as Maine, Vermont, New York, Western Australia, Alaska, North Carolina, and South Korea. Songs about travel and displacement were especially meaningful to me.
My musical tastes from the nineties reflect what I was doing at the time. Toward the beginning of the decade I can see the way my involvement in disc jockeying and selling records affected my taste, as there's a lot of alternative rock and underground rock in my collection from that period. Once I moved to North Carolina, I started listening a lot to WNCW, a great community station out of Spindale, which plays a ton of folk, bluegrass, and Americana. A lot of the music I listened to then, and since, is a product of my love for WNCW. As a result, I didn't pay very much attention to developments in boom bap, gangsta rap, shoegaze, post-rock, math rock, metal, or TV soundtracks. I'm retrospectively expanding my tastes into some of those areas. As always, I'd love to receive your feedback on this chart, and I'd appreciate any musical recommendations you might have.
- Chart updated: 07/07/2024 03:45
- (Created: 02/16/2016 18:46).
- Chart size: 100 albums.
There are 20 comments for this chart from BestEverAlbums.com members and Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s has an average rating of 92 out of 100 (from 18 votes). Please log in or create an account to leave a comment or assign a rating.
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In the spring of 1994, a group of friends and I followed Uncle Tupelo around New England on what turned out to be their final tour, in support of this outstanding album. They were playing small venues then; one friend from that tour recently reminded me, for instance, of a bizarre venue in Providence, Rhode Island--Club Babyhead--that had on its men's room wall a mural of some sort of pseudo-psychedelic imagery involving all manner of demonic, disturbing, devilish-looking eyes. But I suppose that's part of the fun of the small venue circuit. By the second show, the band recognized us, gave us comp tickets, and invited us to join them on their tour bus to play Sega hockey with them after the shows. We were treated like family. Every time I hear this terrific album, the crowning achievement of the alt-country genre, I'm grateful to have shared a few moments of the great musical odyssey that was Uncle Tupelo, before Jeff Tweedy and Jay Farrar went their separate ways to form Wilco and Son Volt, respectively. "Chickamauga" is a searing rocker that showcases Jay Farrar's talents as songwriter and lead guitarist, and is probably the most thoroughly self-aware band breakup song that I've ever heard.
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
Year of Release:
1993
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Rank Score:
688
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Recently I was part of a conversation with some friends about the career trajectory of Buffalo Tom. Among my friends in college, it was undisputed conventional wisdom at the time that Buffalo Tom's first two albums, their self-titled debut and Birdbrain, are alternative-rock classics. The album where we began to split is Let Me Come Over. Some missed the raw, imperfect production of the first two albums, whereas others liked the slicker production of the new album. By the time Big Red Letter Day came out, most of my friends had moved on, rolling their eyes at the band's "selling out." I have always been in the camp that thinks Let Me Come Over is the band's high point: a loud, guitar-driven, three-chord rock album with some surprisingly tender moments layered into the album's overall arc. For me the clean production is a sign of the band's increasing maturity and development, and I for one welcome the change from the band's fuzzier early sound. Any discussion about this album has to begin with the driving rocker "Velvet Roof," which was about as close to a hit single Buffalo Tom ever came. A great, emotional statement from one of the best bands of the Northampton scene of the early nineties.
[First added to this chart: 02/27/2016]
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I have approached few albums in my lifetime with as much anticipation as I did this one when it was first released in 1995. At the time I was fully convinced that Jay Farrar was the real talent behind Uncle Tupelo, so when they broke up it was Farrar's work, rather than Jeff Tweedy's, that I most wanted to hear. This was Farrar's first album with Son Volt coming off the last, and greatest, Uncle Tupelo album, Anodyne. So when it came out I persuaded the woman I was seeing at the time to drive with me into Portland, Maine, to my favorite independent record store to buy it, and we listened to it in the car on the way back to Ferry Beach. I loved it immediately, of course. "Windfall" is one of those songs that, upon first listening, sounded to me like something I'd known and loved all my life, with its timeworn, world-weary wisdom: "May wind take your troubles away / Both feet on the floor, two hands on the wheel / May the wind take your troubles away."
[First added to this chart: 08/07/2016]
Year of Release:
1995
Appears in:
Rank Score:
791
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When I was living in Korea back in 1997, my sister mailed me a cassette tape of this album. It was one of three tapes I had with me at the time (for some reason I didn't have the presence of mind to bring more music with me), and I wore the thing out. The title track is one of the sweetest love songs I've ever heard, and while it's probably overplayed, it still moves me every time. It reminds me sense of kinship that I always experience when I'm in the wilderness, and the profound longing I feel when I hear the words, "You belong with your love on your arm."
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
Year of Release:
1994
Appears in:
Rank Score:
1,781
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This album was the soundtrack for a long drive from the Adirondacks in upstate New York down to the Great Smoky Mountains in Tennessee for a backpacking trip with a woman I loved at the time. We sang at the top of our lungs all the way down. I think now, though, that she might have thought I identified a little too much with the opening lines to the rollicking banjo stomper "Bloody 98": "I got a wife in Hattiesburg and a lover in Mobile." For the record, I don't, never did, and don't want to. As for the album itself, this is one of the best entries in the alt-country genre in the nineties, a collection of well-written songs with effects like barking dogs as a constant reminder of the Mississippi woods from which these songs originated.
[First added to this chart: 02/17/2016]
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Martin Sexton is one of those people who just seems to have been born to write, record, and perform music. I don't know if there's a better live performer alive today, and I know that's saying something--but I ask you to withhold judgment unless you've actually seen him play live. I've seen him live five or six times over the past 25 years or so--sometimes alone with his guitar, sometimes with a drummer--and he never ceases to completely blow me away. He does amazing things with his guitar and his voice; he whistles; he knocks on his guitar and beatboxes into the microphone for percussion; he sings falsetto. He is just a remarkable talent. On top of all that, he writes memorable songs about the usual musical troubadour subjects: lost love, life on the road as a traveling musician, and, of course, food. He has several terrific albums, but Black Sheep is the one I heard first, and probably has the most consistently great songwriting.
[First added to this chart: 05/23/2016]
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[First added to this chart: 05/04/2024]
8. (7) 1
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Around four o'clock in the morning on September 24, 1991, I was asleep in my room in my apartment in Perth, Western Australia, when there was a loud, insistent knock on the door. I opened the door, and my buddy Josh was there, looking even wild-eyed and manic than ever. He'd been at a CD release party downtown and had taken a cab back to the apartment complex where we both lived. He slapped some headphones over my ears and made me listen, way too loud, to the opening of "Smells Like Teen Spirit." I felt the smile come over my face, knowing that groggy early morning in September would always be a landmark moment in the history of music, even though the term "grunge" hadn't yet gone mainstream. There was an immediacy, an urgency, to Nirvana's sound, combined with a clarity of production values, that made it unlike anything I'd ever heard before. Obviously Nirvana had a huge influence on other bands, especially those from the Seattle area, but I still can't say I've heard anything quite like Nevermind since.
[First added to this chart: 02/17/2016]
Year of Release:
1991
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Rank Score:
35,972
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Available from
[First added to this chart: 11/22/2022]
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Before Jeff Buckley decided to wade fully clothed into the Mississippi River late one night and get himself caught in the wake of a passing boat, he recorded this one and only proper full-length album. It's the one I had in the CD player of my truck for most of the year I lived in Bennington, Vermont, while I mourned the loss of my longest and most important relationship to date. It is raw, lean, impulsive, deeply emo stuff--one of the most inspired and engaging albums ever made. People know the brilliant cover of Leonard Cohen's "Halleljuah," but for me the starting point is "Lover, You Should Have Come Over."
[First added to this chart: 02/16/2016]
Year of Release:
1994
Appears in:
Rank Score:
17,485
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Total albums: 100. Page 1 of 10
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Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s composition
| Year | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1990 | 7 | 7% | |
| 1991 | 6 | 6% | |
| 1992 | 10 | 10% | |
| 1993 | 8 | 8% | |
| 1994 | 11 | 11% | |
| 1995 | 10 | 10% | |
| 1996 | 11 | 11% | |
| 1997 | 13 | 13% | |
| 1998 | 9 | 9% | |
| 1999 | 15 | 15% |
| Artist | Albums | % | |
|---|---|---|---|
|
|
|||
| Uncle Tupelo | 4 | 4% | |
| Greg Brown | 4 | 4% | |
| Blue Mountain | 3 | 3% | |
| Wilco | 3 | 3% | |
| Beastie Boys | 3 | 3% | |
| Emmylou Harris | 2 | 2% | |
| The Connells | 2 | 2% | |
| Show all | |||
Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s chart changes
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Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s similar charts
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| Top 100 Greatest Music Albums | buzzdainer | Overall chart | 2025 | |
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| Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s |  jwammo12 | 1990s decade chart | 2025 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s | Ashmark | 1990s decade chart | 2018 | |
Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s similarity to your chart(s)
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Other decade charts by buzzdainer
buzzdainer has shared 6 more decade charts with the community. Browse them all here.| Title | Source | Type | Published | Country |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2020s | buzzdainer | 2020s decade chart | 2025 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2010s | buzzdainer | 2010s decade chart | 2024 | |
| Top 100 Music Albums of the 2000s | buzzdainer | 2000s decade chart | 2024 | |
Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s ratings
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Showing latest 3 ratings for this chart. | Show all 18 ratings for this chart.
| Rating | Date updated | Member | Chart ratings | Avg. chart rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| ! | 05/26/2023 09:09 | Johnnyo | 2,689 | 80/100 |
| ! | 10/17/2020 06:48 | leniad | 670 | 85/100 |
| ! | 08/29/2020 03:28 | areminder | 54 | 79/100 |
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This chart is rated in the top 1% of all charts on BestEverAlbums.com. This chart has a Bayesian average rating of 92.4/100, a mean average of 96.1/100, and a trimmed mean (excluding outliers) of 96.1/100. The standard deviation for this chart is 5.4.
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Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s forum mentions
This chart has been referenced 2 times on the forums, Explore the wider forum discussion to see what members have said about it.
From 
BestEverAlbums 05/24/2023 08:00 in Chart of the day (#4229): By buzzdainer
BestEverAlbums 05/24/2023 08:00 in Chart of the day (#4229): By buzzdainer“Today's chart of the day Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s by buzzdainer () 1. Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo (1993) 2. Let Me Come Over by Buffalo Tom (1992) 3. Trace by Son Volt (1995) 4. Wildflowers by Tom Petty (1994) 5. Homegrown by Blue Mountain (1997) 6. Nevermind by Nirvana (US) (1991) 7. Black…”
View forum post →From BestEverAlbums 08/28/2020 08:00 in Chart of the day (#3231): By buzzdainer
BestEverAlbums 08/28/2020 08:00 in Chart of the day (#3231): By buzzdainer“Today's chart of the day Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s by buzzdainer () 1. Anodyne by Uncle Tupelo (1993) 2. Let Me Come Over by Buffalo Tom (1992) 3. Trace by Son Volt (1995) 4. Wildflowers by Tom Petty (1994) 5. Keep It Like A Secret by Built To Spill (1999) 6. Sackcloth 'N' Ashes by 16…”
View forum post →Top 100 Music Albums of the 1990s comments
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From
buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 07/26/2016 15:04 | #171843
buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 07/26/2016 15:04 | #171843
Thanks, pa! Of the artists you mention, the one I have the hardest time choosing a favorite album for is Yo La Tengo. On any given day, I might say Fakebook, or I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One, or May I Sing With Me, or Painful. Their consistency is one of the hallmarks of their long career as one of America's defining indie rock bands.
Emmylou has made a lot of great music, but Wrecking Ball was my favorite of hers from the nineties. Daniel Lanois tends to make everything he produces sound vaguely like U2, which isn't always a good thing, but his production really works on Wrecking Ball. Spyboy was the live album from the Wrecking Ball tour, and it is nearly as good.
As for Red House Painters, I've soured on Mark Kozelek since he decided to become a full-blown misogynistic jerk. But damn if Songs for a Blue Guitar isn't beautiful. It's a difficult thing loving music made by someone you know you couldn't stand as a human being, but that's how it is for me with Mark Kozelek.
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From
buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 09/09/2016 16:46 | #174616
buzzdainer TOP 100 COMMENTER 09/09/2016 16:46 | #174616
Thanks for that nice comment, sethmadsen! That's funny that you mention the skits on The Carnival. I have found the skits on a number of nineties hip hop albums to be really annoying (and unfunny). Take, for example, Fugees' breakthrough album The Score: an interesting album musically, but the Chinese restaurant skit in "The Beast" is so insipid and offensive it's enough to knock it out of my nineties decade chart (though it did make my 1996 year chart). I gravitate to hip hop artists who seem to be all about the music, hence my love of Digable Planets, A Tribe Called Quest, and others.
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From
garycottier TOP 100 COMMENTER 07/24/2016 16:24 | #171742
Thank you for kind comments, as always, on my 90's chart. Your chart is again filled with lots of Americana, with again, quite a few albums I'm not familiar with. More to check out I suppose, does it ever end? Anyway, thanks again for your continuing interest in my charts, and for continuing to keep me aware of a lot of other music out there.
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From
Larcx13 12/05/2020 15:41 | #262058
Larcx13 12/05/2020 15:41 | #262058
Nice to see Digable Planets all the way up there, though I prefer Blowout Comb. Of course A Tribe Called Quest! Id say check out more releases from Tribe in the 90s as well The Pharcyde, maybe even The Roots. There's also Pete Rock & C.L. Smooth, Guru from Gang Starr's Jazzmatazz vol. 1, as well as De La Soul for similar music.
Cheers!
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From
Tamthebam TOP 100 COMMENTER 08/13/2016 13:27 | #172844
Tamthebam TOP 100 COMMENTER 08/13/2016 13:27 | #172844
Once again we have a lot in common and yet enough differences to make it interesting ! I must check out Son Volt,Built To Spill & Blue Mountain. Bjork's albums in the 90's are a must and I think you will like Blur's 13 & k.d. Lang's Ingenue. Brilliant Chart.
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