My Top 10 Favorite 90's Grunge Albums
Last time I talked more about how Grunge affected me as a gay teen, but now I want to talk more about the music itself. So instead of a song countdown like usual I will countdown my 10 favorite 90s Grunge albums since for this genre I was more drawn to the albums than any other genre. This list isn't trying to be the definitive list for Grunge. There are other lists that are much more in depth like Rolling Stone’s top 50 Grunge albums. This list is about the Grunge albums that have meant the most to me over the years and have impacted me in some important way. I also tried to limit one album per artist so it could be a bit more diverse. I have spent hours upon hours listening to and dissecting each of these albums over the years. They are basically sonic wallpaper for me at this point in a really soothing way. I can usually listen to them as background noise or with my full attention any time and be satisfied either way. These Grunge albums are the music equivalent of Friends episodes for me. Friends is a show where I can watch any episode with my full attention and still enjoy it on my 50th watch, but I can also put it on as background noise too since I know the series so well at this point having watched it over and over again I can drift in and out and not be lost. That’s how I feel about these Grunge albums. Anyway here goes nothing.
1. Stone Temple Pilots - Purple (1994)
Stone Temple Pilots were a pop band disguised as a Grunge band, which is why many critics and Alt-Rock snobs dismissed STP when they first arrived in 1992 with their debut album Core. But over the course of their career Stone Temple Pilots ended up becoming one of the most diverse and interesting bands of their time. Yes, they were more pop than most of their peers, but why is that a bad thing? The way I see it Gen X kids in the early 90s were way too concerned about what was cool instead of what was actually good. Stone Temple Pilots had no indie or punk cred, but what they had instead were rock solid songs that were always built on great melodies. That's why their music holds up so well and better than a lot of their peers, because once you take away the Grunge tag and view their music over 25 years removed it's clear that Stone Temple Pilots are a great pop/rock band who don't write bad songs. Purple was my first Stone Temple Pilots album and the one that kicked off my Grunge obsession. Purple catches the group somewhere between the Grunge Metal of Core and Psychedelic & Jazz tinged pop of Tiny Music and everything is firing on all cylinders here.
The opening song Meatplow is the weakest song on Purple, but it's still pretty damn good which speaks to the quality of songs that populate Purple. We have a Beatlesque acoustic ballad in Pretty Penny (which became my friend's Liz's DJ name in college on my suggestion), Psychedelic hard rock in the form of Lounge Fly and Silvergun Superman, the Bluesy late night creepiness of Big Empty (Which utilizes the Grunge formula of quiet verses and loud choruses perfectly), the Punk fury of Unglued, the Punk meets Psychedelia of Army Ants, the mid-tempo love song Still Remains, and the intense hypnotic stream of consciousness that is Vasoline. Best of all there is Interstate Love Song, which at the time broke records for most airplay ever on rock radio back in the fall of 1994 and it's easy to see why. Interstate Love Song is as perfect as a rock song can get with absolutely no ounce of fat on it so every moment counts and is as catchy as humanly possible. That guitar riff is one of the best rock riffs ever too! If you don't like Interstate Love Song you might not like rock music period. For years this was my favorite album of all time, but even now it's still in the top 5. Stone Temple Pilots are Grunge for people who still value hooks and vocal melodies above all else. It's also Grunge for those who like a bit of glam and sexiness thrown into their rock too. Grunge was mostly sexless as a genre, but Scott Weiland definitely had a style and charisma to him that was very sexual. Also, Scott had a way with melody that was almost on the level of Paul McCartney. None of the other Grunge singers had a way with melody like Scott did. He will be missed. Also there is a moment in the Interstate Love Song music video that I have always enjoyed as a gay man. Watch it and see if you can spot it.
2. Alice in Chains - Jar of Flies (1994)
Purple is my favorite Grunge album but Jar of Flies is the Grunge album that connects the most with me emotionally. Jar of Flies is drenched in sorrow and despair and it communicates what it's like to be isolated and alone better than almost any album I have ever heard. Through the years I have turned to this album for comfort whenever I am at my most depressed. It was like my musical security blanket that I wrapped myself in whenever I needed to let me depression spill out of me and felt most alone in the world. Alice in Chains was known more for their doomy metal sound on albums like Facelift and Dirt, but on this mostly acoustic EP they proved they can be just as powerful when they tone down the volume. The first 4 songs in particular is a brilliant stretch of music and one I have listened to countless times.
Rotten Apple starts things off on a darkly alluring note. It's a song that I just let wash all over me whenever I put the album on. It's not a super melodic song and it's hard to sing along to, but that's the point of Rotten Apple. It's a perfect mood setter and introduction to the album. Then it's Nutshell which is emotionally devastating. Layne's vocal performance is soul crushing but beautiful and Jerry Cantrell's guitar solo at the end is bursting with emotion and is tragically breathtaking. The last words Layne sings before that guitar solo though hit me hard "If I can't be my own I'd rather be dead." That shook me when I first heard it and while I know Layne's struggles were different than mine the idea that you can't go on living if you are never allowed to be your true self really resonated with me deeply when I was in the closet. I Stay Away is another dark song, but it shows some slivers of light in the beautiful use of strings through out and then comes the album's centerpiece and my favorite Alice in Chains song ever No Excuses.
No Excuses was really an outlier for Alice in Chains as it's more in line with the folk pop of the 60s like Simon and Garfunkel than doomy heavy metal. Like that legendary duo, Layne & Jerry sing the whole song together and it can give me goosebumps due to their beautiful harmonizing. The drumming is also great and really helps propel the whole song forward from the very start. Jerry also delivers another pitch perfect guitar solo as well. It's really a perfect pop rock song and one that I again related to in high school. The main chorus goes "Every day something hits me I'm so cold. You find me sitting by myself No Excuses then I know." The self-imposed isolation this song describes felt like a mirror to my own struggles where I had put up walls around me so no one would see the real me. Yet, my favorite thing about the song is that at the end there is a sense of hope with the lyrics: "Yeah it's fine walk down the line, trade our cold rain for warm sunshine. You my friend I will defend and if you change well I love you anyway." I am getting goosebumps writing those lyrics out. That moment in No Excuses gave me as a closeted teen a moment of hope that things would get better and eventually it did get better. In college when my two friends were running my radio show while I studied abroad that semester they dedicated that song to me and it really got to me because what I had longed for so long had finally happened. I had made connections with people and forged bonds of friendship all while out of the closet as a gay man like I had always hoped for. I also played No Excuses at my wedding because it means that much to me. I may drift away from Grunge a bit in the coming years, but this song will always be a personal favorite and one I will never leave behind.
3. The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness (1995)
The first Grunge album I bought back in 1998. I got it for Bullet with Butterfly Wings, 1979 and especially Tonight, Tonight. For years I really only listened to the singles, but as my Grunge obsession took over I started listening to it again and again and each time I would discover a new favorite song. This album showcases Billy Corgan's songwriting at a brilliant peak where he was writing so much good material it couldn't be contained on 1 CD. Even on 2 CDs there was so much top shelf material left behind that many other songs got added later on Singles and B-Sides comps. This is the album where The Pumpkins climbed to the top of the alternative rock mountain and briefly ruled the world. Besides the singles there are so many great songs that showcase what an eclectic, ambitious and talented songwriter Billy Corgan was. We have the pummeling hard rockers like Jellybelly, Bodies and Zero, Baroque pop in Cupid De Lock, epic progressive rock songs like Porcelina the Vast the Ocean and Thru the Eyes of Ruby, 80s new wave in 1979, delicate folk in Stumbleine and more. They even managed to pay homage to rock's greatest double album The Beatles White Album. The White Album closed with Ringo Starr singing a lullaby pop song called Goodnight. On Mellon Collie 3 of the band members sing together and the song is called Farewell and Goodnight. Of course Billy Corgan couldn't keep this songwriting streak going and the Pumpkins would go into a commercial decline shortly thereafter. With that said, Adore is a pretty good album and Machina has some pretty good songs on it too. Still Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness is probably my favorite double album of all time as it somehow captures just about everything that was great about alternative rock in the 90s.
4. Pearl Jam - Ten (1991)
Pearl Jam is a band I knew for a while. They were so popular that I remember hearing their name dropped a lot growing up as a child in the 90s. Seriously if you watch enough movies and TV shows from the 90s like I have you will notice that Pearl Jam is name dropped all the time. Nirvana might have broke Grunge into the mainstream and had more cred, but Pearl Jam was the biggest band in the world during the early to mid-90s. The band came out the gate strong with Ten, which many people think they have never matched since. In some ways I agree that Ten is Pearl Jam’s best album from top to bottom, but later albums had songs just as good as those on Ten like Corduroy off Vitalogy and Go off Vs. My earliest musical memories of Pearl Jam included the music video for Do the Evolution in 1998, seeing the music video to Jeremy a few times in the late 90s and in 1999 their cover of Last Kiss became a huge fluke hit that was inescapable that summer.
Pearl Jam though didn't grab my full attention until 2002 shortly after I had gotten into Stone Temple Pilots. I was in a photography class sophomore year of high school and we were allowed to have the radio on in the dark room. I remember one day hearing the chorus to Evenflow coming out of the dark room and being very interested in the song. Evenflow remains my favorite song ever by Pearl Jam and in my top 10 songs of the 90s. It's also the most kick ass song ever written about a homeless man, which brings me to one of the best things about the band. Pearl Jam were the great storytellers of Grunge. They were able to give voice to people who felt voiceless or victimized. No male rock singer before or after sings from a women's perspective as convincingly or empathically as Eddie Vedder. Pearl Jam's power comes from how their music connects them directly to their audience. Their music is based so strongly on emotion and that made it powerfully resonant for millions of people.
On Ten we hear from a women forced into a mental health facility but doing what she can to escape (Why Go), a boy bullied so much in school he ends up killing himself in front of all classmates (Jeremy), and a person who can't get over his alcohol addiction (Deep). The most autobiographical song on the album is Alive, where Eddie recalls the time he found out his Dad was not his biological Dad at all. Then to add insult to injury Eddie finds out his real Dad is already dead. Then comes that Mike McCreedy guitar solo, which is possibly the most iconic moment in Pearl Jam's entire career. Ten also has this great atmospheric production that gives the whole album an air of mystery that is incredibly alluring. It’s an album that spoke to the horrors of real life while still sounding like great escapism, which is a hard trick to pull off. Pearl Jam accomplished that trick best on Ten because of that production. The band would complain about the production later and never use that producer again instead opting for Brendan O’ Brien, but that production was a big reason why people loved Ten so much and flocked to it in the millions. Ten became one of the biggest albums of the 90s because it meant so much to so many people and continues to mean so much for people around the world today. Every moment on this album sounds like an emotional catharsis. Pearl Jam may not be the biggest act in the world anymore, but they are certainly the biggest cult act in rock and it's because of how important their music is to their fans. That importance started here and it was as great a start as anyone could have hoped for.
5. Garbage - Garbage (1995)
I had already gotten into Garbage back in 1998 thanks to MTV spinning all the music videos off Version 2.0. That said, when I transitioned into Grunge and rock they were a perfect band to help bridge the gap between pop & rock, because while Grunge was a major influence there was also Britpop, Riott Grrl, Techno, Trip Hop, Electronica and overt elements of pop all swirling together on Garbage’s self-titled debut. All those various elements were then shined and buffered to pop perfection by Butch Vig’s production, who seemed to take everything he had learned producing earlier 90s rock classics like Nevermind, Siamese Dream & Bricks Are Heavy and applied it to this album. Garbage’s debut made mid 90s Alternative sound like glossy pop, but in all the right ways. I got this album just as I got into Grunge in early 2002 and it clicked with me instantly.
The albums begins with one of the best introductions to any band ever with Supervixen, which not only shows off their appealing combination of Grunge rock with high gloss production, but it also establishes what a bad ass bitch Shirley Manson is. She is a true rock goddess and through her I was still able to cling to some femininity. The album is stacked with classic singles from the height of the alternative nation with Vow, Queer, Only Happy When It Rains and Stupid Girl. The album also has some of my favorite deep cuts of the decade with Not My Idea and especially My Lover’s Box, which has an amazing wall of sound crescendo at end.
In the years that followed I finally saw Garbage in concert twice and at both shows Shirley Manson made a point to give a shout out to Garbage’s gay fans and dedicated a song to the LGBTQ community. Those Garbage shows were the closest I felt accepted as a gay man at any concerts I had attended before the gay pop concerts. Shirley also wrote an open letter to the LGBTQ community 2 years ago, which I recently posted on Twitter. She actually responded to my post saying she cried while writing it, which made me love her even more if that’s possible. The moral of the story is that even if Stone Temple Pilots are my favorite band to come out of 90s Alternative, Shirley Manson is easily my favorite person to come out of 90s alternative. She is an international treasure.
6. Nirvana – Nevermind (1991)
What else is there to say about this album that hasn’t already been said? It was a genre defining gaming changing moment that altered the course of music history and pop culture as a whole. It’s ripples are still being felt today even if they are getting smaller and smaller every year. While subjectively this is my 6th favorite Grunge album, objectively this is definitely #1. It’s the album that will live on the longest of all the Grunge albums. There’s a reason kids today are still discovering the visceral thrill of Nirvana. Smells Like Teen Spirit is basically the national anthem for 90s Alternative and Lithium is now the name of SiriusXM’s radio station dedicated to Grunge and 90s Alternative. My favorite song has always been the 4th and final single In Bloom where Nirvana’s Beatles meets punk aesthetic worked best. That chorus gets stuck in your head and that guitar solo is the best in their entire catalogue. It’s also their most hilarious music video too. Weezer has kind of based their entire aesthetic off the In Bloom music video in my opinion. If you have somehow not heard this album yet what are you waiting for? There’s a reason it’s one of the most popular, influential and enduring albums ever made in the history of pop music. Everyone should hear this album at least once.
7. The Foo Fighters – The Foo Fighters (1995)
The Foo Fighters have been rock royalty for so long now it’s easy to forget what a gamble it was for Dave Grohl to strike out on his own after Kurt killed himself. This album silenced all the naysayers. The first 2 singles This is a Call and I’ll Stick Around put the Foo Fighters on the map and remain 2 of the best songs they have ever done. Meanwhile Good Grief isn’t just my favorite Foo Fighter’s deep cut, but my favorite deep cut in all of Alternative Rock. That guitar riff pumps me up every time I hear this song and the drumming makes me heart race too. Meanwhile songs like Exhausted and X-Static show how much more alternative, grungy and weird early Foo Fighters were. This album is actually kind of an anomaly compared to the rest of their output. It doesn’t quit fit the more arena rock sound the group adapted later and therefore is kind of forgotten today. Radio never plays songs off of it anymore and when I see The Foo Fighters in concert whenever they do a song from the debut I can tell half the crowd is in to it and the other half is not into it at all. Still that’s what makes it so special and makes it feel more connected to Grunge than their later output. So if you love Grunge but you have not heard this album yet you should even if you don’t like later day Foo Fighters songs such as Best Of You and Walk. This album 25 years later can still surprise you. Also the Big Me music video is still one of the most hilarious music videos ever made by anyone ever!
8. Soundgarden – Superunknown (1994)
Soundgarden is a tough nut to crack. Their music is dense, loud, complex and not at all conventional. When I first got into Grunge in 2002 most of the big acts in the genre clicked with me immediately but Soundgarden took some time. First it was just Black Hole Sun, then it was a few more singles like Spoonman and Burden in My Hand, but it wouldn’t be until 2004 that I finally bought Superunknown after only having their singles collection The A-Sides for almost 2 years. Then it finally clicked. Spoonman is my favorite Soundgarden song and it always pumps me up. Plus it has a solo with spoons! I’m all about getting kitchenware onto rock radio. Outside Spoonman my favorite songs off here are the deep cuts like the dark psychedelic nightmare of Head Down, the full throttle roar of Let Me Down and the extreme sludge of 4th of July and Mailman where it feels like the guitars themselves are slowly peeling the skin off your face! Chris Cornell had the most powerful vocals of all the Grunge frontmen and his voice is in peak form on this album from start to finish. It’s another masterpiece from 1994 the year when Grunge and Alternative Rock reached its peak commercially and artistically. For years 1994 was my single favorite year in music history until 2018 (#20GayTeen) stole its crown. Still it’s a year bursting at the seams with great alternative rock and Superunknown is definitely one of the peaks from that year.
9. Sponge – Rotting Pinata (1994)
Jar of Flies was the grunge album that I had the strongest emotional connection with and the one I turned to when I needed sad music to console me, but Rotting Pinata is a close 2nd. I bought it for 99 cents used in 2004 and I joke that it was the best 99 cents I ever spent. Rotting Pinata has a vibe of atmospheric mystery that lures me in just like Ten or Jar of Flies and the music has a sadness to it that is still very comforting. One of my favorites is Fields which has the lyric “The fields are for angels” which meant it wasn’t for Vinnie the lead singer of Sponge. For someone like me grappling with my sexuality I was drawn to this idea because you are told by organized religion that your life is sinful and you are going straight to hell. This song captured that feeling best for me until Troye Sivan’s Heaven over 20 years later. Also I once heard Fields on a radio commercial for one of Rhode Island’s local colleges and that blew me away. Whoever picked that song was on the same wave length I was on!
Giants is another favorite that builds slowly in its atmospheric production before letting loose with the guitar solo that acts as an emotional outburst at the end. What most people remember though are the two hits Molly and Plowed. Molly is straight up power pop dressed lightly in Grunge trappings. Molly honestly could have been a huge hit for a boy band like Backstreet Boys or One Direction if you changed out some of the instrumentation which proved Grunge had a lot more pop beating underneath it’s walls of distortion and flannel than people give it credit for. Then there is Plowed, which could be called a Stone Temple Pilots knockoff, but if Stone Temple Pilots recorded Plowed it would have been among their top 5 songs ever and that’s high praise coming from me. That main guitar riff is one of the most memorably catchy and ear grapping guitar riffs of the entire decade and the song has an energy to it that always pumps me up whenever it comes on. Plowed also plays in the background of Empire Records when they set up the donations for the climatic rooftop concert. If nothing else listen to Molly and Plowed because they are forgotten gems of their era.
10. Hole – Celebrity Skin (1998)
Live Through This is the definitive Hole album and I have grown to love it more every year especially as I have come to understand more and more what a powerful feminist statement it is. That said, Celebrity Skin had more of an impact on me. I actually bought it when it came out. MTV played the title track all the time every morning for weeks and I loved its mix of masculine hard rock, feminine vocals and high gloss presentation. Lest we forget this album is when Courtney Love looked like she had gotten her shit together for 15 minutes and she was going for a much more Hollywood glam look than she had before. For someone like me who was still very much about pop divas in the late 90s this shift in sound and style for Hole appealed to me. I remember requesting the title track on a rock radio station so I could tape it off the radio. The DJ was actually nice enough to tell me to tune in later that night around 7:30pm because that’s when they would play it. It really made my week that I was able to tape it off the radio. Looking back it also reminds me of how old I am!
I finally bought the album after the release of Malibu, which is a sun dripped California pop song that Fleetwood Mac and America excelled at during the 70s. I loved Malibu instantly and I’ve never stopped loving it over 20 years later. The third single Awful was just as good and is my husband’s favorite song by Hole. Outside the singles my favorite songs are the ones about Kurt Cobain. On Reasons to Be Beautiful Courtney criticizes Kurt for giving up when the going got tough. Then there’s Playing Your Song where Courtney attacks the cult of personality that blossomed after Kurt’s death and how his image, music and death were codified and sold back to the masses as pre-packaged rebellion. The sentiments of this song have only grown truer and truer every year as I see more and more younger kids wearing Nirvana and Kurt Cobain shirts, some of whom don’t even listen to Nirvana but see it as a rebellious fashion statement. Courtney Love may be a hot mess but she’s also one of the most astute and biting singer/songwriters of her time and called it like she saw it. While Celebrity Skin toned down the distortion a bit it still had a lot of edge and a lot of great songs to boot.
