Time flies when you’re having fun, and while a lot of the music made in 1994 is the furthest thing on earth from fun, that year saw some genuinely classic albums released. These albums have held up well, and we go back to them over and over again, just as we did decades ago.
Although three decades have passed since these classic albums were released, they feel as vital and relevant as they did on the first listen, and people are ignoring their 1994 vintage entirely and going back for repeat listens to this day. Here are our choices for the ones we can’t believe have just turned 30.
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1. ‘Superunknown’ by Soundgarden
Release date: March 8, 1994
Soundgarden had turned out reliably heavy alternative music since the late 1980s, but 1994’s “Superunknown” was their biggest hit and contains songs like the title track and “Black Hole Sun.” Lead singer Chris Cornell sadly passed away in 2017, but here you can hear him in all his full-throated glory when he was one of the best singers on earth.
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2. ‘Dookie’ by Green Day
Release date: January 28, 1994
The album that brought punk rock to suburbia has been legally eligible to purchase alcohol in the United States for the past nine years, assuming albums could do such a thing. Sure, they’re just copying Stiff Little Fingers and other bands who did punk rock much better than this Bay Area trio, but songs like ‘Basket Case’ are hard to deny.
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3. ‘The Downward Spiral’ by Nine Inch Nails
Release date: March 8, 1994
Just as Green Day brought punk rock to suburbia, Nine Inch Nails brought industrial music to the same crowd. It had a significant effect on the rest of the music released in the following years – suddenly, every heavy metal band struggling to remain relevant filled their music with lots of abrupt mechanical noises. That trend passed, but man, it hung around for a long time.
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4. ‘Grace’ by Jeff Buckley
Release date: August 23, 1994
“Grace” is the only album Jeff Buckley completed in his lifetime, but if you could leave only one record behind when you slip this mortal coil, this would be a good one to go out on. It features his rendition of “Hallelujah,” and even though many different artists have sung that song countless times, his is arguably the definitive version.
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5. ‘MTV Unplugged in New York’ by Nirvana
Release date: November 1, 1994
“MTV Unplugged in New York” was the first Nirvana album to be released after the passing of frontman Kurt Cobain. Considering the manner of his passing, it’s a pretty chilling performance, and when you listen to it now, it sounds very much like the last will and testament of a person who knows they won’t be with us much longer.
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6. ‘CrazySexyCool’ by TLC
Release date: November 15, 1994
Even if you didn’t like R&B music, it was hard not to like “Waterfalls,” the big hit song off TLC’s “CrazySexyCool” album. Thirty years later, it still hasn’t overstayed its welcome, and you can hear all the drunks shrieking it off-key every karaoke night, a sign of its enduring strength.
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7. ‘No Need to Argue’ by The Cranberries
Release date: October 3, 1994
The Cranberries had a pretty unique sound, characterized by hits like “Zombie,” which are admittedly still a little hard to categorize. Lead singer Dolores O’Riordan sadly passed away in 2018, and the band released the music she had left behind on 2019’s “In the End” before permanently disbanding.
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8. ‘Jar of Flies’ by Alice in Chains
Release date: January 25, 1994
“Jar of Flies” was considered the “acoustic album” by metal-grunge heavyweights Alice in Chains, and yes, it’s a largely hushed affair. It also happens to be the best thing they ever released, and it resonates in your head long after it’s ended. The instrumental “Whale and Wasp” is especially engaging.
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9. ‘Weezer (The Blue Album)’ by Weezer
Release date: May 10, 1994
If anyone can explain the mysteriously durable popularity of Weezer to us, we’re all ears. They burst onto the scene with “Weezer (The Blue Album)” and have attracted a maniacally devoted fan base ever since people who want to hear “Buddy Holly” loud and often. Those fans have been that way for 30 years and show no signs of losing interest even now as they crowd 60.
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10. ‘Monster’ by R.E.M.
Release date: September 27, 1994
“Monster” rocked a little harder than previous R.E.M. albums, leading many longtime fans to accuse them of committing the heinous act of “selling out.” They were already packing stadiums at that point, so it’s hard to see a higher level of selling out that they could have embraced. In reality, this band got popular through relentless touring and making albums that people really enjoyed, even if that bummed out their earliest fans, whom we advise to go home and listen to “Driver 8” like none of this ever happened.
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11. ‘Wildflowers’ by Tom Petty
Release date: November 1, 1994
“Wildflowers” is Tom Petty’s greatest album, and he’s a guy whose career is full of great albums. While every one of his records has at least two or three songs that make them keepers, this one consists of nothing but classic song after classic song, as typified by “You Don’t Know How It Feels” and “Crawling Back to You.” In the compact disc era, this was one CD that never left the player, because why bother? You were only going to listen to “Wildflowers” over and over again.
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12. ‘Live Through This’ by Hole
Release date: April 12, 1994
Sometimes, horrible timing works in your favor. In the case of Courtney Love’s band Hole, her husband, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana, died by suicide on April 5, 1994, and Hole’s major-label debut, “Live Through This,” came out one week later while Nirvana fans were still reeling. We don’t want to suggest that “Live Through This” exploited that tragedy for robust album sales, as that would be untoward and unseemly. Having said that, something made it sell 1.6 million copies in the United States.
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13. ‘American Recordings’ by Johnny Cash
Release date: April 26, 1994
When Johnny Cash made “American Recordings,” a sparse collection of songs made with producer Rick Rubin, he had already been written off years earlier as a has-been and a relic of decades past. It turned out that leaning into his grizzled, elder-statesman persona as hard as possible was precisely the right move, and the album – which sounds like a bunch of demos – completely reinvigorated his career. He made several similar albums with Rubin until his death in 2003, and they all sound utterly timeless today. They will also inspire you to explore Cash’s back catalog, which is one the finest in the history of recorded music.
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14. ‘Dummy’ by Portishead
Release date:August 22, 1994
Trip-hop, a genre that combines hip-hop with slow tempos and lots of breathy atmospheres, was pioneered in the 1990s by artists like Massive Attack, Tricky, and Portishead, whose 1994 debut album “Dummy” is still very compelling and remains utterly unique, even within the trip-hop genre. It’s a good thing that album holds up as well as it does since Portishead has made three studio albums in 30 years, so there’s not much of a marathon you can do with their catalog. You can, however, just play “Dummy” repeatedly, as people did 30 years ago and continue to do today.
This article was produced and syndicated by MediaFeed.
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