Unlike a lot of folk sick to death of life under Thatcher and the Tory Reich, I was sorry to see the back of the eighties. The wicked witch would be deposed soon enough, but at thirty years of age I was having to adjust to living in the real world, one devoid of the excitement of running an independent record label and spending most of my time with like-minded mavericks and dreamers. Life immediately became duller and facing up to the serious task of raising my two sons, it felt very much like my younger self had died and I was hurtling headlong into responsible adulthood.
Initially that feeling manifested itself in a sudden, albeit brief, lack of interest in music, which I guess was only to be expected after so many years dedicated to the cause. Part of it was tiredness, a week of early morning shifts and weekend overtime on the bins rendering me physically exhausted and incapable of doing much more than settling into a routine of work-home-kids-TV-sleep. But it wasn’t just that. Disconnected from the indie experience, I couldn’t fail to notice a significant drop off from the sonic terrorism and experimentation of the late eighties.
In comparison, the early nineties witnessed the last years of rave as a mainstream youth culture and the subsequent splintering of electronic dance music into a mass of sharply defined sub-genres, the rapid decline of Madchester, baggy and indie dance, and the emergence of gangsta rap as a bigoted, malignant force celebrating rebellion without responsibility. Worse still was the appearance of grunge and the return of long hair, guitar solos and paying homage to all kinds of abhorrent, seventies, rock clichés and excess.
Of course nowadays, more than any other genre, the nineties are remembered for Britpop. Meaning a thousand different things to a thousand different people, what is forgotten in the often deserved criticism of Britpop is what united the original handful of artists in the first place was a quirky representation of Britishness that hadn’t been heard since the sixties or in the more leftfield elements of punk, post punk, two tone, indie pop and The Smiths. Council flats, bad drugs, awkward sex, greasy spoon cafes, Doc Martins, street markets, darkened arterial roads and the subtle beauty of the shipping forecast; in their own artful way groups like Saint Etienne, Pulp and early Blur were outsiders tying together an ironic engagement with the surface detail of Britishness and a feeling that British pop should be as important and bold as it had once been.
Then again, no matter what its early intentions were, there were always a few flies in the Britpop ointment. Not least was how much electronic dance, hip hop and the Bristol wild bunch of Massive Attack, Portishead and Tricky had already educated us with sonic adventures that were everything Britpop was not; almost exclusively black, anti-retro and female inclusive. Nonetheless, despite their best efforts and those of genuine non-conformists like Thom Yorke, Jason Pierce, Polly Harvey, Jarvis Cocker, Luke Haines and Damon Albarn, even James Dean Bradfield and Nicky Wire, Britpop replaced the need for innovation and iconoclasm with ruthless ambition and a moronic form of revivalism with Noel Gallagher at its head. But I can’t deny that as I trudged on through the tedium of my daily grind, certainly up until 1997 when my life changed beyond recognition, the Britpop effect proved a very welcome distraction.
In fact, it was only then that I began to realise for the first time that it wasn’t genres or scenes or artists or albums that mattered to me, it was the songs. Making me feel young and old, joyful and sad, in the past and in the now all at the same time, the best of them possessed the excitement, the imagination and the innovation, in essence the otherness, which characterises every one of modern music culture’s greatest moments. As the soundtrack to my nineties, the 100 songs here are a fitting testament to that!
Chris Green
April 2025
1990
1. PUBLIC ENEMY ‘Welcome To The Terrordome’ (Single A Side January 1990)
A direct response to the controversy and turmoil surrounding Public Enemy in the lead up to Fear Of A Black Planet three months later, ‘Welcome to the Terrordome’ was an uncharacteristically personal track exploring themes of white supremacy and black empowerment. As the unholy racket of an unrecognisable sample from The Temptations ‘Psychedelic Shack’ blasted out like a police siren, Chuck D denounced his foes and their accusations of racism while inevitably painting himself into a corner, an agonising onslaught of paranoid analogies merely hinting at his embattled mindset.
2. SWEET EXORCIST ‘Testone’ (Single A Side January 1990)
Back in the late seventies and early eighties, Richard H. Kirk blurred the lines between experimental electronica and funk as a member of Cabaret Voltaire. A decade later he did the same kind of thing with Sweet Exorcist by fusing the harsh, industrial noise of his home city of Sheffield with the clean, minimal sound of Detroit and Chicago. As eerie as it was immediate, while none of us realised it at the time, for a while at least, ‘Testone’ and the bleep techno it helped define would be the sound of our future.
3. PRIMAL SCREAM ‘Loaded’ (Single A Side February 1990)
If the EDM underground belonged to Sweet Exorcist’s ‘Testone’, the popular, dance overground belonged to a former carpenter from Windsor called Andrew Weatherall. Gifted a copy of the self-titled second album by crappy, Glaswegian indie poppers Primal Scream, remarkably, on his first ever visit to a professional studio, the Boy’s Own fanzine publisher and DJ managed to transform their clunky ballad ‘I’m Losing More Than I’ll Ever Have’ into a fusion of trippy dance music and Rolling Stones swagger. And in so doing he presented the first great indie dance record to a generation looking to combine their fascination for acid house, club culture and ecstasy with a love of sexy, good time, rock’n’roll.
4. SINEAD O’CONNOR ‘Black Boys On Mopeds’ (I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got LP March 1990)
Sinead O’Connor could always be relied on to set tongues wagging about whatever subject she chose to focus her anger on next. In the cosy, colourful days of rave, ‘Black Boys On Mopeds’ was another timely reminder of the hypocrisy of western leaders commenting on global atrocities. More specifically, it was a political indictment of Thatcher-era racism doubling as a moving ode to motherhood and a desire to protect her own child from the horrors of the world.
5. MY BLOODY VALENTINE ‘Soon’ (Glider EP April 1990)
The myths and legends built up around My Bloody Valentine and their misunderstood, sonic ‘genius’ Kevin Shields smelt suspiciously of bullshit. However, by the time of Glider, they had inspired enough copyists for the music press to package them together as the mystifying new genre of shoegazing. And yet the astonishing ‘Soon’ was clearly the sound of a cult group leaving their imitators behind; a wall of disintegrating guitars, ethereal voices and hypnotic, pulsing rhythms that became something more than just a song to finally equate Shields perfect pop vision with the sound in his fucked up head.
6. SONIC YOUTH ‘Kool Thing’ (Goo LP June 1990)
As accessible as Sonic Youth would ever get, ‘Kool Thing’ was so good the first time I heard it I had no idea it was them. With Chuck D muttering the occasional (intentional?) ironic rap cliché around Kim Gordon’s vocals, the song had its roots in a disturbing interview she did with a misogynistic LL Cool J to get a female perspective on the male dominated world of hip hop. But with Sonic Youth toning down their regular noisy racket and upping the melody quotient, the whys and the wherefores hardly seemed to matter.
7. RUTHLESS RAP ASSASSINS ‘Justice (Just Us)’ (Killer Album LP June 1990)
Most of the UK hip hop I was listening to in the early nineties was London-centric, so from the start Manchester’s Ruthless Rap Assassins were significantly different. Determined to forge their own path, there was a noticeable punk ideal to what they did that was refreshingly honest. A grim, grimy and gritty document of life in North Hulme and getting through the day by watching films or listening to whatever music you could get your hands on, it’s still one of the most intelligent hip hop albums there is and a stark counterpoint to the hedonism of Madchester taking place less than two miles away.
8. MASSIVE ATTACK ‘Daydreaming’ (Single A Side October 1990)
Massive Attacks debut single stands as a tribute to the funk, reggae and early hip hop that made The Wild Bunch Bristol’s most popular DJ’s, Robert ‘3-D’ Del Naja, Grant ‘Daddy-G’ Marshall, Andrew ‘Mushroom’ Vowles and twenty year old part time associate Adrian ‘Tricky Kid’ Thaws rap about house parties, drugs, urban decay and the eighties under Thatcher presenting an entirely new voice to the youth of the nation; stoned and strong, British and Jamaican, whispering rather than yelling. In fact, it’s genuinely impossible to imagine the last couple of decades of worthwhile black, British music without Massive Attack’s singular, wholly unique vision. And it began here!
9. PET SHOP BOYS ‘Being Boring’ (Single A Side November 1990)
Having soundtracked the eighties sea of excess better than anyone, only the Pet Shop Boys could have had a hit with a slow, sad song called ‘Being Boring’. And only the Pet Shop Boys could have said ta ra to the decade not with a ravey wave but with a dignified and beautiful tribute to all those lost to the holocaust of AIDS. As the worlds of rap and rock began to write and behave as if the virus couldn’t affect them, ‘Being Boring’s undertones of grief and controlled anger appeared all the more relevant.
10. HAPPY MONDAYS ‘Loose Fit’ (Pills ‘N’ Thrills And Bellyaches LP November 1990)
Shaun Ryder’s consistently slapdash lyric’s often flickered with the lunacy of one destined for a padded cell as opposed to the genial TV celeb he has become, while musically Pills ‘N’ Thrills And Bellyaches sounded like a schizophrenic house party on uppers, downers and a bag full of magic mushrooms. Glorying in a style that only came together when it was on the verge of collapse, ‘Loose Fit’ was a brilliant example of the Mondays greatness with an infectious energy and groove that was impossible not to dance to.
1991
11. CHAPTERHOUSE ‘Pearl’ (Single A Side March 1991)
In the early nineties the anodyne, provincial hinterland of my hometown found itself at the epicentre of the burgeoning shoegazing scene, both Chapterhouse and Slowdive representing the slightly sad, southern, middle class response to the northern, working class euphoria of Madchester. Being slightly sad, southern and middle class myself, I found it easy to relate to their experience. Dragged along to a show by ex Criminal Damage photographer Pete Rowe, whose brother Simon was a member, I thought Chapterhouse rather great, particularly ‘Pearl’ which added John Bonham’s definitive drum loop from ‘When The Levee Breaks’ and a danceable synth beat to their regular sonic palette to make them even more appealing.
12. YOUNG MC ‘I Come Off’ [Southern Comfort Mix] (Single A Side March 1991)
Reconfigured from an insignificant album track by British dance sorcerers C.J. Mackintosh and Dave Dorrell, 23 year old Marvin Young’s ‘I Come Off’ was magically transformed into a loping, funk fuelled exposition of black pride and intellect by adding a few smoky effects, some new backing vocals and most crucially of all, the bassline from Aaron Neville’s 1973 soul anthem ‘Hercules’.
13. MASSIVE ATTACK ‘Safe From Harm’ (Blue Lines LP April 1991)
When Blue Lines appeared in the Spring of 1991 it sounded like the start of something genuinely new, it’s dragging beats and sparse, scattered samples conjuring up a strange, disconcerting unease. Underpinned by an agitated bassline, opener ‘Safe From Harm’ drew its gritty ambience from the urban landscape of the groups Bristol roots to convey a compelling sense of protection in its mood and lines like Robert Del Naja’s anxious ‘I was looking back to see if you were looking back at me to see me looking back at you’. Mirroring their commentary on the complexity of personal security and societal pressures, the track confidently set the tone for an album that continues to exert a huge influence on generation after generation of artists attempting to push the envelope of what is possible both sonically and lyrically.
14. THE ORB ‘Perpetual Dawn’ (Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld LP April 1991)
A Dark Side Of The Moon for a new generation of ravers, Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld was a blissed out, sonic trip drawing on everything from Rickie Lee Jones recalling her childhood to samples of Minnie Riperton’s ‘Loving You’, babbling brooks, roosters and church bells. My favourite was the laid back, if slightly nuts, electronic dub of ‘Perpetual Dawn’, which may have been the most upbeat track on the album but was still easy to relax into, especially when I slipped on my king size headphones and adopted my customary horizontal position on the sofa.
15. SON OF BAZERK ‘J Dub’s Theme‘ (Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk LP May 1991)
Nineties hip-hop gifted us dozens of abstract artists and one-off projects, but no one artist or project epitomized that more than Son of Bazerk. With Public Enemy producer Hank Shocklee and The Bomb Squad on board, they were tipped for certain greatness until Bazerk Bazerk Bazerk failed to sell and it became clear that in the real world the cutting edge they were heading towards was no place to be if you wanted commercial success.
Then again, how could it be when gangsta rap’s right wing misanthropy had brainwashed young hip hop and rock fans the world over into believing that what they really wanted was bullshit fairy tales of black men dying and black women being abused over a beat that sounded exactly the same, over and over and again. The avant-garde modernity of Son Of Bazerk and out there stuff like ‘One Time For The Rebel’, ‘Change The Style’ and the wacked out ragga/R&B love groove of ‘J Dub’s Theme‘ never stood a chance.
16. A TRIBE CALLED QUEST ‘Check The Rhime’ (Low End Theory LP September 1991)
A Tribe Called Quest’s landmark Low End Theory suggested yet another direction for hip hop to go in other than the nihilism of gangsta. Slow and mellow with a low end bass that infiltrated your very being in addition to the freewheeling anti-violence rhymes of Q-Tip and Phife, nowhere was this more obvious than on the masterful ‘Check The Rhime’. Giving a hitherto unknown credibility to something as deeply uncool as jazz, theirs was music not just for dancing or punching your fist to, but for sitting around at home pondering the whereabouts of a new, multi-racial bohemia that over thirty years later remains as far away as ever.
17. SAINT ETIENNE ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ (Foxbase Alpha LP September 1991)
In 1990 school friends Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs set about recording a soundtrack to their swingingly fabulous lives in North London. The result was Foxbase Alpha. A compendium of private passions from Dusty Springfield to King Tubby and C86 indie pop to ambient house, somehow these unlikely lads created a record that invited you into a world ever so slightly brighter and more exciting than your own. Not only that, their fabulous, mellow groove remake of Neil Young’s ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ became a handy way in to dance music for those sensitive, softly spoken, indie kids for whom the craziness of Madchester was proving a little too much.
18. JAH WOBBLE’S INVADERS OF THE HEART FEAT. SINEAD O’CONNOR ‘Visions Of You’ (Rising Above Bedlam LP September 1991)
I will always have a soft spot for Jah Wobble, if only because of his essential contribution to Public Image Ltd’s Metal Box. However, having dipped in and out of his head scratching eighties albums, I found the underrated Rising Above Bedlam in a bargain bin and was only tempted to buy it because of Sinead O’ Connor’s appearance on ‘Visions Of You’. A shimmering, dub infected hymn to a warm, loving and humorous spiritual force, it’s one of those rare songs that capture feelings so deep they go beyond words.
19. THE JUSTIFIED ANCIENTS OF MU MU ‘It’s Grim Up North’ (Single A Side October 1991)
Whatever you think of Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty, they created quite a stir during their five years as The Kopyright Liberation Front when they took the music industry for a phenomenal amount of cash, rocketed to the top of the charts, pioneered some of the most iconic acid house, rave and ambient tunes of a generation and then fucked off and deleted their entire catalogue.
‘It’s Grim Up North’ was sandwiched between the big KLF hits ‘What Time Is Love’ and ‘Justified and Ancient’ and credited to The Justified Ancients Of Mu Mu. Set to a pounding industrial techno beat with percussion reminiscent of steam whistles, it sounded incredible, despite being little more than Bill Drummond reciting a list of towns and cities in the North of England before seguing into an orchestral version of ‘Jerusalem’ which, given the subject matter, seemed wholly appropriate.
20. BELTRAM & PROGRAM 2 ‘The Omen’ [Psycho mix] (Single A Side December 1991)
Whiter than white with big fat riffs and dirty noise, the seeds of Belgium techno originally germinated somewhere between Belgium and New York when wonder kid Joey Beltram, who had already revolutionised techno twice on ‘Energy Flash’ and ‘Mentasm’, consciously recreated the feel of his teenage favourites Black Sabbath and Led Zeppelin. The third in a magnificent trilogy, ‘The Omen’ went further still by sampling Robert Plant’s sighs and screams from ‘Whole Lotta Love’s spacey middle bit, Beltram skilfully reconstructing a future from the remnants of his past.
1992
21. SPIRITUALIZED ‘Shine A Light’ (Lazer Guided Melodies LP April 1992)
In his long running quest for pharmaceutical, religious and romantic redemption in a world that often seemed dead set against him having any of it, this sleepy little masterpiece from Spiritualized’s debut Lazer Guided Melodies acted as a microcosm of what Jason Pierce would become. A shadowy skeleton of a song during which a slow, gospel drift gradually became a barely controlled wall of noise with Pierce pleading quietly with his God, ‘Shine A Light’ would not be the first time he hurtled headlong into the darkness.
22. THE DISPOSABLE HEROES OF HIPHOPRISY ‘Language Of Violence’ (Single A Side May 1992)
As the UK revelled in ‘E’ induced love and optimism, no-one was listening to Michael Franti’s extraordinary ‘Language Of Violence’. A vivid depiction of the threats and harassment suffered by a gay youth, it was as draining a listen as I’d ever heard yet so insightful and influential it was responsible for making none other than ‘original gangsta’ and committed homophobe Ice T rethink his attitude. Not that anything has changed much in the interim, the homophobic toxicity of hip hop continuing within the rhymes of supposedly intelligent 21st century rappers who really should know better.
23. ORIGINAL ROCKERS ‘Push Push (The Underwater World Of Jah Cousteau)’ [Groove Corporation Mix] (Push Push: The Remix EP June 1992)
The surprising success of The KLF’s Chill Out album and The Orb’s Adventures Beyond The Ultraworld spawned an epidemic of so called ambient dub that collectively failed to deliver on their initial promise. Rather than explore the pioneering, experimental spirit of King Tubby or Lee Perry, tracks tended to wallow in clichéd, off the shelf samples of birdsong and water, ending up more like the anodyne muzak you might hear in a shopping mall lift. The Original Rockers long forgotten ‘Push Push (The Underwater World Of Jah Cousteau)’ was one of the genres few genuinely sublime moments, where for once ambient dub sounded exactly like it was supposed to.
24. ACEN ‘Trip II The Moon Pt. 2: The Darkside (Single A Side August 1992)
From my vantage point as an outsider, I could see that much like any other culture with the nihilism of drugs as its whole raison d’être, by the Summer of 1993 rave’s living dream had turned to living nightmare; a woozy, hippy hell hole of junked up alternative reality. As the movers, shakers and teeny mega raver’s came down with a sickening crash, the sound of hardcore turned ever darker, Acen’s ‘Trip To The Moon’ series revealing the black hole of excess, paranoia, delusion and depression that had been obscured by the stupidly happy mask of the smiley. What had once been euphoric and transcendent had finally turned ugly and oppressive, meaning that when the sound of darkness began to shadow the swoony delirium, rave effectively was done for.
25. DAS EFX ‘They Want EFX’ (Single A Side August 1992)
Despite evidence to the contrary, a few flashes of individual brilliance did manage to penetrate hop hop’s juvenile delinquent sleaze. Kicking off with a triumphant ‘Bum stiggidy bum stiggidy bum!’ before name checking Pinocchio, The Sound Of Music, Dem bones, ‘Shiver me timbers’ and countless nursery rhymes, Das EFX made their gobbledegook sound other worldly and important by signposting a long lost route back to Little Richard and ‘A wop bop a loo bop.’
26. THE PHARCYDE ‘Passin’ Me By’ (Bizarre Ride II the Pharcyde October 1992)
Together with the sample drunk playfulness of De La Soul, the Beastie Boys and Digital Underground, Los Angeles rappers The Pharcyde served to remind us that sitting around and good naturedly taking the piss out of each other for no particular reason was far more enjoyable than blowing each other’s brains out. One of their greatest songs, the wonky ‘Passin’ Me By’ was a symbolic tale of unrequited love combining snippets of the inimitable Quincy Jones, jazz funker’s Weather Report and guitar master Jimi Hendrix into a creaky framework of tenderness that eschewed the standard macho bullshit of hip hop and was infinitely the better for it.
27. R.E.M. ‘Find The River’ (Automatic For The People LP October 1992)
I never liked R.E.M. that much but surprisingly I did like Automatic For The People. That’s because in the autumn and winter of 1992 I found it literally impossible to escape the likes of ‘Drive’, ‘Man On The Moon’, ‘Everybody Hurts’ and ‘Nightswimming’. Those songs were everywhere at a time when truthfully I couldn’t have given less of a shit about four thirty something American’s trading the same old, jangly, Byrds bollocks. And yet, as much as I tried to resist, their bleak, often majestic songs gradually seeped into my soul, in particular Michael Stipe’s search for something intangible on the harmony drenched ‘Find The River’. Has there ever been a more melodic song in my lifetime? I think not.
28. PULP ‘Babies’ (Single A Side October 1992)
In 1992 Pulp had already been around for more than a decade and had only recently moved on from their early, folkier recordings towards a more synth-based sound. Then ‘Babies’ happened, a song that became the synthesis of everything they would turn into both thematically and musically. The finest example of droll, 29 year old misfit Jarvis Cocker’s song-as-short-story approach, it was a sad yet funny coming-of-age tale of unrequited lust and wince inducing memories and his first truly great song.
29. APHEX TWIN ‘We Are The Music Makers’ (Selected Ambient Works 85-92 LP November 1992)
Richard D. James’ early work was heavily indebted to EDM, filled with beats so eminently danceable they confused those who only knew him from the spastic drum patterns that would come later. There was little of that on Selected Ambient Works 85-92, an album covering the days before software allowed for heavy sampling or glitch technology. Most of the tracks followed a relatively basic, if experimental, formula but were no less enjoyable for that, my pick being ‘We Are The Music Makers’, if only for the sample lifted from the original 1971 film version of Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory.
30. SPIRAL TRIBE ‘Forward The Revolution’ (Spiral Tribe EP November 1992)
From the start UK rave’s loved up, communal high had a smell of hippy about it most students of youth culture thought had been consigned to history. Even worse, crusty rave conjured up uncomfortable memories of early eighties, dog on a string, anarcho punk of the Crass variety. Dominated by the Spiral Tribe collective and their own brand of brilliant, hard and fast techno, they too offered an alternative lifestyle and real movement for change, their free, communal parties and revolutionary spirit culminating in the arrest (but eventual acquittal) of thirteen members on public order offences and the most expensive trial in British legal history. The adverse publicity went some way to laying the groundwork for the 1994 Criminal Justice Act, although by then the Tribe themselves had relocated to a freer minded Europe.
1993
31. KRS-ONE ‘Sound Of Da Police’ (Return Of The Boom Bap LP April 1993)
Original South Bronx gangsta Kris Parker spent his eighties in Boogie Down Productions until his partner 25 year old Scott La Rock was shot dead trying to break up an argument. Turning his back on the bullshit of gangsta rap and its inherent negative rage, he began to follow a more positive path that earned him huge respect but few sales. ‘Sound Of Da Police’ was his one masterpiece of righteous protest, a track comparing a slave overseer to a modern day police officer while detailing generation after generation of institutionalized racism that sadly continues unabated.
32. BLUR ‘Blue Jeans’ (Modern Life Is Rubbish LP May 1993)
It was only when I heard the second Blur album that I realised just how much I’d missed British guitar pop. Crafted from the best bits and pieces of XTC, Wire, The Teardrop Explodes and Hunky Dory Bowie, Modern Life Is Rubbish captured the frustrations of the ordinary working man and the stuff we tend to cling onto when all hope is draining away. In 1993, after five years of working for a living had left me feeling brow beaten, battered and suffering life as if it was to be endured rather than enjoyed, I knew exactly what Damon Albarn was on about on.
33. MANIC STREET PREACHERS ‘La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)’ (Gold Against The Soul LP June 1993)
When the Manic Street Preachers escaped the terraced streets of Blackwood looking for all the world like the aftermath of a car crash between the DIY stencilled clothing of punk and the leopard skin look of glam, they were hailed as either a bad joke or the ‘Future of rock’n’roll’ at a time when it still seemed perfectly possible for a bunch of skinny, callow youths from a South Wales mining town to actually be such a thing. Certainly their records were flawed, but in the early years it was precisely that and their incessant if naïve raging against the dying of the light that made them so compelling.
I saw them for the first time at a typically riotous show at Reading’s tiny After Dark club which epitomised the outrage and violence of a formative period when the Manics pronounced their own and youth cultures quest for change as useless. Ridiculous maybe, but even then I had to admire their courage. Following a string of remarkable singles and a top twenty debut album, Gold Against The Soul showcased a stripped down quartet more attuned to the mainstream. Forgoing their questionable love of hard rock, ‘La Tristesse Durera (Scream To A Sigh)’ proved just how effective they could be.
34. JESUS AND MARY CHAIN ‘Snakedriver’ (Sound Of Speed EP June 1993)
Working from a secret master plan, Jim and William Reid became post punks nihilistic dream incarnate, stripping away any hint of life’s wonderful colours to bury themselves in a litany of misery, wishful sexual thinking and a vast expanse of total darkness. Everything was black and yet it was that very blackness that attracted me the most. Unfairly omitted from any conversation about their greatest songs, ‘Snakedriver’ captured the brother’s essence perfectly, a moment of innovation and of course, side-splittingly funny.
35. CYPRESS HILL ‘Hits From The Bong’ (Black Sunday LP July 1993)
In the summer of 1993, I was making some serious money digging out weeds and clearing overgrown footpaths in the suburbs of Reading for the local council. The day’s task was often completed by early afternoon so a bunch of us would congregate in my huge Dodge, crew cab tipper away from prying eyes down by the River Thames to smoke a bagful of weed and listen to mix tapes on a portable cassette player wired into the dashboard. Cypress Hill never did it for me, but nonetheless they were someone’s favourite, and during that hot, hard-working summer, Black Sunday, ‘Hits From The Bong’ and its ‘Son Of A Preacher Man’ sample gifted us an unexpected, suitably stoned soundtrack. You can’t really ask any more of a song than that can you?
36. A TRIBE CALLED QUEST ‘Oh My God’ (Midnight Marauders LP October 1993)
As different from Cypress Hill as it was possible to get, A Tribe Called Quest and Midnight Marauders represented perfection, an album that happily connected the dots between rap and jazz history and so buoyant that their experimentation resonated as pop. With Q Tip and Phife sounding smarter and more joyous than ever before, songs like the horn stuffed ‘Oh My God’, the hypnotic head nodder ‘Electric Relaxation’ and the pointed and thoughtful dissection of the N-word on ‘Sucka Nigga’ made the whole record feel like a masterclass, which in hindsight is exactly what it was.
37. STEREOLAB ‘French Disco’ (Single A Side October 1993)
Marxist group McCarthy were noticeably better than your regular cutie pie indie poppers yet by 1990 they had become Stereolab. Retaining the same honourable principles as their forebears, they added a suave, European air to their politicking, although it must be said ‘French Disco’ was more motorik driven, acid rock with absurdist, revolutionary lyrics calling for action than anything else.
38. BJORK ‘Play Dead’ (Single A Side October 1993)
In 1993 Bjork was everyone’s favourite princess of avant-garde pop with some top songs, a beautiful voice, an effortless way of mixing and matching genres and best of all, the looks, dress sense and actions of an alien from outer space. Her first album Debut was an intriguing scrapbook of musical ideas, but as my favourite Bjork moments have always been her most accessible, ‘Play Dead’ narrowly pipped the brilliant ‘Venus As A Boy’, ‘Human Behaviour’ and ‘Big Time Sensuality’ for inclusion here.
Originally a stand-alone single, the song was a part of The Young Americans soundtrack with Bjork adding a melody and lyrics to a Jah Wobble bassline and James Bond composer David Arnold’s orchestration. Plugging into the nineties obsession with soundtracks, it was suitably cinematic and dramatic, it’s soaring, shimmering strings helping to produce a stunning slice of symphonic pop that still sounds unique within Bjork’s vast ouvre.
39. LEFTFIELD FEAT. JOHN LYDON ‘Open Up’ (Single A Side November 1993)
Having famously slagged off rave culture to all and sundry, it came as a shock when Jesus Johnny Lydon, a man with a serious habit of being in the right place at the right time, turned up on Leftfields simmering slice of discontent ‘Open Up’. A relentless, high energy melange of pulsating bass and screaming synths, the 36 year old godfather of punk’s disembodied voice transformed it into a malignant four minutes of scowling disquiet, something it could never have been without his input.
40. DJ SHADOW & THE GROOVE ROBBERS ‘In/Flux’ (Single A Side December 1993)
In the end it took a white Californian kid to find a way out of the west coast gangsta malaise. Josh Davis, aka DJ Shadow, was the first to create seamless, instrumental music from discarded, long forgotten soul, jazz and spoken word records and mould them into something informed by its own sense of tempo, time and texture. On first hearing ‘In/Flux’ I was genuinely astounded, convinced I'd heard the sound of a future that merely required a sampler, a bunch of obscure second hand records and the imagination of a classical composer to reconstruct them into something remarkable!
1994
41. MAZZY STAR ‘Fade Into You’ (Single A Side April 1994)
If DJ Shadow was the future, traditional song writers Mazzy Star were the past, at least so I thought. And yet, not for the first time, I got it completely wrong, ‘Fade Into You’ being a song so complete its melancholic soundscape and lyrics encapsulating the complexity of falling in love haunt me to this day.
42. BLUR ‘This Is A Low’ (Parklife LP April 1994)
It would be a lie to say that Blur’s approach to being British has always been celebratory. Sometimes desultory, occasionally dismissive, their relationship with dear old Blighty could lead to trite, music hall clichés or something genuinely transcendent. ‘This Is A Low’, the closing song on Parklife was very much the latter. Taking the BBC shipping forecast as a starting point, it provided a wonderful atmospheric trek around our sceptred isle, its mood alternating from resigned sadness to battered optimism. Often regarded as the apex of Damon Albarn’s obsession with his homeland, it was the moment Blur finally succeeded in imbuing our nation with a mystery as potent as any American myth.
43. NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS ‘Red Right Hand’ (Let Love In LP April 1994)
Creating an imaginary place for me to hide in times of disease and despair, ‘Red Right Hand’ was a menacing folk tale about an unspecified bogeyman (Satan, a drug dealer, a dream weaver, death itself?) haunting some Godforsaken, swamp bound town where ghoulish women pushed men to murder while the undertaker led the townsfolk in an ironic chorus of ‘What A Friend We Have In Jesus’. Some twenty years later, this darkly foreboding song would take on a life of its own as the theme tune for the infamous Peaky Blinders, so much so that these days it’s impossible to hear it without the accompanying image of Tommy Shelby emerging from the smoke and hellfire of 1920’s Birmingham playing on the Sky Q box in your head.
44. TRICKY ‘Ponderosa’ (Single A Side April 1994)
Away from Massive Attack, Tricky’s own music was never anything less than disturbing, the horrific experience of staring into his mother’s open coffin as a barely comprehending four year old and the memory of his chaotic, tough upbringing on Bristol’s lawless Knowle West estate oozing out of every groove. His second single ‘Ponderosa’ was no different. Powerful and emotionally charged it showcased his willingness to explore the darkness within. Dragging its clanking chains around like the ghost of Jacob Marley, the songs haunted atmosphere and evocative lyrics highlighted the brutal and unforgiving nature of the narrator’s reality and the cruel world we live in.
45. NAS ‘Halftime’ (Illmatic LP April 1994)
The legendary debut of one Nasir Jones from Queens, New York was hailed as the second coming and steamrollered all before it. With its articulate, politically aware reportage tripping over dense, scratch reviving beats, Illmatic was everything hip hop was meant to be. Listen to the battle rhyme, ghetto testimony of ‘Halftime’ and you’ll know exactly why it meant so much.
46. JERU THE DAMAJA ‘Come Clean (E New Y Radio)’ (Single A Side May 1994)
An extraordinary hip hop one off, Kendrick Jeru Davis was one of the first rappers to pronounce himself as anti gangsta. Promising a return to the hip hop values of old, ironically the beats production genius Premier provided him with were anything but traditional. Over one of the most unusual yet distinguishable percussion patterns ever recorded, Jeru spouted rhymes in a voice happy to criticise and challenge the status quo and stun the underground. From this point on the hip hop mainstream would become the black equivalent of middle of the road country music with the occasional odd genius desperately trying to stay afloat in an ever rising tide of shit.
47. PORTISHEAD ‘Roads’ (Dummy LP August 1994)
Portishead's debut Dummy was an immersive experience inviting listeners into a world of loneliness, discontent and paranoia. Painted by Beth Gibbons, the sonic landscape was murky and hopeless, yet always enticing. Yearning for something more, her mesmerising voice encouraged us to indulge in a seductive misery defined by hazy beats, snippets of retro soundtracks and the sound of vintage vinyl crackling on the record player. ‘Roads’ was the indisputable centrepiece, a devastating five minutes led by soaring strings dripping with emotion and Gibbon’s own, tenderly desperate voice questioning ‘How can it feel this wrong?’. Underlining life’s loneliness, it was the albums most heartbreaking song.
48. JEFF BUCKLEY ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’ (Grace LP August 1994)
In death Jeff Buckley was hailed as some kind of musical saint, his tiny catalogue of recordings the evidence, if any evidence were needed, of his brilliance, beauty and originality. Myth making bullshit some might say, and if it was for any other artist I would probably concede and take great delight in dismantling the lie. But in the case of Jeff Buckley and Grace, the one and only studio album he made in his short lifetime, I can do nothing but agree. From the unbridled ferocity of ‘Mojo Pin’ to the desperate longing of the immaculate ‘Lover, You Should’ve Come Over’ and the audible pain and orgasmic pleasure of Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’, it provided an unfathomable, other worldly journey that puts to shame all those mealy mouthed, privileged, middle class cunts with their soft rock melodies and cold, cynical hearts who would follow in his wake.
49. MASSIVE ATTACK ‘Karmacoma’ (Protection LP September 1994)
Understanding that the space between the notes could speak just as loudly as the sounds themselves, Massive Attack sculpted a sonic world where reverb-drenched guitars and synths danced in the background, so contributing to the tension that lurked beneath the calm exterior of their music. Pushing the parameters of Blue Lines, Protection infused their social commentary with groove, and in so doing created an album that was both thought provoking and rhythmically infectious.
One of its many highlights, ‘Karmacoma’ was a gritty collaboration with Tricky exploring the more menacing side of urban life. With an off-kilter rhythm and snarling lyrics, it managed to feel simultaneously claustrophobic and expansive, unsettling and magnetic, Tricky’s half-spoken, half-rapped delivery injecting a dissonant energy that underscored the contrast at the albums heart and the constant pull and push between chaos and calm.
50. LAIKA ‘Coming Down Glass’ (Silver Apples Of The Moon LP October 1994)
Once upon a time, before there was Britpop, there was post rock. A fabricated, journalist conceived amalgam of experimental guitar groups, Laika unwittingly found themselves throw into the same pot. And yet to my ears, Silver Apples Of The Moon seemed to focus more on rhythm and groove which wasn’t post punk at all. Instead it was more like trip hop and actually rather good.
1995
51. LEVITICUS ‘The Burial’ (Single A Side February 1995)
Built around a couple of seventies soul singles, a speeded up Jill Francis song and Jigsy King and Tony Curtis's Jamaican hit ‘My Sound a Murder’, ‘The Burial’ is a classic from the glory days of jungle. Somehow managing to scrape into the charts, by so doing it proved what electronic dance music could be when it met the pop fan halfway and worked within a structured format as opposed to relying on unfathomable micro scenes and regurgitated sonic effects.
52. TRICKY ‘Hell Is Round The Corner’ (Maxinquaye LP February 1995)
Maxinquaye was Tricky’s time to shine, an album crawling through the twists and turns of his psyche as his philosophical ruminations twisted into brutal self-examination, its radicalism only matched by the songs immediacy. The impact was heightened even further by the gender fuck of Martina Topley-Bird's gamine voice delivering his nuggets of truthful autobiography, Tricky himself leaving the exact nature of his revelations up for grabs by delaying his vocal appearance until a third of the way through on ‘Hell is Round the Corner’.
Utilising the same Isaac Hayes sample Portishead used on 'Glory Box' but to even greater effect, the duo wove their captivating spell while the vinyl crackle, smoky fug and disorientation took unwary listeners deep into early hour’s territory. And that wasn’t all, the likes of ‘Black Steel’, ‘Overcome’, ‘Aftermath’ and ‘Abaddon Fat Tracks’ were also possessed of a rare beauty intrinsically linked to the same time and place. I hate to use the word classic but Maxinquaye was just that, a timeless example of the nineties and the strange yet brilliant pop times I lived through.
53. PJ HARVEY ‘Down By The Water’ (To Bring You My Love LP February 1995)
In seriously macho times when men were lads and women were in Elastica, Polly Harvey was an enticing concoction of sex ballad suffering and earth mother yearning. In her riot grrrl frock she was the one woman embodiment of The Slits, To Bring You My Love the nearest any woman has ever got to releasing a cock rock album. A collection of songs defiantly shouting ‘Gimme it!’ while proclaiming that the basic impulses, desires and needs of men and women aren’t all that different, if only we could stop hiding behind all those tiresome Venus and Mars, pink and blue cliché’s.
54. ELASTICA ‘Waking Up’ (Elastica LP March 1995)
Justine Frischmann had no time for Britpop, believing quite rightly that Elastica had nothing in common with the likes of Oasis. They preferred the jagged guitars of late seventies post punk and new wave, pilfering their best hooks from Wire’s ‘Three Girl Rhumba’ for ‘Connection’, ‘I Am The Fly’ for ‘Line Up’ and most obvious of the lot, The Stranglers ‘No More Heroes’ for ‘Waking Up’. But that didn’t matter a bit because what Elastica did with them actually improved on the source material by making those melodic elements harder, meaner and incredibly exciting, something I would never have believed possible if I hadn’t heard it for myself.
55. RADIOHEAD ‘Fake Plastic Trees’ (The Bends LP March 1995)
There’s no point in denying it, The Bends version of Radiohead was a sober, po-faced bunch of ex public schoolboys who took themselves very seriously indeed. Their speciality was big, starry-eyed melodies over layered guitars, their sound vast and complex but still stuck within the constraints of trad rock. In 1995 breaking new ground was definitely not a part of their plan. Standing apart and aloof in their home city of Oxford, there was nothing particularly special about them until the release of ‘High And Dry’ and ‘Fake Plastic Trees’. Richly rewarding and incredibly melodic, those two songs created a new archetype that would eventually be heard in the music of Coldplay and their less successful soft rock brethren like Snow Patrol, Keane, Elbow and others although by then they were all copying the same increasingly faded blueprint.
56. BOMB THE BASS FEAT. SINEAD O’CONNOR & BENJAMIN ZEPHANIAH ‘Empire’ (Clear LP April 1995)
My liking for ‘Empire’ was less about Tim Simenon or Bomb The Bass and more about Sinead O’Connor’s duet with beat poet and part-time revolutionary Benjamin Zephaniah. An unexpectedly great song in the unlikeliest of places, even if you didn’t agree with the fierce, anti-colonial sentiment behind this masterpiece (‘Vampire you suck the life of goodness … from now on I'll call you England’), the electro dub layers lurking beneath were impossible to resist.
57. EDWYN COLLINS ‘A Girl Like You’ (Single A Side June 1995)
To this day I’ve never found Edwyn Collins overplayed radio hit of 1995 boring. Featuring lyrics dripping with teenage lust, a fiendishly fuzzed out hook and Sex Pistols drummer Paul Cook on groovy vibraphone, it was, and still is, a throwback to another age when mindset, musicianship and authenticity really used to mean something.
58. BJORK ‘Isobel [Deodata Mix] (Single B Side August 1995)
With the sheer beauty of her music, Björk helped me understand the truth about love, loss, faith, abandonment and the dark horror of losing myself in a life of suffocating gloom, ‘Isobel’ a glorious thing written and remixed in the days when she was still interested in defining the rules of a new pop game informed by electronic dance music and technology. Coming on like the hippy love child that she is, Björk spoke of mountains, forests, creatures called lust and fairy tales of mystery, a feminine and dreamy contradiction of ancient and modern that gave me the merest glimmer of hope for my future.
59. BLACK GRAPE ‘In The Name Of The Father’ (It’s Great When You’re Straight…Yeah LP August 1995)
It’s Great When You’re Straight Yeah! was the soundtrack to my summer of 1995. The return of Shaun Ryder proved a brief one, but Black Grape were irresistible, even if it wasn’t all a laugh a minute. Beneath the guffaws and the giggles there was some serious doom and gloom going on, a glimpse of Ryder’s demons that had nothing to do with the drugs he chose to hide behind. But the real reason I loved this record was its sleazy vibe and honking stew of horns, drum loops and exuberant shouts that felt livelier and looser and more joyously warped than the Happy Mondays ever did. And they were funnier too, none more so than on ‘In The Name Of The Father’ which, just in case you were wondering, was not in the least bit religious.
60. PULP ‘Something Changed’ (Different Class LP October 1995)
Tagged forever as a Britpop group, Pulp were infinitely more interesting than that. The shadow cast by Oasis means that the mid-nineties continues to be remembered as the time when indie sold its soul to worship at the altar of greed and fame, but Pulp steadfastly refused to do the same. Remaining as defiantly odd as they had been in the eighties when no one gave a fuck about them, that fact was never more obvious than on Different Class.
A docu-drama of nineties Britain viewed through the thick rimmed specs of Jarvis Cocker, the album’s twelve songs forged a connection between such disparate subjects as class tourism, comedown angst, tribal youth culture and unrequited love and turned them into larger than life pop. Not only that, for once the words were just as important as the music, although being a mixed bag of disco, Sparks, Roxy Music, tacky eighties Europop and indie pop with no Beatles in sight, that was fairly exceptional too.
1996
61. NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS ‘Stagger Lee’ (Murder Ballads LP February 1996)
Art for art’s sake or killing for the sake of, Murder Ballads was a lot more than just another album or Nick Cave’s ninth long player. From beginning to surprisingly cheerful end, it sucked me deep inside its hellish world of fire and brimstone like some perverse West End Musical. The most macabre tale of the lot was Ol’ Nick’s take on the legend of ‘Stagger Lee’. With The Bad Seeds bastardised swamp blues steaming in the background, Stag promised to ‘crawl over fifty good pussies just to get to one fat boys arsehole’ and that wasn’t the half of it. Murder Ballads was a gothic masterpiece so far outside of pop culture that to explain is pointless. You just need to hear it. Be warned though, even when the sweet voiced Kylie takes her turn on ‘Where The Wild Roses Grow’, it’s never pretty.
62. MANIC STREET PREACHERS ‘A Design For Life’ (Everything Must Go LP May 1996)
After the initial chaos surrounding Richey Edward’s disappearance on 1st February 1995, James Dean Bradfield, Nicky Wire and Sean Moore reconvened seven months later to record their evocative version of ‘Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head’ for the War Child charity Help compilation. They returned fulltime the following year with the significantly different ‘A Design For Life’. An anthem breathing hope into a group otherwise poleaxed by grief, forgetting the magnificent singalong chorus for a moment, Nicky Wire’s words made explicit an affiliation with Wales the Manics had previously rejected, the songs proud insistence on learning and education at odds with the inbuilt alcoholic annihilation of British youth it’s often associated with.
63. BECK ‘Where It’s At’ (Odelay LP June 1996)
From the hiss of a needle on vinyl at the start to the ‘jigsaw jazz and the get fresh flow’, ‘Where It’s At’ was the song that best summed up Odelay‘s magpie influences. Inventive and irreverent, it was a bewildering but beguiling mix of bizarre samples, an Afrika Bambaataa style groove, a funked-out lounge-lizard keyboard and the detuned holler of ‘I got two turntables and a microphone’ nicked from Mantronix’s 'Needle to the Groove'. A seamlessly fabulous noise, the boy once tagged ‘a generation’s consolation prize’ after Kurt Cobain blew his own head off had finally done good!
64. THE BROTHERHOOD ‘Punk Funk’ (Elementalz LP June 1996)
Packed with such strictly British references as Chris Eubank, Drop The Dead Donkey, Marc Bolan, Johnny Rotten, Frank Bruno, Barry Sheen, Eric Sykes, Sid James, Fred West, Roobarb & Custard, Robinson's Jam and Bob Hoskins, The Brotherhoods obscure debut became one of the more celebrated records of mid-nineties UK Hip Hop. Veering from the sublime to the ridiculous with raps that were witty, incisive, satirical and original, they were one of the few to remain true to their heritage and not compromise in any way.
65. UNDERWORLD ‘Born Slippy NUXX’ (Single A Side July 1996)
It’s entirely fitting that the single that best encapsulated the On The Buses Britlad era wasn’t a Britpop record at all. In fact, the only reason this phenomenal single made any impact in the first place was the reconstructed NUXX versions inclusion on Danny Boyle’s soundtrack for Trainspotting , a film about the misery of heroin addiction. How ironic then that alongside ‘Design For Life’ and the excretable ‘Tubthumping’, ‘Born Slippy’ is now regarded as one of this countries principle drinking anthems!
66. SNEAKER PIMPS ‘Six Underground’ (Becoming X LP August 1996)
An engaging by product of West Country trip hop, Sneaker Pimps may not have had the doomed romanticism of Portishead or the experimental tendencies of Tricky, but they did possess a cool sense of pop, making ‘Six Underground’ in particular an entrancing, sexually subversive, post-modernist delight.
67. BARRY ADAMSON FEAT. JARVIS COCKER ‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Pelvis’ (Oedipus Schmoedipus LP August 1996)
Ex Magazine and Bad Seeds bassist Barry Adamson had been recording atmospheric soundtracks for the imaginary films in his head for years before the release of Oedipus Schmoedipus. A fluid mix of lounge, jazz and funk with a seriously sleazy underbelly, my own favourite was ‘Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Pelvis’ with its gospel choir refrain and the lewd observations of a certain Mr Jarvis Cocker.
68. EELS ‘Flower’ (Beautiful Freak LP August 1996)
An album for professional depressives, Beautiful Freak had a rather battered, bruised and downtrodden feel to it. In a weary, dejected voice, on songs with titles like ‘Novacaine For The Soul’ and ‘Lucky Day In Hell’, Mark ‘E’ Everett sang about the bleak, often violent world we live in. And yet, through his all-enveloping darkness it was still possible to hear the occasional shaft of light punctuating the gloom, so making an outwardly fragile and defeated song like ‘Flower’ not quite as grim as it first sounded.
69. BABYBIRD ’45 & Fat’ (Ugly Beautiful LP October 1996)
Borrowed from a friend but never returned, Ugly Beautiful was pop genius Stephen Jones hour in the spotlight. Featuring songs originally heard on a series of lo-fi, experimental albums recorded in his attic during long periods on the dole, there’s a whole lot more to his first ‘proper’ album than the great, if overplayed, ‘You’re Gorgeous’ would have you believe. Stuffed as much with the big pop melodies of ‘Candy Girl’ and ‘Goodbye’ as the depressing, defeated yet triumphant odes to disillusion ‘45 & Fat’ and ‘Too Handsome to be Homeless’, Ugly Beautiful proved to be a remarkable, unexpected treasure.
70. SUPER FURRY ANIMALS ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ (Single A Side December 1996)
Taking the award for the most sweary record of the nineties or any other decade for that matter, ‘The Man Don’t Give A Fuck’ was a magnificent, spaced out, song of resistance. Sampling the chorus wholesale from Steely Dan’s ‘Showbiz Kids’, it very nearly didn’t happen either until the Super Furry’s label paid Donald Fagin the £7000 he was demanding. And thank God they did because as a percolating anti-establishment rant it has become one of the greatest protest songs of modern times, proudly taking centre stage during the Iraq war when it was regularly accompanied by images of George W. Bush and Tony Blair.
1997
71. BLUR ‘Death Of A Party’ (Blur LP February 1997)
Just as Blur’s self-titled fifth album could be viewed as the rediscovery of their artistic essence and conscious withdrawal from the vulgar sales and media rat race of Britpop, so ‘Death Of A Party’ could be read as the flipside to their once hedonistic, carefree lifestyle. With its distorted beats, nightmarish organ and lyrics warning about casual sex and the continuing danger of AIDS, it made for a sombre, oddly disassociated song unlike any others in their catalogue.
72. NICK CAVE & THE BAD SEEDS ‘(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For’ (The Boatman’s Call LP March 1997)
Despite the obvious joy of having two young sons, my stupidly youthful marriage was doomed from the start and by the end of 1996 had descended into untold hell and misery. Broken mentally and physically, with a sense of self-esteem so fragile it was all I could do to hold onto what remained, I met someone who singlehandedly renewed my sense of purpose and literally changed my life. She was ‘the one’ and a few months later ‘(Are You) The One That I’ve Been Waiting For’, surely one of the greatest songs of pure devotion ever written, confirmed it.
73. THE VERVE ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ (Single A Side June 1997)
Iconic, uplifting and defiant, forget the infamous dispute revolving around the strings sampled from Andrew Oldham’s orchestral recording of the Rolling Stones ‘The Last Time’, listening to the majesty of ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony’ was like a metaphorical walk down life's crooked path with two fingers raised to all and sundry. An anthem among anthems gleefully crushing all those other songs not bold enough to share its tyrannical worldview, it continues to embody all the necessary optimism for a new beginning, whether that be personal or something greater.
74. RADIOHEAD ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ (OK Computer LP June 1997)
The aching sadness, the cinematic glory, the icy ambience, the frail whispers and the wild, delirious bursts of noise, from the first listen it was obvious that OK Computer was a once in a generation masterpiece. A semi concept album that served notice on Britpop by replacing the movement’s laddish anti-intellectualism and vacant hedonism with the secret glamour of intelligence, literacy and angst, almost singlehandedly, Radiohead put seriousness back on the agenda.
A bold attempt to encapsulate all that was misguided, shallow and spiritually vacant about western society in just twelve songs, the pensive ‘Exit Music (For A Film)’ was one of the most heart wrenching elegies I’d ever heard. The tale of two lovers trying to escape the grim realities of a bitter and twisted world, it chimed absolutely with the new life I was carving out for myself with my beloved.
75. SPIRITUALIZED ‘Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space’ (Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space LP June 1997)
Jason Pierce was all about exploring the majesty and wonder of the world around him and reflecting those findings in his wonderfully realised songs. Elevating mundane concerns to grand struggles between good and evil, nowhere was that more apparent than on the title track of Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space. Using loops and samples to twist a vibrant collection of expensive string sounds and multitudes of voices into universes of their own, Pierce sang about the power of love to change a life, or of finding bliss when heaven seems out of reach. The song’s epic length and unconventional structure, including a brief excerpt from Elvis’s ‘Can’t Help Falling in Love’, made it a bold, experimental statement and one of Spiritualized’s most adored songs.
76. MASSIVE ATTACK ‘Risingson’ (Single A Side June 1997)
‘Risingson’ was released seven months before its parent album Mezzanine and signified a new chapter in Massive Attack’s history as they tapped into the darkness like never before. A sinister, slow motion crawl showered with shimmering effects and ghostly choirs, it was a song of half formed impressions and meaning with an overwhelming sense of dread and decay that was not quite what I was expecting.
77. CORNERSHOP ‘Brimful Of Asha’ (When I Was Born For The 7th Time LP September 1997)
Part of the fun in my nineties was seeing groups rocket from the most obscure cracks of the independent network into the UK top twenty. That one of them was Cornershop, whose first EP had been produced by my old Membranes mate John Robb, was even more astounding. The most affable of records, When I Was Born For The 7th Time was a loose collection of songs shot through with positivity, invention and Tjinder Singh’s deadpan wisdom. Inevitably, the star of the show was the original version of ‘Brimful Of Asha’ which took the fuzzy memories of a British-Indian boyhood influenced by songstress Asha Bhosle, Marc Bolan and Trojan reggae, aligned them with the sound of The Velvet Underground and transformed them into thrilling pop gold.
78. CORNELIUS ‘Star Fruits Surf Rider’ (Fantasma LP September 1997)
Created by Tokyo trendsetter Keigo Oyamada, Fantasma was an animated version of The Beach Boys Pet Sounds that was so hyperactive it was almost impossible to keep up. The representative artefact of Tokyo’s ultra-hip Shibuya district, thankfully nothing got lost in translation, the lush ‘Star Fruits Surf Rider’ sounding like exuberant pop joy in any language.
79. BJORK ‘Joga’ (Homogenic LP September 1997)
The sound of Björk retreating from the spotlight following the massive success of her first two albums, Homogenic heralded a return to her Icelandic homeland, conceptually if not physically. Bristling with a wonderful, joyous drama, I was drawn to it for reasons I couldn't understand at the time, but as I’ve grown older I’ve come to realise that in what for me had become a fairly turbulent life, Homogenic represented escapism, extremes of emotion and a route through which I would make a few discoveries of my own. While the likes of the jittering, orchestral ‘Hunter’, the heart-stoppingly beautiful ‘Unravel’ and the poetic ‘Bachelorette’ were all astonishingly good, it was the dizzying sonic soundscape of ‘Joga’ that immediately felt like it would be around forever, the one song that groups, choirs and entire communities will be performing long after Björk has turned to dust.
80. PORTISHEAD ‘All Mine’ (Portishead LP October 1997)
Portishead’s second album may be their most forgotten, but it’s certainly their most intriguing. Falling midway between the film noir soundtracks of Dummy and the musically challenging Third, it carved its own path that was more macabre nightmare than dream pop. Often described as a modern day torch ballad, ‘All Mine’ was the obvious standout and even with Beth Gibbon’s Shirley Bassey inflections and a richly textured groove, the most vicious Portishead ever sounded.
1998
81. AIR ‘Sexy Boy’ (Moon Safari LP January 1998)
As a child of the sixties and seventies, I imagined a great many things about the future but I never imagined that it might be a disappointment. In fact, had Air not come along, I may never have had cause to remember how that future made me feel, Moon Safari somehow capturing the 21st century I’d imagined as opposed to the one I would find two years later. Sophisticated and seductive, that feeling was best captured on the melodic ‘Sexy Boy’. Sung largely in French, so adding an air of mystery for non-native listeners, it had a distinctly androgynous quality which, given the way the new millennium has turned out, seems more relevant now than ever.
82. BOARDS OF CANADA ‘Aquarius’ (Music Has The Right To Children LP April 1998)
We all have bits and pieces of our past that shape our lives, much of it coming from too much time spent in front of the TV as youngsters. Boards of Canada, a couple of Scottish chaps whose name derives from documentaries produced by Canada’s National Film Board, took those fragments, added just the right amount of crumbly decay and came up with their own surreal, vaguely sinister take on a childhood in weird old Britain. I found them unsettling in the extreme, as thrilling as they were terrifying, the coven of ghost’s they dug up on Music Has The Right To Children triggering my own boyhood memories of alienation, loneliness and confusion and an urgent need to resolve that past before it destroyed my future. Never before or since has an album affected me in quite the same way.
83. MASSIVE ATTACK FEAT. ELIZABETH FRASER ‘Teardrop’ (Mezzanine LP April 1998)
Unlike Blue Lines and Protection, Mezzanine was a monochrome, dense work shrouded in a menacing gloom that made the music coiled and so tightly wound it felt like it was milliseconds away from collapse. Unrelentingly heavy, the mood only lightened when ‘Teardrop’ and the unbearably fragile and strained voice of the Cocteau Twins Elizabeth Fraser began. Yet beneath her seemingly joyous cascade of notes lay a far more depressing tale, the lyrics a requiem for her former partner Jeff Buckley who had drowned on 29th May 1997 during the songs recording.
84. TRICKY FEAT. PJ HARVEY ‘Broken Homes’ (Angels With Dirty Faces LP May 1998)
Whereas Maxinquaye had been a part of the subtle Bristol based conspiracy to transform pop culture, Angels With Dirty Faces was a dark, disturbing beast of a record that defied fashion, dumped trip hop and mumbled to itself about society’s decay, poverty, racism, fame and the overpowering pressure of life in the late 20th Century. Like taking a peek inside a friend’s private diary only to be disturbed by the contents, I had no doubt it was a masterpiece yet even now it’s a tough listen. Tricky had clearly been to some bad places, met some bad people and done some terrible things, but for pure artistic inventiveness Angels With Dirty Faces was incomparable to any other album here, and that includes Maxinquaye.
85. BLACK BOX RECORDER ‘Child Psychology’ (Single A Side May 1998)
Black Box Recorder were an exquisitely sinister English trio who loved nothing more than to soak up the addictive, everyday horrors of our nation and set them to a 4/4 beat. Banned from the radio for its deadpan chorus of ‘Life is unfair / Kill yourself or get over it’, the listless ‘Childhood Psychology’ embodied all that was unsettling about them, Sarah Nixey’s childhood tale just one example of Black Box Recorder’s disturbing vignettes and suburban tableaux.
86. PULP ‘Cocaine Socialism’ (Single B Side June 1998)
Bafflingly relegated to the B side of the relatively unknown ‘A Little Soul’, ‘Cocaine Socialism’ was a scathing yet witty condemnation of Tony Blair and New Labour’s attempts to co-opt Cool Britannia. Charged by a thrilling horn section and self-referential lyrics like ‘You sing about common people / And the misshapes and the misfits’, Pulp’s nineties peers may have been aiming for Ray Davies inspired social satire, but no-one else came up with anything as pointed and powerful as this.
87. HERBERT ‘So Now’ (Around The House LP July 1998)
Matthew Herbert loved nothing more than to integrate the sound of objects lying around his home into his tasteful and danceable songs. Not that anyone would have noticed, because the effect of his sampling was essentially inaudible. Voiced by the sultry Dani Siciliano, the highlight of Around The House was ‘So Now’, a lush and spacious rhythmic backdrop topped by some gorgeous interplay that explains Herbert’s art far better than any explanation.
88. STARDUST ‘Music Sounds Better With You’ (Single A Side July 1998)
A short lived side project helmed by Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter, Stardust’s ‘Music Sounds Better With You’ was pure, disco sparkle, but what was even more great about it was how it blended in elements of Daft Punk’s machine tooled house music. A groovy earworm destined for joyous, communal ecstasy, incredibly it also hit the heights of number two in the UK singles chart.
89. OUTKAST ‘SpottieOttieDopaliscious’ (Aquemini LP September 1998)
As two teenagers draping their adolescent drawl over a silky Atlanta take on California hip hop, Andre 3000 and Big Boi turned themselves into mainstream futurists mixing old school funk, machine rhythms and church gospel with a sci-fi, comic book aesthetic. A lengthy, seven minute, psychedelic, head turning treatise on their experience of Atlanta's nightlife, ‘Spottieottiedopaliscious’ had everything from a heavy dub echo to roots inspired horns, samples of prog-era Genesis guitar and rhymes closer to the spoken word than rapping. It was the first time that critics asked whether or not Outkast could be labelled as hip hop or not. The fact that they’re still asking is explanation enough!
90. BECK ‘Nobody’s Fault But My Own’ (Mutations LP November 1998)
One of Beck Hansen’s finest virtues as an artist has been his respect for the album as a self-contained unit. While no two have ever sounded exactly the same, it’s been relatively easy to decipher a distinctive pattern, one which began after Odelay with the more insular Mutations. A folk-rock collection that included the swirling strings and gentle acoustics of the achingly sincere ‘Nobody’s Fault But My Own’, Beck’s maudlin delivery trod the line between self-centeredness and doleful regret with remarkable grace, his hangdog sense of resolution suggesting that he accepted his screw-ups, something we would all be wise to do every so often.
1999
91. EMINEM ‘My Name Is’ (The Slim Shady LP February 1999)
My adolescent son and his mates fell for The Slim Shady LP big time, so causing untold sensationalist outrage amongst their parents, something which tended to happen when you lived life with The Sun or The Daily Mail as your bible. I was bemused by the fuss. Even at their tender age those boys understood well enough that Eminem and songs like ‘My Name Is’ weren’t telling them anything they didn’t already know, being no more than cartoon satires of the violence and hatred they were exposed to each and every day on the streets of the town in which they lived.
92. BLUR ‘Tender’ (Single A Side March 1999)
Damon Albarn’s late nineties study in heartbreak left very little to the imagination but was both splendid and eerie in a way that songs seldom are anymore.
93. LOOPER ‘Impossible Things #2’ (Up A Tree LP March 1999)
In the late nineties Stuart David chose to take a break from his bass playing duties in Belle & Sebastian to explore his own idea of what pop should be. The DIY punk ethos updated for a new generation, I guess what he was really trying to say was why bother sampling bits and pieces of The Police, Led Zeppelin or any other commercial giant to perform rap Karaoke over when you could sample yourself or your friends and tell your own tale? And ‘Impossible Things #2’ certainly told its own, if extremely odd, everyday tale.
94. MOGWAI ‘Punk Rock’ (Come On Die Young LP March 1999)
Mogwai arrived like the final kick to the head of a Britpop movement in its death throes, the fact that they could say more in a dark, mysterious guitar instrumental than Oasis or any one of their similarly retro acolytes could in a million insipid strums telling its own story. And yet it was only with the release of their second album Come On Die Young that Mogwai’s template of repetition fully revealed itself. Opening with ‘Punk Rock’, a track constructed around a 1977 Iggy Pop interview, while Mogwai themselves were not a punk group per se, I soon fell under their spell, finding comfort in the thought that the punk spirit carries on regardless, albeit in one of its many undefinable forms.
95. APHEX TWIN ‘Nannou’ (Windowlicker EP March 1999)
Richard D. James heralded a serious return to the DIY ideology of a Throbbing Gristle or a This Heat where enthusiastic amateurs with no obvious musical ability but plenty of ideas could still make records. Very much the new pioneer, he was someone who had the wherewithal to do things with computers, drum machines, samplers and sequencers that couldn’t be found in any instruction manual. ‘Nannou’ was just one of his many recordings of rampant experimentation, a field recording of a music box backed by a bunch of robots playing random instruments proving once and for all that even introverted boys in their bedrooms could have hit potential.
96. BJORK ‘All Is Full Of Love’ [Video Version] (Single May 1999)
The promotional video of robots kissing attracted so much attention that the song behind it often got overlooked, but ‘All Is Full of Love’ was extraordinarily beautiful even without the visuals. Romantic and optimistic, it was Bjork at her most drowsily erotic and seductive, the slow building, trippy production style, cascading harpsichord and flurries of strings allowing her innate ability to carve a stunning vocal line seemingly out of nothing to shine. And shine it truly did.
97. LE TIGRE ‘Hot Topic’ (Le Tigre LP October 1999)
Formed by Katherine Hanna of Bikini Kill, Le Tigre took riot grrrl’s DIY principles and progressive gender politics and pushed them towards the commercial dancefloor, which may not sound radical now, but in the nineties underground was treated with utter disdain. Made on the cheap, Le Tigre was inspired by early electro, fifties doo wop and sixties girl group chants with a dollop of scratchy, new wave guitar thrown in for good measure. Of course, in a parallel nineties universe where subversive melodies and sloganeering ruled the roost, ‘Hot Topic’ would have been a sure-fire number one and we’d all have been chanting its handy list of feminist heroines from Gertrude Stein to Eileen Myles. But For now it will have to make do with being one of the most addictive unknown songs of the decade.
98. KRUST FEAT. SAUL WILLIAMS ‘Coded Language’ (Single A Side October 1999)
It seems weird now to think of a record, CD or whatever like ‘Coded Language’ finding a space amongst the detritus of Britpop or even the giants of hip hop. Less a pop single and more of an intimidating, intellectual experience, over a rumbling, raging near nine minutes of noise this collaboration between American poet Saul Williams and Bristol drum and bass maestro Krust tackled the gap between what the mind is capable of understanding and the shit we are fed day after day in a way that was completely new. In 1999 that was really saying something.
99. MOS DEF ‘Rock N Roll’ (Black On Both Sides LP October 1999)
I fell so out of love with hip hop in the late nineties I believed it had gone for good. Even so, it was hard to judge what the worst thing about it really was. Was it the rappers themselves, the Mafiosi styled moguls and hangers on, or was it the rap fans and media jerking off all over the bitches, guns and bling bollocks? Then, right at the death, there was a sudden influx of revitalised beats and rhymes, ‘Rock’n’Roll’ from Black On Both Sides being one of them.
It’s not often that you hear an MC relaying his theory on rock’n’roll history, but Mos Def mostly got it right in his attempt to reconnect black folk with the music they invented; rock’n’roll really was Chuck Berry, Little Richard and Bo Diddly, and it’s an indisputable fact that the Rolling Stones didn’t come up with their shit on their own. And the way that it ended, with a snatch of Hendrix and a Bad Brains punk thrash, you could tell that young Mos really did know his stuff.
100. Q TIP ‘All In’ (Amplified LP November 1999)
When A Tribe Called Quest imploded, Jonathan ‘Q Tip’ Davis looked like a man relieved he no longer had to carry the full weight of hip hops conscience around amongst all those nasty gangsta’s churning out the same sicko records year after year. So it didn’t come as a complete surprise when Amplified appeared sounding like the record of a man released from a life sentence who was suddenly free to indulge his passion for women and for getting deep down and dirty in a club without worrying whether it was morally right to do so. No question, the best intelligently empty, hip grinding, party album of its time and the best possible way to end such a turbulent, frequently noxious and joyless, decade.
