100 Best Albums of the Nineties

80. The Breeders, ‘Last Splash’
The Pixies‘ Kim Deal eclipsed her old band ”” if only for one album ”” with loud, crazy songs about summer, sex and songs ”” plus her twin sister Kelley on guitar. The album’s sole hit, “Cannonball,” remains one of the most ridiculous pop songs to ever crash the pop charts.

79. Guided by Voices, ‘Bee Thousand’
GBV‘s six previous albums (released in limited editions on minuscule indies) were brilliant, but Bee Thousand was a tour de force by a good old-fashioned American basement genius. A rotating group of thirtysomethings based in Dayton, Ohio, Guided by Voices mined familiar territory: classic English pop rockers like the Who, the Kinks and the Beatles, albeit filtered through latter-day Beatlemaniacs like Cheap Trick and Robyn Hitchcock, as well as low-fi avatars like Daniel Johnston and Pavement. Recorded on a four-track machine, Bee Thousand sounds like a favorite bootleg or a beloved old LP whose worn grooves now reveal only a blurry jumble. Amp hum, sniffling musicians and creaking chairs all inhabit the mix, but the homespun production only underlines the strength of the songs ”” low-fi or not, there’s no denying an astonishing rush of guitar-pop glory like “Tractor Rape Chain.”

78. Oasis, ‘Definitely Maybe’
While stateside bands agonized over fame, Oasis announced, “Tonight, I’m a rock & roll star.” Indeed, the title of this debut album ”” a blast of guitar muscle, sneering vocals, retro hooks and arrogant flash ”” is the only ambivalent thing about it. “You can have it all/But how much do you want it?” the brothers Gallagher ask in “Supersonic,” and the answer is, a fuckin’ lot. The hits came later, but this is where Oasis established a beachhead on these shores in the war to restore British rock to the throne.

77. Neil Young and Crazy Horse, ‘Ragged Glory’
To kick-start the Nineties, Neil Young reunited with Crazy Horse, cranked the amps and, as a songwriter, took a look back to see if anything was still standing. There’s some blood on the tracks (“Love to Burn,” “Fuckin’ Up”), but “Days That Used to Be” and “Mansion on the Hill” revisit the era of peace, love and granola with a sentimentality that Young rarely permits himself. The long guitar solos are this album’s real story, however. They’re ragged and glorious, indeed, and they turn this look back into a look ahead: The guitar barrage of grunge is right around the corner.

76. The Rolling Stones, ‘Bridges to Babylon’
Maybe it was the biz markie sample on “Anybody Seen My Baby?” that suggested the Rolling Stones were up for invigoration on Bridges to Babylon. Not that their rockers (“Flip the Switch”) or ballads of taunting regret (“Already Over Me”) are missing. It’s that everything sounds vivified ”” from the reggae swagger of Keith Richards’ “You Don’t Have to Mean It” to Mick Jagger’s hedonist manifesto “Saint of Me.” A bridge to the twenty-first century? For the Stones, Babylon will do just fine.

75. Belle and Sebastian, ‘If You’re Feeling Sinister’
This instrument-switching Scottish outfit represented the ultimate triumph of twee, that British subgenre that applies rock-style hipness and amateurish fervor to unrock interests such as coffeehouse folk, French 1960s pop and the works of Burt Bacharach. Casually led by real-life choirboy and Smiths admirer Stuart Murdoch, Belle and Sebastian attached cello, trumpet and strings to a skiffle beat and melodies devised after hours of lonely listening to vintage Top Forty radio. Not since Nick Drake had so quiet a band spoken so loudly.

74. Rage Against the Machine, ‘The Battle of Los Angeles’
Rage Against the Machine‘s first two records sound better than they used to, now that we know they were leading up to something. But they sure don’t howl or move like The Battle of Los Angeles. Tom Morello is the most adventurous metal guitarist since Eddie Van Halen Hagar-ed out, and his boombastic sonics in “Born of a Broken Man,” “Ashes in the Fall” and “War Within a Breath” rumble like crosstown turntable traffic. Zack de la Rocha has figured out how to project with his major-threat mouth, while bassist Tim Commerford and drummer Brad Wilk beef up their arena muscles. As a result, Battle captures Rage in all their stadium-shaking ferocity, blasting righteous propaganda to the cheap seats. Rage’s macho bluster trips up their politics; even the kinda-sorta-feminist “Maria” is the sound of real men stuck on their own potency. But hopefully that’s a temporary glitch ”” with Battle, Rage have already pushed their noise and their message further than the Clash ever dreamed possible.

73. Missy “Misdemeanor” Elliott, ‘Supa Dupa Fly’
The Don of Virginia beach, Missy claimed hip-hop and R&B as her own playground with more ambitious flair than any other mogul, male or female. She has it all: songwriting skills, a voice that drips soul whether singing or rapping and the coolest name in showbiz. She also had Timbaland, whose dubbed-out aquaboogie rocked bodies with a whole new funk style. They were two kids out to conquer the world, and they did with “The Rain,” turning an Ann Peebles oldie into an interstellar booty patrol. Missy struts her stuff through jams like “Sock It 2 Me” and the hysterical “Izzy Izzy Ahh,” throwing in the words beep beep whenever she could fit them and just generally getting her vroom on.

72. The Chemical Brothers, ‘Dig Your Own Hole’
In “Block Rockin’ Beats” ”” the bulldozing fusion of high-stepping funk, twisted dub games and massed, tortured-machine screams that opened their second album ”” Tom Rowlands and Ed Simons of the Chemical Brothers created the “Whole Lotta Love” of Nineties sampledelia, a clubland monster with rock & roll guts and symphonic dynamics. On the rest of Dig Your Own Hole, particularly the Beatlemaniac swirl of “Setting Sun” and the Day-Glo surge of “The Private Psychedelic Reel,” the British DJ duo showed that (a) playing other people’s records ”” sliced, diced and blown to ingeniously reconfigured bits ”” is a valid form of composition, and (b) dance music is a matter of both mind and body.

71. DJ Shadow, ‘Endtroducing…’
A mad scientist who obviously doesn’t get out of the lab much, DJ Shadow spends Endtroducing rewiring the Mo’ Wax sound he helped invent. This snootiest of British dance labels made stars out of train-spotting DJs, hooking up countless samples and special effects into a hypnotic pastiche of tripping, hopping beats, and Shadow was its biggest star of all. The dystopian New Age of Endtroducing sounds like an alien spacecraft touching down on the autobahn late at night, probably to check out Earth’s used-vinyl bins. Endtroducing is headphone macro­dub with a crafty Californian sense of humor, and the lamentable fact that DJ Shadow has spawned a thousand corny knockoffs doesn’t stop grooves like “Building Steam With a Grain of Salt” from ringing out like hell’s bells. This is DJ culture at its boldest: steeped in the past but zooming into the Space Age future.