commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996

I thought I remembered House of GVSB being much more highly-regarded that year.

The Tortoise album, too, for that matter.

lot of breakthrough albums that come to be regarded highly over time lose out to diminishing returns from established artists on P&J, just how it goes

As far as 1996 commercial alt-rock goes, the Fountains of Wayne s/t debut LP holds up better than almost anything on the Pazz and Jop list.

theres already a thread about what this thread is slowly turning into

defend 1996

xp When I was on the bus everyone sang "Don't Look Back In Anger." You decide which is worse.

P.S. I'm a USA resident.

my main memory of music on the school bus in 1996 is the vague background BLEH BLEH BLEH of what i later recognized as Ginuwine's "Pony"

and then in early '97 the ticketyticketyticketyTACK of "One In A Million."

96 is maybe my favorite year for music, but i was never part of the alternanation. that shit was just the stuff i'd politely sit through on mtv so i could hear "no diggity". i did actively like beck tho.

i remember the first time i heard Jay-Z was when MTV2 did a block of videos chosen by Moby and "Ain't No" was his token rap pick :/

the "singalong" stuff was mostly regarding "the band bus" and like "on the way back from camp"

whereas on the bus going to school it was pretty much yes yes yes re: "pony" "one in a million" "ain't no" add onto that list "fugeela" and "danger" (Blahzay blahzay)

"hot 97! R n B flayv!"

Fugees have def become one of my favorite things about 96

and "Un-break My Heart."

on perusal of my mp3s, my favorite things about 96 were

entroducing
emperor tomato ketchup
songs for a blue guitar
strand
horse stories
if you're feeling sinister
harmacy
exploded drawing
jawbox

God, what a fucking horrible year for music!

and black love

still enjoy that beck, love fugees, love s-k (though there's 4 s-k lps i'm more likely to listen to), listen to emperor tomato ketchup fairly often in warm weather months, the tricky and pulp are obv classics, haven't listened to the former in years, haven't needed to listen to the latter in years, the rem is my third or fourth fave album by them, i'd imagine i listen to walking wounded at least once every three months or so, even at the time i never quite understood why cassandra wilson, the maxwell is a classic, ugh those rubin johnny cash albums, how the fuck did that shitty soundgarden rank that high, that sheryl crow is decent, i always smile when cibo matto pops up on someone's ipod in the lab, that tony toni tone is fantastic, those e6 albums are classics, ye gods at that jon spencer album ranking maybe you dudes have a point, lotta overrated unexpected comeback albums that still have their moments

most days I like the Imperial Teen record best.

weird at dirty three not ranking up there (i mean i understand p&j had to recognize ratm and sublime and all), i remember them placing in the rolling stone poll that year so it wasn't exactly under the radar in hackville

glancing at acclaimed music if i was voting p&j that year i'd have emperor tomato ketchup, reasonable doubt, walking wounded, millions now living, new adventures in hi-fi, horse stories, pre-millenium tension, cubist castle, atliens, labradford in some order.

<3 that dirty three album so much

i didn't love the Jon Spencer joint...nothing like as good as Extra Width/Orange

i'm kind of fond of it, different energy than the earlier records but kind of cool and unhinged in the way it careens from one song to the next.

i think i was somewhat disappointed in it at the time and then that disappointment got retroactively compounded by acme

oh Acme is a total fall off

Horse Stories is one of my favorite albums. '96 was a pretty good year for stuff that flew slightly under the radar.

yeah Acme was no bueno. bleh

i always smile when cibo matto pops up on someone's ipod in the lab

wanna hear about balls' lab

we listened to tragic kingdom in the lab the other day, somehow it (or just no doubt in general i'd guess) came up so we decided to put it on. i know it's been noted but god cd glut is really the marker for that era, it was ridiculous how long that album was and unlike some cd glut era albums where the sprawl works for it (eg hi-fi for me at least) here it just became ridiculous. was shocked that there wasn't quite as skacore air to it as i remembered, 'sunday morning' and 'don't speak' still sounded great (as if 'don't speak' every really left radio anyway), 'excuse me mister' sounded alot weirder than i recalled, other than the minimum ska the rest was pretty much how i imagined, much better than its rep at the time (or even now probably right?) but still not so great that it didn't provide the baseline for both the subsequent albums to be better (well judging by the singles at least).

lol xpost

god i swear i'll look at a post i've just made and see grammar and spelling errors that just mystify me, i'll look at it and think 'o look, that's alzheimer's. there's alzheimer's creeping in. *adds piracetam to shopping cart*'.

if i count all the time in coffee shops since 1996 i wonder if endtroducing isn't the album i've heard most in my life

Tragic Kingdom reminded me at the time (pre-"Don't Speak" ubiquity) of Faith No More, for some reason. I'd have to hear it again to know whether that comparison holds up.

aw man I love Tragic Kingdom start to finish. Much as I love them I've never found that they repeated the consistency of that first album. imo.

what i like on endtroducing i like alot but i bet like 35-40% of the vote it got was dickweeds slapping themselves on the back for agreeing w/ 'why hip-hop sucks in 96'. which wow does that title look even dumber now, like if frank zappa had recorded a track called 'why rock albums suck in 67' and then the only lyric was 'it's the drugs!', that level all time RONG.

Yo balls, Tragic Kingdom was in regular rotation for me when I worked a temporary shelving job at UGA Libraries following the great library fire of ought four, I got moderately into it and I do think the highs are pretty high. Staggering to realize it officially had SEVEN SINGLES according to wikipedia but obviously around three of those were non-starters. I dunno if it's THAT overstuffed at 14 tracks but definitely it could shed two and it'd be no big loss. Or three, or four. Looking at the tracklist I'm struggling to remember anything beyond some bits of chorus about the last four songs, and I listened to this thing a LOT. First ten are pretty solid though - - - competent uptempo ska-rock-whatever album with a few huge highlights.

The mid-90s is one of those times when you sort of wish the album had never been developed as a format and people just had singles to stake their rep on. I mean, "Spiderwebs," "Just A Girl," "Sunday Morning" - there was great material on this record!

"Sunday Morning" is so great. i always like the least successful single off of each No Doubt/Stefani record the most.

lol i think part of it may have been just me and another worker going 'fucking hell how long does it take to get to 'sunday morning' already???' and then after 'don't speak' going 'fucking hell there's four more songs on this thing'. it still sounded fine, i'll take it over ratm and sublime, nevermind 311 (aka 'why altrock sucks in 96').

the fact that i grew up thinking 12 track albums were the norm and 14-15 is like awesome bonus is so fucked up and wrong, i'm glad i saw the light eventually

I loved "No Diggity."

I've never owned it on any format

whiney how hyped were you for that blackstreet/odb/slash/fishbone joint

it was my everything

311

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JnPntwwxuq8&ob=av2n

still suprised tom gave that a '10' on popular tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDkhl-CgETg

boy america got the better of that deal