commercially disappointing major label rock/alternative albums of 1996

what blackstreet/odb slash fiction joint?

STILL LOVE THIS SONG FWIW - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDHd-vxcMDo

PPL OF ATHENS I WILL BE SINGING THIS SONG THURSDAY AT KARAOKE.

my sister says she was in a spacehog video. i've never watched one, so i don't know whether or not this is true.

i'm gonna start calling liv tyer "the spacehag"

I am so pissed off to be reminded of "Mungo City"

― da croupier, Thursday, September 13, 2007 4:58 PM Bookmark

^^^ pops into my head every time i think of Spacehog now

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M6YkVlI5VSU

also not to be a self-plugger but if you are digging on kula shaker, mungo city and "fix" this may be the thread for you: 50 Memorable Songs Of The Late 1990s That Apparently Only You Remember, Even Though They Were Totally On The Radio And Stuff

I finally took a look at 1996's albums in my music and I'm a little bowled over. Here's the list of everything alternative-ish that wasn't represented in the poll and that I'll stump for (to varying degrees) and largely still listen to and enjoy:

A Minor Forest - Flemish Altruism
Aphex Twin - Richard D. James
Fiona Apple - Tidal
Baby Fox - A Normal Family
Bardo Pond - Amanita
Beck - Odelay
Belle & Sebastian - If You're Feeling Sinister and Tigermilk
Butter 08 - S/T
Cardigans - First Band On The Moon
Cat Power - What Would The Community Think
Cibo Matto - Viva! La Woman
Cocteau Twins - Milk and Kisses
Cynthia Dall - (untitled)
Dirty Three - Horse Stories
DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
DJ Spooky - Necropolis
Dr. Octagon - Dr. Octagonecologyst
Eels - Beautiful Freak
Future Sound Of London - Dead Cities
Gastr Del Sol - Upgrade & Afterlife
Lisa Germano - Excerpts From A Love Circus
Girls Against Boys - House of GVSB
Guided By Voices - Under The Bushes, Under The Stars
PJ Harvey & John Parish - Dance Hall At Louse Point
Hayden - Everything I Long For
High Llamas - Hawaii
Illyah Kuryahkin - Count No Count
Imperial Teen - Seasick
Jonathan Fire*Eater - Tremble Under Boom Lights
JSBX - Now I Got Worry
June Of 44 - Tropics & Meridians
Kostars - Klassics With A K
Lamb - S/T
Luscious Jackson - Fever In Fever Out
Mazzy Star - Among My Swan
Takako Minekawa - Roomic Cube
Modest Mouse - This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About
Morcheeba - Who Can You Trust
NMH - On Avery Island
Ninetynine - S/T
OTC - Dusk At Cubist Castle and Explanation II
Orbital - In Sides
Beth Orton - Trailer Park
Palace Music - Arise, Therefore
Polvo - Exploded Drawing
Rachel's - The Sea And The Bells
Raincoats - Looking In The Shadows
Alex Reece - So Far
Retsin - Egg Fusion
Rome - S/T
Royal Trux - Sweet Sixteen
Sammy - Tales Of Great Neck Glory
Sebadoh - Harmacy
Sleater-Kinney - Call The Doctor
Sloan - One Chord To Another
Smog - The Doctor Came At Dawn and Kicking A Couple Around
Sonora Pine - S/T
Soul Coughing - Irresistable Bliss
Spinanes - Strand
Spoon - Telefono
Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup
Sugar Plant - Cage Of The Sun
Superdrag - Regretfully Yours
Tortoise - Millions Now Living Will Never Die
Tricky - Pre-Millennium Tension and Nearly God
Underworld - Second Toughest In The Infants
Veruca Salt - Blow It Out Your Ass, It's Veruca Salt
Ween - 12 Golden Country Greats
Wilco - Being There

YMMV with a lot of these albums, but it blows my mind that anyone who was into alternative/indie stuff would consider this a shitty year for music. That's more decent-to-great stuff in a single year than I've probably discovered from the past five years.

1996: In the Meantime vs. Tattva

re: deric's list, i did something similar in the "defend 1996" thread:

12 Favorites:

Sun City Girls - 330,003 Cross-Dressers...
Electric Wizard - Come My Fanatics
Hellacopters - Supershitty to the Max!
Belle and Sebastian - Tigermilk and If You're Feeling Sinister
Outkast - ATLiens
Stereolab - Emperor Tomato Ketchup
John Zorn - Bar Kokhba
Harmony of the Spheres compilation
Bardo Pond - Amanita
Turbonegro - Ass Cobra
Ghostface Killah - Ironman

Other Good Stuff:

2Pac - All Eyez On Me
Arvo Part - Litany
Boris - Absolutego
Brainiac - Hissing Prigs In Static Couture
Butter 08 - Butter 08
Cibo Matto - Year of the Woman
Circle - Zopalki
Country Teasers - Satan Is Real Again
Cryptopsy - None So Vile
De La Soul - Stakes Is High
DJ Spooky - Songs of a Dead Dreamer
Dr. Octagon - Dr. Octagonecologyst and Instrumentalyst
E-40 - Hall of Game
Fatboy Slim - Better Living Through Chemistry
Fu Manchu - In Search of...
fucking racist asshole - Filosofem
Fugees - The Score
Guided By Voices - Tonics & Twisted Chasers and Under the Bushes Under the Stars
Harvey Milk - Courtesy and Goodwill to Men
Imperial Teen - Seasick
Jay-Z - Reasonable Doubt
Jessamine - The Long Arm of Coincidence
Magic Hour - Secession '96
Maxwell - Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite
Melvins - Stag
Mobb Deep - Hell On Earth
MOP - Firing Squad
Neutral Milk Hotel - On Avery Island
Oblivians - Popular Favorites
Olivia Tremor Control - Dusk at Cubist Castle
Sleater-Kinney - Call the Doctor
Sloan - One Chord to Another
Swans - Soundtracks for the Blind
The Brian Jonestown Massacre - Take It From the Man! (and at least one more)
The Chemical Brothers - Live At the Social, Vol. 1
The Fall - Light User Syndrome
The Heads - Relaxing With...
Three 6 Mafia - The End
Tricky - Pre-Millennium Tension
Unwound - Repetition
Weezer - Pinkerton

was a great fucking year

Yeah, and my list dispensed with most the mainstream pop and hip hop from that year. '96 just don't stop.

Also, lest we all forget, '96 also brought us this gem:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1piLRStP7xE

oh man that totally belonged in my poll :-/

dr casino you need to get a mungo city jar, where every time you want to post a clip of "mungo city" or reference "mungo city" on ilx you hit yourself with the mungo city jar.

lmao

hahahahah

btw props for filing "fucking racist asshole" alphabetically under F

can't believe i didn't bother to read the Xgau P&J essay from this year already, really touches on a lot of the same points covered itt:
http://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/pnj/pj96.php

voted for whigs, nice to see this turnout

formative years for so many of us

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/53/Carbuttoncloththelemonheads.jpg

thought of another album for the 'accidental omissions' list along w/ Cracker and Tom Petty

oh man – I assigned this album when I was arts editor in college. "If I Could Talk I'd Tell You"!

Just listened to "If I Could Talk I'd Tell You" this morning. Another pretty little Lemonheads tune, if ultimately fairly empty at its core.

I did not like that album

Blame the drugs.

it's a shame about evan

Wasn't that around the time he started doing stuff with Noel Gallagher? Yeah...

his vocal sounds like he's singing around a gob of Listerine.

some really good stuff on it, first three tracks especially, but oh god C'mon Daddy is fucking terrible

I love the sound on that Lemonheads album. It's so bright and airy. While there aren't any stand-out songs, first half of the record is really solid. I like the cover of Knoxville Girl. It always seemed that there was something pretty fucked up lurking behind the Dando persona and that choice of song is kinda, "Yeah, that makes sense."

I know it's not quite "modern rock," but Sheryl Crow's eponymous follow up definitely fits in this category. Better than the first album, IMO, but definitely a big dip sales wise (I think Entertainment Weekly even wrote an article about all of these at the time).

Alt radio definitely played "If It Makes You Happy" and "Everyday is a Winding Road" -- which should've been the leading single.

Is it viewed as a disappointment though? I don't think so. It's still her most critically beloved album (self-production, etc), and those singles got as much airplay as the TNMC stuff.

It went triple platinum and stayed in the charts for more than a year.

man I know I'm a sap, but I love If It Makes You Happy.

"Sheryl Crow" sold less than half what "Tuesdsay Night Music Club" sold so by my measuring stick of what constitutes thread inclusion, i'll allow it

Yeah -- I was unaware that it had actually sold 3 million copies. I just remember the opinion at the time was that it was a letdown from TNMC, and "If It Makes You Happy" slid down the charts quicker than "All I Wanna Do." (Artistic merit notwithstanding -- great album, great singles, esp. when you include "A Change Would Do You Good" and "Home.")

Sheryl Crow sold more copies than Tuesday Night Music Club here in the UK, and I remember several songs from it were hits here. Only 'All I Wanna Do' from Tuesday Night Music Club had much impact.

Yeah, that one's tricky - definitely a sophomore slump but maybe one that could have been comfortably predicted by the execs? Feel like the singles from it were generally bigger and longer-lived than those from a lot of these other records - or maybe just had a slightly greater degree of crossover/VH1 play...

yeah it seemed like "Every Day is a Winding Road" and "If It Makes You Happy" never went away between 1996-1997.

never forgave her for using "everyday" incorrectly

Thats prob the weakest of the singles from the album tbh. You can almost hear Soak Up the Sun start to take shape...

yeah it sold less but it also proved she wasn't a fluke one album act, which was a real risk for those kind of big hit having vaguely boho female acts. it wasn't fairweather johnson or anything. pretty fond of that album and the next one tbh.

Yeah balls otm. I'd prob taking the singles from this album and the Globe Sessions (+ Difficult Kind which I can't believe wasn't one) over a comparable string from any pop or country singer that ILX has been enamored with in the past couple years

(xp to myself actually its A Change Would Do You Good that resembles Soak Up the Sun. But Change is great, go figure)

OMG what an appalling shitshow of a list.

No kidding!

idk i feel like i like a majority of these

Everyone wrong about Sheryl Crow.

Lotta good albums in this list.

II by The Presidents was the first time I'd ever been disappointed in a CD I'd bought. I think I was 11 and it was probably my 5th or 6th CD. I remember thinking, "it sounds like they made half of these songs up in an afternoon"

I also recall Factory Showroom being a huge disappointment, like it was almost a betrayal that TMBG had made such a "normal" rock album. It's still pretty weird of course. In retrospect its probably one of their finest albums, I remember putting it on recently and thinking it made a case for TMBG as part of the same power pop lineage as Costello & Squeeze. It does have that really awful "XTC vs. Adam Ant" song on it though

i've warmed on factory showroom thanks to the TMBG poll thread discussions. even at the time it felt to me like a helpful course correction *away* from John Henry's generic rock band move. i just wish it had felt more overstuffed with ideas and songs, like their older albums.