1994 was the first year I can recall really, really following music. I was 10 going on 11, and I spent that entire summer watching MTV and VH1. I tuned in regularly to Alternative Nation, Headbanger’s Ball, 120 Minutes and to a lesser extent Yo! MTV Raps. Are you getting nostalgic for those glory days when the M stood for music? The point is that this is when I decided to listen to something besides Queen and other classic rock bands. It was a good time to tune into what was happening in music, because as my list will indicate there was great music all over the place in 1994.
Truth be told the music I remember most from that summer is largely Ace of Base, Salt ‘n’ Peppa, Boyz II Men, and “Closer”. Not Nine Inch Nails per se, just that video being on all the time, every day. 1994 was also the year Kurt Cobain died which cast a black cloud over all of music. Alternative music or it’s noisy Seattle cousin grunge were all the rage that year, at least in terms of hype. Jar of Flies, Superunknown, Vitalogy, and too many more albums no one remembers came and went that year.
This was the era when major labels were scooping up every obscure noisy band hoping they’d be the next big thing. As a result countless awful bands who had no business making music suddenly arrived on a national stage, but there were a few diamonds to be found. Unlikely bands like Dinosaur Jr., The Meat Puppets, and Pavement found themselves with actual hit singles.
1994 was also a year of legendary rap debuts. The Notorious BIG, Nas, and Outkast all released their first albums in 1994. Despite the fact that Death Row was still largely dominating sales at the time with “Regulators”, “Murder was the Case”, etc. ‘94 was the year New York fought back. It also saw the first wave of Wu-Tang solo albums and side projects, particularly RZA’s Gravediggaz, and Method Man’s Tical.
Oasis was largely credited with revitalizing British rock in 1994, but they were hardly alone. A handful of landmark albums from England also appeared in 1994, such as Blur’s Parklife, Suede’s Dog Man Star, and The Manic Street Preachers’ Holy Bible. Perhaps even more impressive was the electronic music coming out of England at the time. Trip-hop got it’s first taste of commercial success with Portishead’s Dummy, but there was also The Prodigy putting out arguably the most frantic techno music around.
For these reasons and many others this list was hard to put together. My last top 100 list contained a whopping 7 albums from 1994 (although not necessarily the top 7 on this list). It would seem easy to select an additional 3 albums to round out this list, but well I’m going to go ahead and admit there will be a few disappointed readers out there. There are probably only a small handful of people who would agree with my top choice, but that’s what makes it my list, not yours. I didn’t necessarily attempt to make this list diverse, and I apologize for the lack of metal in 1994, but I’d say blame Pantera and Megadeth for releasing their 3rd and 4th best albums of the decade in 1994. I’d like to give a special nod to Nirvana’s Unplugged album. For reasons that once made a lot more sense to me I’ve never really counted live albums for list consideration. That little footnote out of the way, here’s my list:
10. Oasis - Definitely Maybe
There are probably a dozen albums that would have been worthy for the final spot on this list, and I apologize to the fans of each of them, but Oasis was just better. Definitely Maybe just seemed to stand out as the best of the new guitar drenched pop rock that was coming out in the mid-90s. Despite all the Beatles comparisons, Defnitely Maybe seems to borrow more from The Sex Pistols and Mott the Hoople than the fab four. Noel Gallagher got voice of a generation praise for his songwriting, which is saying something because most of the songs on this album were written in about a weekend after boasting to their label that he had tons of originals ready to go. As a result the album more than “borrows” from other sources, but mixes it all together in a way decidedly unique. From the opening track this is a band with big dreams and aspirations, before those dreams were realized and they self destructed. For their debut though, it’s just about as perfect as messy British rock can get.
9. Green Day - Dookie
There’s only one other album on this list that I owned in 1994, which was underneath my Christmas tree in 1994. Dookie was the major label debut of Green Day and it represented a lot of what was crazy in music in the mid-90s. They were allowed to run wild with their material but in the studio it was cleaned up just enough to sell, and boy did it ever. Billy Joe Armstrong seemed to resonate with every slightly immature slacker on the planet before maturing to elder statesman. Despite the fact that Green Day single handedly made pop-punk a thing, the band seems to owe equal debts to Ray Davies as Joe Strummer. Listening to the album today feels like a nostalgic greatest hits collection, perhaps because there were three monstrous singles released, as well as several other tracks getting major airplay. This probably doubled as the first album I owned with a parental advisory sticker on it, I was such a little bad ass, but still today this album is nearly flawless.
8. Morrissey - Vauxhall and I
For those people who clamor for more Smiths albums should do themselves a favor and investigate Morrissey the solo artist. Your Arsenal is certainly growing on me, but my favorite album from Morrissey is still Vauxhall and I. It contains damn near my favorite song he ever wrote (including Smiths), which of course is “The More You Ignore Me, the Closer I Get”. The rest of the album is nearly as amazing, particularly the opener “Now My Heart is Full”. Morrissey hasn’t lost any of his bitter touch and lyrically hasn’t dropped a bit. More than a few critics considered this to be his closest solo album to a Smiths record, and I’m not going to argue. Probably why I always liked it so damn much.
7. Blur - Parklife
When you mention Blur in the US someone inevitably screams “Whoo-hoo” and we all hearken back to when “Song 2” was a hit. 1994’s Parklife however was their major iconic music statement. In the span of a surprisingly brisk 16 songs Blur runs the gamut of nearly a half-century of popular British music. They tackle dance pop, new wave, punk and music hall. There are some killer melodies on here, and the title track became something of an anthem in the UK. It might seem a bit pretentious, but they seem perfectly suited to do nearly any style of music and it shows on the record. They might not match the grandiose posturing of Suede, but it’s the brevity of the songs that helps to salvage the record. This album delivers exactly what it needs in exactly the right doses, a superb balancing act.
6. Nas - Illmatic
Speaking of brevity, Nas delivered one of the all time greatest hip-hop debuts with Illmatic. The hype train was up and running for Nas after his brief guest spot on Main Source’s criminally out of print Breaking Atoms album came out in 1991. This album was aimed to take down the west coast juggernaut of G-funk, and as a result the beats on Illmatic seem to sound like New York. The beats are harder, the samples more jagged, this isn’t the smooth funk of the west coast sound, Nas was ushering in the new wave of street realism. It also helped sound the death tolls of the alternative rap movement from the Native Tongue family. Perhaps the best part about the album is it’s length. Only 10 songs long, which includes an intro, Nas didn’t find it necessary to fill a mandatory 70 minutes of music with his debut. Something many other rappers can learn from. Nearly every time I listen to the album I get have a new favorite, but is there any opening statement better than "New York State of Mind"?
5. Jeff Buckley - Grace
You might be noticing something of a theme. There are 5 debut albums on this top ten, and in the case of Jeff Buckley this was his only album. An obsessive perfectionist, he spent an absurd amount of time on Grace, and never seemed to be satisfied with any of his later recordings to put out an official follow up album. I don’t think I’m exaggerating when I say this might be the single best vocal performance on record. His voice was damn near the best in music and he came up with ten songs to brilliantly showcase it. He probably is the most overqualified singer to ever tackle a Leonard Cohen song, and infinitely improve upon it with “Hallelujah”. This is probably the only album I can think of that would contain perhaps two of the ten best songs ever recorded. The other being “Lover, You Should’ve Come Over” which might inexplicably be better than “Hallelujah”. The title track and “Last Goodbye” are also in the running for some of the best songs ever, but it’s the total package that makes Grace so phenomenal. It’s one of those rare moments when we got to see a fully formed vision from an artist just entering his prime. We could’ve used some more Jeff Buckley albums in our lives, but luckily the one we got was damn near perfect.
4. The Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die
Sorry Jeru the Damaja, you did not have the best debut rap album of 1994. Even though his true impact wasn’t really felt until his untimely death (a mere two months before Buckley), Biggie was the rapper who brought the East Coast back. Before the fatal feud between him and 2 Pac was underway, Biggie was a prodigy of a rapper who was marketed to perfection by Sean Combs and Bad Boy records. Take away the videos and their “fashion” sense and what’s left is one of the greatest rappers of all time doing his thing. Rocking a deep baritone reminiscent of King Tee, Biggie dropped some of the best rhymes anyone had ever heard and it was up to the rest of the rap world to catch up to him. He could flow like Rakim but had the ability to tell intricate stories like Slick Rick. The sound of the album was very much reminiscent of the west coast style, sampling well known hits, but forever overshadowing his source material. Method Man is the only guest on the record (although Biggie does rap in two distinct voices on “Gimme the Loot”) so it’s all Biggie. Unfortunately Puffy finds it necessary to add “color” to the tracks threatening to derail the whole thing, particularly the interlude on “Big Poppa” and almost all of “Juicy”, but Biggie’s skills were just too much to be brought down.
3. Weezer - Weezer
Ok the last debut album on my list, who knew this would be the best? I’m sure I might change my arbitrary ranking in a matter of days, but Weezer’s first album is just perfect. I was a fan of this band pretty much from day one and they were the first band I could consider “dork rock”. They made references to Kiss, X-men, and Dungeons & Dragons all on “In the Garage”, how could I not love them? They garnered quite a few comparisons to The Cars, in no small part thanks to Ric Ocasik who produced the album. Like Nas, Weezer only needed 10 songs to craft their album which is probably the first and last time Weezer will ever be compared to Nas. True story, my friends and I in 6th grade used to make a game out of having a conversation entirely in Weezer song titles, needless to say “Undone (The Sweater Song)” was a little tough to fit into a sentence. Weezer made songs for the socially awkward. They were a band who loved Kiss and Van Halen but seemed far too geeky to actually sing about having sex. It was an honest and super catchy record and another bit of perfection.
2. Nine Inch Nails - The Downward Spiral
1994 was perhaps a simpler time. This was before anyone paid any attention to Marilyn Manson, and Eminem was busy being obscure in Detroit. It was still genuinely possible to offend people, and Trent Reznor did. He scared parents, his lyrics were blasphemous, violently sexual, and their live shows were mini-riots. In the process he became the master of the one man band and took his sweet time delivering a follow up to Pretty Hate Machine. Broken was a bit of a teaser bridging the gap, but all bets were off on The Downward Spiral. Despite his status as the king of industrial music, there are moments on this album that would have been right at home on an old Brian Eno album. Nearly every song on the album incorporates some odd-time signatures and his screaming cathartic vocals can go to a whisper in a moments notice. There isn’t a thing I’d change about this album, and sorry to say I probably prefer the original version of “Hurt” thank you very much. “Closer” is one of those iconic tracks that I should have gotten sick of long ago, and believe me in the summer of ‘94 I heard it probably every hour. Somehow though, that song like the rest of this album still remarkably holds up. It might not be the best song on the album but it probably sums up the album as well as anything.
1. Dream Theater - Awake
Ordinarily I agree with Allmusic.com on their numerous ratings. Somehow though the top two albums from 1994 we seem to be on vastly different pages. Awake is about as polished as Dream Theater ever got without compromising. They got a little heavier as evidenced by the introduction of 7-string guitars, and they recorded the album in the same facility Metallica used for their black album. James LaBrie still aimed for the highest notes he could hit before constant touring led him to subdue his future vocals. It was also the last to feature original keyboardist Kevin Moore who closes the album with the personal “Space Dye Vest”. “6:00” opens things up with a memorable and catchy drum beat before Mike Portnoy got too lazy to construct distinctive drum parts, and the album only gets better from there. Awake was another example of how Dream Theater might just be the best band in the world when it came out, something that time has dulled somewhat. I can’t help but admit I’m a sucker for prog-rock, and this is about as great a progressive album as there is. The music I have in my head, down to the ridiculous shredding, crazy fills, and vocals is what Dream Theater sounded like on Awake. In the crazy world of 1994 a progressive metal band made an album that topped them all, and it seems like it makes perfect sense in retrospect.
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