It’s really popular to try to determine what the "best" albums are. Those of you who are regular readers of the ol’ column know that I am an album guy, but not only am I an album guy, I’m also a list guy. I love the year-end issues of magazines when they determine the top however-many albums of the year. I love it when records I like place high, get super-pissed when albums I like don’t rate high (or at all), and get even more super-fucking-pissed when records I hate come in high; I have even picked up records I hadn’t heard before based on these lists. I have sat for many an hour in many a bar drinking many a pint debating what was the best album of the year -- the 1990s, ever, last Tuesday, etc. -- with many a good mate. Yessir, I love rating them platters o’ wax. 

It’s all crap, though.

There’s really no way to actually rate albums, much less rank them accordingly. You either like a record, or you don’t. It affects you, or it doesn’t. I don’t think I’m making any great discovery right now; music (and any art, for that matter) is not like sports – there’s not a uniform set of criterion to grade it on. There are albums, songs, and artists that I love that other people can’t stomach, and vice-versa I’m sure but that doesn’t make my favorites any better or worse (and vice versa). Again, not a fucking newsflash. 

The fact remains, however, that we love to rank ‘em, list ‘em, argue and whine about ‘em. Why? Well, because it’s fun (didn’t think I was gonna write a whole column examining that, didja? Have more faith in me than that.) Nope, I’m gonna go through the thought process with you, if for no other reason than that, too, is fun.

The way I see it, for any given period of time, there are three ways to look at what is going to be "The" album of any given time period. I don’t see them as any criterion to an overall “undisputed champion,” if you will, because, as I have said, I don’t think it is possible for such a thing to exist.

The first category is which album sold the most. I don’t think that quantity equals quality; not by a long shot. There are people that would argue that an album that sold massively is important -- that the album (or anything for that matter) has become a cultural event, and there must be some mark of quality there. I personally don’t go in for that line of thinking, but I believe that’s where the roads of criticism of a particular subject (in our case, rock music) and pop culture criticism diverge. It is, however, the only objective category we have.

Secondly, we can determine what is the most "important" album of the time frame. This is ultimately subjective, but you can back your argument up by citing trends that you believe are directly influenced by the piece in question. This is the most fun to argue, because it blends the empirical and intuitive, allowing the most intellectual sparring.

Finally, you have the completely and utterly subjective "favorite" album. That’s just the one you liked the best. That is fun to argue about as well, and can allow great insight into the personality of you adversary, but, ultimately, there is no chart to measure "rocking."

So what are "The" albums of the 1990s? You see, I grew up in the 90s -- turned 12 in 1990 and 21 in 1999, and that’s an age when we listen to a lot of records, and music means a lot to us (well, it did to me, anyway). In my first instance of actual research for this column, I found that according to the RIAA, the best selling album of the 1990s was Come On Over by Shania Twain. Uh… good for her. I can’t say I’ve heard this record, so, well… there we are. And anyway, this is a column about rock music, not country or any other type of music, so we’ll just say it doesn’t really come into what we’re talking about. Interestingly enough, the best selling rock record of the 90's was Cracked Rear View by Hootie and the Blowfish. Not Metallica’s black album, not Ten by Pearl Jam, nor anything by the Chilli Peppers or Dave Mathews or Korn or anything else that I would have guessed would be the top seller. Hootie. Now, the sudden rise and inevitable fall of Hootie could be a Shakespearean drama or an epic poem, but I’ll leave it alone. However, I will wager that not many (although I’m sure some) would consider Cracked Rear View their favorite album of the 90s, and even less would consider it the most important (other than paving the way for Matchbox 20 and other Mom Rock).

Well, what is the most important album then? Overall, I would argue that it’s The Chronic by Dr. Dre. I know I just got done saying I will focus only on rock music (and that is completely due to my own ignorance of all but the surface details of other styles), but I think history will view the 90s as when hip-hop became the dominant form of pop music, and The Chronic was the album that established Gangsta as the leading form of rap over Public Enemy’s politically charged style, and the poetically influenced style of groups like De La Soul. And I know that there were Gangsta records before The Chronic, but that was the first one that seemed to be huge beyond it’s core audience.

(Author’s note: I really do not know a whole lot about this style of music, so if anything I wrote is inaccurate, I meant no disrespect. If anyone reading this writes a column similar to mine about hip-hop, or knows of one, please email me, because I have always wanted to strike up a correspondence with such an individual.)

When it comes to rock music, the title of most important record almost unanimously goes to Nirvana’s Nevermind. Yup, can’t really argue with that. For those of you that are unfamiliar with it, it simultaneously dethroned Heavy Metal as the dominant form of rock with the kids (and it is really all about the kids), broke Punk into the mainstream, and opened the door for all types of Alternative Music, punk or not.

The thing is, I never really liked Nevermind a whole lot. Not that I disliked it, though. It was okay. Being a teenage metalhead, I had heard music that was heavier and more disaffected (and that was just on Lights, Camera, Revolution by Suicidal Tendencies), but I liked "Smells Like Teen Spirit" enough to buy the record, and I thought that Cobain had a really good sense of melody, but that was about it. I was glad to see hair metal go, but at the time that record came out I would rather have had Anthrax and Megadeth being the ones doing the replacing.

So what was my favorite album of the 90s? If you had asked me in the fall of 1996, I would have said it would be Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. But I don’t respond to that record the same way anymore, because I did not just graduate from high school and go to college and have to listen to "1979" over and over again. In spring of 1999, I would have said The Real Thing by Faith No More, because I am convinced that album is about having a co-dependent relationship with a manipulative person, which at the time, I had. But not anymore. These days, my favorite album recorded in the 1990s is Mule Variations by Tom Waits, for too many reasons to list. But that album doesn’t feel like a 90s album to me -- maybe because Waits is an older artist, or maybe it’s because it’s the first album I feel I like as an adult, and not a teenager. Maybe it’s Weezer’s Blue Album, because I never skip any tracks when I listen to it, and sing along to all the words. But it can’t be that, because I think I may actually like Pinkerton better. So if you put a gun to my head right now, I’d say Saturation by Urge Overkill, for no other reason than I got it out when I read they were doing a reunion tour, and man that albums rocks. But what I’m saying here is that your favorite album, of any period, will probably not be your favorite forever. And that, my friends, is why proclaiming albums "The Best" is, in fact, crap. 

But crap in the best possible way.