Glory of the 90’s: The Albums of My Teenage Years, Part 2

See the introduction to this post in part one and part three.

Madonna: The Immaculate Collection, 1990

This is the first album I ever bought (or was bought for me, I can’t remember) and cemented a love for Madonna that had been brewing since the mid-eighties. I was eleven when The Immaculate Collection was released and it sums up perfectly the pop tastes I had through the previous decade (all tinny beats and synthesisers) which would soon mature as the decade moved on. The album is Madonna’s best selling and an undisputed pop classic, featuring most of her eighties hits that sound-tracked my childhood but also 3 of her most iconic 90’s songs – Vogue, Justify My love, and Rescue Me. Being a fan of Madonna through the nineties (and to this day) opened my eyes to American gay culture and art which ultimately defined my tastes and gave me a glimpse of a glamorous world waiting for me outside the small town I grew up in. Being a Madonna fan became a lifelong passion and her work still inspires me today.

Nirvana: Nevermind, 1991

I remember watching Nirvana perform Smells Like Teen Spirit at the MTV Awards and thinking ‘who are these losers?’ They couldn’t be bothered to sing properly and they threw their guitars into their amps. It took me a number of years before my teenage angst caught up with me and I started to appreciate the potency of their music. Smells Like Teen Spirit became the anthem of my generation (much like Beck’s I’m a Loser and Radiohead’s Creep) and brought Grunge out of Seattle and to the masses. Nevermind fast became the album every 90’s teenager had to have in their collection, along with plaid shirts and Doc Martin boots. Kurt Cobain was a poet and his lyrics and drawling, can’t-quite-be-bothered delivery, was mimicked by every grunge act that followed in their wake. From the guitar riffs and call to arms of songs like Come As You Are and In Bloom, to the agony of Something in the Way, this was the soundtrack to a million teenage parties in the early-to-mid nineties.

Sade: Love Deluxe, 1992 

When Madonna’s Erotica album was released, many critics compared it to Sade’s Love Deluxe, claiming that the former’s eroticism was cold and calculated while Sade’s was as hot as a furnace. Indeed, it is probably responsible for the conception of a whole new generation born in the nineties. But this album isn’t just about sex, it’s a sensual delight full of beautiful arrangements, sultry vocals, and delicately crafted melodies. In celebrates love and the expression of it, melding jazz, soul, r’n’b and trip-hop into a template that many artists would later use (D’Angelo on Brown Sugar, Maxwell on Urban Hang Suite). Sade’s voice is one of my favourites – understated, raspy, agile, and completely unique. When I went to university and finally got some loving of my own, let’s just say this album found its way onto the CD player (remember those?) at the appropriate time. Favourite songs include No Ordinary Love, Kiss of Life, and Cherish the Day.

Sarah McLachlan: Fumbling Towards Ecstasy, 1993

This album started my love affair with female singer songwriters (even before I discovered Tori Amos, whose Under the Pink would not be released for another year). It is without doubt McLachlan’s best album and showcases her folksy, ethereal voice perfectly – it’s also her most accessible. I rediscovered this album at university because my friend Becky played it a lot and the follow-up, Surfacing (generally regarded to be McLachlan’s most commercially successful). But it’s always been an album I return to, with such classic songs as Possession, Circle, Ice, and Fear. But it’s the second track on the album, Wait, which resonates mostly with me. The song is a sad lament on the end of a relationship “I found myself wanting sympathy/But to be consumed again/Oh I know would be the death of me”. I played Wait over and over again after I was unceremoniously dumped by a student at Oxford who I had given my heart to.

The Cranberries: No Need to Argue, 1994

My best friend in high school, Sandy, was responsible for introducing me to this album. She was obsessed with The Cranberries, though it took me a while to get over lead singer Dolores O’Riordan’s Marmite vocals. She played me Daffodil Lament, a strange, almost Baroque folk song with a sprawling song structure and spine chilling vocal harmonies. I fell in love. It was partially this album which marked a change in my music tastes – I went from listening only to pop and dance music to indie, folk, grunge, and rock. I listened to this album religiously during my G.C.S.Es and it reminds me of the intensity of being sixteen and also in love for the first time with a boy from school. One of my abiding memories of this album is being at a house party (at Sandy’s house, obviously) where it was playing, as I sat in an armchair singing every word in an indirect serenade to him as he sat elsewhere in the room. The album is full of love’s disappointment, so it was perfectly apt.

Hole: Live Through This, 1994

Possibly one of the angriest albums I bought during the nineties, perfectly summed up the teenage anger I felt towards the world – being gay and closeted, being bullied when I was younger, resentment towards my parents, and being ignored by the boys at school that I had crushes on. Lead singer Courtney Love epitomised the angst and the pain of being on the margins of mainstream society while refusing to be one of its victims. Songs like Doll Parts summed up her feelings of inadequacy and ugliness, while Violet expresses the rage against men who take what they want and then leave you with nothing (came in handy years later when I was feeling angry about that same Oxford student). The album touched on suicide, motherhood, madness, depression, and predicted the death of her husband Kurt Cobain on a track that was removed just before it was released. Live Through This was the female Nevermind and equally as potent.

Jeff Buckley: Grace, 1994

Long before Jeff Buckley’s cover of Hallelujah became a staple of shows like The X-Factor and American Idol, his album Grace was the secret of music aficionados and hipsters. (Unfortunately half the population think Alexander Burke wrote the song, while the rest of us snicker). Jeff Buckley, like Cobain, was the poster child of the 90s; a vulnerable, sensitive, handsome guy who played guitar. Like Cobain, he died tragically (drowning in the Mississippi River aged 30) and his one finished album, Grace, is essential to his mythology. I discovered his music because Tori Amos was a fan and often referenced him in interviews. Like Amos, he is a singer-songwriter of immense invention and musical craft, winding perceptive lyrics around rock and blues melodies. Some of my favourite songs are the title track Grace, So Real, and Dream Brother. He was also, crucially, the first male rock singer to sing in high registers (both with his head voice and falsetto) which influenced my own singing style while studying music A Level.

Boy George: Cheapness and Beauty, 1995

During the summer of 95, I came into full consciousness as a gay man. Being gay was something I was always aware of (I fancied boys instead of girls as early as primary school) though I knew instinctively it was something I should not talk about. After my GSCEs finished I read Boy George’s amazing autobiography Take It Like a Man in which he writes about his childhood experiences as a rather camp child. It was like he was describing my own upbringing. The book was accompanied by his fourth solo album, Cheapness and Beauty. It was a clear departure from the synth-pop sound of the eighties and Acid House of the early nineties that infused his previous albums. Instead, George mined the music of his childhood and produced an album of glam rock and acoustic folk. It was his most personal record (inspired again by writing his book), married with great melodies and rock production. It was the start of a process of coming out for me which was completed two years later when I got to university.