Mainstream music hit a powerfully diverse stride in 1996, with a collection of trailblazing albums soundracking the year Tupac Shakur and Brad from Sublime died, the year Pop-Up Video was born. The early-nineties cheese-pop was firmly in the rear-view mirror, as the overcast brooding of grunge’s domination gave way to a musical maturity that expanded its emotional palette.
Those of us old enough to remember each have our own stories from this incredible year in music, a time when iconic albums arrived at a dizzying pace rather than a snail’s crawl of hype and false inflation. To honor this phenomenal year in music, we’re running down a list of 20 Awesome Albums That Turned 20 in 2016. How many do you own? How many can you remember?
Albums Turning 20 in 2016
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Tricky: Pre-Millennium Tension
Released: October 28, 1996
Label: 4th & B'way Records
Tricky tried his best to get away from trip-hop, but the Massive Attack co-founder didn't have the heart to kill his baby. What resulted was a dark-stony masterpiece, an aggressive, pulsating crusher with ethereal beauty weaving through by vocalist and longtime collaborator Martina Topley-Bird. Come for “Christiansands,” stay for “Vent,” “She Makes Me Wanna Die” and the traumatically amazing Chill Rob G cover “Bad Dreams”.
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DJ Shadow: Entroducing…
Released: November 19, 1996
Label: Mo' Wax
DJ Shadow’s debut studio album set a highwater mark for turntable dance music, laying an EDM foundation with integrity and inspiring a thousand corny knockoffs with impossibly awesome grooves and a sense of kinetic spiritual momentum. This is DJ culture at its most fearless, referential and forward-thinking, and we’ve been trying to get back ever since. Entroducing… influenced hip-hop beat designs and, to this day, makes spacebar DJs shit themselves with insecurity and hug their silly-ass cartoon bass buttons for dear life.
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Porno for Pyros: Good God's Urge
Released: May 28, 1996
Label: Warner Bros.
The bohemian wandering-spirit beauty of this release far exceeded its alt-rock predecessor. The sophomore release of Jane’s Addiction members Perry Farrell and Stephen Perkins’ side project was downright enchanting, a gorgeous departure from the dark and stony depths of Jane’s, from the tropical dance of “Tahitian Moon” to the lovestruck acoustic beauty of “Kimberly Austin” and the psychedelic treasure of “Bali Eyes”. The album was also celebrated peripherally for Jane’s guitarist Dave Navarro’s presence: he plays on "Freeway” - and so does RHCP bassist Flea.
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Tool: Ænima
Released: September 17, 1996
Label: Zoo Entertainment
With the devastatingly powerful Ænima, Tool planted a flag in an entirely new galaxy of avant-metal ferocity. Packed with Jungian psychology, sexual imagery and enough shifting time signatures to require a master decoder ring just to keep the fucking beat, Ænima also happens to be an astonishingly intelligent, fractally complex album superfans are still picking apart to this day.
Once you digest the imagery of anal fisting as a metaphor for how desensitized society has become to tragedy and shock, dig deeper to find masterfully cutting deconstructions of Scientology (“Eulogy”), the slippery concept of selling out (“Hooker With a Penis”), and even full-sail psychedelic enlightenment (“Third Eye”). There’s a reason Tool take five plus years between albums - each one seems to qualify for its own collegiate course of study.
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Tori Amos: Boys for Pele
Released: January 22, 1996
Label: Atlantic
Tori hits the peak of her power on her third studio album, a breathtakingly lush 18-track movement that leaps from the trauma diaries of her previous efforts to finally showcase her sensuously spellbinding confidence and thematic prowess. The impressive strength of first single "Caught a Lite Sneeze" was a cricket chirp to the lion’s roar of seductive, drunken-goddess danger on “Professional Widow”. Watch her sing a magnificent version of “Muhammad My Friend” with Tool’s Maynard James Keenan.
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Fiona Apple: Tidal
Released: July 23, 1996
Label: Work Group
Barely 20 years old, Fiona Apple came out swinging on her debut album, a thinking girl’s poetry book set ablaze, lit from the fires of charred exes and inflictors. She walks across a piano to deliver first-person melodrama and self-analytical female empowerment, an arresting intimacy of a scorned woman trying to make peace with her demons. It was damned delicious - but the world had no idea what was in store from the elusive, prickly chanteuse.
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Rage Against The Machine: Evil Empire
Released: April 16, 1996
Label: Epic Records
The sociopolitical sword of Damocles cut mercilessly from the speakers as Rage Against the Machine further honed their incendiary blend of squealing guitars, juggernaut rhythms and political activism on their Brendan O'Brien-produced second LP. The microphone vivisection of government corruption, empire building, media manipulation, big business, complacency and ambivalence was astonishingly potent, and only two decades later do we realize how vitally necessary Zack De La Rocha’s surgical-strike megaphone awareness was. He has been sorely - no, desperately - missed in the modern age of unchecked corruption in politics, law enforcement and capitalism, as confused complacency and warmly encouraged inertia fill the void of informed defiance. Couchbound clicktivism doesn't mean shit if the kinetic activism isn't there to support it. Has there ever been a time where we've needed that fire of truth and defiance to burn brighter? You know the answer.
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OutKast: ATLiens
Released: August 27, 1996
Label: LaFace
OutKast took flight from the materialistic pimp-wannabe gunplay nihilism of late-'90s mainstream hip-hop with their sophomore record, a lyrically mesmerizing, up-to-the-minute briefing on Southern black youth culture packed with eclectic, deep, and soulful production. Whether bounding through depictions of jealous peers at the mall, conniving women or evil record-industry execs, Andre and Big Boi display a unique ability to depict ghetto life while outlining life-affirming possibilities through positively butter lyrical delivery.
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Pearl Jam: No Code
Released: August 27, 1996
Label: Epic Records
This is Pearl Jam at peak punk. A fatigue-driven tension within the band, counterbalanced by new drummer Jack Irons (RHCP, Eleven), contributes to an entirely unique sonic flavor in their catalogue. From gorgeously delicate introspection (“Sometimes,” “Present Tense”) to snarling rockers (“Habit,” “Lukin”) there are few fucks afforded to consistency as the Seattle quintet tore through recording sessions. But the deep-cut gems which arise from the odd energy are tremendous, including “Smile,” “Off He Goes” and “In My Tree”.
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Stone Temple Pilots: Tiny Music... Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop
Released: March 26, 1996
Label: Atlantic
With frontman Scott Weiland up to his face in drug problems and legal trouble, the band retreated to the Westerly Ranch in Santa Ynez, Calif. to work out their issues and focus on writing new music. Producer Brendan O’Brien, joined the band for sessions which would be spontaneous but fruitful, resulting in a more artistically balanced record. Drummer Eric Kretz told Pause and Play, “A lot of the songs you hear were written right there, in the heat of the moment.” The album would go double platinum as a result, on the strength of a number of singles.
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Beck: Odelay
Released: June 18, 1996
Label: Bong Load Custom Records
Odelay is the second official studio album and fifth overall by Beck, an intentional “disposable pop” direction that ironically resulted in concreting the alt rocker as a permanent industry fixture. The danceability of “The New Pollution,” “Where It’s At” and “Devil’s Haircut” propelled the song to a Grammy nomination for Album of the Year, and it won a Grammy Award for Best Alternative Music Album in 1997, as well as a Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance for "Where It's At,” while racking up an Album of The Year award from Rolling Stone.
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2Pac: All Eyez On Me
Released: February 13, 1996
Label: Death Row, Interscope
Tupac Shakur’s fourth record is more literal than one would like, coming just four months after he was released on bail pending appeal on his conviction for sexual assault, and barely a year after he was shot. The record also marked 2Pac's new, fateful allegiance with the West Coast's powerhouse rap dynasty, Death Row Records. As a result, he embraced the thug persona wholeheartedly, trading his lyrical depth for a stronger beat foundation. So while the rhymes were less revolutionary, the sound was more complete - and his star status burned brighter than ever.
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Soundgarden: Down on the Upside
Released: May 21, 1996
Label: A&M Records
Everything changed on Soundgarden’s fifth album, a punk-laced and more experimental sound than the group's preceding albums. While tracks like “Never The Machine Forever” present a clean lineage from Badmotorfinger’s launchpad, “Zero Chance,” “Switch Opens” and the like were a hard left into more melodic rock territory, resulting in a polarizing reaction externally as well as internally. The lion’s share of the self-produced record’s material was written by frontman Chris Cornell and bassist Ben Shepherd, leading to clashes with guitarist Kim Thayil over a departure from the band's trademark sound. In fact, Thayil's only contribution to the album was the song "Never the Machine Forever,” for which he wrote both the lyrics and the music. It would be the final song the band recorded together until sessions for King Animal nearly two decades later.
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Cake: Fashion Nugget
Released: September 17, 1996
Label: Capricorn
Having honed their honky-fun craft to a fine point, Cake struck gold on their sophomore release, blending funk, garage rock, jazz, new-wave, and alt/rock to create infectiously fun, borderline goofball music. It’s here that we discover their smash hit “The Distance,” followed up by the adorable, country-tinged “Stickshifts and Safetybelts,” the waltzy “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps” and a positively great cover of “I Will Survive”. Try to make it through one listen without imitating John McCrea’s “aaall right” at least once.
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Marilyn Manson: Antichrist Superstar
Released: October 8, 1996
Label: Interscope
Evil hits the mainstream as the Nine Inch Nails disciple rises fully into his own monster, the funhouse flipside to Trent Reznor’s sexual anger circus. Inspired by and dedicated to German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, this rock opera bleeds apocalyptic horror and sincere darkness. Sinister, haunting and cool as fuck, Antichrist Superstar was a potent turning point in post-grunge ’90s rock.
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Weezer: Pinkerton
Released: September 24, 1996
Label: DGC Records
Weezer’s self-produced sophomore album was considerably darker and more abrasive than its predecessor, polarizing fans and critics. But it’s become a hindsight favorite, an off-kilter detour with its fingers deep in the grit, beauty, sadness and madness of love. A twisted spin on Rivers Cuomo’s neurotic reality, Pinkerton is the diary reading we were never supposed to see - but can’t stop returning to.
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Failure: Fantastic Planet
Released: August 13, 1996
Label: Slash Records/Warner Bros.
Nearly derailed by corporate label bullshit as well as heroin, Failure had little to lose when they rented a space from Lita Ford and decided to shut themselves off from the world to record, produce, and publish a new album. The trio named Fantastic Planet after the English version of director René Laloux’s outlandishly tripped-out 1973 animated film La Planète Sauvage, fitting for the record’s epic ambition, rich production and emotional ambivalence. The massively gravitational record sat on the record company’s shelf for a year and a half, during which time Greg Edwards was consumed by a debilitating heroin habit. Failure fell apart soon after, and wouldn’t reconvene for nearly two decades.
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Phish: Billy Breathes
Released: October 15, 1996
Label: Elektra
Phish lean back on their sixth album, a soft-slug stoner’s wonderland that confirms guitarist Trey Anastasio, drummer Jon Fishman, bassist Mike Gordon and keyboard player Page McConnell are more than a Vermont jam band jacking Dead fans. Full of heart and radio-ready sounds, Billy Breathes is refreshingly all over the place. Laid-back and gorgeous, it’s the anti-hippie’s hippie album.
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Fugees: The Score
Released: February 13, 1996
Label: Columbia Records
The second and final studio album by legendary trio Fugees was a marked departure from the commercial domination of gangsta rap, challenging the thug ideology with a mixed-gender outfit of formidable intelligence and prowess on the mic. They've described the recording process in interviews as relaxed and organic; you can't hear the tension between Wyclef Jean and Hill that would lead to the band's break up a year later. The Score is rife with stark portraits of life in the ghetto, a full-sail depiction of pain and pride through some of the most cerebrally powerful lyrics in the genre’s history. It’s like an audio film, “the way radio was back in the 1940s,” Lauryn Hill explains. “It tells a story, and there are cuts and breaks in the music. It's almost like a hip-hop version of 'Tommy', like what The Who did for rock music.”
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Jay Z: Reasonable Doubt
Released: June 25, 1996
Label: Priority Records
Jay Z’s debut album is brimming with the aspirations and regrets of an all-pistons-firing hustler, establishing Jay as one of his generation's premier rappers. Anchored by the immortal "Brooklyn's Finest," a duet between Jay and the Notorious B.I.G., the legendary lyrical dexterity at play on Reasonable Doubt was enough to establish a two-handed grab on the rap spotlight the West coast had dominated for years prior.
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Type O Negative: October Rust
Released: August 20, 1996
Label: Roadrunner
A goth-metal gem, October Rust showcases a more of uplifting and less dismal energy than Type O Negative’s previous effort, with a cunning sense of humor to balance the genre’s typical eyeroll-worthy melodrama. Even the cover of Neil Young's "Cinnamon Girl" stands tall to the original.
