Top 100 Albums of 1996:

1. Jay-Z - Reasonable Doubt
2. UGK - Ridin' Dirty
3. Sloan - One Chord To Another
4. Brendan Benson - One Mississippi
5. The Posies - Amazing Disgrace
6. Makaveli – Don Killuminati: The 7 Day Theory
7. Two Dollar Guitar - Burned And Buried
8. Soul Coughing - Irresistible Bliss
9. Squarepusher - Feed Me Weird Things
10. R.E.M. - New Adventures In Hi-Fi
11. Lil Kim - Hardcore
12. Butter 08 - Butter
13. Beck - Odelay!
14. Mobb Deep - Hell On Earth
15. Cat Power - What Would The Community Think?
16. Pearl Jam - No Code
17. 2Pac - All Eyez On Me
18. Counting Crows - Recovering The Satellites
19. Heltah Skeltah - Nocturnal
20. Outkast - ATLiens
21. Redman - Muddy Waters
22. Nas - It Was Written
23. The Roots - Illadelph Halflife
24. Maxwell - Maxwell's Urban Hang Suite
25. Tony! Toni! Toné! - House of Music
26. Buffalo Daughter - New Vapour Athletes
27. Ginuwine - Ginuwine... The Bachelor
28. DJ Shadow - Endtroducing
29. Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - Now I Got Worry
30. Ruth Ruth - The Little Death EP
31. Nearly God - Nearly God
32. They Might Be Giants - Factory Showroom
33. E-40 - Hall of Game
34. Soundgarden - Down On The Upside
35. New Radiant Storm King - Hurricane Necklace
36. Elvis Costello and The Attractions - All This Useless Beauty
37. Firewater - Get Off the Cross, We Need the Wood for the Fire
38. A Tribe Called Quest - Beats, Rhymes And Life
39. De La Soul - Stakes Is High
40. Heatmiser - Mic City Sons
41. Plug - Drum'n'Bass For Papa
42. Stone Temple Pilots - Tiny Music... Songs From The Vatican Gift Shop
43. Brainiac - Hissing Prigs In Static Couture
44. Semisonic - The Great Divide
45. Cibo Matto - Viva! La Woman
46. Smashing Pumpkins - The Aeroplane Flies High
47. Prince - Emancipation
48. Dr. Octagon - Dr. Octagonycologist
49. Lungfish - Indivisible
50. Tricky - Pre-Millenium Tension

When I first started putting together these lists of my favorite albums of the '90s, it quickly became apparently that 1996 was, if not my favorite year of the decade, then at least the year with the greatest concentration of albums I like, possibly of any decade. I was 14 and started high school that year, and my range of musical interests was still rapidly changing and expanding. But the odd thing was how much there is that I like, but not necessarily love. There's just a really large spread of things I dig the hell out of and feel nostalgic for but by no means consider a masterpiece, outside of Reasonable Doubt and maybe a couple other albums. I don't have nearly as positive an overall feeling about the albums of 1997, but the highs were definitely higher. Albums I liked that didn't make the cut for the top 50 include Fred Schneider, Beth Orton, Mike Johnson, Dos, Spymob, Screaming Trees, Chavez, Girls Against Boys, Lotion, Tori Amos, and on and on and on.

1996 seems like a really fertile year to me because of the unique little sweet spot it hit, kind of by accident. The Biggie/Jay/Nas/Kim/Foxy axis of New York rap was riding high but it was before the big dividing line of history that '97 became with Big's death and Puffy's command of the spotlight. Alt-rock was still technically in its boom years but you could kind of see the bottom falling out that year -- I recently assembled a list of a couple alt-rock albums from that year that sold less than half what their predecessors sold, including some of my favorite albums of the year (Pearl Jam, R.E.M., Soundgarden, Stone Temple Pilots, Counting Crows, They Might Be Giants, etc.). Christgau had a pretty good essay for that year's Pazz & Jop that touches on that a bit. Meanwhile, major labels were still flush with cash and throwing money at a bunch of unprofitable curios. And really, looking at the Sloan and Brendan Benson and Posies albums here, '96 was kind of the birth of my enthusiasm for power pop.

As I mentioned in the 1998 entry, that was the first year that I did any kind of year-end top 10 list of favorite albums, but 1996 was the first year that I put much thought into whether I had an 'album of the year,' and have distinct memories of listening to Odelay! that December and thinking yeah, this is it. Obviously, I don't really feel that way anymore, partly because, as I've said, I didn't really start checking for rap albums regularly until '97, so I was a little too into that funky white boy Beck/DJ Shadow bullshit (although I still love that Soul Coughing album, I don't know why I didn't think it was better than Odelay! back then).All in all I only heard about half of this top 50 in 1996 or early '97, though, so I'm starting to get into the years where I've heard more since then than I did at the time, and I'll have more differences with my younger self to reflect on. It probably says a lot about my age and taste at the time that the infamous Metallica-headlined Lollapalooza '96 was the first and only iteration of the festival I saw.




Top 100 Singles of 1996:

1. Spacehog - "In The Meantime"
2. Ghost Town DJ's - "My Boo"
3. Cake - "The Distance"
4. Marilyn Manson - "The Beautiful People"
5. Soul Coughing - "Super Bon Bon"
6. Smashing Pumpkins - "Tonight, Tonight"
7. Mariah Carey - "Always Be My Baby"
8. Toni Braxton - "You're Makin' Me High"
9. Lost Boyz - "Renee"
10. Mista - "Blackberry Molasses"
11. Ginuwine - "Pony"
12. Blackstreet f/ Queen Penn and Dr. Dre - "No Diggity"
13. Beck - "Where It's At"
14. Soundgarden - "Burden In My Hand"
15. Oasis - "Don't Look Back In Anger"
16. Rocket From The Crypt - "On A Rope"
17. Jay-Z f/ Foxy Brown - "Ain't No"
18. The Fugees - "Fu-Gee-La"
19. Akinyele - "Put It In Your Mouth"
20. Outkast - "ATLiens"
21. Counting Crows - "Angels Of The Silences"
22. Stone Temple Pilots - "Big Bang Baby"
23. Dave Matthews Band - "So Much To Say"
24. Metallica - "Hero Of The Day"
25. Luther Vandross - "Your Secret Love"
26. R. Kelly f/ Ronald Isley - "Down Low (Nobody Has To Know)"
27. Busta Rhymes - "Woo Hah!! Got You All In Check"
28. Social Distortion - "I Was Wrong"
29. Bjork - "Hyperballad"
30. D'Angelo - "Lady"
31. Dishwalla - "Counting Blue Cars"
32. Pearl Jam - "Who You Are"
33. Geggy Tah - "Whoever You Are"
34. Jay-Z f/ Mary J. Blige - "Can't Knock The Hustle"
35. Smashing Pumpkins - "Muzzle"
36. The Chemical Brothers - "Setting Sun"
37. Kula Shaker - "Tattva"
38. No Doubt - "Sunday Morning"
39. The Squirrel Nut Zippers - "Hell"
40. Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Aeroplane"
41. Matchbox 20 - "Long Day"
42. Tori Amos - "Caught A Lite Sneeze"
43. 2Pac f/ Nate Dogg - "All Bout U"
44. Jewel - "Who Will Save Your Soul"
45. The Fugees - "Ready Or Not"
46. Tracy Bonham - "Mother Mother" 
47. Goldfinger - "Here In Your Bedroom"
48. Semisonic - "F.N.T."
49. Ghostface Killah - "Daytona 500"
50. Alanis Morissette - "Head Over Feet"
51. The Cranberries - "Salvation"
52. Stabbing Westward - "Shame"
53. Weezer - "El Scorcho"
54. Rage Against The Machine - "Down Rodeo" 
55. The Verve Pipe - "Photograph"
56. MxPx - "Chick Magnet"
57. R.E.M. - "Bittersweet Me"
58. Soul Coughing - "Soundtrack To Mary"
59. Semisonic - "If I Run"
60. Lil Kim f/ Jay-Z and Lil Cease - "Big Momma Thang"
61. No Doubt - "Spiderwebs"
62. Akinyele - "Fuck Me For Free"
63. Sponge - "Wax Ecstatic (To Sell Angelina)"
64. Tony! Toni! Toné! f/ DJ Quik - "Let's Get Down"
65. 2Pac f/ Dr. Dre - "California Love"
66. Chavez - "Unreal Is Here"
67. Smashing Pumpkins - "1979"
68. Lil Kim f/ Lil Cease and Notorious B.I.G. - "Crush On You"
69. Pearl Jam - "Leaving Here"
70. La Bouche - "Be My Lover"
71. Kula Shaker - "Hey Dude" 
72. Toni Braxton - "Un-Break My Heart"
73. Quad City DJ's - "C'Mon And Ride It (The Train)"
74. Westside Connection - "Bow Down"
75. Eric Clapton and Babyface - "Change The World"
76. Orbital - "The Box"
77. Michael Jackson - "They Don't Care About Us"
78. Primitive Radio Gods - "Standing Outside A Broken Phone Booth"
79. Jay-Z - "Dead Presidents"
80. Everclear - "Heartspark Dollarsign"
81. The Wallflowers - "6th Avenue Heartache"
82. Lush - "Ladykillers"
83. Sebadoh - "Willing To Wait"
84. Hootie & The Blowfish - "Old Man & Me (When I Get To Heaven)"
85. Van Halen - "Me Wise Magic"
86. Aaliyah - "If Your Girl Only Knew"
87. Dru Hill - "Tell Me"
88. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - "The Crossroads"
89. Rage Against The Machine - "Bulls On Parade" 
90. Lil Kim - "Queen Bitch"
91. Blues Traveler - "But Anyway"
92. The Refreshments - "Banditos"
93. Superdrag - "Destination Ursa Major"
94. Ghostface Killah f/ Mary J. Blige - "All That I Got Is You" 
95. Toni Braxton - "Un-Break My Heart"
96. Tony! Toni! Toné! - "Thinking Of You"
97. Gina Thompson f/ Missy Elliott - "The Things That You Do"
98. Local H - "Bound For The Floor"
99. Sublime - "What I Got" 
100. Smashing Pumpkins - "Zero"

Like the albums list, the singles list if flush with stuff I really like and remember fondly, but is a little thin on the top as far as undeniably great stuff. I was also surprised by my inability to rank much rap really far up there, whereas the top 10 for '97 and probably for the preceding couple years are extremely rap-heavy. Some really good R&B, though, and a whole shitload of those failed rock singles that precipitated the aforementioned bloodbath of disappointing album sales.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 24, 2012 at 11:10 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.