Top 50 Albums of 1995: 

1. The Geraldine Fibbers - Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home
2. Superchunk - Here's Where The Strings Come In
3. Pulp - Different Class
4. Big L - Lifestylez Ov Da Poor & Dangerous
5. Fugazi - Red Medicine
6. Mobb Deep - The Infamous
7. Goodie Mob - Soul Food
8. Tricky - Maxinquaye
9. Raekwon - Only Built 4 Cuban Linx...
10. Radiohead - The Bends
11. Ben Folds Five - Ben Folds Five
12. Bjork - Post
13. Bruce McCulloch - Shame-Based Man
14. Bone Thugs-n-Harmony - E. 1999 Eternal
15. Nels Cline Trio - Ground
16. D'Angelo - Brown Sugar
17. The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness
18. 8Ball & MJG - On Top Of The World
19. Rocket From The Crypt - Scream, Dracula, Scream!
20. E-40 - In A Major Way
21. Pavement - Wowee Zowee
22. Sparklehorse - Vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
23. 2Pac - Me Against The World
24. Emmylou Harris - Wrecking Ball
25. Thurston Moore - Psychic Hearts
26. Mike Watt - Ball-Hog Or Tugboat?
27. Black Grape - It’s Great When You’re Straight...Yeah
28. Primus - Tales From The Punchbowl
29. Smart Went Crazy - Now We're Even
30. Garbage - Garbage
31. Ani Difranco - Not A Pretty Girl
32. Morphine - Yes
33. Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters
34. Mudhoney - My Brother The Cow
35. 4hero - Parallel Universe 
36. Sonic Youth - Washing Machine
37. The Meat Puppets - No Joke
38. Prince - The Gold Experience
39. Nine Inch Nails - Further Down The Spiral
40. Spiritualized - Pure Phase
41. Elliott Smith - Elliott Smith
42. The Ramones - Adios Amigos
43. Neil Young - Mirror Ball
44. The Presidents of the United States of America - The Presidents of the United States of America
45. Sun Ra - The Singles
46. Lee Ranaldo - East Jesus
47. Superchunk - Incidental Music 1991-95
48. Portastatic - Slow Note From A Sinking Ship
49. The Roots - Do You Want More?!!!??!
50 . Ruth Ruth - Laughing Gallery


Last month when I tackled 1996 I started to get into the era that I really feel the strongest nostalgia for, and that really ramps up even more with '95. I heard less than half of these albums in the first year or two they were out, though, and even fewer of the upper reaches of the list. I was 13 that year, and I'd just really started to dig into the '80s back catalogs of bands like Sonic Youth and the Meat Puppets and that was a big year for me discovering that stuff, which really overshadows what those bands were doing at the time (I went to buy Washing Machine within months of picking up Daydream Nation, Goo, etc.).

The top 3 are easily in my top 10 for the whole decade (making '95 pretty competitive with '94 for favorite year of the '90s, at least for albums), all records I discovered a few years later after hearing the bands' later albums, all records that continue to mean more to me with each passing year -- I recently transplanted the disc and booklet of Lost Somewhere Between The Earth And My Home from its long-ago smashed jewel case into a nice barely used one that once belonged to Chinese Democracy. I didn't think anything would unseat Mobb Deep as my default favorite rap album of that year until I finally listened to the Big L album recently and was just blown away by it.




















Top 100 Singles of 1995:

1. Method Man f/ Mary J. Blige - "I'll Be There for You/You're All I Need to Get By"
2. The Toadies - "Possum Kingdom"
3. Mobb Deep - "Shook Ones Part II"
4. LL Cool J - "Doin' It"
5. Luniz - "I Got 5 On It"
6. Pearl Jam - "Corduroy"
7. The Jayhawks - "Blue"
8. White Zombie - "More Human Than Human"
9. Jeff Buckley - "Last Goodbye"
10. Adina Howard - "Freak Like Me"
11. Hole - "Violet"
12. Seal - "Kiss From A Rose"
13. Radiohead - "Just"
14. Raekwon - "Ice Cream"
15. Weezer - "Say It Ain't So"
16, Foo Fighters - "This Is A Call"
17. Bone Thugs-N-Harmony - "1st Of Tha Month"
18. Sparklehorse - "Someday I Will Treat You Good"
19, Notorious B.I.G. - "Big Poppa"
20. Primus - "Wynona's Big Brown Beaver"
21. Elastica - "Stutter"
22. Brandy - "Baby"
23. R.E.M. - "Strange Currencies"
24. Our Lady Peace - "Starseed"
25. Shaggy - "Boombastic"
26. Ol Dirty Bastard - "Brooklyn Zoo"
27. Mary J. Blige - "I Love You"
28. Better Than Ezra - "In The Blood"
29. Michael Jackson f/ Janet Jackson - "Scream"
30. Black Grape - "Rev. Black Grape"
31. Matthew Sweet - "Sick of Myself"
32. Natalie Merchant - "Wonder"
33. Son Volt - "Drown"
34. The Black Crowes - "Wiser Time"
35. 311 - "Don't Stay Home"
36. U2 - "Hold Me, Thrill Me, Kiss Me, Kill Me"
37. Folk Implosion - "Natural One"
38. Pearl Jam - "Immortality"
39. Goodie Mob - "Cell Therapy" 
40. Dave Matthews Band - "Ants Marching"
41. R. Kelly - "You Remind Me Of Something"
42. D'Angelo - "Brown Sugar"
43. KoRn - "Blind"
44. Better Than Ezra - "Good"
45. The Meat Puppets - "Scum"
46. Ol Dirty Bastard - "Shimmy Shimmy Ya"
47. TLC - "Red Light Special"
48. Superchunk - "Hyper Enough"
49. R.E.M. - "Star 69"
50. Toad The Wet Sprocket - "Good Intentions"
51. Green Day - "JAR"
52. Mary J. Blige - "I'm Goin' Down"
53. Montell Jordan - "This Is How We Do It"
54. Morphine - "Honey White"
55. The Notorious B.I.G. - 'Warning"
56. Oasis - "Wonderwall"
57. Pearl Jam - "I Got Id"
58. Bush - "Everything Zen"
59. Tom Petty - "You Wreck Me" 
60. E-40 f/ Suga T - "Sprinkle Me"
61. Blues Traveler - "Hook"
62. Juliana Hatfield - "Universal Heartbeat" 
63. Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Warped"
67. No Doubt - "Just A Girl"
68. Collective Soul - "December"
69. Sublime - "Date Rape"
70. Rednex - "Cotton Eye Joe"
71. Mariah Carey - "Fantasy"
72. The Ramones - "I Don't Wanna Grow Up"
73. Live - "White, Discussion"
74. Hum - "Stars"
75. The Lost Boyz - "Jeeps, Lex Coups, Bimaz & Benz"
76. Alanis Morissette - "You Oughta Know"
77. Bjork - "It's Oh So Quiet"
78. Scatman John - "Scatman (Ski-Ba-Bop-Ba-Dop-Bop)"
79. Junior Mafia - "Playas Anthem"
80. Everclear - "Heroin Girl"
81. Pearl Jam - "Better Man"
82. Rancid - "Ruby Soho"
83. Skee-Lo - "I Wish"
84. Madonna - "Human Nature"
85. Sonic Youth - "The Diamond Sea"
86. Dr. Dre - "Keep Their Heads Ringin'"
87. Monica - "Don't Take It Personal (Just One of Dem Days)" 
88. Tripping Daisy - "I Got A Girl"
89. Mary J. Blige - "Mary Jane (All Night Long)"
90. 8Ball & MJG f/ Nina Creque - "Space Age Pimpin'"
91. Radiohead - "Fake Plastic Trees"
92. Notorious B.I.G. - "One More Chance (Remix)"
93. Mad Season - "River Of Deceit"
94. The Magnificent Bastards - "Mockingbird Girl"
95. Poe - "Angry Johnny"
96. Smashing Pumpkins - "Bullet With Butterfly Wings"
97. Madonna - "Take A Bow"
98. Pearl Jam - "Not For You" 
99. The Stone Roses - "Love Spreads"
100. The Presidents of the United States of America - "Lump"

1995 was the only period of my adolescence that I didn't have cable for most of the year, my mom probably rightly assumed it was a distraction from our schoolwork and temporarily got rid of it. And since at that point I lived in Delaware and couldn't drive yet, and we only listened to rock stations in the and I didn't even know what the urban/pop stations we could get a signal on were, if any, MTV and The Box and BET were my only real exposure to rap and R&B at that point, so I have this weird blind spot for '95. Like, I barely knew of Biggie or anything, a lot of songs on this list I eventually heard later on. By the time I got cable back, "Yo! MTV Raps" had gone off the air. And before that my interest in rap was kind of spotty anyway, so I didn't really pay much attention until '96 and '97. This year's rock singles, like those of '96, feels like a mixed bag. Alt-rock radio hadn't quite started to curdle yet, but it definitely felt like even the good new bands scoring their first hits at the time were decidedly more minor in some sense than the class of '91 or even the class of '94. I had to really cherrypick the Bush and Live and Alanis songs I could stand amongst the garbage I never want to hear again.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 18, 2012 at 3:58 PM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.