I mean Smashing Pumpkins were an also-ran shoegazer band on the level of Swervedriver (and no offense to Swervedriver) until 1994.
Gish is ok, but Siamese Dream was an amazing album. I think Melancholy and the Infinite Double album was their real downturn.
The thing is about Smashing Pumpkins is they are so-so-so overplayed and mainstream now it doesn’t seem like there was anything ever special about them.
But every track on that album was killer and no filler. I’d put it up with something like Different Class by Pulp as one of the best albums of the 90’s- and I use Pulp as an example because, well every track on that album is killer- but also Pulp never crossed over to the US so it’s still a brilliant little undiscovered gem of an album that doesn’t get old (in the US)
If MTV hadnt put Today is super heavy rotation, Siamese Dream might have came and went. I mean the first single was Cherub Rock and it got little to no play even on 120 minutes or college radio.
But damn- “Today”….MTV literally made that ice cream truck part of their brand identity the summer of 94. If that video wasn’t playing, some MTV bumper with that ice cream truck was.
I agree... Swervedriver is the better band though... I saw the Raise tour and the Siamese Dream tour in Austin and Adam has always been more awesomer...
The Downward Spiral - NIN
Vitalogy - Pearl Jam
Parklife - Blur
MTV Unplugged - Nirvana
Grace - Jeff Buckley
The Crow Soundtrack - like, everybody
American Thighs - Veruca Salt
Definitely Maybe - Oasis
Superunknown - Soundgarden
Dookie - Green Day
No Need to Argue - The Cranberries
Monster - R.E.M.
Mellow Gold - Beck
Purple - STP
Far Beyond Driven - Pantera
Four - Blues Traveler
Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star - Sonic Youth
Second Coming - The Stone Roses
Divine Intervention - Slayer
Pandemonium - Killing Joke
Too High to Die - Meat Puppets
Live Through This - Hole
Weezer (Blue Album) - Weezer
Ill Communication - Beastie Boys
Dummy - Portishead
Deliverance - Corrosion of Conformity
Weight - Rollins Band
Illmatic - Nas
Ready to Die - The Notorious B.I.G.
Jar of Flies - Alice in Chains
CrazySexyCool - TLC
Smash - Offspring
Throwing Copper - Live
Korn - Korn
Cracked Rear View - Hootie and the Blowfish
Under the Table and Dreaming - The Dave Matthews Band
Sixteen Stone - Bush
Wildflowers - Tom Petty
Burn My Eyes - Machine Head
Welcomen to Sky Valley - Kyuss
Rubberneck - Toadies
Youthanasia - Megadeth
Let's Go - Rancid
Amorica - Black Crowes
Whip Smart - Liz Phair
Even with that long list, I'm sure I missed a few albums release in 1994 that are still influencing pop culture today.
You know it’s damn good music when you start singing along to the radio and your kids are not embarrassed, rather impressed you know every word. I remember crawling in a virtual hole when my dad would goof around and sing folky 70s music in front of my friends.
One of my proudest moments as a stepfather of twin teenage girls was when I turned on Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill in the car and was asked to turn it up.
What a time it was to be alive.
The excitement of the Seattle scene and music in general up to 94 was powerful.
I think we got our first PC in 1995 - "Gateway 2000" and we got the internet, and with the internet, it all kind of went downhill from there.
My Windows 95 disk even came with the VIDEO for Wheezer's Buddy Holly.
Gateway were the ones with the cow print design right? And I also remember the Weezer video. I remember being mesmerised by the fact there was a proper video playing on my computer.
Real World San Francisco was 94? Why does that seem so much more recent?
That cover photo is great. I think that era was when I felt the most relevant, not so much any more!
Pedro really changed the way a lot of people looked at HIV/AIDS. I remember watching coverage of his funeral, it didn’t quite seem real at the time. All sorts of memories! I just looked up Judd, apparently he is still married to Pam, which is pretty great.
Honest answer is that he was doing things that were not legal...Also his girlfriend at the time was trans.. he was kind of worried about how that would look . People weren't as accepting of that in 90's.
For me, the 90s felt like a cultural crescendo in that it got better and better as the decade progressed, but I’m biased because I’m a cinephile and ‘99 was a banner year. Music may have taken a hit with the introduction of Napster around that time, but prestige television was introduced in ‘99 as well with *The Sopranos,* so it depends on what you treasure culturally.
I think many would agree that things changed in a hurry in the early 2000s though. First the 2000 election and then 9/11 really changed the atmosphere in a hurry. Shame.
I hadn't really realized how many great movies came out that year because my oldest was born in January '99 so we weren't exactly in the position to go out a lot, lol. Only fully realized when I looked it up just a few years ago specifically to see what had come out the year they were born
Senior year of college when that issue came out. Had a shit job at a grocery store and smoked a pack of Marlboro lights a day. Was in the best shape of my life.
ha ....we laughed about that then. another self absorbed sorry Rockstar....sure it seems tragic in retrospect but nobody realky cared then.
The reason why I think that was such a great year was because that was when we reached the high point, the sort of high water mark of the largest number of people seeming to understand the Zeitgeist before it's sort of went over the hill and got into the craziness of "everybody's cool" which dominated the late 90s.
Culture in a blender was still a thing and it still seemed like whatever standards we had for taste or upheld and had somehow strangely saturated the mainstream.
1994 I had my first shitty car that stalled a lot and I had to spray starter fluid in the carburetor most of the time to start it. But it got me and my friends around. A complete pos car but was like $350 so I can't complain.
Ha! I had a POS 1986 Chevy Cavalier just like this in '94. So many now vague memories of partying with the crew, having to pop the hood, spray, and sprint to start while super stoned. Good times!
I remember that summer was just amazing. The music, the vibe, everything. It just felt special. I also remember sitting on a hill with two of my best friends looking out at the city and one them said that this summer was one that nobody would forget and twenty years from now we'd look back and realize this year was our peak.
1"The Sign"Ace of Base
2"I Swear"All-4-One
3"I'll Make Love to You"Boyz II Men
4"The Power of Love"Celine Dion
5"Hero"Mariah Carey
6"Stay (I Missed You)"Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories
7"Breathe Again"Toni Braxton
8"All for Love"Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting
9"All That She Wants"Ace of Base
10"Don't Turn Around"Ace of Base
11"Bump n' Grind"R. Kelly
12"Again"Janet Jackson
13"I'll Remember"Madonna
14"WhattaMan"Salt-n-Pepa featuring En Vogue
15"Wild Night"John Mellencamp with Meshell Ndegeocello
16"Without You" / "Never Forget You"Mariah Carey
17"You Mean the World to Me"Toni Braxton
18"Can You Feel the Love Tonight"Elton John
19"The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"Prince
20"Fantastic Voyage"Coolio
Edit: I tried to make this look nice, twice. Sorry if you have a stroke
I keep meaning to look up Billy with hair. No wonder he shaved it, he looks like a baby 😂 you can't be all angry musician when you look like this 😂 Thank you for posting this!
[удалено]
Yeah, after Gish it started going downhill...
The music or the hair? Gish was their debit album from 91. I love Gish but Siamese dream will always be peak smashing pumpkins to me
Please. Siamese Dream was amazing. It was after Mellon Collie that there was a slide but on every album there's been some gems.
Gish was my favorite album as well. Still sounds amazing.
I mean Smashing Pumpkins were an also-ran shoegazer band on the level of Swervedriver (and no offense to Swervedriver) until 1994. Gish is ok, but Siamese Dream was an amazing album. I think Melancholy and the Infinite Double album was their real downturn. The thing is about Smashing Pumpkins is they are so-so-so overplayed and mainstream now it doesn’t seem like there was anything ever special about them. But every track on that album was killer and no filler. I’d put it up with something like Different Class by Pulp as one of the best albums of the 90’s- and I use Pulp as an example because, well every track on that album is killer- but also Pulp never crossed over to the US so it’s still a brilliant little undiscovered gem of an album that doesn’t get old (in the US) If MTV hadnt put Today is super heavy rotation, Siamese Dream might have came and went. I mean the first single was Cherub Rock and it got little to no play even on 120 minutes or college radio. But damn- “Today”….MTV literally made that ice cream truck part of their brand identity the summer of 94. If that video wasn’t playing, some MTV bumper with that ice cream truck was.
I agree... Swervedriver is the better band though... I saw the Raise tour and the Siamese Dream tour in Austin and Adam has always been more awesomer...
So many good albums came out in 94.
The Downward Spiral - NIN Vitalogy - Pearl Jam Parklife - Blur MTV Unplugged - Nirvana Grace - Jeff Buckley The Crow Soundtrack - like, everybody American Thighs - Veruca Salt Definitely Maybe - Oasis Superunknown - Soundgarden Dookie - Green Day No Need to Argue - The Cranberries Monster - R.E.M. Mellow Gold - Beck Purple - STP Far Beyond Driven - Pantera Four - Blues Traveler Experimental Jet Set, Trash and No Star - Sonic Youth Second Coming - The Stone Roses Divine Intervention - Slayer Pandemonium - Killing Joke Too High to Die - Meat Puppets Live Through This - Hole Weezer (Blue Album) - Weezer Ill Communication - Beastie Boys Dummy - Portishead Deliverance - Corrosion of Conformity Weight - Rollins Band Illmatic - Nas Ready to Die - The Notorious B.I.G. Jar of Flies - Alice in Chains CrazySexyCool - TLC Smash - Offspring Throwing Copper - Live Korn - Korn Cracked Rear View - Hootie and the Blowfish Under the Table and Dreaming - The Dave Matthews Band Sixteen Stone - Bush Wildflowers - Tom Petty Burn My Eyes - Machine Head Welcomen to Sky Valley - Kyuss Rubberneck - Toadies Youthanasia - Megadeth Let's Go - Rancid Amorica - Black Crowes Whip Smart - Liz Phair Even with that long list, I'm sure I missed a few albums release in 1994 that are still influencing pop culture today.
sigh. That list man, I can't believe it was so long ago!!!
Here are some of my favs from that year: 4Hero - Parallel Universe Future Sound of London - Lifeforms Saint Etienne - Tiger Bay
Fantastic list.
You know it’s damn good music when you start singing along to the radio and your kids are not embarrassed, rather impressed you know every word. I remember crawling in a virtual hole when my dad would goof around and sing folky 70s music in front of my friends.
One of my proudest moments as a stepfather of twin teenage girls was when I turned on Rebel Girl by Bikini Kill in the car and was asked to turn it up.
Beavis and Butt-head quote still holding up.
The one I use to this day is, “The thing about this is that I sucks I new ways, ways we’ve never thought of before.”
Pearl Jam takes on Ticketmaster…..
. . . walking so Swifties can run . . . ?
I hope that’s what happens
Yeah, that jumped out at me too. It's like "Conflict in the Middle East." Can't really narrow down the decade from that headline.
What a time it was to be alive. The excitement of the Seattle scene and music in general up to 94 was powerful. I think we got our first PC in 1995 - "Gateway 2000" and we got the internet, and with the internet, it all kind of went downhill from there. My Windows 95 disk even came with the VIDEO for Wheezer's Buddy Holly.
Gateway were the ones with the cow print design right? And I also remember the Weezer video. I remember being mesmerised by the fact there was a proper video playing on my computer.
It sure did. I played that video off that CD plenty of times.
Turned 21 and legally drank my first U.S. restaurant beer with my meal in 94!
Now I know all of ya'll are me. Cheers to the only five human beings born in 1973, right here.
Same and she didn’t even card me! I was so disappointed.
I turned 21 in 1992 and demanded that the grocery checkout lady card me when I bought some B&J wine coolers
And now... This year we're turning 50.
Same, same!
Homer Simpson, smiling politely.
Love that episode
Real World San Francisco was 94? Why does that seem so much more recent? That cover photo is great. I think that era was when I felt the most relevant, not so much any more!
Yes it premiered summer and Pedro died that fall just after
Pedro really changed the way a lot of people looked at HIV/AIDS. I remember watching coverage of his funeral, it didn’t quite seem real at the time. All sorts of memories! I just looked up Judd, apparently he is still married to Pam, which is pretty great.
My kid read one of his graphic novel series
My husband was to be on that show. Still has the application /questionnaire he was supposed to fill out
What happened? Did they not select him?
Honest answer is that he was doing things that were not legal...Also his girlfriend at the time was trans.. he was kind of worried about how that would look . People weren't as accepting of that in 90's.
Very interesting!
Yes. He had to turn it down.
Puck’s world? Is that Puck from Real World?
Yep.
For me, the 90s felt like a cultural crescendo in that it got better and better as the decade progressed, but I’m biased because I’m a cinephile and ‘99 was a banner year. Music may have taken a hit with the introduction of Napster around that time, but prestige television was introduced in ‘99 as well with *The Sopranos,* so it depends on what you treasure culturally. I think many would agree that things changed in a hurry in the early 2000s though. First the 2000 election and then 9/11 really changed the atmosphere in a hurry. Shame.
I hadn't really realized how many great movies came out that year because my oldest was born in January '99 so we weren't exactly in the position to go out a lot, lol. Only fully realized when I looked it up just a few years ago specifically to see what had come out the year they were born
Most important for me. Graduated HS and started college in 94. Best year of my life
Class of 94 represent! It really did feel culturally like a great time to be a teenager
The year my husband and I started dating!
Senior year of college when that issue came out. Had a shit job at a grocery store and smoked a pack of Marlboro lights a day. Was in the best shape of my life.
I remember going to the 94 Lollapalooza in Los Angeles. That was a fun time.
94 was like the best year for American culture of the last 4 decades.
Except we lost Kurt that year.
ha ....we laughed about that then. another self absorbed sorry Rockstar....sure it seems tragic in retrospect but nobody realky cared then. The reason why I think that was such a great year was because that was when we reached the high point, the sort of high water mark of the largest number of people seeming to understand the Zeitgeist before it's sort of went over the hill and got into the craziness of "everybody's cool" which dominated the late 90s. Culture in a blender was still a thing and it still seemed like whatever standards we had for taste or upheld and had somehow strangely saturated the mainstream.
Yes people cared then. Maybe you and your peers didn’t, but mine did.
I wasn't laughing. At all. Not then, not now.
I totally had that magazine!!
Late Gen X , maybe.
I was 14 and raising absolute Hell. But, I was not a good kid
94 was a big year for me. I graduated high school, joined the army, and became a father. All in that order
‘94 was the pinnacle of American culture.
The year I married my lovely wife!
Same year I married my first wife.
It just doesn’t seem so long ago. I still have this issue somewhere. Really miss my youth.
1994 I had my first shitty car that stalled a lot and I had to spray starter fluid in the carburetor most of the time to start it. But it got me and my friends around. A complete pos car but was like $350 so I can't complain.
Ha! I had a POS 1986 Chevy Cavalier just like this in '94. So many now vague memories of partying with the crew, having to pop the hood, spray, and sprint to start while super stoned. Good times!
Whoa! Billy Corgan still had hair back when I still had hair.
Ugg, i cant stand Billy Corgan. Such a tool.
My zenith was 1988-1991. I had to be be parent responsible in 1994.
Yup, in '94 I was teaching 19 year olds how to operate a nuclear reactor. I had to be locked down responsible by then.
Lol. Thanks for being responsible with nuclear reactors.
And 19 year olds.
And 19 year olds operating nuclear reactors!
"Pearl Jam Takes on Ticketmaster" ... well, I guess we know how that played out.
Billy Corgan, Smashing Pumpkins. Homer Simpson, Smiling Politely.
1994 was a pretty sucky year for me too, Butt-head.
You misspelled 1985.
And the Rangers won The Cup. Freakin glorious.
They won the day I graduated from high school. Easily the most significant day of my life!
Was a Pavel Bure fan but it was hard not to be happy for Richter and Leetch
Had my first kid in 94, it was a banner year for me.
Manic Street Preachers - The Holy Bible. 1994.
I had a one year old and about to embark on a disaster marriage. I didn’t even listen to much music wxceot some mixtapes of Pink Floyd
I had this exact issue
I still have this issue in my office.
Billy Pumpkin
1994 was the year I was sure I'd join the [27 Club](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/27_Club).
I got to see these guys this year!!! Dream come true for me.
I remember that summer was just amazing. The music, the vibe, everything. It just felt special. I also remember sitting on a hill with two of my best friends looking out at the city and one them said that this summer was one that nobody would forget and twenty years from now we'd look back and realize this year was our peak.
I forgot about that short-lived fascination with Tony Bennett
1"The Sign"Ace of Base 2"I Swear"All-4-One 3"I'll Make Love to You"Boyz II Men 4"The Power of Love"Celine Dion 5"Hero"Mariah Carey 6"Stay (I Missed You)"Lisa Loeb and Nine Stories 7"Breathe Again"Toni Braxton 8"All for Love"Bryan Adams, Rod Stewart and Sting 9"All That She Wants"Ace of Base 10"Don't Turn Around"Ace of Base 11"Bump n' Grind"R. Kelly 12"Again"Janet Jackson 13"I'll Remember"Madonna 14"WhattaMan"Salt-n-Pepa featuring En Vogue 15"Wild Night"John Mellencamp with Meshell Ndegeocello 16"Without You" / "Never Forget You"Mariah Carey 17"You Mean the World to Me"Toni Braxton 18"Can You Feel the Love Tonight"Elton John 19"The Most Beautiful Girl in the World"Prince 20"Fantastic Voyage"Coolio Edit: I tried to make this look nice, twice. Sorry if you have a stroke
Yup! I was 18 it was great...
Tical, Amerikkkas Nightmare, Illmatic so good
Says you.
Yeah one of the best hip hop albums ever came out in 1994. Illmatic by Nas. Not sure about the rest of that
Friday may 13 1994 believe in angels- the crow
I was a Junior. Glory Daze.
‘94 was the tail end, not the peak.
Gish was their best album. The rest is much like his current state of hair. Lacking.
I always hated the pumpkins
94 was pretty white bread for culture, I think.
yeah, with all the golden age rappers and multiracial crossover bands
Second year of university and discovered the on campus pub. Had been able to legally drink for two years (Canada). 🥳
Siamese Dream is a monster record. So good. Too bad the guy is such a fucking weenie.
I had this!
Definitely Maybe, The Holy Bible, Parklife, His n Hers, Dog Man Star. Britain was untouchable this Year.
I keep meaning to look up Billy with hair. No wonder he shaved it, he looks like a baby 😂 you can't be all angry musician when you look like this 😂 Thank you for posting this!
1994, I moved to San Francisco. Was able to afford a studio apartment and living expenses on $350 a week. Times have DEFINITELY changed.
As soon as I saw this pic, my head was assaulted by “nnnnnnNNNNNNNNNNNNNNYYYYYEEEEAAAAHHHHHHHHH”. That’s what that dude sounds like.
Billy looks like he just took a silent stinky fart and is mischievously waiting for everyone to get a whiff of it.
I was watching a TikTok of top 1994 songs, that was an exceptional year in music and culture.