Top 100 Best Selling Albums of The 90s

[bichard]

Blimey, it took almost a million sales to crack the top 100 in the 90s...

I'm going to try to keep up with this thread, I turned 18 at the start of the decade and spent pretty much the whole ten years DJing or selling records. Much to savour!

I have never owned a Cranberries album but do have Ode To My Family somewhere - it would have been £1.99 in a record shop counterbox, I imagine - they make some decent singles but the uptempo stinkers ("Zombie", "Salvation", "I Can't Be With You") were always enough to put me off investing in a CD. They resurfaced this year with a new album, which did chart I think.

It's a sign of how bland M People eventually became that Mike Pickering's pivotal role in Manchester house music has become somewhat overlooked. Certainly, as Eric mentions, the early singles were very nifty soulful house, in keeping with that of the period. The cover of Marshall Jefferson's Someday is perfectly judged. But the chorus to Open Your Heart was a dumbed down version of that of How Can I Love You More, that version of Itchycoo Park happened, the gurning percussionist was given undue prominence, and it all fell apart in the way "crossover" bands often do. The tumble into the dumper was rapid.

REM's Monster got one hell of a kicking for not sounding enough like Automatic For The People, which shouldn't have been enough to consign it to a big-selling footnote in their history. Let Me In is an amazing song, and more anguished and soulful than anything on Automatic. Yet this was their "dumb rock'n'roll album", supposedly. Bang And Blame is a corker, too. What's wrong with being a little contrary?

I had absolutely no interest in The Cranberries post-Dreams. That and Linger are sublime, but Zombie outright killed any affection I had for them. Dreadful song.

I really like Monster. It was actually the first REM album I bought, although I do now have the previous two classics. What's The Frequency Kenneth was their first single to have any impact on me, hence the purchase. It still remains one of my favourite single releases by them, although in retrospect I prefer Bang and Blame. That song is amazing. Up there with Man on the Moon as my favourite REM single.

I never liked M People. I had absolutely no interest in them, beyond listening to my sister do her excellent, mocking impression of Heather Small...

[Eric Generic]

The 90's are not a favourite musical decade for me. Everything became either too tacky or too credible and pop music lost the eclecticism that so marked out the 80's. By mid decde you got to the point where the traditional 'pop' group (Vocals, guitar, keyboards, drums etc) had virtually disappeared and you had the choice of either manufactured boy/girl bands with their dance routines or Brit Pop indie bands with very little bridging the gap. Not really being a fan of either I was a bit lost.

To this day I think it's a real shame that the playing of instruments is a virtually lost art in pop and certainly it's something that's scorned on this forum whereas in the 80's nearly all of the biggest bands were 100% pop but also wrote and played on their own records.

Duran Duran, Culture Club, Spandau Ballet, Wham, Thompson Twins, Human League, Depeche Mode, Madness, Eurythmics etc where all huge acts the like of which barely exist today. I blame S/A/W. By putting marketability before talent they ruined pop music for a generation. We're still suffering the consequences today.

AMEN.

I feel exactly the same. So far I still own nearly everything in the list, but I don't love these records anywhere near as much as the 80s ones. I just don't feel that connection with them.

[hudweiser]

I agree also; as much as I like the PWL era (having grown up with it), we're still feeling the aftershocks of its mantra. It seems that any group who do play their own instruments either don't want to be called a pop group or get lambasted for playing poppy tracks.

[invertedbutterfly]

I think it says more about my age than it does about the relative quality of the music, but I have always felt that the nineties are my decade, musically (and in other ways) - but I'm sure it would have been true of whatever decade I came of age in. I can't get past the whole nostalgia thing to be in any way objective, but the nineties just feel a good fit musically to me.

Being a teenager for most of the decade, it also means that my '90s tastes are (relatively) slanted away from pop in a way pretty much peculiar to it - which I think will be reflected in this list, in things that I'd never probably get in to if I came across them today, are dear to me (as is the case with, say, OK Computer).

[MollieSwift21]

Excited to see where Shania, Mariah, and Britney will end up! The Backstreet Boys were never too successful in the UK were they?

[marie_05]

To this day I think it's a real shame that the playing of instruments is a virtually lost art in pop and certainly it's something that's scorned on this forum whereas in the 80's nearly all of the biggest bands were 100% pop but also wrote and played on their own records.

I've never understood why so many people on this forum feel that way about bands with instruments. The best I can come up with is that it's associated with pretense and snobbery, which is certainly not something that applies to all bands.

I'm not sure what to think of the 90s. I was a child during the 90s, so all the bubblegum pop/eurodance stuff seemed fun and entertaining at the time, but looking back a lot of it has aged horribly. You really only hear songs by 2 Unlimited and Aqua during 'Back To The 90s' parties these days and it's not difficult to figure out why. To be fair, some acts (e.g. the Spice Girls and the Backstreet Boys) released some fantastic pop songs I still love, but things really got out of hand with acts like the Vengaboys and ToyBox.

[hudweiser]

I'm expecting ABBA Gold to be number one.

[Eric Generic]

This thread has got me thinking what actually ARE my favourite albums of the 90s. I've never felt much love towards that decade's music, at least from about 1994/5 onwards. The early years of the 90s were pretty much a hangover of the 80s, continuing in much the same vein. Then the whole grunge thing took over, then Britpop, then Dadrock, and amongst all that possibly one of the most fundamental changes to how music sounded - the loudness wars began. And the demise (at the time) of vinyl ushered in the era of stupidly overlong CDs, which again did its best to induce listener fatigue!

[gezza76]

91. EVERYTHING MUST GO- Manic Street Preachers (980,000)



RELEASED: 20th May 1996

PEAK POSITION: 2

WKS IN TOP 75: 80

SINGLES RELEASED:
A DESIGN FOR LIFE (2)
EVERYTHING MUST GO (5)
AUSTRALIA (7)
KEVIN CARTER (9)

As a pop movement of the 90s Brit Pop is well represented in this countdown- probably more than any countdown of the singles of the decade. Here for example are the Manics. After initially claiming that they would only ever release one album they had a u-turn and though the hits continued their career had really rather stalled- certainly commercially, ironically it was the disappearance of Richey Edwards in 95 that altered the bands fortunes.

The alteration in style, away from the darker themes that had dominated previous albums especially “The Holy Bible”, to a more mainstream radio friendly sound instantly improved the fortunes of the band who pre 96 managed to get just a solo top 10 with their cover the MASH theme “Suicide Is Painless”.

Now hit after hit invaded the top 10 including all 4 singles from “Everything Must Go” their best seller of the 90s and of their career, though there isn’t much in it between this and 1998’s “This Is My Truth Tell Me Yours”. The album spent two weeks in the runner up spot behind first George Michael’s “Older” then “Spice” by the Spice Girls but some 10 months apart....

[gezza76]

90. SOMETHING TO REMEMBER- Madonna (980,000)




RELEASED: 6th November 1995

PEAK POSITION: 3

WKS IN TOP 75: 29

SINGLES RELEASED:
YOU'LL SEE (5)
OH FATHER (16)
ONE MORE CHANCE (11)

She may be remembered as the THE female vocalist of the 80s, and that’s true, but only one other female soloist places as many albums in the decade top 100 as Madonna does. “Something To Remember” was a compilation of love songs released as a holding album between “Bedtime Stories” and the “Evita” project.

The release of “You'’ll See” witnessed Madonna’s first appearance on TOTP in 11 years spurred on, no doubt, by the fact that guaranteed UK top 10 hits were no longer a given for her, a string of 33 consecutive top 10 Hits finally came to an end in Dec 94 with the release of “Take A Bow”. Three singles were released in the UK to promote the album- two of them failed to hit the top 10, the final singles to do this for Madonna for a further 7 years...

[gezza76]

89. THE DEFINITIVE SIMON & GARFUNKEL (980,000)



RELEASED: 18th November 1991

PEAK POSITION: 8

WKS IN TOP 75: 57

SINGLES RELEASED:
A HAZY SHADE OF WINTER/ SILENT NIGHT (30)
THE BOXER (75)

Some acts are just evergreen. Simon & Garfunkel had been defunct as a recording unit since 1970 and “The Definitive” was hardly the first compilation of their hits yet such was their enduring appeal that they managed to shift almost a million outselling many of the major albums of the decade.

Occasional reunions over the years have spurned on sales, the album never made it higher than number 8 on the weekly charts meaning that only one album on this survey peaked lower in the weekly charts....

[Eric Generic]

Manic Street Preachers are/were one of the best things to come out of the 90s, and one of the few bands of that time who I still enjoy listening to now. Their singles output is almost second to none. They peaked commercially with this album, and the follow-up, but the great music didn't stop there. Some really underrated stuff from the 00s got overlooked by the public.

[gezza76]

88. GLITTERING PRIZE 81/92- Simple Minds (1,000,000)



RELEASED: 12th October 1992

PEAK POSITION: 1

WKS IN TOP 75: 39

SINGLES RELEASED:

LOVE SONG/ ALIVE AND KICKING (6)

Here’s another Greatest Hits compilation this time 80’s throwbacks Simple Minds, if only they’d left it here it would have been quite an impressive tale, but they didn’t. It was the final of five chart topping albums for the 80’s supergroup fronted by ex Mr Patsy Kensit, Jim Kerr and took their name from a line in the Bowie track “Jean Genie”

Only 3 top 40 hits followed the release of “Glittering Prize 82-92” between 1993-present compared with 17 top 20 hits during 1982-1992. The law of diminishing returns hasn’t daunted them however and they persist to this day, however in other news we have reached the million mark in our countdown....

[gezza76]

87. ELEGANT SLUMMING- M People (1,020,000)



RELEASED: 4th October 1993

PEAK POISTION: 2

WKS IN TOP 75: 87

SINGLES RELEASED:

MOVING ON UP (2)
RENAISSANCE (5)
ONE NIGHT IN HEAVEN (6)
DON'T LOOK ANY FURTHER (9)
ELEGANTLY AMERICAN EP (31)

Here’s appearance number two from M People this time with 93’s Mercury Prize winning “Elegant Slumming” . It was the album that broke them as a major chart act of the decade and spawned 4 top 10 hits, the biggest of which, “Moving On Up”, provided them with their highest peaking single of their career when it stalled at No 2 behind “Boom Shake The Room” in Oct 93.

Incidentally the album peaked at number two unable to unseat Meat Loaf’s “Bat Out Of Hell II- Back into Hell” but then back in late 93 there wasn’t much that did...

[gezza76]

86.SEAL- Seal (1,020,000)



RELEASED: 20th May 1991

PEAK POSITION: 1

WKS IN TOP 75: 58

SINGLES RELEASED:

CRAZY (2)
KILLER...ON THE LOOSE EP (8)
FUTURE LOVE EP (12)
THE BEGINNING (24)
VIOLET (39)

After famously being plucked from relative obscurity by Adamski (who stumbled on Seal working in the local McDonalds so the story went at the time) Seal soon dumped the ‘ski and went solo delivering up the BRIT winning debut solo album “Seal”.

Though not containing any chart topping singles it did include Seal’s solo version of “Killer” which became a top 10 hit just 18 months after the Adamski original and contains the song once hailed at the first classic of the decade in “Crazy”....

[Eric Generic]

Ah, some good ones there! Seal's debut remains one the best of the 90s, a brilliant album. I was so psyched up for its release, and it didn't disappoint. The Simple MInds best-of was, at the time, one of my most-eagerly awaited as it was the first time all those tracks had been collected together (it did, sadly, omit Up On The Catwalk), and it spent months at #1 on my personal chart over the winter of 92/93.

[Baby Clyde]

Seal's album is fabulous but to my horror I've just discovered that I don't own it on CD??? I have no idea why.

Off to Amazon.

[Baby Clyde]

Sorted. 1p Used & New.

[Eric Generic]

There are two versions, apparently...some minor differences in the mixes of some tracks (although I think all UK pressings are all the same!).

It's long overdue a Deluxe reissue...you've got the single mixes of Violet, The Beginning and KIller On The Loose, plus quite a few B-sides.

[Booers]

I would have though Everthing Must Go would be higher in the list. I still think Australia sounds like Mica Paris' One Temptation.

Something to Remember is a nice collection, but at the time I wanted a whole album of Massive Attack collaborations. Her version of I Want You with them is brilliant. Some of the other new songs on there were a bit iffy, like One More Chance, but all in all it was a nice collection showing that she wasn't just a singer of disposable pop, and good to get those previous non-album tracks like I'll Remember and This Used To be My Playground.

Elegant Slumming has some right tunes on it. It gets slated for having beaten Blur's Parklife but I still think it holds itself up as a great dance pop record. The intro to One Night In Heaven on the album version is heavenly.

I was a bit disappointed by Seal's album. I got it years after it was released when I was at uni in the late 90s, and always found it a bit of a drag bar the singles. I always thought that Basement Jaxx's Red Alert chorus was a rip-off of The Beginning's chorus.

[gezza76]

85. THE GREAT ESCAPE- Blur (1,030,000)



RELEASED: 11th September 1995

PEAK POSITION: 1

WKS IN THE TOP 75: 47

SINGLES RELEASED:

COUNTRY HOUSE (1)
THE UNIVERSAL (5)
CHARMLESS MAN (5)
STEREOTYPES (7)

Ok Oasis won the war, that’s fair to say, but back in the hot summer of 95 it was Blur who won the Brit Pop battle with “Country House”. That’s here on “The Great Escape” obviously but it’s far too jaunty and false a statement for a blur signature tune. The album debuted instantly at number one back in September 95 but a month later it was clear that Oasis had produced something of another class and certainly in commercial terms it proved to be just that, yet all 4 singles from the album made the top 10.

As a reminder that before it became the theme to the British Gas adverts “The Universal” was a great track with it’s “Clockwork Orange” themed video. Blur never again reached the same heights of commercial success after this....

[gezza76]

84. THE BEST OF ROD STEWART- Rod Stewart (1,030,000)



RELEASED: 13th November 1989

PEAK POSITION: 6

WKS IN TOP 75: 103

SINGLES RELEASED:

DOWNTOWN TRAIN (10)
THIS OLD HEART OF MINE (51)

Here's the second of those 5 albums released prior to 1990 to make it onto the list and the first to spend more than 100 weeks on the survey during the decade.

Released to capture the Xmas 89 market Rod’s "Best of" sold consistently well through the decade to pass the million mark ( I was responsible for 1 copy). His last appearance in the top 10 singles was now some 14 years ago but he remains a force on the album charts thanks to his “Great American Songbook” series which keeps the bucks rolling in.....

[gezza76]

83. PERFORMANCE AND COCKTAILS- The Stereophonics (1,046,443)



RELEASED: 8th March 1999

PEAK POSITION: 1

WKS IN TOP 75: 43

SINGLES RELEASED:

BARTENDER AND THE THIEF (3)
JUST LOOKING (4)
PICK A PART THAT'S NEW (4)
HURRY UP AND WAIT (11)
I WOULDN'T BELIEVE YOUR RADIO (11)

Here’s the 5th biggest seller of 1999 from Welsh band Stereophonics. “Performance & Cocktails” was only their second album but it accompanied the transformation of the band from indie also rans to a major album act in the first half of the noughties and was the first of their two million selling albums 2001’s “Just Enough Education To Perform” being the follow up and superior seller overall...

[invertedbutterfly]

I think the Sterephonics may be one of my least favourite bands of all time...

[bichard]

I think the Sterephonics may be one of my least favourite bands of all time...

I'm no fan but there are two really rather excellent songs on their debut.