August and Everything After
Counting Crows' 1993 debut—rootsy, literate, and aching, with "Mr. Jones" inescapable on every radio and Adam Duritz's dreads on every MTV block. The album that lived in car CD players for the rest of the decade.
#Rock
12 items
Counting Crows
Adam Duritz's dreadlocked, wordy, openly wounded alt-rock band — one of the definitive sounds of 90s radio. Their 1993 debut sold over seven million copies, and Duritz spent years dismantling the very song that made them famous, recanting "Mr. Jones" and its hunger for stardom after getting exactly what he wished for.
Creed — Higher
The arena-rock anthem that felt both deeply sincere and faintly ridiculous, and proved Creed were simultaneously the most mocked and most inescapable band in America. Scott Stapp's arms-wide-open delivery of lyrics about lucid dreaming somehow dominated rock radio for over a year.
![Video thumbnail — Green Day - Basket Case [Official Music Video] (4K Upgrade)](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/NUTGr5t3MoY/maxresdefault.jpg)
Green Day — Dookie
Green Day's major-label debut smashed punk into the mainstream with three-minute anthems of suburban ennui. Released February 1, 1994, "Longview," "Basket Case," and "When I Come Around" dragged pop-punk from a Bay Area garage to every suburban bedroom in America.
![Video thumbnail — Nickelback - How You Remind Me [OFFICIAL VIDEO]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/Aiay8I5IPB8/maxresdefault.jpg)
Nickelback — How You Remind Me
The opening growl — 'Never made it as a wise man' — that became the sound of 2001, and the song that proved Nickelback were simultaneously the internet's favorite punching bag and the actual soundtrack to the decade. Mathematically the most-played song of the 2000s on US radio, and everyone hated it, and everyone still knows every word.
Alanis Morissette — Jagged Little Pill
Alanis Morissette's international debut detonated on alternative radio with "You Oughta Know" and never let up. At 21, she won the 1996 Grammy for Album of the Year, becoming the youngest recipient of that award at the time and selling over 33 million copies worldwide.
Smashing Pumpkins — Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Billy Corgan's double-album magnum opus: 28 tracks, two discs, infinite sadness. Mellon Collie debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 (their only chart-topper), spawned multiple MTV staples, and won a Grammy for 'Bullet with Butterfly Wings'—the song that distilled 90s ennui into one howled line: 'Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.'
Oasis — (What's the Story) Morning Glory?
Oasis's second album was the sound of the 1990s reaching critical mass: brothers Noel (songwriter, deadpan guitar) and Liam (arrogant vocals) Gallagher channeling The Beatles, bombast, and Manchester swagger into 12 tracks that became anthems. One of the best-selling albums ever, it made Oasis briefly the biggest rock band on Earth.
![Video thumbnail — My Chemical Romance - Welcome To The Black Parade [Official Music Video] [HD]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/RRKJiM9Njr8/maxresdefault.jpg)
My Chemical Romance
The eyeliner-and-marching-band emo icons behind The Black Parade. Formed in New Jersey after 9/11, MCR gave every mid-2000s teenager an anthem — "Welcome to the Black Parade," "Helena," "I'm Not Okay" — and a look.
Nirvana
Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl didn't invent grunge—but their 1991 album Nevermind accidentally blew it up worldwide, displacing Michael Jackson from #1 and making flannel shirts and angst the uniform of the decade.
U2
Dublin's titanic arena-rock band, who peaked once in the 1980s and reinvented themselves entirely in the 1990s as ironic multimedia spectacle. The Nineties U2 was fearless—Berlin studios, video walls the size of buildings, prank calls to the White House. They nearly broke up, then wrote "One" and changed everything.
The Smashing Pumpkins
Billy Corgan's Chicago four-piece: shaved head, a black ZERO shirt, and a voice that could go from a whisper to a howl inside one bar. Between Gish and Machina they were a defining act of 90s alternative rock — a #1 double album, two Grammys, and seven VMAs in a single night — and then they ended it themselves, on stage at the same Chicago club where they'd started.