I have long argued 1991 was a pivotal year for modern music. Allow me to explain why in this Friday feel-good #thread. #TheYearWas1991
For many genres, 1991 was a watershed moment. The albums released in that year often represent the start of a whole new generation of music. #TheYearWas1991
In this thread I aim to demonstrate how the music released in 1991 is still relevant today, either as parts of the public consciousness, cultural reference, or even as music still played on radio, TV, and probably on your computer or smartphone. #TheYearWas1991
January 29, 1991: @jesusjonesband releases the album "Doubt", from which comes the song "Right Here, Right Now," which you've heard in TV shows, movies, and commercials ever since: #TheYearWas1991
February 5, 1991, @QueenWillRock release their final studio album "Innuendo" (singer Freddie Mercury passed away in November of the same year). The album had several hits including "I'm Going Slightly Mad"... #TheYearWas1991
The video for the song "These Are The Days Of Our Lives" finally woke people up to the fact Mercury was not well. I vividly remember seeing it for the first time and asking my dad why the singer looked so thin. #TheYearWas1991
The last track on "Innuendo", "The Show Must Go On" might possibly the most aptly named final sign-off from a creative genius to date: #TheYearWas1991
February 14, 1991: All-male acapella group @BoyzIIMen release their debut album "Cooleyhighharmony" including the hit "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye to Yesterday" #TheYearWas1991
February 19, 1991: @thehipdotcom become number 1 in Canada with their sophomore studio effort "Road Apples" which includes the song "Little Bones" #TheYearWas1991
March 4, 1991: The KLF release their fourth studio album "The White Room" which was supposed to be the soundtrack for a movie that was never made. The album had several major hits including "What Time Is Love" #TheYearWas1991
... "3 a.m. Eternal" #TheYearWas1991
... "Last Train to Trancentral" #TheYearWas1991
... and "Justified and Ancient (Stand By The JAMs)" #TheYearWas1991
The KLF, aka The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu, The JAMs, The Timelords, remain one of the most interesting early hip-hop / electronica acts of the 1990s imo. Their post-apocalyptic visuals + bizarre religious overtones still confound me: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White… #TheYearWas1991
March 5, 1991: @amygrant releases the album "Heart in Motion". You've probably heard the song "Baby Baby" in TV shows or commercials: #TheYearWas1991
March 12, 1991: @remhq release their seminal album "Out of Time" which has everyone realizing the mandolin has a place in modern rock music with the classic "Losing My Religion": #TheYearWas1991
"Out of Time" also included the hit "Shiny Happy People" featuring singer Kate Pierson of the B-52's: #TheYearWas1991
In the US, the packaging of the "Out of Time" CD included a signup sheet for Rock The Vote, making this album a strong political statement as well as a musical milestone. You can learn more about this in the @99piorg episode on the longbox 99percentinvisible.org/episode/longbo… #TheYearWas1991
March 26, 1991: Mr. Big release their album "Lean Into It" turning them into a one-hit-wonder with the acoustic soft-rock ballad "Be With You" #TheYearWas1991
The same album also featured the song "Daddy, Brother, Lover, Little Boy [The Electric Drill Song]" in which the guitars are played with electric drills. Because reasons. #TheYearWas1991
March 26, 1991: Rod Stewart releases "Vagabond Heart" featuring the hit single "It Takes Two" - a duet with Tina Turner. You have heard this song, and maybe even performed it at karaoke: #TheYearWas1991
"Vagabond Heart" also included a hugely popular cover version of Van Morrison's "Have I Told You Lately" #TheYearWas1991
March 28, 1991: "Hello, you fool, I love you." Swedish band @TheRealRoxette takes us on a "Joyride" with their album by the same name: #TheYearWas1991
April 2, 1991: Brazilian heavy metal band @sepulturacombr release their album "Arise". The video for the title track is banned from MVT due to it's apocalyptic religious imagery. #TheYearWas1991
On the same day (April 2, 1991), @LennyKravitz releases his sophomore effort "Mama Said" bringing classic rock and soul together with tracks like "Always On The Run" featuring GnR's Slash: #TheYearWas1991
... and the classic apostrophe laden "It Ain't Over 'Till It's Over": #TheYearWas1991
April 16, 1991: Temple of the Dog signals the age of Grunge with their self-titled (and only) album, a tribute to Mother Love Bone singer Andrew Wood. Featured on the album are members from Pearl Jam and Soundgarden: #TheYearWas1991
April 23, 1991: Michael Bolton releases "Time, Love & Tenderness" including the hit single "When A Man Loves a Woman" (cover) #TheYearWas1991
April 26, 1991: Luther Vandross releases "Power of Love" earning him multiple awards and chart toppers: #TheYearWas1991
May 5, 1991: Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark (OMD) desperately hold on to the 1980s electronica sound and somehow end up with a timeless hit in "Sailing On The Seven Seas" #TheYearWas1991
May 13, 1991: De La Soul release their sophomore effort "De La Soul is Dead", still considered an influential hip hop album that changed the genre. From the album, "A Roller Skating Jam Named Saturdays" #TheYearWas1991
May 14, 1991: Ice-T releases "O.G. Original Gangster" and the single by the same name. #TheYearWas1991
"The things you say.. You're unbelievable." May 14, 1991: EMF release their debut album "Schubert Dip" with the classic hit "Unbelievable" mixing hip-hop, electronica, and rock in what would become a whole new genre: #TheYearWas1991
May 14, 1991: @PaulaAbdul releases "Spellbound" which ends up going triple platinum in the US. You've heard the song "Rush rush" even if you didn't know it: #So90s #TheYearWas1991
Oh man. So 90s high school party that song.
May 28, 1991: The Smashing Pumpkins release their debut "Gish". They will end up reshaping music a few years later: #TheYearWas1991
May 28, 1991: NWA release their sophomore effort including the song "Appetite For Destruction" #TheYearWas1991
June 7, 1991: @Seal releases his self-titled debut album featuring several hits you've heard in TV shows, commercials, and movies including "Crazy": #TheYearWas1991
... and "Killer" which was later immortalized by George Michael #TheYearWas1991
June 7, 1991: Natalie Cole releases "Unforgettable... with Love" including "Unforgettable", a duet with her father Nat King Cole who passed away in 1965 #TheYearWas1991
July 2, 1991: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers release "Into the Great Wide Open" including the hits "Learning to Fly": #TheYearWas1991
... and "Into The Great Wide Open" #TheYearWas1991
August 6, 1991: @MassiveAttackUK release their debut album "Blue Lines", defining a whole new musical genre called "trip-hop". The track "Unfinished Sympathy" is still played everywhere. #TheYearWas1991
August 6, 1991: P.M. Dawn release their short-titled debut "Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience" and the massive hit single "Set Adrift on memory bliss" #TheYearWas1991
"Exit light. Enter night." August 12, 1991: Heavy metal is changed forever as @Metallica release their self-titled album, often referred to as "the Black Album". Hits include "Enter Sandman" #TheYearWas1991
... and the ballad "Nothing Else Matters" #TheYearWas1991
Seriously. The Black Album took modern metal mainstream and launched Metallica into the stratosphere. The production value of that album completely realigned the metal scene from garage bands and dingy clubs to massive stadiums and the collection of serious music aficionados.
August 13, 1991: Cypress Hill release their self-titled debut including the single "How I Could Just Kill A Man" #TheYearWas1991
August 13, 1991: Experimental rock band Mr. Bungle fronted by Mike Patton (Faith No More, Fantomas, etc) release their self-titled debut album. This is one of my all-time favorite albums. "Travolta" from that album: #TheYearWas1991
August 20, 1991: People can't decide if they love or hate The Spin Doctors and their first studio album "Pocket Full of Kryptonite", but you still hear "Two Princes" played today. #TheYearWas1991
... "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong" from the same album: #TheYearWas1991
August 26, 1991: Blur release their debut album "Leisure". The band will end up defining the sound of the British 1990s. "Bang" from the album: #TheYearWas1991
August 27, 1991: Toad the Wet Sprocket tells us to "Walk On The Ocean" on their album "fear" #TheYearWas1991
August 27, 1991: The grunge era begins in earnest with @PearlJam's debut album "Ten". There is so much to say about this album it warrants an entire thread of it's own. Let's just go through the hits: "Even Flow" ("This is not a TV studio") #TheYearWas1991
... "Alive" #TheYearWas1991
... Is "Jeremy" alive? And what did he say in class? #TheYearWas1991
To say Pearl Jam's "Ten" changed everything would be an understatement.
September 3, 1991: Queen Latifah releases her sophomore effort "Nature of a Sista'" and slowly cements her position as an icon for women in hip-hop. "Fly Girl" from that album: #TheYearWas1991
September 3, 1991: Naughty by Nature release their self-titled sophomore effort including the hit single "O.P.P" #TheYearWas1991
September 10, 1991: Dire Straights take a bow with their final studio album "On Every Street" including the single "Calling Elvis": #TheYearWas1991
September 17, 1991: @MariahCarey has us all feeling "Emotions" with her second studio album by the same name: #TheYearWas1991
September 17, 1991: Paving the way for female-fronted grunge bands, Hole release their debut "Pretty on the Inside" including the song "Teenage Whore": #TheYearWas1991
September 17, 1991: Guns n' Roses release their two albums "Use Your Illusion I" and "Use Your Illusion II". There are so many hits off these albums I can't pick them all. Some highlights: "Live and Let Die" (Paul McCartney cover) #TheYearWas1991
... weirdly emo ballad for a heavy rock band "Don't Cry" #TheYearWas1991
... even MORE emo ballad "November Rain" in which front man Axl Rose takes drugs, gets married to a model, and dies. (man, he had some issues) #TheYearWas1991
... "Civil War" #TheYearWas1991
... and "You Could Be Mine" which was originally supposed to be on their debut "Appetite for Destruction" and ended up being the title track for the movie "T2: Terminator 2" #TheYearWas1991
September 18, 1991: C.M.B (Color Me Badd) release their self-titled debut album featuring single "I Wanna Sex You Up": #TheYearWas1991
September 23, 1991: Canadian hit machine @bryanadams releases "Waking Up The Neighbours" with a ton of hits including "Can't Stop This Thing We Started" #TheYearWas1991
... "Do I Have to Say The Words" #TheYearWas1991
... and "(Everything I do) I Do It For You" which was the title track to the Kevin Costner movie "Robbin Hood: Prince of Thieves" #TheYearWas1991
And the hits keep coming: September 24, 1991: @RHCPoficialmx release the iconic "Blood, Sugar, Sex, Magik" launching the funk/rock/rap band into the stratosphere. "Breaking the Girl" #TheYearWas1991
... "Suck My Kiss" #TheYearWas1991
... the iconic "Give It Away" #TheYearWas1991
... and of course "Under The Bridge" #TheYearWas1991
Again, genre-defining, history-changing album.
September 24, 1991: A Tribe Called Quest release "The Low End Theory" including the single "Jazz (We've Got) Buggin' Out" #TheYearWas1991
Then, on the same day (September 24, 1991), time pretty much stops with the release of @Nirvana's album "Nevermind." Everyone tries to figure out what Kurt Cobain says in "Smells Like Teen Spirit" #TheYearWas1991
... everyone giggles at the nerdiness in the video to "In Bloom" #TheYearWas1991
... the band told everyone to "Come As You Are" #TheYearWas1991
... and we got a taste for the band's notoriously insane stage prescence in "Lithium" #TheYearWas1991
Yet another genre-defining history-changing album.
September 30, 1991: Everyone wants to fall from the "Stars" straight into the arms of Simply Red #TheYearWas1991
October 1, 1991: Public Enemy tells everyone to "Shut 'Em Down" on their album "Apocalypse 91... The Enemy Strikes Black" #TheYearWas1991
October 1, 1991: Prince & The New Power Generation give us "Diamonds and Pearls" #TheYearWas1991
... and "Cream" #TheYearWas1991
... and tell us to "Get Off" (I sense a theme here) #TheYearWas1991
October 8, 1991: @soundgarden strikes a "Jesus Christ Pose' in their album "Badmotorfinger" defining the harder and more experimental edge of grunge. #TheYearWas1991
October 15, 1991: Ugly Kid Joe are "As Ugly As They Wanna Be" and hate "Everything About You" #TheYearWas1991
October 29, 1991: Hammer (formerly "MC") is "Too Legit to Quit" #TheYearWas1991
November 11, 1991: Genesis get honest about their moves with "We Can't Dance" and the single "I Can't Dance": #TheYearWas1991
November 12, 1991: 2Pac releases his debut album "2Pacalypse Now" featuring the single "Trapped" #TheYearWas1991
November 19, 1991: @U2 release "Achtung Baby" claiming they are "Even Better Than The Real Thing" #TheYearWas1991
... some woman they know moves in "Mysterious Ways" #TheYearWas1991
... and after internal turmoil that almost broke up the band, they are now "One" #TheYearWas1991
November 26, 1991: Michael Jackson gets "Dangerous" with a ton of hit singles: "Jam" featuring Heavy D: #TheYearWas1991
... "In The Closet" featuring featuring Princess Stéphanie of Monaco on the album and model Naomi Campbell in the video #TheYearWas1991
... The Egyptian themed video for "Remember the Time" #TheYearWas1991
... the humanitarian "Heal the World": #TheYearWas1991
... The culturally and technically revolutionary "Black or White" #TheYearWas1991
... "Give Into Me" featuring Slash from Guns n' Roses #TheYearWas1991
... and "Will You Be There", the soundtrack to the hugely popular movie "Free Willie" #TheYearWas1991
Wow, that album had a lot of hits!
So, like I said at the beginning, I believe 1991 was a pivotal year for music. And I think after reading this enormous thread you'd probably agree. If Twitter threads aren't your thing, I made a YouTube playlist of every song mentioned here: youtube.com/playlist?list=…
Oops. I somehow missed Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch, "Music for the People", released July 23, 1991. Marky Mark would later become a major action movie star called "Mark Wahlberg" #TheYearWas1991 #addendum
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