There was a time where there was nothing like the feeling of walking into your local Tower Records or Sam Goody and heading straight for the new releases section. The sight of racks of CDs lined up in endless rows of musical discovery offered the thrill of not knowing exactly what you were going to get. Here are albums that were more than worth it at the time, and that shaped the way music would sound in the decades to come. For more about how we put together this list, read this letter from our editor-in-chief Puja Patel.
All releases featured here are independently selected by our editors. When you buy something through our retail links, however, Pitchfork may earn an affiliate commission. Salt-N-Pepa just happened to get there early. On Superunknown , Soundgarden mixed some pop vulnerability into their Zep-influenced hard rock and broke into the mainstream. The album remains an alt-rock anomaly, thundering and openhearted in equal measure.
The Bodyguard became the highest-earning soundtrack of all time, surpassing Saturday Night Fever , and influencing generations of big-voiced divas like Christina Aguilera and Ariana Grande. Boredoms started in as something like a noise band, and ended three decades later as something like a mountain.
At times, they sound like a hardcore band that never got the memo about brevity; at others, like a religious cult for whom the sound of a skipping CD is the embodiment of the divine. Two chords might repeat for 10 minutes, until that relatively small sliver of time feels like eternity. A crescendo might gain thrilling momentum only to slam abruptly into silence. Later Boredoms recordings and performances could resemble live-band DJ sets, with shards of noise and melody whirling around a single central pulse.
Meditation is one path to bliss. A good joke is another. To save hardcore, Fugazi had to destroy it and build something new from what scraps could still be salvaged. By , Minor Threat frontman Ian MacKaye was bored and frustrated with the violent, pig-headed masculinity prevalent in hardcore scenes across the country.
