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Song of the Day #5,806: ‘High and Dry’ – Radiohead

Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1995…

#4 – The Bends – Radiohead

The most critically celebrated Radiohead album of the 90s is 1997’s OK Computer, and deservedly so. But I’ve always been partial to the band’s sophomore release, The Bends.

This album finds the band in a sweet spot between the straight-forward grunge of their debut Pablo Honey and the more experimental rock of future releases. The songs here are rather conventional but, due to the band’s performance and Thom Yorke’s yearning vocals, they’re extremely emotionally effective.

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Song of the Day #5,805: ‘Vow’ – Garbage

Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1995…

#5 – Garbage – Garbage

This album might be the most 1995 record on my list of 1995 records. Garbage’s sound — alternative rock with a side of grunge — had its heyday in the middle of that decade.

And I’m not sure anybody did it better than this unlikely quartet, made up of three male American record producers and a mesmerizing Scottish female lead singer.

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Song of the Day #5,804: ‘Burn’ – Usher

The week of May 22, 2004, found Usher in a familiar place on top of the Billboard Hot 100.

When Usher was named the headliner of this year’s Super Bowl halftime show, I was underwhelmed. But I guess that’s because I wasn’t paying much attention in the early 2000s when he was churning out hits faster than the charts could process them.

Consider that ‘Burn’ replaced Usher’s own ‘Yeah!’ at #1 and was later dislodged from the top spot by ‘Confessions Part II,’ another Usher track.

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Song of the Day #5,803: ‘I Swear’ – All-4-One

Throwing back to the week of May 21, 1994, we find the R&B band All-4-One atop the Billboard Hot 100 with their sole #1 hit, ‘I Swear.’

This song was first released five months earlier as the lead single of country singer John Michael Montgomery’s album Kickin’ It Up. That recording spent a month at #1 on the country chart, and made it to #42 on the Hot 100.

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Song of the Day #5,802: ‘Coming Up Roses’ – Elliott Smith

Continuing a countdown of my favorite albums of 1995…

#6 – Elliott Smith – Elliott Smith

This is another album I circled back to after discovering the artist a few years down the road. In this case, I first heard Elliott Smith’s 1998 album XO before picking up the three that preceded it.

This self-titled release was Smith’s sophomore effort, and his first on the Kill Rock Stars label. It carried over the lo-fi acoustic style of his debut — the sound most people associate with Smith, though his music was much more produced on future releases.

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