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Song of the Day #5,052: ‘When I Come Around’ – Green Day

When I do these Decades series, I’m always surprised by how many copies albums sold two or three decades ago. Most of the albums I’m featuring as part of this look at 1994 went at least three or four times platinum. A few made it to diamond status (10 million units).

Among those is Green Day’s Dookie, the band’s third album and first for a major label. The album went diamond in the U.S. and sold 20 million copies worldwide, making it their top-selling album by far (eclipsing 2001’s American Idiot by several million).

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Song of the Day #5,051: ‘Sour Times’ – Portishead

1994 was a big year for well-received debut albums. At least a half dozen of the albums I’ve already featured from that year have been debuts, and a handful of other first efforts just missed the cut.

English electronic band Portishead have released only three albums during their on-again, off-again career, and 1994’s Dummy — their triple-platinum first effort — is the standout.

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Song of the Day #5,050: ‘In the Garage’ – Weezer

In May of 1994, Los Angeles rock band Weezer released its first — and still most successful — album, a self-titled record popularly referred to as the Blue Album due to the background color of its cover image.

The power pop collection went triple platinum in the U.S. and reached #16 on the Billboard 200. Its first two singles — ‘Undone – The Sweater Song‘ and ‘Buddy Holly‘ — became minor hits largely due to the prominence of their Spike Jonze-directed videos on MTV.

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Song of the Day #5,049: ‘The Starting Line’ – Keane

When today’s random song popped up, I had a hard time remembering that English indie rock band Keane ever released an album called Strangeland.

A quick search of the blog revealed my lone post on the 2012 recording, written the year of its release, in which I trashed it as the band’s first misstep after a string of very good albums.

This is the first time I’ve heard a moment of the album in the decade since.

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Song of the Day #5,048: ‘On and On and On’ – Wilco

This is the fifth song I’ve featured from Wilco’s 2007 album Sky Blue Sky, all on Random Weekends. That’s nearly half of the album’s 12 tracks. The Random iTunes Fairy seems to have a thing for this record.

‘On and On and On’ is a deep cut on an album that is one of the band’s least heralded releases, but it’s quite meaningful to songwriter and lead singer Jeff Tweedy. Here’s what he had to say about the song in a 2016 interview:

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