As I wrote at the beginning of the week, I had a hard time coming up with five 1990 albums for this list. But I had no problem coming up with my #1, Paul Simon’s The Rhythm of the Saints.
Following up the all-time classic Graceland four years later was no easy task, but Simon delivered, creating an album that similarly married world music with his plaintive melodies.
My second favorite album of 1990 is Sinead O’Connor’s sophomore release, the worldwide smash I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got. This was O’Connor’s second album, following the fierce The Lion and the Cobra, but the first impression many of us had of this remarkable talent.
Who can forget that impossibly beautiful porcelain face and bald head singing ‘Nothing Compares 2 U’ against a black background on MTV?
My #3 album of 1990 is Listen Without Prejudice Vol. 1, the second solo album by the late George Michael.
Three years earlier, Michael scored a massive hit with the pop classic Faith, an extremely difficult act to follow. Listen Without Prejudice sold only a third as many copies as its predecessor and received mixed to positive reviews, but for my money it’s just as strong an album.
My #4 album of 1990 is Joe Jackson’s Laughter & Lust, the signer-songwriter’s 12th studio album and the last to have any kind of chart success. This is the first Jackson album I owned and I played it quite a bit during my early college years.
My favorite track on Laughter & Lust is today’s SOTD, ‘The Other Me.’ It’s a brazenly romantic song about regretting the loss of an old love, but not quite enough to end your current relationship.
Today I pick up on my Decades series, where I dive into the albums of a given year in the 70s, 80s, 90 and 00s. I started with my birth year, 1972, then featured 1982, ’92 and ’02. Then I backed up a couple of years to cover 1970 and 1980, and starting today I’ll tackle 1990.
This is the year I turned 18 and started college, a time when I started expanding my musical horizons, and yet I had a hard time coming up with albums I really like from the year. I found a lot more that I missed out on, and I’ll cover those over the next couple of weeks, but this week I’ll count down my five favorite 1990 albums.
Meet Me In Montauk 