Tag Archives: Decades

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Song of the Day #4,373: ‘Today’ – Smashing Pumpkins

I strive to appreciate music and movies across many different genres, but everything has its limits. I can name a dozen or so horror films I really love, for example, but most turn me off completely.

When it comes to music, I’ve always had blind spots for heavy metal and rap. Rap is like horror, where I can pick and choose the bright spots. But metal is a non-starter. That displeasure extends to metal’s gentler cousin, grunge, which is one reason I’m a little out of step with the music of the early 90s.

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Song of the Day #4,372: ‘Rubberband Girl’ – Kate Bush

1993 saw the release of Kate Bush’s seventh studio album, The Red Shoes. This was her follow-up to her two most successful releases, Hounds of Love and The Sensual World, and it joined those albums in reaching Platinum status in the UK.

This would be Bush’s last album for 12 years, a hiatus she spent raising her son.

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Song of the Day #4,371: ‘All Apologies’ – Nirvana

Here’s the part of the Decades series where I explore celebrated albums with which I am not familiar. What 1993 releases did I miss, and how well will I receive them now?

Nirvana’s third (and, due to Kurt Cobain’s death a year later, final) studio album, In Utero, had the unenviable task of following Nevermind, which became one of the best-selling and most-celebrated albums of all-time just two years earlier.

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Song of the Day #4,368: ‘Omaha’ – Counting Crows

My easy pick for the best album of 1993 is August and Everything After, the debut release by Counting Crows. I’ve talked about doing a theme week (or two) on great debut albums, and this one would surely be near the top of that list as well.

The California-based band had formed just a couple of years before this album’s release, and sparked a bidding war among major labels who heard their demo tapes. They landed T Bone Burnett as producer and knocked out this collection of literate folk rock tunes. The album sold more than 7 million copies in the U.S. and placed three singles on the Hot 100 (including ‘Mr. Jones,’ which reached #5).

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Song of the Day #4,367: ‘Mr. Harris’ – Aimee Mann

My #2 album of 1993 is Aimee Mann’s solo debut, Whatever. This record followed a five year absence from recording for Mann as she battled legal issues with the label of her former band Til Tuesday.

Mann recorded three albums with Til Tuesday in the mid to late 80s, the best of which is 1988’s Everything’s Different Now. The band broke up after that release, largely because Mann wanted to take her music in a more acoustic, less New Wave, direction.

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