Before there was Avril Lavigne, there was Alanis Morrissette and she made quite a name for herself initially in the teen pop market in her native Canada before she did a 180 on her career and released this deeply personal album about her heartbreak she had from a relationship. This in turn has led to many jokes (most notably on How I met your mother) to how a teen idol managed to evolve into a voice of a generation.
One of the most well-respected albums of the decade, partially due to how many iconic tracks are on this double album but also due to how well loved the Smashing pumpkins remain to this day (side note, this is a silly name for a band to call themselves.) Sadly, this album took its toll on the band as one of their touring members died of a drug overdose during its production which messed them up.
Following the buzz they received from their debut album Definitely maybe, the Gallagher’s and company released their sophomore album which proved to be so much of a game changer that it single handily brought Britpop to most parts of the world that wasn’t already familiar with the genre. Unfortunately, due to the cocky nature of the Gallagher’s, the band have received tons of backlash in recent years as people have dismissed their music as overblown and pretentious.
You’d think that a band who gave themselves such a patriotic name would be more politically charged with their music, granted they do have the occasional politically charged song in them, but they won’t last long in a debate with Rage against the machine overall if their music is anything to go by. Instead, they’re a bit on the goofier side with their music which is perhaps why they achieved more success than their politically charged peers.
While there wasn’t any chance that this album would be as successful as Mariah’s previous album Music box, it does have the consolation of spawning two of her biggest hits in her career worldwide, one of which even broke records on Billboard by staying at number one for sixteen weeks. I should also point out that the album is indeed structured to be like a daydream, much like her last album was meant to be seen as a music box.
Enya had already achieved massive success with her previous four albums; however, this was her crowning achievement given how it remains her most successful album in her career despite coming out a bit late in the new age craze she kick started with her second album Watermark. Indeed, this was her last notable success in most parts of the world as the new age craze began to lose its momentum.
It may have divided the fans upon its initial release, however it’s clear that this follow up to Blood sugar sex magik wasn’t a failure by any means for the band no matter how much the A.V club wanted us to believe otherwise when they (in my opinion) foolishly declared it as one of the least essential albums of the decade. Sure, the departure of John Frusciante did mean that the band had changed their sound, however it still managed to connect with audiences and still does to this day.
This is a bit of a different album from Chris Isaak as he seems to have traded in his Roy Orbison impression for a more original performance he gives throughout this album. This paid off for him massively as it remains his biggest album in his career, although he curiously didn’t revisit this approach with his later work. Another interesting fact about this album is that the second single was only a hit when it was featured in the Stanley Kubrick film Eyes wide shut.
This was originally just meant to be a greatest hits package for MJ; however, it was delayed by several months when he realised he wrote and entire albums worth of new songs which resulted in this being a hybrid of a studio album and a greatest hits album. I should also point out that it had an aggressive marketing campaign involving the erection of several statues that the cover art depicts.
This was an album that took its sweet time in finding an audience for the band in question, for almost two years this sat on shelves largely ignored even with Triple J discovering the album the previous year and promoting it on their station. It eventually became a success when “Glycerine” became a surprise hit for the English band in America, which in turn allowed it to become a success here in Australia and thus sell the album.
This albums placement on this list may surprise my American readers considering this is one of the most successful albums of all time over there, however it wasn’t nearly that big here in Australia despite how well the songs permeated on radio here. The album was still a huge success thanks to the vocals of Darius Rucker as well as heartland rock always having a welcomed presence in our music scene.
Following the surprise success of their previous album worldwide, Green day followed that up with this album which was a huge success even if it didn’t quite live up to the standards Dookie set up for them. Still, it at least had a ton of fanfare upon its initial release which is more than you can say for their next album which needed one of the songs to be affiliated with Seinfeld of all things for it to be a success.
It had been seven years since Tracy Chapman last troubled the charts with one of her albums, so to see her back in the spotlight with her fourth album was a bit of a welcomed surprise for audiences around this time. Although this comeback was short lived as Tracy unfortunately failed to capitalise off of its success, it’s nonetheless one of the more heart-warming stories of perseverance.
Bjork is one of the most unconventional artists to ever make it big in the music industry, while this wasn’t her debut album by any means, it was the album that made her a household name due to the success of its second single which saved it from falling out of the charts upon its initial release and allowed it to become one of the more popular alternative albums of the 90’s.
While he wouldn’t have any more success further in the decade, Michael Bolton was able to find success with this greatest hits package overlooking the first ten years of his career. Granted most of his success came from the previous five years, however I guess this was a good way of fans discovering his mid 80’s work which wasn’t a success for him at the time.
It seemed that Janet and her fanbase couldn’t wait for the actual tenth anniversary of her breakthrough album Control before she released this greatest hits package and her fans made it an instant success, I bring this up because the album is a bit of a lie since it was released a year earlier than it would suggest. Her popularity would dwindle after this; however, she was still a household name for another nine years.
Often considered to be one of the quintessential industrial bands of the decade, we have Garbage led by the seductive Shirley Manson who made a huge splash with their debut album which connected with many people back in the day. It was a slow rise to success as they were an alternative band competing with EDM, however they made it big down under thanks to heavy promotion from Triple J.
KD Lang was on a roll by this point of her career as she managed to score yet another successful album that connected with her audience, she really did carry the torch for LGBT singer/songwriters this decade as her ballads connected with women who felt they weren’t fitting into the conventions of the day.
EDM might have been the genre of choice in Australia when it came to our singles chart, however it wasn’t the case for the albums given how few EDM albums we’ve looked at so far on these lists of mine. One of the notable exceptions came from the Real McCoy who scored a massive hit with their album due to how many singles came from it, indeed they were the most successful EDM act of the decade until Aqua came along.
Given how he had won an academy award the previous year for his work on the Philadelphia soundtrack, this seemed as good as time as any for Bruce Springsteen to remind fans of his back catalogue with his greatest hits package which allowed the album to become a huge success for him.
This was the debut album from Silverchair, a band who was “unearthed” the previous year by Triple J despite only being in their early to mid-teens when they were discovered by the band. This led to the album being a huge success for them which of course they weren’t able to handle very well, although they did keep it together throughout the rest of the decade as they matured their sound with each new album.
As divisive as this phase of Bon Jovi’s career has remained over the years, there’s no denying that its success makes sense as “Always” remains their biggest hit in their catalogue. As such, they ditched their hair metal ballads in favour of more adult contemporary ballads which struck a chord with listeners of the day, although they would go on hiatus for the rest of the 90’s despite how big this album was.
Oh, that poor puppy! I guess these guys wanted to dedicate their fourth album to this helpless canine on the cover which admittedly must have compelled their fans to make this a success for them as the album sadly didn’t receive the same love that their previous album got from Triple J. This was the last successful album from the band as their subsequent follow ups failed to find an audience for them.
There have been quite a number of ballads to make it big from Madonna over the years, she certainly noticed how many of them were successful which is why she released a greatest hits packaged themed around them that was a huge success for her worldwide. As far as I can tell, she’s yet to do the same for her more upbeat material as those songs can only be found on albums that has her ballads on them.
Wow did this album take its sweet time in finding success here in Australia, granted this is likely due to it being an RNB album which the occasional rap thrown in which would’ve made it unlikely for it to be a success here were it not for the strength of its third single. The irony is that this album became a success here around the time the trio filed for bankruptcy due to poor management of their money.
This was only one of two albums that Merril Bainbridge released in her career, the other one being so much of a commercial disaster it didn’t even chart here let alone internationally. I’m guessing it was the success of this album which allowed her to see international success with its lead single despite how long it took for it to find an audience here initially, although it could also be that she was a popular female singer/songwriter.
There were a lot of love themed greatest hits albums released over the years, this wasn’t even the first one to come from Elton John as he had previously released an album with this name back in 1982 to very minimal success. He had better luck this time around as he had mostly stuck to love ballads in the 90’s which helped him remain in the mainstream.
As you’ve no doubt noticed going through these lists, there wasn’t a lot of RNB albums to become popular here in Australia throughout the decade, this was one of the lucky few that was due to there being quite a lot of hype going into it due to the popularity of its advanced singles. Said singles proved to be even more popular in NZ at the expense of the album which flopped over there.
This was the last album from Queen to have Freddie Mercury on vocals, I guess this is their version of Milk and honey that John Lennon made eleven years prior which gives me complicated feelings about its existence.
This was originally released as Enya’s debut album back in 1986 to deafening silence, I’m guessing because it was a bit ahead of its time seeing as though new age music wouldn’t become a thing until her second album Watermark. It was rereleased under this title in 1992 where it didn’t make much of a splash, however it did three years later for some reason which led to the success of her next album.
This was the final successful album that Simply red had here in Australia, although considering they had an entire decade of uninterrupted success, this was an impressive feat for them even if it didn’t reach the same levels of success as their first four albums. They aged into the 90’s remarkably well, although after their greatest hits album which they released a year after this, their popularity would fade away.
Yanni is a well-known Greek musician who had a massive breakthrough this year when he released this live album from a performance he gave at the Acropolis in his homeland, it was such a success that he was able to join the ranks (however briefly) of his fellow classical musicians such as the Three tenors and Andrea Bocelli.
So, we all know that scene from the Blues brothers where the two leads are driving down the street and the musician of colour is entertaining everyone with his scatting right? Well, here he is fifteen years later with a successful album to his name likely due to the success of Scatman John and his hit single this year. John would live until 2001 where he passed away at the age of 83, making him one of the oldest artists to feature on this site.
From what I can gather, Dangerous minds is a combination of Dead poet’s society and To sir with love as it draws themes from both of those movies with the twist of the teacher being a woman as opposed to a man in the former and a man of colour in the latter. It received mixed reviews for its derivative story; however, the soundtrack did much better thanks to its theme song provided to it by Coolio.
This was the third album from this decade that Faith no more saw a ton of success with here in Australia, it was more of their hybrid of hard rock and hip hop just like their previous two albums even though it didn’t have that obvious hit on here that “Epic” and their cover of “I’m easy” was for their other albums. They would release one more album after this before going their separate ways in 1998.
Batman forever remains critically divided to this day as while some enjoy it for its campier tone (me included) others feel it’s out of place with the previous two Batman films as they were both more serious in tone and were among the first superhero movies to treat its source material with dignity and respect. The soundtrack was at least a success as it spawned not one but two chart toppers here in Australia.
This was the only album that Jeff Buckley managed to release in his lifetime, it was an alternative rock album that was heavily promoted on Triple J as they were in love with the rock scene throughout the 90’s and even to this day. Unfortunately, Jeff would drown two years after this album came out, although the silver lining is that this became a success for him again that year.
Apparently, there was archival footage of John Lennon making songs for the Beatles, meaning that at some point before his death, he was considering reuniting the band which I guess meant he was willing to patch things up with the other three members (particularly Paul.) When this footage was discovered, the rest of the band honoured his wishes by pseudo reforming and releasing these new tracks on this greatest hits album.
Given how he saw a surprise hit with his last album In pieces, it makes sense that Garth Brooks would want fans to discover his older material which he helped them do with this greatest hits package this year.
If you were to compare Seal’s chart run of his earlier entry on this list on the AMR and ARIA charts, you’d notice it did far better on the former than on the latter which was quite rare for albums before 1997 here in Australia. The likely reason for that is that ARIA was able to track the success of this double album that was released exclusively here which showed how success it was upon its initial release.
Vanessa Mae was a Singaporean born British violinist who scored massive worldwide success with this album of hers, it was a decent hit here in Australia likely due to how popular classical music was even if as far as I’m aware, this was the only successful album to feature a solo violinist in our music scene ever.
Given that this album came a year after the tragic death of his former bandmate, Dave Grohl had little issues with this finding an audiences worldwide back in the day which retains the spirit of Nirvana with his new band the Foo fighters with this album. An interesting note is that each of their albums would see more success than the last in their catalogue, culminating with their 2010’s release which was their most popular work.
I guess it was only a matter of time before I featured a Take that album on this site, although this was their only notable success given how they were thoroughly defeated in the first round of the boy band wars by East 17 as far as we Aussies were concerned. Still, this did spawn their biggest hit even in their native UK, so I guess we cut them some slack by handing them success with this album here.
While it was far better received than Whitney Houston’s first film the Bodyguard, Waiting to exhale still received mixed reviews from critics once again for the writing as Whitney’s performance was far better received as were the rest of the cast which comprised of women of colour. Once again, the soundtrack was what stood out from the production which managed to spawn another hit for its leading actress.
I would say that Garth Brooks was on a roll with this album here in Australia, except this was only a success on the ARIA charts and even this far into the decade, it felt like they were playing favoritism to certain artists that wasn’t reflected in the (in my opinion) much less bias AMR charts. It’s here for prosperity, but it probably doesn’t deserve to be.
