Good news for musos; 2015 looks set to be a year of big album releases, with efforts by Red Hot Chili Peppers, Bob Dylan and Coldplay making up just a few. However, this new year will also be a big anniversary year for pop, with a range of albums that defined the mid-90s Britpop explosion reaching the grand old age of 20 along with their American alt-rock cousins.
It’s hard to believe that seemingly modern greats such as ‘The Bends’ by Radiohead and the Foo Fighters’ self-titled debut could be entering their third year already, but it’s true. 1995 was an undeniably a great year for music across the genres, with albums exploring places that hadn’t been explored before and while Britpop was really hitting its stride, courtesy of Pulp’s ‘Different Class’ and Oasis’s ‘(What’s the Story) Morning Glory’, Bjork was discovering a strange new world of her own in the dark and delicious ‘Post’. Meanwhile, The Chemical Brothers were bringing in a new sound of a different kind, defining the big beat sound with soul and hip hop samples scattered over a post-rave soundscape.
Supergrass hit up the Indie scene, coming in below the behemoths that were Oasis, Pulp and Blur to take the less well-trodden psychedelic soft-punk path to indie glory on ‘I Should Coco’. Elastica’s self-titled album threw the gauntlet down to Indie on behalf of the female of the species with panache. Only to be called clichéd by the same short-sighted critics who blindly adored every gobby lad yelling over guitars at the time. Speaking of which, the original and the best, Paul Weller, released ”Stanley Road’ and a whole new wave of cool with the likes of ‘You do Something to Me’
On the other side of the pond the Foo Fighters had released their own debut just eight months after Kurt Kobain’s suicide. The often under-rated album giving a tantalising taste of things to come for the saviours of rock. Finally, the Smashing Pumpkins released my own personal favourite 1995 album, ‘Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness’, a soulful and satisfying exploration of the tight alt-pop band’s personal side. This rounded off a great year in music, the products of which are still highly relevant and influential two decades later.