I’ve always looking back on my own best-x-of-the-year/decade/etc. lists and thinking about what changes I’d make if I were to compile the same list today. I began making album-of-the-year lists at the end of 1996 and posted them annually online as of my first blog in 2002. Thirty years on, I’m looking back at what I liked then vs. now.

One caveat: until streaming and the adoption of Friday as a global release day in 2015, the occasional record release would often fall by country in different dates and in some cases, years. A few beloved albums on my lists were not available in the U.S. until the calendar year after their original UK/European release. For the most part, I’m sticking with those US release years for point of comparison, only using original release dates on the rare occasion when I bought the import instead of waiting for a release here.

My pre-blog best-of lists were always recorded in handwritten journals I kept as of 1995. No list for that first year, so we begin with ’96.

Then:

1. Aimee Mann, I’m With Stupid
2. Cibo Matto, Viva! La Woman
3. Everything But The Girl, Walking Wounded
4. Soundtrack, Trainspotting
5. R.E.M., New Adventures In Hi-Fi
6. Pet Shop Boys, Bilingual
7. Luscious Jackson, Fever In Fever Out
8. Cowboy Junkies, Lay It Down
9. Suzanne Vega, Nine Objects of Desire
10. Beck, Odelay

I’m With Stupid defined my 1996. A UK release the previous summer, it was delayed here until January. Not long after finally getting my hands on it, I wrote a review of it for my Critical Writing class at Marquette; the professor liked it enough to make copies and share it with the entire class (are teachers still allowed to do this w/out the author’s permission?) We didn’t have iTunes or Spotify back then and thus no easy means of keeping track of spins but I’m almost positive I listened to it more than anything else at the time.

Kooky Japanese-America duo Cibo Matto I discovered via their video of “Know Your Chicken” on MTV’s 120 Minutes. A week later, I found a freshly used promo CD of it at my regular used-record store, Second Hand Tunes. Along with Everything But The Girl’s full-on dive into club music shortly after the success of the remixed “Missing”, it was my soundtrack going into summer between Junior and Senior years; the Trainspotting soundtrack, R.E.M.’s final classic lineup release and late-in-the-year additions from Pet Shop Boys and Luscious Jackson would take over for the fall and winter.

Now:

1. Belle and Sebastian, If You’re Feeling Sinister
2. Aimee Mann, I’m With Stupid
3. Morcheeba, Who Can You Trust?
4. Tori Amos, Boys For Pele
5. Soundtrack, Trainspotting
6. Cibo Matto, Viva! La Woman
7. Ani DiFranco, Dilate
8. Amy Rigby, Diary of a Mod Housewife
9. Luscious Jackson, Fever In Fever Out
10. Fiona Apple, Tidal

Only something I hadn’t heard at the time could possibly knock Mann off the top spot; I’ve written length about Belle and Sebastian’s near-perfect record here. Morcheeba and Ani DiFranco would become favorites in 1997 (and the former still gets plenty of spins from me in 2026.) I also bought Boys for Pele when it came out (two weeks before I’m With Stupid) but had difficulty absorbing all 70+ minutes of it, returning to some tracks often (“Hey Jupiter”, “Putting The Damage On”) while ignoring others altogether (“In The Springtime of His Voodoo”?) Only after a decade or two did I come to love it nearly as much as Little Earthquakes. A dense, demanding labyrinth, Pele is worth living with for the long haul as was 2002’s similarly sprawling Scarlet’s Walk (and, though too soon to tell, potentially this year’s In Times of Dragons.)

The only post-2000 discovery here is Rigby’s now-classic debut, as accomplished an introduction as Little Earthquakes (or perhaps Fiona Apple’s Tidal, which I also likely first heard in ’97.) I hemmed and hawed over including Diary of a Mod Housewife and/or Viva! La Woman in my 100 Albums project but already had six entries for 1996 and wanted to spread the wealth around to adjacent years. I still listen to Nine Objects of Desire and Bilingual regularly; Odelay, not so much. Walked Wounded is a good EBTG album but perhaps not one of the greatest in a fairly stacked discography.

Speaking of which, is 1996 one of the *best* years for music? I haven’t even mentioned Stereolab’s Emperor Tomato Ketchup, Pulp’s Different Class, Gillian Welch’s Revival, DJ Shadow’s Endtroducing…, George Michael’s Older or Fishmans’ Long Season. We’ll see if even 1997 measures up to it.