On “Doll Parts,” singer, guitarist, and songwriter Courtney Love dissects herself into slivers. Fake eyes, legs, and arms all fall at odd angles, their connective elastic snapped. When some men want women, they divide them in this way: reduce them to anatomical segments, seize upon a part, and throw away the rest. Steve Wright says: “The joy of this chart is that it shows which 90s albums have truly endured. And that's because they're all really memorable, really influential, or just really well-loved. It's a great mix, with all the albums you'd expect to be in there and some that, maybe, you wouldn't...” Nirvana’s commercial breakthrough with ‘Nevermind’ came as a surprise to many - not least of all the band themselves. But the Seattle trio’s 1991 second LP epitomised the flourishing grunge scene as a whole in its exhilarance, irreverence and sheer defiance to the mainstream that it would ultimately change the landscape of. The group would sadly only release one more full-length album (1993’s ‘In Utero’ coming a year before singer Kurt Cobain’s tragic passing), but ‘Nevermind’ was full to the brim of songs that would continue to enthrall listeners - new and old - for the decades to follow: from the pure angst of ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ to the quietly haunting ‘Something in the Way’ and sardonic singalong of ‘Lithium’. Leave it to Mariah Carey, the girl next door, to make pure lust sound so naive, so syrupy sweet, that it could be read as something pious to a passerby. Leave it to a diva at the height of her fame to describe being horny as feeling “kinda hectic inside,” and to articulate it by singing more dizzying runs than an amusement park’s worth of rides. It feels right that she wrote, produced, and recorded “Fantasy” in only two days, roughly the amount of time a person can live solely on the giddiness of a flirtation and the anticipation of an eventual release. Here’s what love at 26, the age at which she put out the song, could feel like. It’s what you want love to feel like for the rest of your life, too.

Björk’s career has been a series of test cases to determine just how much strangeness a song can contain and still work as pop. On Post, the Icelandic eccentric revelled in the possibilities opened up by the multiplatinum success of 1993’s Debut (her first solo album after quitting the Sugarcubes). Instead of playing it safe, Björk brought the weirdness—from jazz fusion’s edgy tonality to dance music’s rhythmic science. In retrospect, she’d felt that Debut had been too tame. “I had very safe pop songs…and I was sort of shy and humble toward the whole thing,” she said in 1995. “This time I felt more at ease.” Colin Greenwood (bass) says: "I’m just really grateful and happy that people love the record and those atmospheres captured in that magical place stand up today and you can hear them on the record." But it was the follow-up, Dig Your Own Hole, that spun our world around totally. “ Exit was a complete worldview of what we wanted in music,” Rowlands explains. “ Dig Your Own Hole was a record borne out of where we ended up after Exit—playing a lot of live gigs to bigger audiences. It’s got big feelings, big emotions.” It was the result of this most insular band becoming “a little braver about revealing feelings and letting them come out in the music,” according to Hubley. Yo La Tengo had been suggesting such ambition since 1990’s Fakebook, but they delivered it here. “A lot of the things that our group has done over the years we’ve done to try to get over our shyness,” Ira Kaplan says. “Maybe we did better at that on this record.” JON DOLAN There’s one more thing that makes ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ the song of the decade, and that’s Samuel Bayer’s now iconic video. His lo-fi, sepia-saturated take on a school concert that descends into madness – complete with slo-mo cheerleaders, smashed up guitars and smoke and fire in a sports hall full of sweaty headbanging teens – was as disturbing and anarchic as the song itself. Everyone watched it. Everyone knew they would never forget it. Tim Arthur

Robyn: “Show Me Love” (1995)

The goal of the first record was to document our experimentation with hip-hop and punk, but also to destroy the boundaries between art and politics,” says de la Rocha. “This had been done before, but the greed and indifference of the Reagan ’80s had spilled over into the ’90s. Given that climate, Rage wasn’t supposed to be popular.” Shedding the boutiquey qualities that allowed some to dismiss her as a Sade for the ’90s, Björk hooked up with multiple collaborators to forge an eclectic tour de force that challenged the agility of her starburst voice. The orchestral grandeur of “Isobel,” the technoid seduction of “Possibly Maybe,” the industrial juggernaut of “Army of Me,” and the big-band retro romp of “It’s Oh So Quiet” each highlight a different facet of her fascinatingly mutable identity (magic-realist dreamer, cyber-diva, space-pixie, etc.). These personalities are further dramatized in a series of brilliantly inventive videos such as “Army of Me” and its Tank Girl tyke. A TV-friendly ambassador for all things avant, Björk offers electronica with a human face for those intrigued by new sounds but alienated by the genre’s anonymity. Following the very first National Album Day in 2018, subsequent years have had a specific theme which the BBC has reflected in its content and programming - Celebrating Debut Albums (2022), Celebrating Women in Music (2021), Celebrating the 80s (2020), and ‘Don’t Skip’ to encourage fans to discover albums in full, as a complete body of work (2019). This poisonous sequel to the hardly saccharine Nevermind was heard as a fame-spurning volley in the early-’90s alternawars, but In Utero makes more sense as an honest attempt to portray life with Kurt Cobain’s famous stomach—the measure of beauty available to someone rolling around on a hotel bed, wavering between pain, spew, and fog.

Rolling Stone's 500 Greatest Albums of All Time: Rage Against the Machine's 'The Battle of Los Angeles' Fight the power? Fuhgeddaboutit. In the years since that awakening, Rowlands and Chemical sibling Ed Simons have channeled the power into their own mad engines. Their 1995 debut, Exit Planet Dust, was the album that introduced the world to what the Chems had been brewing at the legendary Heavenly Social Club, where the so-called “Big Beat” scene got its start and even Fatboy Slim would stop in to take notes (“That’s why my first album is called Better Living Through Chemistry,” Norman Cook admits. “My girlfriend used to say that all I do is rip off the Chemical Brothers.”)Having spent the preceding decade as one of music’s most revered experimental pop acts, for 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, the Flaming Lips jettisoned some of the problematic, self-consciously fey trappings of their previous work and distilled the elements that worked best about their distinctive take on modern pop into song structures that were as accessible as they were adventurous. The result was a deliberately constructed, refined new sound and a landmark album that was both influenced by and superior to the music of its era and which, in retrospect, stands as one of the finest, most important and influential albums of its decade. A testament to careful, selective editing, The Soft Bulletin recast the Flaming Lips as far more than a quirky cult act and laid the groundwork for their commercial and artistic breakthroughs in the years that followed. Keefe Music from around the world, too, was becoming more popular in America. Jamaican dub and reggae were prevalent in ska and punk music, and Afropop found its way into a variety of genres. Electronic music hit the mainstream with force, as both underground and mainstream acts helped define the dance culture we now see at festivals worldwide. Jazz saw an experimental renaissance after a tough decade, and Latin music started its long ascent to becoming pop music in the United States. The 1990s represented a grab bag of unimaginable wealth for music fans. Here are just a few starting places for you to explore the decade. Martin Talbot, Chief Executive of Official Charts: “We are delighted to be collaborating with Radio 2 on this fantastic National Album Day chart, in celebration of the great studio albums of the Nineties. This fascinating rundown is a superb reminder of what an eclectic decade it was, dominated by Britpop and hip-hop, country and soul, metal and grunge, plus (of course) plenty of pop. What a decade it was.”

Shania Twain - Still the One, presented by Scott Mills who introduces a celebration of Shania's iconic 1997 album Come On Over, one of the biggest-selling of all time. The programme includes an interview with Shania, alongside the likes of Lewis Capaldi and Kelsea Ballerini. It didn’t make Radiohead any happier either. In Meeting People Is Easy, director Grant Gee’s arty documentary about the emotional exhaustion of promoting an album in the age of MTV Singapore, a reporter asks Yorke how he feels about an upcoming show, and the singer replies that he’s terrified. As on Computer, what should be a mindless interaction with the machinery of daily life brings on a nameless dread. “The wheels start turning again and the industry starts moving again,” Yorke says. “It just keeps going—basically outside of our control.” RJ SMITH She thinks, then goes on, with a determination that should outlive the doubters: “And you still can.” ERIC WEISBARD Oasis are the chart toppers AND take the silver medal position with (What’s the story) Morning Glory? at No.1, and Definitely Maybe in second place. 2001 by Dr Dre is at No. 3 and fourth and fifth positions are both held by Nirvana, with Nevermind and In Utero. The rundown also features records by Westlife, Spice Girls, Destiny’s Child, Metallica, Shania Twain and more.Given the crowded field, we’ve been ultra-selective in compiling this all-bangers, no-clangers playlist and limited it to one song per artist. Whether the ‘90s was the greatest decade for music is mostly a generational debate, but as you’ll hear, one thing’s for sure: it was never boring. But then, the cool thing about Björk is precisely the elegance with which she manages to straddle the murky underworld of marginal music and the overlit overground of MTV pop. Certified gold in the U.S., Post represents Björk’s balancing act at its high-wire pinnacle. SIMON REYNOLDS

The Official Most Streamed Albums of the 90s chart features the Top 40 most-streamed albums from the decade, based on UK streams, as compiled exclusively by the Official Charts Company for National Album Day. The Official Top 40 Most Streamed albums of the 90s POS Sara Cox’s Half Wower with lots of 90s tunes to get you dancing (available on BBC Sounds from 12 October). Recorded in Berlin after the Wall came down, Achtung Baby did the unimaginable: It made one of the world’s biggest bands seem edgy again. The righteous chest-beating of anthems like “Sunday Bloody Sunday” gave way to a worldly cynicism influenced by media overload and the albums David Bowie and Brian Eno collaborated on in Berlin in the late ’70s. But U2 weren’t pretending to be the Orb; the electronic rhythms and effects are there to shine up singles like “One” and “Mysterious Ways.” Flying in at Number 1 and Number 2 are none other than legendary Britpop band Oasis, with (Whats The Story) Morning Glory? taking the lead, and Definitely Maybe securing second place. In England, Oasis and the rest of the Britpop lot left nearly as big a mark as Nirvana and the other Seattleites. Hip-hop took over the world, and seemed to change shape every few months. Remember when electronica looked like the future? Where do mischief makers like Pavement, Beastie Boys and A Tribe Called Quest fit in? And that’s to say nothing of the totally random ska and swing revivals…although that’s all you’ll hear about it here.

Punk/Hardcore/Ska

It results in killer tunes like “Same Old Show,” based around a surprisingly eerie vocal loop from “On My Radio” by British ska revivalists the Selecter, and “Jump N’ Shout,” with its raucous dancehall reggae vocal and menacing gangsta-strut bass line. Remedy‘s every-which-way creativity also encompasses the Timbaland-style stutter beats of “U Can’t Stop Me” and funk fantasia of “Rendez-Vu” and “Yo-Yo.”“When we started out, we were just trying to be house producers,” says Ratcliffe. “Now that we’ve achieved that, we’re trying not to be house producers.” SIMON REYNOLDS Romesh Ranganathan: For The Love of Hip Hop focusses on the classic 1997 album, The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill. Underneath all the marching-band tempos and piles of instrumentation, In the Aeroplane Over the Sea stands out as one of the most effective examples of dread cloaked in bright, hammering noise. From the three-part intro of “King of Carrot Flowers,” where a solitary acoustic strums are slowly buried by a clamoring wave of new sounds, these songs act as exercises in raw emotion padded with the kind of busy din that distracts from the heartrending gloom of the lyrics. Over everything is the quivering voice of Jeff Mangum, the de facto force behind this singularly sustained explosion of melancholy. Cataldo Pinkerton is a tired, cranky record, but therein lies its brilliance: no shortage of well-delivered mania and pathos. Gone were the likable teenage ragamuffins of The Blue Album, and in their place stumbled a group of world-weary men ravaged by the wake of unimaginable success. And so, in typical Rivers Cuomo fashion, we get brilliant rants on the emptiness of sudden fame (“Tired of Sex”), continued romantic disappointment (the hilariously bittersweet “Pink Triangle”), and a wonderfully disjointed, attention-sapped lead single (“El Scorcho”). Perhaps Pinkerton was the advent of Weezer’s slow decline into mediocrity, but it remains their most intricate, introspective, and serious work, brimming with a well-layered creepiness and complexity the band has rarely matched since. Liedel By the end of 1996, Radiohead was a one-hit wonder (thanks to 1993’s self-loathing “Creep”) whose second album, The Bends, sold half as well in the U.S. as their first. But as they toured the world for a bleary-eyed year and a half to try to cultivate an audience for their increasingly experimental music, they came up with their great theme: In the future that’s two minutes away, everywhere looks the same and no place is home.