So why is No Alternative on this best 1,000 albums ever thing?
There are very few things that make me more nostalgic for the 1990s than the No Alternative compilation album.
Let’s break it down.
I stumbled across the music video to the Beastie Boys’ “Three MC’s and One DJ” on social media recently, which I had never seen before.
It’s incredible if you haven’t seen it.
Even just a tad more incredible is the live cut of “The New Style” on No Alternative. Whenever I listen to it I can’t get over how good it is, while at the same time it makes me lament that I never got to see the Beastie Boys live.
Time for a story: I thought I was possibly going to see the Beasties perform one night in the East Village of Manhattan back in the mid-1990s. I was standing outside of Coney Island High, an incredible artifact of a New York City that doesn’t quite exist anymore, where a crowd was gathered. Whispers circulated that a Beastie Boys “secret show” was about to go down, but alas it never came to pass.
Anyway, while “The New Style” off of License to Ill is great in its own right, for me you just might say there’s no alternative to… well, you get it.
Which brings us back to our old friend/nemesis, Stephen Thomas Erlewine, of All Music fame. In the midst of a 4.5 out of 5 star review of No Alternative, he takes the time to call out “The New Style” as a “weak live track” while also spotlighting that “nothing can save the Goo Goo Dolls’ atrocious pop-metal take on the Rolling Stones’ “Bitch.”
Now, no one could accuse me of being a huge Goo Goo Dolls fan. For example, you’ll see nary a GGD album on this best 1,000 albums ever project. But I really dig the cover of “Bitch,” to the point where I solidly prefer it to the Rolling Stones’ original. The revved-up, stomping take on it is pretty smoking overall. In fact, when I listen to it I find myself thinking why didn’t the Goo Goo Dolls do more of THIS back in the day?
Matthew Sweet’s “Superdeformed” is my second favorite Sweet song of all time, right behind “Girlfriend,” the title track off of Girlfriend (#747 of best 1,000 albums ever). It’s alt rockingly delightful.
And then with Sarah McLachlan’s gorgeous and haunting “Hold On,” it’s flat-out my favorite all-time song by that artist.
I’ve talked quite a bit about my journey with Pavement, which you can check out if you’d like, so I’ll just state here that “Unseen Power of the Picket Fences” was a real breakthrough for me in unlocking what makes the band so special in its super unusual way.
It’s both a strange song and a great song, and I remember how blown away I was when I realized how much of it is about R.E.M., one of my favorite bands of all, but that it’s also sort of (I think?) about the end of the Civil War at the same time.
That’s just brilliant, and that’s just Pavement.
And I can’t even believe that I’ve gotten this far without mentioning “Sappy” (even though it’s referred to as “Verse Chorus Verse” on the album), a very good Nirvana song – which by that measure means it’s better than the best song that almost all bands have ever produced.
(If you think I’m joking, I’m not.)
There are so many other great songs on No Alternative. “Show Me” is easily a Top 3 Soundgarden song in my view, Urge Overkill’s “View of the Rain a/k/a Take a Walk” is one of their best gentler songs, while “Joed Out,” by Barbara Manning, is a blissfully sweet number that reminds me of the very best from the likes of The Cranberries or 10,000 Maniacs.
Some stats & info about No Alternative
- What kind of musical stylings does this album represent? Compilations, Rock Music, Alternative Rock, Pop Music
- Rolling Stone’s greatest 500 albums ranking – not ranked!
- All Music’s rating – 4.5 out of 5 stars
- When was No Alternative released? 1993
- My ranking, the one you’re reading right now – #110 out of 1,000
No Alternative on Spotify
A lyrical snippet from No Alternative that’s evocative of the album in some way, maybe
You know I’m superdeformed, you can’t say you weren’t warned. I’m superdeformed, now dig it.
What does the “best 1,000 albums ever” mean and why are you doing this?
Yeah, I know it’s audacious, a little crazy (okay, maybe a lot cray cray), bordering on criminal nerdery.
But here’s what it’s NOT: a definitive list of the Greatest Albums of All-Time. This is 100% my own personal super biased, incredibly subjective review of what my top 1,000 albums are, ranked in painstaking order over the course of doing research for nearly a year, Rob from High Fidelity style. Find out more about why I embarked on a best 1,000 albums ever project.