If you were a grunge, funk-rock, or hip-hop fan, September 24, 1991, was an incredibly good day. If you just so happened to enjoy all three styles of music, then you were probably on cloud nine. By the time the world went to bed that night in September, the music landscape was forever changed by these three simultaneous and equally iconic album releases from 1991.
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Talk about a Tuesday pick-me-up.
‘Nevermind’ by Nirvana
Opening our list of the three most iconic simultaneous album releases is Nirvana’s second studio album, Nevermind. Of the three albums the band released before Kurt Cobain’s tragic death in 1994, the record Nirvana put out on September 24, 1991, would become their most famous. Nevermind is full of career-defining hits for the Seattle-based grunge band, including “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, “Come as You Are”, “Lithium”, and “In Bloom”.
Nevermind thrust grunge into the mainstream in a way the world had never seen before. Nirvana outsold Michael Jackson. MTV played its music videos constantly. Whether he wanted it or not, Kurt Cobain had effectively become the voice of the 1990s.
‘The Low End Theory’ by A Tribe Called Quest
Compared to other popular genres of the day, hip-hop was still relatively new when A Tribe Called Quest released their second album, The Low End Theory. As hip-hop continued to find its standing between R&B, funk, and soul, A Tribe Called Quest brought jazz into the mix, bridging the gap between the burgeoning musical style and bebop jazz of the 1940s. Singles included “Check the Rhime”, “Jazz (We’ve Got)”, and “Scenario”.
Although The Low End Theory didn’t necessarily top the charts (it peaked at No. 45 on the Billboard 200), historians have since recognized the album’s immense significance and cultural legacy. In 2022, the Library of Congress preserved the track in the National Recording Registry.
‘Blood Sugar Sex Magik’ by Red Hot Chili Peppers
Down the West Coast from Nirvana and thousands of miles across the country from A Tribe Called Quest, Red Hot Chili Peppers were cooking up a genre-defining album of their own. The last of three simultaneous album releases on September 24, 1991, is RHCP’s fifth studio album, Blood Sugar Sex Magik. Hits like “Give It Away”, “Under the Bridge”, and “Suck My Kiss” helped propel the Los Angeles funk-rock band into the mainstream.
Like Nirvana and The Low End Theory, Blood Sugar Sex Magik came to define a specific sound and musical movement of the early 1990s. The songs off that RHCP record came to define their career and, more broadly, alternative rock in general.
Photo by Paul Bergen/Redferns
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