My Favorite Debut Album Was One of the Best of the 1990s

This one surprised even me

When Pierce McIntyre issued the “Favorite Debut Album” challenge I thought the difficulty would lie in picking from so many that I love. However, as fate would have it, many of the albums that I thought were debuts were actually not. Both the Gin Blossoms’ New Miserable Experience and 10,000 Maniacs’ In My Tribe were second albums; each band had issued an indie first album before these. I learn something new with each one of the challenges.

I obviously gave serious thought to Bruce Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., mainly because it’s Bruce. But while it has multiple great songs, it’s not an album I’ll often play all the way through. One important reason is that the production value on the album itself is inferior to what we would see from Born to Run onward (after Bruce broke with manager Mike Appel). Maybe he should re-record his first two albums like Taylor Swift is doing with her back catalogue.

After combing through my CD collection (yes, I still have one of those), I landed on the best album of 1993, and one of the best ever, debut or otherwise. It is criminally overshadowed by the horrible Hootie & the Blowfish album, Cracked Rear View, that released less than a year later, but from the opening lines of “Round Here,” August and Everything After announced Counting Crows as a band to be reckoned with. The first single from the album is one you will surely recognize:

A friend of mine came to hate this song because when we were out together I would always drop this line from the song into the conversation:

I wanna be Bob Dylan/Mr. Jones wishes he was someone just a little more funky

Lead singer Adam Duritz didn’t need to be Bob Dylan, however, and he was more than funky enough. If you need proof of just how cool he was in the 1990s, consider this: he dated not one, but two of the stars of Friends, Jennifer Aniston in 1995 and Courteney Cox in 1997. Top that, Darius Rucker.

Unlike many ‘90s albums, there is not a throwaway song on August and Everything After. Four singles were released from the album: “Mr. Jones,” “Round Here,” “Rain King,” and “A Murder of One,” with “Mr. Jones” charting the highest at #5 on the Billboard charts. The album itself reached #4 in the U.S. and has sold over 10 million copies worldwide. (The fact that Cracked Rear View sold 11 million more copies than August and Everything After should have been an indication that dark days lay ahead of us).

Aside from the four singles, there are some truly superb songs that they could have easily released as well, from “Omaha” and “Raining in Baltimore” to “Perfect Blue Buildings,” a song that made my recent funeral playlist. August and Everything After may be the perfect debut album, and it’s one you should listen to right now.

Here’s the full album:

What’s your favorite debut album? Here is Pierce’s original challenge for anyone wanting to take part. I know Terry Barr has weighed in already, but what about you Sarah Paris, Keith R. Higgons, Kevin Alexander, Eric Pierce, Alex Markham, Simon Dillon, and Jessica Lee McMillan?