10 Classic Albums That Came Out Of Nowhere

In the grand scheme of rock revivals, grunge really deserved to have a better fate than it did in the late '90s. Even though the sounds of acts like Nirvana and Pearl Jam felt fresh and exciting at the time, the death of Kurt Cobain made every shred of goodwill the genre had come to a halt, with only wannabes scrounging for any remains they could. While pop punk may have gotten by on the goodwill of upbeat music, the real shocker came with a little upstart breaking out of Manchester.

Since there's no real way to pinpoint musical history too much, Definitely Maybe may be as good a starting point as any to get someone into the Britpop movement. In an era when everything was about disaffected irony, here were these surefire rock stars that didn't have an ironic bone in their body, playing songs that were as forceful as the classic rock you listened to when you were a kid.

What made the whole thing even more mind-boggling is its origins, coming off of the relatively small indie label Creation Records and taking the entire UK by storm when it finally hit the shelves off of songs like Live Forever and Cigarettes & Alcohol. Though this was the kind of label that you came to for artists like Primal Scream and My Bloody Valentine, Definitely Maybe gave us one of the last great rock acts to come out of the 20th century.