10 Perfect Soft Rock Albums Of The '90s

In the wake of grunge, every single rocker seemed to be burnt the hell out on what was going on. We had spent the past few years tapping into that kind of inner pain, but it didn't feel like we could even take that seriously anymore. It was time to turn things down just a little bit, and Counting Crows practically gave us a hug on their first record.

Following in the footsteps of what the adult alternative scene was doing, this is an alternative record that seems a lot more indebted to classic rock than anything else, as Adam Duritz paints different pictures of what his inner feelings are like. While there's a good chance that most people just know this record for the song Mr. Jones, tracks like Raining in Baltimore and Round Here have a much more organic sound going for them, tapping into pure melancholy a lot better than what the post grunge bands could have hoped for at the time.

For as down tempo and slow as some of these tracks are, there's never a moment where it feels like a chore to get through. If anything, you just feel like you're in the room with these guys as they use their music to figure out where they even fit in the world. It was never going to be easy to move on from the fall of grunge, but this is the kind of record that seems to take you in and tell you that everything was going to be okay.