10 Perfect Soft Rock Albums Of The '90s

It's hard to really nail down who the king of alternative was at the turn of the decade. While it would be easy to just call out Kurt Cobain as the voice of his generation, you also had people like Eddie Vedder standing up for the Everyman while bands like Oasis started to bring the rock star attitude back into the charts in the back half of the decade. There was only one queen among the alternative scene though, and her name was Alanis.

Breaking free from the child star roots that she had in a past life, Jagged Little Pill is where Alanis shifted fully into the alternative sphere, with the right attitude to back it up. When you listen to songs like You Oughta Know, you can feel her singing these lyrics through gnashed teeth, and also being able to turn it around to love sick ballads on tracks like Head Over Feet. Attitude is half the battle in alt rock, but Alanis has the right songs in tow as well, asking tough questions on songs like Mary Jane, as she tells the story of a woman who's making a life of her own and never once stopping to ask herself if she's happy.

For as dated as other '90s albums might sound, some of these tracks touch on subjects that we're still dealing with today, like the toxic familial relationship going on in Perfect or Alanis telling off her man for eating away at her on Not the Doctor. Alanis might not have been the person that we expected to ask these questions, but these were the words that most us desperately needed to hear around this time.