Automatic for the People
1992
They set out to make a loud record and ended up with a quiet one. John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin wrote the string parts.
★ 8.9
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1992
Showing 156 works across all media from 1992
Nuthin' But a G Thang
Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg
1992 · From The Chronic
Dre built G-funk on a Leon Haywood sample, handed Snoop the mic, and gangsta rap reached number two.
★ 8.9
The Chronic
1992
Dre had session players replay the funk records rather than sample them, which sidestepped clearance and made everything sound warmer and slower.
★ 8.8
Unforgiven
Directed by Clint Eastwood
1992
Eastwood spent thirty years building the myth this film takes apart: no western has been harder on the pleasure of violence, or on the men who deal it out.
★ 8.7
A Few Good Men · 1992
They Reminisce Over YouPete Rock
They Reminisce Over You
1992
Pete Rock looped a Tom Scott saxophone line, and CL Smooth's eulogy for a lost friend still aches.
★ 8.3
I Will Always Love You
1992 · From The Bodyguard (soundtrack)
Parton wrote it to leave Porter Wagoner; Houston opened a cappella and held the Hot 100 for fourteen weeks.
★ 8.1
Creep (Radiohead)
1992 · From Pablo Honey
Greenwood meant those three dead notes before the chorus to wreck the song, and they are what makes it work.
★ 7.7
Rage Against the Machine
1992
The sleeve insists there are no samples or keyboards anywhere. Every strange noise is Tom Morello working the pickup switch and scraping the strings.
★ 7.5
Slanted and Enchanted
1992
Recorded for about eight hundred dollars in the drummer's garage in Stockton. He later took to greeting the audience with handstands.
★ 7.5
Reservoir Dogs
Directed by Quentin Tarantino
1992
Tarantino arrived fully formed with a heist film that never shows the heist: everyone is in a warehouse afterward, suspecting everyone else and talking far too much.
★ 7.3
Man on the Moon
1992
Berry's chords, Buck's arrangement, and lyrics Stipe wrote at the last minute about Andy Kaufman, Elvis impression included.
★ 7.3
Only Shallow
1992 · From Loveless
Four snare hits, then two amps facing each other with tremolos fighting, sampled and reversed into shoegaze's founding roar.
★ 7.3
NightswimmingR.E.M.
Nightswimming
1992 · From Automatic for the People
Mills cut the piano at Criteria on the instrument heard on "Layla," and John Paul Jones arranged the strings.
★ 7.2
November Rain
1992 · From Use Your Illusion I
Slash's solo grew from an improvisation, Rose had chased the song since 1986, and nine minutes went top three.
★ 7.2
A Few Good Men · 1992
Rebirth of Slick (Cool Like Dat)
1992
Butler built it from an Art Blakey bassline in his father's jazz records, three voices making cool sound effortless.
★ 7.1
Everybody HurtsR.E.M.
Everybody Hurts
1992 · From Automatic for the People
Berry wrote most of it over a drum machine, John Paul Jones scored the strings, and the words target teenagers.
★ 6.9
Would
1992 · From Dirt
Cantrell wrote it for the Singles soundtrack while grieving Andrew Wood; Starr's bass line and two voices doing the mourning.
★ 6.9
Jeremy
1992 · From Ten
A twelve-string bass figure from Ament, a Texas newspaper item in Vedder's hands, and four VMAs in 1993.
★ 6.8
Harvest Moon
1992 · From Harvest Moon
Tinnitus from the Ragged Glory tour pushed Young back to acoustic guitars, and Ronstadt shadows him line for line.
★ 6.8
All the Pretty Horses
1992 · 302 pages
Sixteen years old and landless, John Grady Cole rides into Mexico in 1949 and finds work breaking horses on a great hacienda. McCarthy writes horses and hard country better than any American novelist.
★ 6.8
Friday I'm In LoveThe Cure
Friday I'm In Love
1992 · From Wish
Smith left the vari-speed engaged at mixdown, so the released version sits a quarter-tone sharp and grins anyway.
★ 6.7
Glengarry Glen Ross
Directed by James Foley
1992
The best-acted film about work ever made: Mamet's salesmen speak in a rhythm nobody actually uses, and an ensemble of stars took deep pay cuts for the chance to say the lines.
★ 6.7
Let Me Ride
Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg
1992 · From The Chronic
A Mothership Connection sample, RBX writing Dre's verses, and the Grammy win that turned it into a hit.
★ 6.7
Real Love
1992 · From What's the 411?
Prince Markie Dee and Cory Rooney sped up Audio Two's "Top Billin'", and hip hop soul had its template.
★ 6.7
Jump AroundHouse of Pain
Jump Around
1992
Cypress Hill could not write to Muggs's beat and Ice Cube passed on it; it reached number three anyway.
★ 6.6
Young Men and Fire
1992 · 333 pages
At Mann Gulch in 1949 a wildfire turned uphill and killed twelve smokejumpers and a fire guard in minutes. Maclean, past seventy, walked that Montana slope for years to learn what happened.
★ 6.4
The Last of the Mohicans
Directed by Michael Mann
1992
Michael Mann's most romantic film ends with twelve near-wordless minutes carried entirely by the score: Daniel Day-Lewis learned to live off the land for it, and the frontier looks genuinely unmapped.
★ 6.4
Show Me Love
1992
One Korg M1 preset, stripped to vocal and kick, and Beyonce was still borrowing that organ in 2022.
★ 6.4
The Secret History
1992 · 557 pages
At a Vermont college a transfer student joins five classics majors and their charismatic tutor, then learns their rite to Dionysus left a farmer dead. Dark academia has been rewriting it since.
★ 6.4
A Heart So White
1992 · 278 pages
A woman returns from her honeymoon, goes to the bathroom, and shoots herself while the family eats lunch. Marías gives the story to her nephew, an interpreter afraid to know.
★ 6.4
Plush
1992
The riff arrived in the back of a U-Haul, and DeLeo's ragtime chords carried grunge to a Grammy.
★ 6.3
End of the Road
1992
Thirteen weeks at number one, a record until Whitney broke it in early 1993, on Babyface's Boomerang ballad.
★ 6.3
So What'cha Want
1992 · From Check Your Head
Vocals barked through a karaoke microphone, Money Mark's organ underneath, the Beasties back on their own instruments at G-Son.
★ 6.3
Aladdin
Directed by Ron Clements and John Musker
1992
Robin Williams improvised for hours and the animators drew to whatever he gave them: the Genie is still the fastest thing in any Disney film, and every animated star cast since owes him.
★ 6.3
Halcyon and On and On
1992
Named for the tranquilizer the Hartnolls' mother took, with Kirsty Hawkshaw's vocal reversed and stretched across nine minutes.
★ 6.2
My Lovin' (You're Never Gonna Get It)
1992
Foster and McElroy looped a guitar figure from James Brown's "The Payback," and four voices turn refusal into swagger.
★ 6.1
Check Your Head
1992
They picked their instruments back up and built a studio with a skate ramp in it, which is roughly how the record sounds.
★ 6.1
Rooster
1992 · From Dirt
Cantrell's song for his father, a Vietnam veteran nicknamed Rooster who appears in Pellington's video; number seven on Mainstream Rock.
★ 6.1
Dirt
1992
Singer Layne Staley wrote most of it about his own heroin addiction, and the band recorded it in Los Angeles while the city was burning.
★ 6.1
Don't Sweat the Technique
1992 · From Don't Sweat the Technique
Cut at the Hit Factory for their final album together, Eric B.'s jazz loops under Rakim's most unhurried flow.
★ 6.0
The Emigrants
1992 · 240 pages
Sebald follows four émigré lives quietly undone by the twentieth century, each coming apart decades after the danger had passed. Unlabeled photographs surface throughout the prose and you read them as evidence.
★ 5.8
They Want EFXDas EFX
They Want EFX
1992
EPMD signed them off a talent show they lost, and the iggedy style swallowed hip hop for two years.
★ 5.8
Drive (REM)R.E.M.
Drive (REM)
1992 · From Automatic for the People
John Paul Jones scored the strings, Scott Litt named Queen as the model, and the lyric hands kids the wheel.
★ 5.7
Up in the Old Hotel
1992 · 716 pages
Mitchell listened to New York for decades: the regulars at McSorley's, the fishermen at Fulton Market, and Joe Gould, a Village drifter compiling a nine-million-word oral history from everything he overheard.
★ 5.7
I Have Nothing
1992 · From The Bodyguard (soundtrack)
Cut at Encore Studios in 1991, a year before the film, Houston riding a modulation most singers would refuse.
★ 5.5
Harvest Moon
1992
Ringing ears from his previous, much louder album meant Young had to play quietly, so he called the band back and made a sequel.
★ 5.4