Schindler's List
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1993
More people have understood the Holocaust through this film than through any other: Spielberg took no fee, shot it in black and white, and gave the last word to the survivors.
★ 9.7
Browse by time · year
1993
Showing 162 works across all media from 1993
Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
1993
RZA negotiated a deal letting every member sign solo elsewhere, then recorded the group in a basement on deliberately cheap, muddy equipment.
★ 8.9
Doggystyle
1993
Snoop was on trial for murder while promoting it. It was the first debut album in history to enter the chart at number one.
★ 8.3
Groundhog Day
Directed by Harold Ramis
1993
The title became a phrase people use without knowing the film: a comedy about repeating one day turned into the most quietly serious argument about how to live.
★ 8.2
Jurassic Park
Directed by Steven Spielberg
1993
The moment the first dinosaur appears is the moment audiences stopped trusting their own eyes: Spielberg mixed puppets and computers so well that the seams still do not show.
★ 8.2
Midnight Marauders
1993
A synthesized voice introduces the tracks like a museum tour guide, and the cover is a grid of about seventy other rappers' faces.
★ 8.0
It Was A Good Day
1993 · From The Predator
DJ Pooh looped the Isley Brothers' Footsteps in the Dark, and Ice Cube spent four minutes on an uneventful day.
★ 7.9
Gin & JuiceSnoop Dogg
Gin & Juice
1993 · From Doggystyle
Dr. Dre produced it, George McCrae supplied the sample, and Snoop's unhurried drawl became the West Coast blueprint.
★ 7.8
Protect Ya Neck
1993 · From Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)
Eight MCs, a beat RZA scrapped and rebuilt, and a 12-inch the group pressed themselves before any label would.
★ 7.7
Heart-Shaped Box
1993 · From In Utero
Albini recorded it at Pachyderm in a Minnesota winter, and Scott Litt later remixed it to lift Cobain's vocal.
★ 7.6
Who Am I (What's My Name)
1993 · From Doggystyle
Dre stacked Atomic Dog over Parliament and Funkadelic, and Snoop's debut single walked straight into the top ten.
★ 7.6
MTV Unplugged in New York
1993
Cobain asked for lilies and candles on the set, refused to play the hits, and was dead five months later.
★ 7.5
Keep Ya Head Up
1993
A Zapp groove under the Five Stairsteps hook, dedicated to Latasha Harlins, and rap's warmest tribute to Black women.
★ 7.4
All Apologies
1993 · From MTV Unplugged in New York
Lori Goldston's cello beside Cobain at the November 1993 Unplugged taping, months before his death, apology turned farewell.
★ 7.3
Dazed and Confused
Directed by Richard Linklater
1993
Nothing happens and that is the entire point: Linklater catches the last day of school in 1976 so exactly that people who were not there remember it anyway.
★ 7.3
Insane in the Brain
1993 · From Black Sunday
A diss aimed at Chubb Rock, by B-Real's account, over a squealing hook DJ Muggs still won't explain.
★ 7.2
93 'Til InfinitySouls of Mischief
93 'Til Infinity
1993 · From 93 'til Infinity
A-Plus flipped Billy Cobham's Heather into a beat he made in high school, and Oakland never sounded calmer.
★ 7.1
There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America.
First Inaugural Address of Bill Clinton · 1993
Award Tour
1993 · From Midnight Marauders
Q-Tip flipped a Weldon Irvine bassline, Trugoy took the hook, and the chorus name-checks cities from New York to Tokyo.
★ 7.0
That's what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.
Dazed and Confused · 1993
Passin' Me By
1993 · From Bizarre Ride II The Pharcyde
J-Swift looped Quincy Jones and Weather Report while four Pharcyde MCs traded verses about being turned down.
★ 7.0
Exile in Guyville
1993
Phair wrote it as a song-by-song answer to Exile on Main St., in the same running order, from home cassettes she had made alone.
★ 6.9
Sound Of Da Police
1993
The siren is KRS-One's own voice, over Showbiz's loop of a Grand Funk Railroad cover cut at D&D.
★ 6.9
The Wonder Years · 1993
Siamese Dream
1993
Billy Corgan played nearly all the guitar and bass himself, and some songs carry dozens of layered guitar tracks stacked on top of each other.
★ 6.7
Mary Jane's Last Dance
1993 · From Greatest Hits
Originally called Indiana Girl, until Petty decided he couldn't sing that line; Stan Lynch's last sessions with the Heartbreakers.
★ 6.7
Linger
1993
Stephen Street produced it, the Duke Quartet supplied the strings, and O'Riordan wrote the melody at her audition.
★ 6.5
The Fugitive
Directed by Andrew Davis
1993
The train wreck was staged for real because it was cheaper than faking it: a surgeon convicted of his wife's murder runs, and Tommy Lee Jones's marshal is better company than the hero.
★ 6.4
Dazed and Confused · 1993
Mr. Jones
1993
T-Bone Burnett replaced the band's own drummer with session man Denny Fongheiser, and Duritz got the fame he wished for.
★ 6.2
In the Name of the Father
Directed by Jim Sheridan
1993
Daniel Day-Lewis plays a man convicted of a bombing he had nothing to do with: the Guildford Four case, filmed while the wound in Britain was still fresh.
★ 6.2
Dreams (The Cranberries)
1993
A debut single written about her first love, with Stephen Street producing and Mike Mahoney's voice climbing wordlessly out the top.
★ 6.1
Ordinary World
1993 · From Duran Duran (The Wedding Album)
Three days to finish the music in Cuccurullo's home studio, and an elegy for a dead friend became their comeback.
★ 6.1
W. E. B. Du Bois
Biography of a Race, 1868-1919
1993 · 715 pages
Du Bois took the first Harvard doctorate given a Black American, wrote The Souls of Black Folk, and helped found the NAACP. Lewis won Pulitzers for this volume and for its sequel.
★ 6.0
Check Yo Self
1993 · From The Predator
Predator-era Cube with Das EFX in tow; the remix rode the Message beat to number one R&B.
★ 6.0
The Radicalism of the American Revolution
1993 · 447 pages
Wood argues the American Revolution was as radical as any in history: it dissolved a world of patronage, deference, and rank, and produced a society of equal, money-minded, self-interested citizens.
★ 6.0
Carlito's Way
Directed by Brian De Palma
1993
De Palma's best film with Pacino, and it took people twenty years to notice: an ex-convict tries to go straight in 1975 New York, and the Grand Central chase is a masterclass.
★ 5.9
Shoop
1993
Built on a Sweet Inspirations sample, with Salt and Pepa flipping the gaze and riding it to number four.
★ 5.9
Murder Was the Case
1993 · From Doggystyle
A Faustian bargain told in the first person, later expanded into an eighteen-minute film Dre co-directed with Fab Five Freddy.
★ 5.8
A Bronx Tale
Directed by Robert De Niro
1993
Chazz Palminteri turned down large offers for his one-man play until someone would let him star: De Niro directed his first film out of it, about a boy with two fathers competing.
★ 5.8
I Get Around
1993
Shock G's beat was meant for Digital Underground, and by his account Shakur wrote Shock's verse for him.
★ 5.8
All I Wanna DoSheryl Crow
All I Wanna Do
1993
Crow found Wyn Cooper's poem 'Fun' in a Pasadena used bookstore and sang it into a Grammy.
★ 5.8
True Romance
Directed by Tony Scott
1993
Tarantino sold this script to pay for Reservoir Dogs and Tony Scott shot it with real affection: a comic book clerk and a call girl leave Detroit with the wrong suitcase.
★ 5.7
How We Die
1993 · 278 pages
There is little dignity in how we die, the surgeon Nuland writes, and he shows why: what heart failure, stroke, cancer, and Alzheimer's do to a body. Dignity belongs to the life before.
★ 5.7
El MatadorLos Fabulosos Cadillacs
El Matador
1993
Cianciarulo set a hunted revolutionary over candombe and murga, and the 1994 VMAs gave it Viewer's Choice.
★ 5.6
The Field of Cultural Production
1993 · 322 pages
Genius does not explain art, Bourdieu argues. Value is manufactured by the whole apparatus around the work: critics, dealers, publishers, rival artists. In this economy refusing money is precisely what buys prestige.
★ 5.5
Any Time, Any PlaceJanet Jackson
Any Time, Any Place
1993
Fingersnaps, a saxophone and rolling thunder from Jam and Lewis, with Jackson singing desire at a whisper.
★ 5.5
She Don't Use Jelly
1993 · From Transmissions from the Satellite Heart
A decade underground, then Beavis and Butt-Head featured the video and the Lips had their only American hit.
★ 5.4
Whatta ManSalt-N-Pepa
Whatta Man
Salt-N-Pepa and En Vogue
1993
Linda Lyndell's 1968 Volt single became the hook, with En Vogue singing it and Salt-n-Pepa praising a good man.
★ 5.3
Rape Me
1993 · From In Utero
Written on acoustic guitar in 1991, recorded by Albini at Pachyderm, and stocked by Walmart under a changed title.
★ 5.2
Hip Hop HoorayNaughty by Nature
Hip Hop Hooray
1993
KayGee looped James Brown and Peter Gabriel, and Spike Lee filled the Brooklyn video with Tupac and Queen Latifah.
★ 5.1
Lodi Dodi
1993 · From Doggystyle
Dre put music under Doug E. Fresh and Slick Rick's a cappella original, and Snoop made the story his.
★ 5.0
Fields of Gold
1993
Barley fields outside Sting's Wiltshire house, Kathryn Tickell's Northumbrian smallpipes, and a promise meant to last a lifetime.
★ 4.9
Workers
An Archaeology of the Industrial Age
1993 · 400 pages
Fifty thousand men climb out of a Brazilian gold pit on wooden ladders, caked in mud. Salgado spent six years across twenty-six countries photographing manual labor as the machines took it away.
★ 4.9
I'd Do Anything for Love (But I Won't Do That)
1993 · From Bat Out of Hell II: Back into Hell
Twelve minutes on the album, and the guide vocal Lorraine Crosby sang under a pseudonym is the one you hear.
★ 4.9
Dreamlover
1993
Eight weeks at number one on a loop from the Emotions' Blind Alley, with Carey sounding weightless above it.
★ 4.9
Vs.
1993
The band refused to make videos for any of it, and it sold nearly a million copies in five days anyway.
★ 4.8
Chattahoochee
1993
Keith Stegall produced it, Jim McBride supplied the title line, and Jackson water-skied through the video in red cowboy boots.
★ 4.8
Come UndoneDuran Duran
Come Undone
1993 · From Duran Duran (The Wedding Album)
One drum loop, a phone call that brought Nick Rhodes over, and Tessa Niles unleashing the diva on the chorus.
★ 4.7
Philadelphia
Directed by Jonathan Demme
1993
The first major studio film to take AIDS seriously, aimed squarely at people who had not: a lawyer sues the firm that fired him, and Bruce Springsteen wrote the opening song.
★ 4.7
Tombstone
Directed by George P. Cosmatos
1993
Val Kilmer's Doc Holliday is the reason people keep rewatching it: the film lost its director a month into shooting and still produced the most quotable western since the sixties.
★ 4.6
Shine
1993
A basement demo meant only for publishers, until an Atlanta college station put it into rotation and Atlantic came calling.
★ 4.6
Where I'm From
1993
Two Melvin Van Peebles samples anchor it, and the trio spends the whole track naming exactly what shaped them.
★ 4.5
93 'til Infinity
1993
They were teenagers when they made it, rapping fast over a Billy Cobham loop about doing very little on a warm Oakland afternoon.
★ 4.5
Hero
1993
Written for Gloria Estefan until Mottola heard the demo; Carey thought it schmaltzy and took it to number one.
★ 4.5
Runaway Train
1993
Pirner wrote it during a breakdown, and Tony Kaye's video named missing children, region by region, until some came home.
★ 4.5
You know, one of the tragedies of real life is that there is no background music.
The Shipping News · 1993
Possession
1993
McLachlan wrote it in the voice of her own obsessive letter writers, and Marchand makes it sound tender.
★ 4.3
When Can I See You
1993
Babyface stripped back to acoustic guitar, won his first performing Grammy, and landed his highest solo placing at number four.
★ 4.2
The SignAce of Base
The Sign
1993
A synth flute over a Banbarra drum sample, cut at Cheiron in Stockholm, and Billboard's biggest single of 1994.
★ 4.2
The River of Dreams
1993 · From River of Dreams
Joel woke with the melody, tried to wash it away in the shower, and gave in to gospel.
★ 4.2
The Power of Love
1993
A Jennifer Rush ballad from 1984, remade by David Foster, and Dion's first American number one, four weeks running.
★ 4.0
All That She WantsAce of Base
All That She Wants
1993
Minor key at Linn Berggren's insistence, a demo titled Mr. Ace, and a number one in thirteen countries.
★ 3.9
The Sandlot
Directed by David Mickey Evans
1993
It has become the film American men quote at each other about being eleven: a new kid in 1962 learns baseball on a vacant lot, and the stakes are imaginary and total.
★ 3.9
Speech at the University of Texas, April 7, 1993 · 1993
A Bronx Tale · 1993
Jurassic Park · 1993