Best Albums of 1993 (Part 2)

Before this project, I didn’t think much about how I listened to music. But looking back I’ve always been streaky and inconsistent, with long stretches of very little music at all. That seems weird to me.

My Liked playlist is the best record of this trend. When I filter by Date Added, I see streaks of a month or two when I was furiously searching for new music, and then several months might pass before I found anything new. I’m not entirely sure what I was doing between these bursts of new music - I was probably either listening to my old playlists, overplaying the new songs I’d just found, or not listening to much music at all. I’ve been streaky like that in pretty much every hobby in my life, so it makes sense.

But the weirdest thing about that inconsistency is that I know the positive effects music has on my life. When I work, for example, I know I don’t get as much done without music on. I’m distractible and bouncing around until I put on something ambient or familiar to drown out the noise. I notice when I’m not listening to music, but for one reason or another I sometimes still avoid it. Maybe I try to justify that by thinking I should be able to focus without music. Or maybe it’s just laziness, or the fact that I don’t have anything new in my playlists, or just force of habit.

I don’t really think about leisure activities as things I need to form a consistent habit around. I figure I’ll do fun stuff when I feel like it, so what’s the point of making a habit around my fun activities? Habits are dull, fun stuff should be spontaneous, right?

To my surprise, I’ve actually found that not to be the case. I’ve been listening to multiple new albums consistently for almost a year now as a part of this project, and I’ve actually found that the habit, the weekly-ish cadence of listening to new music and reflecting on what I’ve heard, has increased my enjoyment of the music I hear - not to mention the known music I also listen to from time to time. A habit has made my leisure activity even more enjoyable, and has injected zero stress into it, as I might have once feared.

I think the reason is that habits remove the “decision fatigue” involved in choosing what to do. Decision fatigue is even worse when there’s so much music to choose from. So what I’ve done, inadvertently, is created a habit of listening to something totally new to me without worrying about whether I’ll like it. This has removed all decision fatigue from the process, which lowers any residual stress that might have been involved and makes the music even more enjoyable. Consistency, even in a fun leisure activity like listening to music, has immense benefits. Good habits are fun, and I’ll have to find some more places to apply that in my life.

I have to admit, I went a little nuts this week with the 1993 albums. I just couldn’t contain myself, so there’s going to be a part 3. And three parts still won’t even cover the whole list I wanted to get through. I don’t know why 1993 seems like an overlooked year, to be honest - it’s simply loaded. We’ll see if 1994 lives up to the hype compared to this.

So now in no particular order, here are 6 more dope albums from 1993. I’ll accept further recommendations as always, but it might be similar to offering a hotdog to Joey Chestnut after he just finished an eating contest. I’m stuffed, dog.

Also part one is below, in case you missed it.