Too High to Die by Meat Puppets

Too High to Die, the Meat Puppets' eighth studio album, came out on London Records on January 25, 1994, and it's the moment the Phoenix trio's weird, sun-baked mix of punk, country and psychedelia finally stumbled into the mainstream. Butthole Surfers guitarist Paul Leary produced it, and the title thumbs its nose at the Ramones' 1984 album Too Tough to Die.

Curt Kirkwood's warbling vocals and loping guitar, his brother Cris on bass and Derrick Bostrom on drums: the same old lineup, just a bit more focused, and "Backwater" rides a greasy, rolling riff into the heart of alternative radio. It helped that the Kirkwood brothers had just turned up on Nirvana's MTV Unplugged, and the band toured hard behind it, opening for Blind Melon, Soul Asylum and Stone Temple Pilots, and for Nirvana just before release. It became the most successful record they ever made.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.