Purple by Stone Temple Pilots

Purple, the second studio album from Stone Temple Pilots, came out on Atlantic on June 7, 1994, with the title printed on the cover as a single Chinese character, and it's where the band's sound opened up. They started work on it while still touring behind their debut, Core, and Brendan O'Brien produced, pushing their grunge foundation into psychedelic rock, blues rock and even a little country.

"Big Empty" was the early one, cut on May 25, 1993, and it turned up in the 1994 film The Crow; the rest was recorded in March 1994. "Vasoline" is a woozy, stop-start riff that wriggles into your head, "Interstate Love Song" pairs a jangling guitar with a vocal that glides like it's cruising the highway, and "Big Empty" drifts from a hush into a heavy chorus. "Unglued" and "Pretty Penny", lesser-known cuts, went out as promotional singles and did well on rock charts.

Purple debuted at number 1 on the Billboard 200 and stayed on top for three weeks, selling 252,000 copies in its first week. Both "Vasoline" and "Interstate Love Song" went to the top of Mainstream Rock Tracks and peaked at number 2 on Modern Rock Tracks, with "Big Empty" making the top ten on both. Reviews on release were mixed to negative, but time has been kinder, and it's now ranked among the best albums of the 1990s and certified six times platinum. A Super Deluxe Edition marked its 25th anniversary in 2019, and in 2024 the band toured to mark the 30th, playing the whole album every night.

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