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Released: April 1989 Charted: 13 May 1989
Tracks (UK version): (Click for codes to singles charts.) I Wanna Be Adored (9/14/91, #20 UK, #18 MR) / She Bangs the Drums (7/29/89, #34 UK, #9 MR) / Waterfall (1/11/92, #27 UK) / Don’t Stop / Bye Bye Badman / Elizabeth My Dear / (Song for My) Sugar Spun Sister / Made of Stone (3/31/89, #20 UK) / Shoot You Down / This Is the One / I Am the Resurrection (4/11/92, #33 UK)
Sales (in millions): -- US, 0.6 UK, 0.8 world
Peak: 86 US, 9 UK
Rating: 
Review: “There’s almost no precedent for the Stone Roses…their debut was a fully formed gem that gave birth to an entire genre – Brit-pop.” TL “Pop hooks [are] one thing, and dance rhythms [are] another, but it’s also important to have dat swing, you know, and the band has it.” GS The album “ushered in the era of Madchester,” AZ “an indie rock phenomenon that fused guitar-pop with drug-fueled rave and dance culture.” AMG At the time, “British youth were abandoning rock music en masse for acid-house sounds and communal raves” BN “and the charts were looking less than healthy.” AD By bringing “dance music to an audience…previously obsessed with droning guitars,” AMG the Stone Roses “almost single-handedly made British rock music hip again.” BN
Through “classic psychedelia married with punk energy and rave swagger” BN, the Roses established themselves as “postmodern English, filtering folk-rock romanticism through Joy Division and Jesus and Mary Chain hyperromanticism.” RC “The repercussions…could be heard throughout the ‘90s” AMG as the band spawned the sound of the guitar-based pop of Oasis and Blur, “gave birth to shoegazer bands like My Bloody Valentine,” RV and were “a definite precursor of grunge.” JA
Frontman Ian Brown revived “the concept of classic pop songwriting.” AMG “Quietly melodic” PK “prime ‘sixties’ harmonies” AD “owe far more to, say, Simon & Garfunkel than to New Order.” PK The lyrics “flicked at epic romance…without veering into sentimentality.” TL The album “creates it’s own world and atmosphere whilst simultaneously reminding you of almost every great sixties English group.” AD It has “the lyrical sensibilities of John Lennon and Joe Strummer, mixes in Motown rhythms, adds a dash of Sex Pistols and tops it off with a purple haze of instrumentation and production reminiscent of Jimi Hendrix.” RV “The vocal melodies are well-written and sound fresh, sincere, and inspiring. And happy, too: this is one hell of a cheerful, optimistic record.” GS “Only The Beatles ever dared exhaust so many good tunes in the space of an hour.” IB Ultimately, the album is “a crystallization of everything there is to love about the last 40 years of pop music.” RV
Guitarist John Squire establishes himself as “a new hero for a new age,” AZ deftly heading into the world of “guitar heroism without the attendant pomp and egomania.” IB His “playing is endlessly inventive but never overwhelms the songs.” IB His “layers of simple, exceedingly catchy hooks” AMG are “a thing of magic,” AZ “recalling the British Invasion while suggesting the future with their phased, echoey effects.” AMG He “lingered over chords like the Byrds’ Roger McGuinn.” TL “Drummer Alan ‘Reni’ Wren’s galloping, hiphop-influenced beats [are] a sonic infusion that became a fixture of ‘90s alt rock.” JA Along with bassist ‘Mani’ Mounfield, the two “shift from charging beat-pop to fluid funkadelic grooves, sometimes in the space of a single song.” IB They “always imply dance rhythms without overtly going into the disco,” AMG establishing themselves as “one of the tightest British rhythm sections of the time.” GS “This is as good as guitars, bass and drums can sound together, and if you don’t get it, you probably have some disease that keeps you from liking music.” IB
I Wanna Be Adored
I Wanna Be Adored is “a perfect album opener” AD “with it’s slow, slow build up [and the] impeccably played musical backing” AD of Mani’s “creeping bassline,” AMG Squire’s “waves of cool guitar hooks” AMG and Reni’s “funky drummer shuffle.” QM Through it all, Brown “Brown sings with a vitriolic verve unheard since Johnny Rotten” RV as he “reveals the band is driven by the devil to make great music. ‘I don’t need to sell my soul,’ he sings. ‘He’s already in me.’ When he wails, ‘I wanna be adored,’ the sentiment doesn’t seem like an egotistical statement from a band in its infancy as much as it is a prelude to greatness.” RV
She Bangs the Drums
On She Bangs the Drums “the ‘60s hooks and the rolling beats manage to convey the colorful, neo-psychedelic world of acid house” AMG and “wind into the rhythm inseparably” AMG while displaying “a rush of guitars not heard since The Byrds invented folk rock.” AD Waterfall is “a luminous, druggy, Byrds-style ballad” JA “with it’s delicate repeating guitar figure and it’s dramatic ending.” AD By leaning on “sixties-influenced studio gimmicks like backwards tracks and phasing,” JA
Waterfall
Made of Stone is an “atmospheric” and “heartbreaking, swoon-some classic pop rock song.” AD “The band were justly proud of this and released it as a single.” AD It “depicts the destruction of Manchester under dwindling industrialization and Margaret Thatcher’s iron fist. ‘When the streets are cold and lonely / And the cars they burn below me / Are you all alone / Are you made of stone?’” RV
Made of Stone
While every song on the album “is knocking on the door of perfection…[the epic finale I Am the Resurrection] kicks it down, taking in bubblegum, Motown, and psychedelic funk on the way to a glorious instrumental climax that’ll having you shaking your head in disbelief.” IB It takes a certain amount of arrogance for a band to claim its [sic] the second coming, let alone an upstart. The Roses pull it off with ease. Brown snarls, ‘I am the resurrection and I am the light / I couldn’t ever bring myself to hate you as I fly,’ sounding more like a villain than the messiah…By the time the band reaches its instrumental climax, it’s easy to adore the Roses.” RV
I Am the Resurrection
The band would never find a way to equal their debut. With their fame came subsequent legal battles to move from independent status to a major label. They eventually signed with Geffen and, five years after their debut, “reemerged…with the stodgy and wrongly titled Second Coming. The Stone Roses, however, remains a stellar contribution to the canon of classic debuts.” BN It is “one of the finest records of the past 30 years.” CL “Some albums really can change the world, and in 1989 this was one of them.” AZ
Resources and Related Links:
- The Stone Roses’ DMDB Encyclopedia entry
- album page on DMDB website (even more in-depth look at album)
- AMG All Music Guide review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine
- JA John Alroy, Wilson & Alroy’s Record Reviews
- AZ Amazon.com review by Chris Nickson
- BN Barnes & Noble review by Tony Fletcher
- RC Robert Christgau
- AD Adrian Denning’s Album Reviews
- IB Ink Blot Magazine review by Jesse Fahnestock
- CL Colin Larkin (1998). Virgin All-Time Top 1000 Albums. Virgin Books: London, England.
- PK Pop Kulcher 50 Greatest Rock & Roll Albums of All Time
- QM Q magazine review by Ian Gittins (October 2000 print issue)
- RV The Review “100 Greatest Albums of All Time” by Clarke Speicher (October – November 2001; Vol. 128: numbers 12-23).
- GS George Starostin reviews
- TL Time Magazine’s All-TIME 100 Albums by Josh Tyrangiel and Alan Light (11/13/06).
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