Congrats to No Doubt: the Tragic Kingdom album has much-deservingly been ranked # 1 on OC Weekly’s list of the Top 20 Greatest OC Albums of All Time!
For the past 18 years, faithful readers of the OC Weekly have counted on our music section for the continuous cycle of sniffing out the local albums. It goes something like this: We search for them (yeah, we get a shit ton in the mail too), we listen to them, separate the wheat from the chaff, remind you of their release dates, champion them when they sell a bajillion copies and remind you who told you to give them a listen in the first place. Along the way, we’ve also made sure to pay tribute to the classic albums that paved the way for OC music culture as we know it. Though there are literally thousands of OC-based offerings worthy of our admiration, there are always going to be a handful of albums that immediately pop into our brain when someone asks us to rehash the best albums that define OC music and also represent both a time and place in our native sound. Love it or hate it, this is what we came up with. Without further ado, here is our list of the Top 20 Greatest Albums of All Time.–Nate Jackson
1) No Doubt , Tragic Kingdom (1995) You can’t make a Top 20 Greatest OC Albums of All Time list without mentioning this record. No Doubt is unarguably the biggest band to spawn from OC and Tragic Kingdom is their most recognizable album filled with radio hits that symbolized the FM domination of Third Wave ska. Gwen Stefani defies America’s perception of today’s Orange County woman–who isn’t always a blonde millionaire MILF wearing designer treads… oh wait. We still love you and wish we were you, Gwen! Thanks for putting OC on the map. We’ll always cherish the 90s image we have of you dressed in that red dress, holding up an orange. –Jena Ardell
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