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The Shins Released Debut Album “Oh, Inverted World” 20 Years Ago Today

20 years ago today, the Shins released debut album Oh, Inverted World. You gotta hear this one song—it will change your life, we swear. Read our MAGNET Classics on the album that came next:

And as a bonus, MAGNET is happy to bring you a brand-new video from Surfer Blood, covering Oh, Inverted World track “Know Your Onion.” Says Surfer Blood’s John Paul Pitts of the Shins, “When I was younger I listened to Oh, Inverted World on repeat for a solid year. Most of my experience with music up until that point involved whatever was on FM radio, so when I heard the Shins for the first time it blew my mind. It showed me that there was a whole world of music outside of the extremely narrow genre of late ’90s radio rock. The melodies and vocal production would definitely become an influence when I started working on Astro Coast years later, and ‘Know Your Onion’ was always a stand-out track for me. Cathartic, triumphant and melancholy all at once.”

Fun fact: Guided By Voices headlined both MAGNET’s 10th-anniversary show in 2003 and our Turns 21 show in 2014; the 2003 show featured the Shins in the second slot, while the 2014 show featured Surfer Blood in the second slot. You never asked for the truth, but we owed that to you.