Stripped

Stripped, released by Columbia on September 6, 1993, is the fifth studio album, and the title describes the method: take the decoration off and let the songs stand. Two of its ten tracks were already in the catalogue — "Please Don't Leave Me" from Sin-Decade and "Savage Heart" from 1990's Jump the Gun — and both are revisited here in another shape. New songs such as "If It Ain't Gonna Change," "In The Minds Of The Young" and "Too Late, Too Loud" sit alongside more sparely arranged pieces like "39," "Heartbeat From Heaven" and "I'll Be There," which set the character of the record. Putting reinterpretations and new material in one sleeve is an idea the band returned to on Louder Than Ever in 2014. This is the last of the CBS/Columbia records; from Scream onward the band worked with Massacre. It closes the major-label decade that began in the mid-1980s.