ITT: /mu/ in 1999
I'M BLUE
>>130615307Blink 182 sucks!!
>>130615307this year was when music died forever. no coming back from this stuff.>Britney>Feminem>Limp Dickzit>Creed
great, RHCP are back. just when we all hoped they were done forever.
not a real r&b thrush but good enough to fake it ("Heartbreaker", "Bliss") *
>>130615455After nine years this is getting real old, Mariah. You were supposed to last 1-2 albums and then fuck off ala Debbie and Paula.
>>130615307that new Simpsons last night really sucked, I'm going to write a wall of text about it on Usenet. hopefully this is the last season.
>>130615348don't think that's a picture of her from '99 though
Since he was already marked for death with Menudo, don't assume his rebirth is a one-shot but at the same time don't try and make him into some kind of Latin-pride poster boy, either--slicked-up workout rhythms and romantic pap were tokens of progress circa Desi Arnaz and Xavier Cugat. In a country where Spanish is a second language, all they amount to are the reactionary strategems of yet one more crappy pop star. C
>>130615544that guy fucks asses
horrorshow in stereo--they mean it, man ("Wisconsin Death Trip", "I'm With Stupid") *
>>130615437they were only good on the debut, after that it just became schtick
>>130615307holy fuck. check out this new kid the Allman Brothers Band just brought in as the guitarist. Dickey Betts and Derek Trucks in the same band. wew ladhttps://youtu.be/ECnLq30dP6c?si=HH2fqO1sT17F-zdM&t=1291
>>130615307Just got this awesome job at the world trade center
Dammit, Mom, you got on the phone and fucked up my Internet connection again.
Now we can FINALLY party like it's 1999!!!>but, but ... what about Y2K? should I be afraid? should I be very afraid?
hey who's going to this Woodstock '99 thing with me?
Right, you knew already. But though I pray I hear solo Y render the title song hopeful instead of smug, I know that in my head I'll still hear N harmonizing insipidly behind. And when S explains how when he was young old people were wrong and now that he's old young people are wrong and then disses "overfed talking heads" without ever once acknowledging overfed singing exhead C to his immediate left, I imagine some computer nerd with more brains than sense joining the arms race just to get even. Still a menace--and still conceited about it. C
I doubt the hyperactive little imp sat down and "composed" here. There are no reports he even strove to unify à la DJ Shadow. And Endtroducing . . . is the reference point nevertheless. It's because Moby still loves song form that he elects to sample Alan Lomax field recordings rather than garage-sale instrumental and spoken-word LPs. But though the blues and gospel and more gospel testify not just for song but for body and spirit, they wouldn't shout anywhere near as loud and clear without the mastermind's ministrations--his grooves, his pacing, his textures, his harmonies, sometimes his tunes, and mostly his grooves, which honor not just dance music but the entire rock tradition it's part of. Although the futurist's dream of Blind Willie Johnson that opens this complete work was some kind of hit in England, here it'll be strictly for aesthetes. We've earned it. A+
RIP Grunge. Nu Metal is the new thing.
>>130616044(and that's not a good thing)
>>130616030It's bad 90s TV commercial music.
311 done it again!!https://youtu.be/KWo-02Hsab4?si=2Fm8oozUwiOXvQIs
>>130615473oh well at least the end is getting close now that some new young pop sluts have risen
PS1 -core
In which Kathleen Hanna does the unprecedented--if not, apparently, impossible--and reinvents punk again. The first time seems a snap in retrospect, a straightforward seizure of formal strategy and emotional stance for grrrl rage and female discovery-between Hanna's instinct for the ditty and her big pipes, Bikini Kill was an instant sure shot. But she got too old for that, and maybe a little too fulfilled as well. So having passed through her woebegone Julie Ruin project, she gets together with two arty girlfriends and makes deceptively simple music about her arty life. Topics include aesthetic theory, millenarian hippies, John Cassavetes, the pleasures of the Metro Card, who put the ram in the rama-lama-ding-dong, and "Hot Topic" ("Nina Simone!" "Ann Peebles!" "The Slits!" "James Baldwin!" "Mia X!" "Billy Tipton!" "Shirley Muldowney!"). Dynamic synthbeats. Spirited choruses. Even some trick guitar. A
Madonna next door (". . . Baby One More Time," "Soda Pop"). *
>>130615307Fuck Korn and Bizkit. This is what you little zoomers unironically listen to? Take me back to '84 when rock meant something.
>>130616261she could actually sing but was forced to do that retarded baby voice
>>130616248>In which Kathleen Hanna does the unprecedented--if not, apparently, impossible--and reinvents punk againwhy do critics not want to let punk go? it had its time and that was 1977 to 84. it's over, guys. accept it.
new age fuck fiends ("Scar Tissue", "Purple Stain") *
Going to Woodstock next month and I'm really excited. Think I might rape a woman there idk.
What a shitshow of a year this was. Every album posted in here is some auditory torment I'd hoped to never be reminded of.
Thump, bump, hump ("Final Warning," "No. 1 Fan"). **
>>130616464i think about four people in 2026 still remember that Ginuwine existed.
Nas covers his ahzz. If in one song he's "wetting" (lovely word) "any nigga" (another) his fellow playa Scarface doesn't like, in another he's fomenting revolution: "Combine all the cliques and make one gang." Yeah sure. The question is how convincing he is, and only two themes ring true: the bad ones, revenge and money. His idea of narrative detail is to drop brand names like Bret Easton Ellis; his idea of morality is everybody dies. Ghostface Killah's "Wildflower" is far more brutal than the she-cheated-while-I-was-playin "Undying Love," and far less bloody; Biggie's "Playa Hater" is far more brutal than the Wu-Puff cameo "Hate Me Now," and far more humorous. Blame his confusion and bad faith on a conscience that's bothered him ever since he bought into the Suge Knight ethos. I've never met a ho in my life. This kind of sellout starts with a "W." B-
Cool CD I bought :D
>>130616579one's hoping you bought that for your 9 yo niece
"Guns, money, pussy, cars, drugs, jewels, clothes, brawls, killings, buroughs, buildings, diseases, stress, the D's." And then: "Straight reality." Yeah, right. B-
>>130616597>>130616567not music
>>130616329ditto Manson he sucks too
After six fucking years, genius-by-acclamation Trent Reznor delivers double-hoohah, every second remixed till it glistens like broken glass on a prison wall. Is the way he takes his petty pain out on the world a little, er, immature for a guy who's pushing 35? Never mind, I'm told--just immerse in the music. So I do. "Dream job: emperor," it says. "More fun than death by injection." B
Homage to Neil Young's Hawks and Doves? Who knows?
>>130615307Just got a new job at the World Trade Center. Wish me luck, guys.
I don't want to call McCartney the most complacent rock and roller in history. The competition's way too stiff, especially up around his age, and anyway, I'm not judging his inner life, only his musical surface. From womp-bom-a-loo-mom to monkberry moon delight, his rockin' soul and pop lyricism always evinced facility, not feeling, and his love songs were, as he so eloquently put it, silly. This piece of starting-over escapism isn't like that at all, as, robbed of the wife he loved with all his heart, McCartney returns to the great joy of his adolescence in a literally death-defying formal inversion. So light it's almost airborne, Gene Vincent's "Blue Jean Baby" opens; so wild it's almost feral, Elvis Presley's "Party" closes. Some familiar titles are merely redone or recast, which beyond some Chuck Berry zydeco gets him nowhere. But arcana like Fats Domino's "Coquette" and Carl Perkins's "Movie Magg" could have been born yesterday, three originals dole out tastes of strange, and on two successive slow sad ones, the Vipers' hung-up obscurity "No Other Baby' and Ricky Nelson's lachrymose hit "Lonesome Town," the impossibility of the project becomes the point. Teenagers know in some recess of their self-involvement that their angst will have a next chapter, but McCartney's loneliness is permanent. Not incurable--the music is a kind of new life. But its fun is a spiritual achievement the man's never before approached. A-
>>130616893>it only took Paul the loss of his oneitis to actually release a human album with human feelings as opposed to entertainment product>he didn't even do this for that other person he was close to who died before their time
>>130616893Nobody cares that 60s Nick Carter lost his wife and is sad, we have current Nick Carter anyway.
Anybody who believes kids are naive enough to take this record literally is right to fear them, because that's the kind of adult teenagers hate. Daring moralizers to go on the attack while explicitly--but not (fuck you, dickwad) unambiguously--declaring itself a satiric, cautionary fiction, this cause célèbre runs short of ideas only toward the end, when Dre's whiteboy turns provocation into the dull sensationalism fools think is his whole story. Over an hour his cadence gets wearing, too. But he flat-out loves to rhyme--"seizure"/"T-shirt," "eyeballs"/"Lysol"/"my fault," "BM"/"GM"/"be him"/"Tylenol PM"/"coliseum," "Mike D"/"might be"--and you have to love the way he slips in sotto voce asides from innocent bystanders. Sticking nine-inch nails through his eyelids, flattening a black bully with a four-inch broom, reminding his conscience/producer about Dee Barnes, watching helplessly as an abused Valley Girl OD's on his shrooms, cajoling his baby daughter Hailey into helping him get rid of her mom's body, he shows more comic genius than any pop musician since--Loudon Wainwright III? A-
>>130616975>A minusthis deserved a C plus at most
>>130616975probably the single worst album of '99. the atomic bombings of Japan, the Holocaust, and the Cambodian killing fields combined didn't do as much destruction as this album.
Boy did this look like some rock-star bullshit when it happened--Clapton, McLachlan, Richards, Hynde, Nicks, Chicks, oy. All that was missing was Carlos Santana. Only it turned into rock-star bullshit in the best sense--the songcraft and tasty licks to which the '60s-turned-'70s have long been reduced suffused with their full complement of reassuring meaningfulness and congenial noblesse oblige. Crow's unairbrushed enthusiasm bridges the generations, and when she gets too bland anyway a fellow professional steps in to reaffirm our shared fallibility. As always, the man called Richards is especially disarming in this role. They mean us well, why not? It ain't love, but it ain't bad. A-
Ignore the porn-movie cover except insofar as it conveys terror. These guys are so frightened of females that they turn down sure sex from one hussy on grounds of name-dropping and reject another for being too quick with the zipper. There's no macho camouflage--girlophobia is their great subject. And boy, have they worked up some terrific defenses. If preemptive jealousy doesn't do the trick, there's always suicide, or abduction by aliens. Yet note it well--because they're out front about their little problem, "Going Away to College" is the love song the Descendents put Green Day on earth to inspire. A-
>>130617187very very overrated 4/10 album
I like teenpop fine, but please, one song at a time. And since teenpop likes this glamorous femme quartet, individual songs are all a reasonable grownup would expect. Uh-uh. Lyrics are the usual problem--if there's a quotable quote here, I haven't noticed it. But that may just be because the multivalent harmonies, suavely irregular beats, and, not incidentally, deep-seated self-respect have been keeping me busy ever since I heard through the visuals. B+
Unlike three virgins ("Goodbye Earl," "Sin Wagon," "Ready To Run"). ***
>>130617310If I pull this up on Youtube, I ain't scrolling down to the comment section any time soon. Forget it. I'm not that dumb.
ROB RITCHIE IS A RICH KID FRAUD FROM UPSTATE MICHIGAN AND THE ONLY REASON ANYONE GOES TO SEE HIM LIVE IS HIS MIDGET BUDDY
"Turn the rap game into WCW" ("Blackout," "Run 4 Cover") ***
give their image credit for having a sound ("Re-Arranged", "N 2 Gether Now") *
These crazy fukkkers are gonna take metal by storm just watch
>>130617431Took that long to get to it?
No more Missy Nice Girl ("Busa Rhyme," "Smooth Chick"). ***
>>130617480wait how's she holding a smart phone in her hand in 1999?
PSYCHIC SPIES FROM CHINA TRYNNA...
>>130615676>>130617456boy nu metal aged so poorly compared to the classic 80s stuff
Surveying the world from a temporary star ("Then the Morning Comes," "I Just Wanna See"). ***
Rather than hating playas, she's bored with them. Between Aretha and Lauryn and the sister who knocked on the door and just by being sincere convinced Mary she'd had Mary's man's baby, all that she can say is that she's ready to love someone serious and walk away from anyone who isn't. Unless you count Bennie and the Jets, her pop allies don't do all that much for her song sense, which is why her live album is still where to begin. But two more like this and she'll be ready for another. A girl who can come out of a Diane Warren song with no symptoms of soul death has performed a miracle that defied Al Green. A-
>>130617581the official band of Nickelodeon also aged a bit poorly no matter how nostalgic it could be being reminded of being 11 and going down the freeway in your mom's Caravan with TTMC in the cassette player
For any Upper West Side showbiz kid, musical comedy is mother's milk, more "natural" than the rude attack of rock or the polite confessional of folk. And having gone mega, Fiona was autonomous enough to want it that way. With crucial help from Jon Brion, she's got the Richard Rodgers/Kurt Weill part down, and will surely tackle the Dorothy Fields/Lorenz Hart part later. Meanwhile, confessional attacks like "A Mistake" and "Get Gone" will do. Webber & Sondheim, watch out. A-
>>130617724>I wuz raeped
>>130617709>car cassette player>1999what kind of broke backwards poorfags were your family?
>>130617581I remember that bad I think from the MADD assemblies in middle school. Or maybe it was another one. You know that assemblies at school where they showed you gore to try to get you to not drive drunk and then you ended up driving drunk anyways?
>>130617724>For any Upper West Side showbiz kid, musical comedy is mother's milk, more "natural" than the rude attack of rock or the polite confessional of folkAnd that, kids, is why Steve Lawrence was always ass and AIDS.
"Genie in a Bottle" was such a dazzlingly clever piece of teen self-exploration cum sexploitation that it seemed the better part of valor to hope it was a fluke. But this was avoidance--like LeAnn and unlike Britney, Christina already has "adult" grit and phrasing down pat, and so threatens to join Gloria, Mariah, Celine, and LeAnn herself in the endless parade of Diane Warren-fueled divas-by-fiat hitting high notes and signifying less than nothing. "What a Girl Wants" is clever, too, but in a far less ingratiating way--like its two-hour promotional video writ small, it raises the question of how this ruthlessly atypical young careerist can presume to advise girls not cursed with her ambition, and the fear that some of them will make her a role model regardless. Give me Left Eye any day. C+
softening it a little up for their younger demographic, sexing it up a little for their own peace of mind ("I Want It That Way," "Larger Than Life") **
if only it promised as much for the future of rock leftism as it did the future of rock guitar ("Guerrilla Radio", "Calm Like a Bomb") *
>>130618041Tom Morello is a meme guitarist.
>>130617906most people forget that WAGW on the album is a totally different song than the version they usually hear which which was a remake from 2001
Refreshing for white guys, especially white guys as dumb as these two, to complain about the slave owner on the dollar bill--simpleminded, but an act of cultural nonconformity nonetheless. Cool to give away a special-offer CD where you rap over stolen gangsta tracks, too. But when a real gangsta's bitch fucks his homey he kills everybody in sight. These kiss-offs just kill the girl, every chance they get. And though they claim clown, they rarely get funnier than "I'd cut my head off but then I would be dead," and that on the cut everybody uses to prove how dumb they are. Personally, I think saying fuck 93 times in one song is a riot. Tell Fatboy Slim the news. C+
>>130616424>the horrifying reminder of Flea's junk flapping around at Woodstock '99
>>130617517A lot of '99 releases aged like old milk after relistening to them. I mean, you had to be there I guess.
>>130616424>I'LL MAKE IT TO THE MOON EVEN IF I HAVE TO CRAWLi love that line
Sound there, context vanished ("Stacked Actor," "Generator"). *
>>130618274>HEY IT'S ME, JENNY FROM THE BLOCK XD
Dogs can't leave that woman alone ("Heaven Only Knows," "My B******," "Love Is Blind"). **
>>130618377yeah they lost it in a hurry and this album already sounded stupidly outdated for '99
just like you they are lonely too ("Silly Ho," "Unpretty") ***
>>130618409back after half a decade and for sure they're pushing 30 by now and sound chiller and more adult than on albums 1 and 2.
What's hard to get used to here, and what's also freshest and perhaps best, is how Corin and Carrie's voices intertwine--even reading the booklet it's hard to keep track of who's saying what to whom about what, as if they'd fallen in love with (or to) the Velvets' "Murder Mystery." Not that meanings would be crystalline in any case, or that they should be. With Cadallaca an outlet for Corin's girlish ways, S-K emerges as a diary of adulthood in all its encroaching intricacy. I mean, the guitars don't crunch like they used to either, and that's the very reason "Get Up" sounds like death and desire at the same time. The reason "The Size of Our Love" sounds like death, on the other hand, is that sometimes love is death. Nobody ever said maturity would be fun and games. A
tough-guyisms so steeped in convention they disappear into the bounce ("Drop It Like It's Hot," "Tha Block Is Hot," "F*** Tha World") **
If only Esther Phillips had written her own songs, she would have sung worse ones ("I've Committed Murder," "Caligula"). **
Goodnight sweet princess of ill-timed Downbeat editorials.
Put it this way--two decades after "What'd I Say," Ray Charles's shtick was a lot tireder ("Hot Wit U," "Undisputed"). **
>>130618554You do realize that Charles was already in his tenth year of recording when that song came out, right? Also he was pushing 50 by the time period reference while Prince is just 40 here.
Our lady of terrible elevator music jazz strikes again.
Goodnight Mitch Miller's favorite hand puppet. You were never quite the new Sinatra for the '50s he envisioned, but you tried. Kind of.
It's a New Millennium, but he's Still S.L.I.M.E. How Eminem survived all the misogyny conditioning to grow into the sensitive spouse we know today I'll never understand. A "family man" when he's explaining why he fled the 'hood, on the very next track Dre drips contempt for the wife he's dogging and the other husbands' wives he's sodomizing--apparently because his real-life wife told him that would be commercial, rendering him a liar more ways than Eminem himself could comprehend. For an hour, with time out for some memorable Eminem tracks, Dre degrades women every way he can think of, all of which involve his dick ("the whole eight," as this master of poetic license puts it). Best friend S. Dogg, bad speller Kurupt, and Dat 'Ho Ms. Roq are among the hangers-on who'll take his (really Eminem's) money when (and if) he writes the check. And just when you thought it was safe to discard your vomit bag he goes out on a tearjerker about a dead homey. Wottan innovator. C
>2 hour long Nine Inch Nails albumshan't be listening
>>130618724yeah i hate CD bloat too
I am born.
>>130618790See >>130616058
In the year rock died again, what should come storming back but metal--d/b/a "hard" or "loud" rock and, as Syracuse demonstrated, uglier than ever. Yet these God-fearing grunge babies sound falser than rape-inciting Limp Bizkit, abuse-tripping Static-X, party animals Buckcherry, or even world-dance Days of the New. Because their songs address universals, they don't debase women, a plus. But their spirituality is as sodden as their sonics. I mean, it's not as if familial oppression isn't real. It's the main thing that turns the hard and loud into truth-seekers and revenge-seekers both. So after years of Marilyn Manson lies, young bands seem to have found a psychic space where such themes open up the musical imagination. By contrast, these guys are still in denial, bellowing regressive circumlocutions to drown out the truth inside. Which is what? Maybe lust. C
For years Cornell struggled to claim the class rage and overgrown-adolescent angst that is every metalman's birthright--only in Soundgarden's last years did he find the macho muscle to fully inhabit that role. Now, as if to prove he can't be satisfied, he sets his solo sights on the manly empathy and world-weary remorse of the big-rock balladeer. Here's hoping he never gets there. C+
>>130618832Stick to voicing cartoons, dear.
Hill's Shania move comes down so far on the wrong side of Bryan Adams it's a wonder she doesn't pop out of her fancy black lingerie--great color choice, gal, no grass stains. Back in the boudoir, she poses for photos, then carefully removes said lingerie so as to "make love all night long." The drums wham-bam her promises home. The guitars make noise without having any fun. How poetic. How precisely what Tim McGraw deserves. C+
https://youtu.be/ub747pprmJ8?t=10&si
Back in 1999, I remember watching non-stop coverage of Woodstock '99 on Much Music Canada. That was almost 30 years ago. Fuck. They should do a Woodstock 2029. https://youtu.be/JOn5DhFRyZY
>>130615339Always have and always will
>>130615307Future classic right here
Thanks Granny Ruth, though Ella's power level you have never quite attained.
Bot thread
>>130622327wasn't she Rakim's aunt or something?
>>130618949See >>130616618
