The Get Up Kids – Something to Write Home About [Vagrant] – 21 September 1999
In the early to mid-1990s, Midwestern emo was still largely a jagged thing, an identifiable descendant of the “Revolution Summer” post-hardcore sound from which it drew inspiration. In the late 1990s, however, a new crop of bands decided to give the genre a more mainstream-friendly makeover. Leading the charge was Kansas City five-piece the Get Up Kids, who plugged emo’s boy-chases-girl lyrical tropes into a Weezer/Rentals-esque power-pop template. Needless to say, this softer-edged sound soon took roost, engendering the generation of Fall Out Boys and Girls that currently dominates the charts.
However, in hindsight, it’s quite clear that the Get Up Kids didn’t just do it first; they also did it best. From the opening pick-scrape of “Holiday” to the hushed closing of “I’ll Catch You”, Something to Write Home About ably captures the excitement, uncertainty, and trepidation of young love without embracing misogyny or veering too far into the realm of slam book cliché. Conversations get heated, feelings get hurt, hearts get poured out over telephone lines, and all the while, the band maintains a bouncy exuberance, filtering the energy of punk rock through a tightly focused pop lens.
Growing up in the endless suburbs of the Midwest, I spent a lot of time going to punk rock shows at YMCAs, churches, and community centers. Occasionally, a savvy sound guy would play this album in between sets and the result was always the same: A roomful of self-conscious kids letting down their guard and shamelessly singing along. I still can’t listen to “Action and Action” without wanting to do the same. Something to write home about, indeed. – Mehan Jayasuriya
Tori Amos – To Venus and Back [Atlantic] – 21 September 1999
Tori Amos released this double album just over a year after the impressive From the Choirgirl Hotel, where she brought more complex, electronic arrangements to a sound still governed by the piano. Venus: Orbiting was intended as a b-side release, but new song after new song found its way into the studio, and Amos scrapped the original plan. The results were mixed.
Whispy, flitting songs like the single “Concertina” mingled with gorgeous ballads like “Josephine” and “1000 Oceans”, halfway-theres like opener “Bliss”, the tentative “Lust”, and tropical storms like “Datura”. Sophisticated melodies were largely obscured by the singer’s efforts to atmospherically convey an imagined sojourn on the planet Venus.
The real star of the show is the second disc, Venus: Still Orbiting , a live collection from 1998’s Plugged tour, where a diverse sampling of Amos’ first decade really showcases her power and influence as a songwriter. A grown-up rendition of “Cornflake Girl” shares space with riveting versions of “Cloud on My Tongue” (both tracks from Under the Pink) and the orphan stunner “Cooling”.
The pairing of these bold, energetic performances with the nebulous outerspace meanderings of the first disc makes for a strange combination, with the profundity of tracks like “Bliss” sometimes entirely swept away by overbearing effects. Still, the creative juices were flowing at a rate fans haven’t seen since, and the creations themselves displayed Amos’s peerless ability as a composer and performer, even if her experimentation often served more as a distraction than as a sign of innovation. – Liz Colville
Creed – Human Clay [Wind-up] – 28 September 1999
The two biggest-selling rock acts of 1999, Limp Bizkit and Creed, are veritable punchlines in 2009, proponents of booming me-against-the-world post-grunge solipsism that appeals to an ever-narrowing, eternally receding arena-rock audience. Unlike the Bizkit, who raged in the name of locker-room profanity and locker-door profundity, Creed sought inspiration from a higher power. From the ecumenical name to the ersatz-Dali album art, Creed oozed a platitudinous spirituality, albeit one vague enough to gain massive radio play and move millions of units. In fact, Human Clay went on to sell 11 million albums, despite widespread critical drubbings.
Of course, what do critics know? In the case of Human Clay, it turns out quite a bit. Creed’s first album, 1997’s cheaply-produced My Own Prison, issued on the then independent upstart Wind-up Records, was an out-of-nowhere mega-hit. It had a couple of modestly gratifying, derivative but listenable cuts. But on Human Clay, the budget was upped, and so was the grandiosity. This album had to sound huge, gigantic, gargantuan, as gargantuan as the momentous supernal themes tackled in the lyrics. However, the vocals are pompous and self-important, the music clumsy and over-engineered, and worst of all, the hooks non-existent.
Human Clay remains a dreadful listen; 56 interminable minutes of forced chest thumps and clenched fists. Scott Stapp spews his tenebrous passion plays like Mount St. Helens spewed lava. Every power chord, every guttural grunt, has to erupt with meaning, with depth, with substance. Whether addressing domestic abuse on “Wash Away Those Years”, praising his child on “With Arms Wide Open”, or attacking his critics on “What If”, he recites exhausted clichés as though the earth’s survival depends on them. His two-trick baritone, a flagrant oversimplification of the Vedder-Staley technique, does not sell his horrid lyrics; it importunes them. And while religious fervor motivates his pronouncements, God appears only indirectly, as a “faceless man” or “our maker”.
As with antecedents from U2 to Live to Collective Soul, Creed avoids direct Christianity in the name of marketability. Mark Tremonti, a semi-skilled guitarist, breaks up Stapp’s sermons with the occasional shredding solo, but more often obscures his virtuosic limitations behind the ProTools. As this is utterly sexless music, the rhythm section is utterly utilitarian: this is voice and guitar music with bottom added as a conventional measure only. The result is songs that progress like gaseous cramps shooting through the abdomen.
Aesthetic failings aside, Human Clay was a hit, though a largely forgotten one. Like many messianic rockers (Fred Durst included), Stapp’s massive ego eventually swallowed up his fame, and Creed folded after one more even worse multi-platinum album. Tremonti pressed on with the equally unoriginal Alter Bridge, Stapp released a flop solo album and a much-lampooned sex tape, and once their dwindling notoriety mattered more their personal differences, they announced a 2009 reunion.
Yet it’s hard to imagine this music triggering the boundless nostalgia of bafflingly beloved artistic lepers like Bon Jovi or Def Leppard. For one, Creed’s music is too self-serious to be fun, and too hackneyed to be inspirational. Many of the rock radio stations that put Human Clay‘s four singles into heavy rotation have folded into livelier formats, and as ratings sag, rock playlists have become more stagnant and homogeneous.
Creed’s once ubiquitous singles have evaporated from the public consciousness: they’re seldom played alongside the neo-cock-rockers (Hinder, Saving Abel) and almost classic rockers (Stone Temple Pilots, Alice in Chains) that currently rule the rock radio roost. DJs mock Creed incessantly, and bartenders are known to cue up Human Clay to clear the joint at closing time. Unless revisionism resurrects it in another decade’s time (think Slippery When Wet revived in 2006 versus 1996), Human Clay is destined for history’s cut-out bin, which is where many critics rightfully thought it belonged ten years ago. – Charles Hohman
Garth Brooks – In the Life of Chris Gaines [Capitol] – 28 September 1999
“Why the hell is Garth Brooks dressed up like Ben Stiller with a soul patch, or a lost member of the Backstreet Boys?” This was probably what countless fans said after catching a glimpse of the cover of In the Life of Chris Gaines, featuring Brooks dolled up as his rock star alter ego. The album was originally intended to be a musical prequel to a film developed by Brooks entitled The Lamb, a greatest hits package chronicling the musical evolution of the fictional (and Australian!) singer/songwriter Chris Gaines. The Lamb never came to fruition, and while the character never had his life story fleshed out on celluloid, the world got to witness Garth playing dress-up in both a literal and figurative sense.
By 1999, Garth Brooks had accomplished nearly every feat in the world of country music, almost single-handedly reviving the genre and bringing it unprecedented mainstream attention. In spite of the numerous NBC specials and countless music-industry accolades, Brooks had contemplated retirement. When you’ve conquered your domain of choice, what else is there to do? The Chris Gaines project offered him a new creative avenue.
Produced by R&B mainstay Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds and Don Was, In the Life of Chris Gaines pulled from a variety of musical styles, very few of which resembled country. The album’s single, “Lost in You” (which hit #5 on the Billboard Hot 100), as well as “Driftin’ Away” were loaded with vocal harmonies and slow, acoustic guitar, staples of Babyface’s repertoire. Singing in a high falsetto, through Gaines, Brooks finally got his shot to trot out the sort of vocal tremolo that would be employed by scores of American Idol contestants in years to come.
Gaines shot to a decidedly less mellow end of the spectrum on the funked-out, bass-heavy “Way of the Girl”, complete with Jimi Hendrix-like riffs and nary a trace of Garth’s country roots, before doing yet another 180 with a slice of 1990s pop-alternative radio rock on “Unsigned Letter”. He even managed to squeeze in a pseudo-cover with “Right Now”, rapping his way through social hypothesis while incorporating the chorus of the Youngbloods’ folk classic “Get Together”.
Great pains were taken to create the Chris Gaines character, right down to the liner notes featuring Gaines’s prefabricated discography (and era-specific hairstyles depicted on each album cover mock-up). Hell, actual bands putting out greatest hit comps in 1999 didn’t go through half the trouble that Garth Brooks did in piecing together the past of his alter ego. The scary thing is, it’s all very believable. If you didn’t know better, it would be hard to guess that the myriad of musical compositions contributing to this sonic jigsaw were attributed to Garth Brooks (who didn’t write the songs, but rather convincingly performed them in his genre-hopping persona).
In spite of the promotional effort put behind In the Life of Chris Gaines, (including a VH1 Behind the Music mockumentary special), Brooks’ risky retrospective of an illusory character tanked. Fans didn’t get it, nor did they take kindly to the country crooner pulling an Andy Kaufman with the creation of his own, much more emo Tony Clifton.
While Garth Brooks had made country palatable to a mainstream audience in the 1990s, In the Life of Chris Gaines was his foray into reverse crossover appeal. Brooks’ experiment didn’t work very well, but artists in years to come would invert his formula to achieve greater success. The likes of Jessica Simpson and Hootie and the Blowfish’s Darius Rucker have used country as a platform to boost lagging pop record sales and revive their careers.
All things considered, it’s a shame Brooks’s turn as Chris Gaines didn’t get its due for the sheer creativity and multi-faceted finesse in crafting an above-board pop album from an unlikely source, and doing it better than some of pop’s “real” chart toppers of the 1990s. – Lana Cooper
Method Man and Redman – Blackout! [Def Jam] – 28 September 1999
Outside of the odd posse cut, in the late 1990s it was rare to see cross-pollination of rival rap crews. Def Squad and Wu-Tang were the twin towers of hip-hop at the time – with all due respect to the mighty Boot Camp Clik – and both crews were bursting at the seams with MCs to rhyme with, but a fortuitous collaboration on a Tupac track brought long-time friends Redman and Method Man together in the studio and planted the seed for a duo release. Ever the rap mavericks, and bonded by blunts, blocks, and beats, Redman and Meth threw a bale of weed on the fire and set to spitting some of the best party rhymes you’ll ever hear.
Redman and Method Man both had solo deals with Def Jam at the time. Lyor Cohen and Russell Rush not being two gents to would pass up an opportunity to make a buck, Blackout! was made a priority, and eventually sold over a million copies. “Da Rockwilder” was the lead-off single, whereon Red and Meth drop lyrical interplay unheard since the heyday of EPMD. Erick Sermon looms large here. His funky swagger informs most of the album, producing the lion’s share of the tracks and keeping them funky and live. Meth and Red are party guys and party tracks are the way of the walk, with very little of the Wu-Tang grittiness of the average RZA track. And throughout, the two swap lines and cadences like so many blunts.
The uninitiated would do well to get yourself a neck brace before throwing Blackout! on, as it is virtually impossible to listen to the tracks without rocking your head like a Paris Hilton bobblehead. The shout-outs to Bill Clinton and Shirley Chisholm are a bit dated, but everything else about Blackout! has staying power that trumps most of today’s hip-hop. – Rob Browning
Muse – Showbiz [Maverick] – 4 October 1999
The band that would later become “the best live band in the world” released their debut album Showbiz in 1999, achieving only minor success largely because there were only some minor songs on the album. None of Muse‘s best work appears here, but they laid a solid foundation for where they would go on later albums. Vocalist/guitarist/pianist Matt Bellamy begins to grow out of his obsession with Thom Yorke, and despite their similar vocal ranges and falsetto, Bellamy proves the more energetic performer on songs like “Sunburn” and slow burner “Showbiz”. “Cave” hints at the band’s sweeping, orchestral possibilities that “Citizen Erased” would later fully expand upon.
Still, songs like “Escape” and “Muscle Museum” proved that the band had some growing up to do, struggling to find their own voice. Chris Wolstenholme never manages to impress with the catchy basslines found in later hits “Hysteria” and “Time Is Running Out”. Bellamy does not fully exploit his piano talent, like he will later in “Butterflies and Hurricanes” and “Hoodoo”.
The entire album is missing that technicality in composition that impresses audiences worldwide. Yet, while profiling a young band still struggling to discover and exploit their strengths, Showbiz remains one of the most important albums of 1999 because of the foundations it laid for the future. – Tyler Fisher
Paul McCartney – Run Devil Run [Capitol] – 4 October 1999
Paul McCartney‘s release Run Devil Run shoots a wistful wink to the Brylcreme boys of the slick-backed 1950s. This album was long overdue. A man who’s been knighted, blighted (oops, ex-wife Heather), and ignited (a working-class fire-fighter is something to be), and having been hailed by Yale (honorary degree program) and bailed on (sorry, Heather) deserves to “give grease a chance” and retrofit those tunes that defined and revolutionized his youth.
Paul James McCartney was not only the doe-eyed darling of the fab 1960s Beatles, he fronted the group Wings with his 30-year marriage partner, Linda. He received the MBE from the Queen, has composed countless classical works, including oratorios, and besides the bass, Macca plays lead and rhythm guitar, keys, and drums. Not to mention his bastion of original tunes. But besides that hullabaloo, what’s the whoop about Run Devil Run?
Well, there’s the unabashed party mood resonating throughout this album, for one. The fact that in December of 1999, McCartney played a promotional set at Liverpool’s Cavern Club – the club where the Beatles first channeled their chops – leads us to believe he was indeed pining for a more innocent time. Only a year after losing his wife Linda, it made sense that he would recall those early rock ‘n’ roll tracks that kept his left-handed bass plugged in and shimmied his shimmering, oft scratchy vocals.
It’s not surprising, but cunningly original, that McCartney named this kitschy keepsake after an herbal medicine shop in Atlanta. Having always had a penchant for lyrical examination of unsung and ordinary places (take “Penny Lane”, in which he and Lennon chronicle barbers and firemen who bustle in suburbia) McCartney illustrates in fine detail the drama inherent in ordinary life. And when holding that working-class prism against an everyman, he turns each one into a hero.
But here, aside from penning three original songs, “Run Devil Run”, “Try Not to Cry”, and “What It Is”, McCartney moves aside and lets a long-gone era speak raucously and defiantly for itself. It’s a confident McCartney who bellows “Blue Jean Bop” (Gene Vincent/Morris Levy), and though his song-writing partner of yore exclaimed that they were “bigger than Jesus,” Macca comes full circle by proving he’s bigger than Elvis. Hence, his interpretation of “All Shook Up” (Larry Williams). So can a post-mop–top trump a pompadour with side-burns? Hell, yeah.
McCartney zones in on Chuck Barry’s electro-twang, reverb-flavored “Brown Eyed Handsome Man”, and we’re doin’ the duck walk on sprinkled Zydeco crumbs. He sports lavish vocals in “Coquette”, and in “Party” there are traces of early Beatles covers like “Long Tall Sally”. Rockabilly abounds in “I Got Stung”, and “Shake a Hand” pumps up McCartney’s flaming falsetto. Sweet. Imagine you’re holding an ocean’s shell up to your ear, and you’ll hear hints of Roy Orbison and Little Richard in the vocals.
“No Other Baby” heralds a maple-syrup tinge, while “What It Is” reeks of post-rock. “You can buy a dream or two to last you through the year”, he croons in “Lonesome Town”, and then persuasively purges, “I want to enjoy being alive / Don’t want to leave before I arrive” when incarnating “Try Not to Cry”. Rocker ecstasy abounds in “She Said Yeah”, where you delight in McCartney’s primitive, escalating bass. Those were the days…
When Run Devil Run was released it garnered rave reviews, heading up the charts to #12 in the UK and #27 in the US. Sounds like the fans appreciated McCartney’s boyish resurgence and foray into a fun concept album. The 14 songs get you moving, distract you from the car notes, and veer away from any subject deeper than unrequited love. Unlike McCartney’s work before and after, there are no protest songs or retrospectives about inner angst. Don’t expect disappointing gurus or lovely meter maids. Do expect to twist through time travel.
So, for those who consider roller-skating babes, drive-in movies, and root beer floats the bomb, this is it. It’s like a happy shining Norman Rockwell painting put to vinyl, and how bad can that be? It definitely deserves the trophy on the mantel for one of rock ‘n’ roll’s most happy moments. – Lisa Torem
The Bloodhound Gang – Hooray for Boobies [Interscope] – 4 October 1999
Not quite rap, not quite rock, and certainly not nu-metal, the Bloodhound Gang were in a class all by themselves. “Class”, however, doesn’t exactly apply to the band that gave the world Hooray for Boobies – which saw a 1999 release in Europe, but was delayed in the US until early 2000 – arguably their best and most controversial album.
Beyond the title, the Bloodhound Gang ran into several roadblocks delaying the release of their third offering. Legal issues arising from the group’s inclusion of a parody of Pink Floyd’s “Another Brick in the Wall” cropped up on the song “Right Turn Clyde”, and the band battled with their label, Geffen, over the inclusion of a cover of “Along Comes Mary”. The Pink Floyd debacle was resolved, thus allowing Bloodhound Gang to include the lyrics “All in all you’re just another / Dick with no balls” on “Clyde”, but they caved to label pressure and agreed to release “Along Comes Mary”.
Minor artistic squabbles aside, the band earned serious MTV rotation with the disc’s quirky single, “The Bad Touch”. Better known for its über-catchy chorus (“You and me baby ain’t nothin’ but mammals / So let’s do it like they do on the Discovery Channel”), the song catapulted the band from its fringe status to the mainstream. Prior to this, they’d scored a minor hit with “Fire Water Burn” off of their previous album, and minor cult status with “You’re Pretty When I’m Drunk” from their first disc.
The real beauty of Hooray for Boobies, however, lies within lead singer/lyricist Jimmy Pop’s rapid-fire delivery of pop culture barbs that manage to be both clever and surprisingly intellectual. Lyrically, Bloodhoung Gang sounds like “Weird” Al Yankovic’s pervert savant younger brother if he wrote all-original music.
“Three Point One Four” references a double-entendre on the decimal figure known as “pi” and features Jimmy Pop belting out a falsetto coda comprised of a single word: “Va-gi-i-na! / Va-gi-i-na!, each syllable ascending note-by-note on a musical scale with Freddie Mercury-worthy bombast. The references to female anatomy keep coming with a two-and-a-half-minute tribute to adult film star Chasey Lain (who, incidentally, makes a cameo on the album to address the creepy, fan-letter style of the song, all in good fun).
Lest it appear that the Bloodhound Gang are singularly minded, other songs on the album tackle subjects of a deep philosophical and spiritual nature. Take “Hell Yeah”, for instance, in which Pop muses about the nature of God. He ponders, “Would I be a good messiah with my low self-esteem? / If I don’t believe in myself / Would that be blasphemy?”, while petitioning to add a “book of Flavor Flav to the Bible”. From tongue-in-cheek proselytizing, the Gang goes all-out grindcore with “I Hope You Die”, perhaps the funniest fantasy ever to depict an elaborate vision of an enemy’s demise, culminating in said enemy’s realization that “‘fist’ can be a verb”.
Over a decade later, the Bloodhound Gang’s unique blend of techno, hip-hop, and metal-tinted guitar rock could easily fit on the current musical landscape. Even more amazingly, most of the wisely-chosen pop culture references contained on Hooray for Boobies are still relevant and funny. Thanks for the mammaries, Bloodhound Gang! – Lana Cooper