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Music > Features > The Edge of Change: The Most Memorable Albums of 1999 The Edge of Change: The Most Memorable Albums of 1999January - March 1999: Britney Spears to Blur[22 June 2009] By PopMatters Staff
15 March 1999
With 13—a sprawling, noisy, meandering mess of a would-be masterpiece—Blur completed their break from the classicist Britpop that had been their bread and butter since 1993, a transition that began on 1997’s self-titled album and finds its consummation here, on their most adventurous, interesting, and flawed album. Though on its surface it sounds like it might be a bold, but clumsy, attempt at rebirth, a possible new beginning, 13 is actually mostly concerned with endings: the end of the band’s longtime relationship with legendary producer Stephen Street (who was instrumental in shaping the sound of another little British group by the name of the Smiths) in favor of knob twiddler William Orbit; the end of their former pop formalism and lyrical wit in favor of a more fluid, almost formless aesthetic; the end of Albarn’s long-term romantic relationship with Elastica frontwoman Justine Frischmann (which break-up fueled a good portion of the album’s lyrical content and its overall tone); the beginning of the end of the core songwriting relationship in the band between singer Damon Albarn and guitarist Graham Coxon (though the latter wouldn’t actually leave the band formally until the next album, Think Tank); and, I suppose, the end of the millennium (or the “End of a Century”… ha!). A classic case of ambition far outstripping actual reach (and being all the better for it), 13 is less of a reinvention than an attempt to completely dissolve the band’s old crisp concision and pop eclecticism in a… ahem… blurry sonic soup of squalling distortion, electronic flourishes, buzzsaw guitars, jammed out noodling, extraneous instrumental interstitials, indulgent song lengths, and nonsense lyrics. There are a few recognizable parts of the old Blur buried in there somewhere, but the band seems fully intent on sloughing off its old self—damn the fans, damn sales, damn Britpop. The kitchen sink approach taken to both the songwriting and overall production and sound yields a wildly uneven, but always captivating, album that is relentless in its desire both to discourage and surprise in equal measure. The latter applies to the stunning album opener, and lead single (at nearly eight minutes!), “Tender”, a towering, shambling, sad sack break-up song buoyed up and thrown heavenward by a gospel-tinged choir. Its slow, swelling, almost tribal build-up on a simple repetitive guitar line and vocal melody, coursing from emotional frailty up through to exultation, is the frontloaded highpoint of the album, and possibly of Blur’s entire career. 13 veers off sharply thereafter—perhaps by accident, perhaps by design—crashing down into the howling paranoid glam rave-up “Bugman”, followed by the only really recognizable old school Blur song, ”Coffee and TV”, before wandering off and losing its way in a number of muddled, confounding songs in its middle section. These seem often more like the germs of songs than songs proper, experiments that are picked up and then abandoned before completion and paring down (most of them stretch out needlessly past five minutes, and a few past seven). 13 redeems itself on its back third, though, before adjourning with the bookend and answer to “Tender”, the beautiful, wistful ballad “No Distance Left to Run”—a tired dirge that caves in to resignation and acceptance in the face of the inevitable end of things. The end of love, of the millennium, of the old Blur.
16 March 1999
To suggest that Tom Russell’s album The Man from God Knows Where should feature on American History syllabuses may not sound like the ultimate compliment. But part of the brilliance of this undervalued multi-vocal song-cycle—or “folk opera”—is to illuminate American immigrant experience in a complex, ambitious-but-accessible, vivid, and thoroughly enjoyable way. Drawing deeply on his own background as the child of Norwegian and Irish immigrants, Russell produces a record that is at once utterly personal and totally expansive, charting the experiences of a variety of characters in a manner both intimate and mythic. Subtle and tasteful arrangements built around Old and New World musical traditions and augmented with snatches of hymns and folk songs provide the rich musical context. Vocally, Russell enlists the help of a stellar line-up of roots music luminaries, placing his own burly, authoritative, Johnny Cash-ish tones alongside Dolores Keane’s smouldering soul-of-Ireland burr, Iris DeMent’s aching high lonesome twang, the austere Scandinavian sounds of Kari Bremnes and Sondre Bratland, and the off-kilter croak of Dave Van Ronk. Even Walt Whitman gets in on the act, with Russell brilliantly incorporating a bit of the poet’s voice as recorded by Thomas Edison on wax cylinder in 1890. The cast sensitively inhabit characters ranging from Sitting Bull to a lonely prairie housewife, and the album broadens out into a dazzling array of narratives and perspectives, unfolding like an epic motion-picture as its characters confront homesickness, prejudice, joy, and disillusionment in their new land. Russell’s potent investigation of American realities and mythologies makes The Man from God Knows Where an album not simply for 1999, or for 2009, but one for the ages. 
 The Edge of Change: The Most Memorable Albums of 1999 |
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Comments
No offense but, it’s really an amazing stretch to say that Silverchair was more versatile than Pearl Jam or especially Soundgarden. I politely dissent. Go back and listen to the discographies of those two bands. I still think that Silverchair, even though Diorama, are a fairly generic and boring band.
Comment by Bob — June 22, 2009 @ 12:55 am
There are so many things wrong with your critique of Britney’s deput album and her influence of youth I hardly know where to start, but here’s one. If you are going to somehow blame the Backstreet Boys for poor Britney’s success, at least explain why. A sample of Britney’s debut album was included on some, not all copies of Backstreet’s brilliant MILLLINEUM album-which sold over a million copies in one week, millions upon millions upon MILLIONS total sales around the world. I assure you-those sales did NOT occur BECAUSE of Britney’s song. Most copies did NOT have that song.
Comment by Marlena — June 22, 2009 @ 5:30 am
about the Britney article:
first of all Britney was just a girl following her dream, when you get the opportunity to make you dream come true you don’t really say no cause you’re 2 years younger than you should be to get into the music business and wait for the second opportunity that might never come…
second of all, her problems and her meltdown don’t come just from the fact that she’s famous, Britney has bipolar disorder so the fame only added to it but didn’t cause it…
plus her songs are nothing like Michael Jackson’s, she’s got her own style of music and her songs are great, otherwise they wouldn’t have gotten into the top 10 of the billboard charts
she’s a very talented girl so even if it got her through some serious problems, she is where she should be: a successful artist to remember.
even though she messed up a lot, she’s proven to be a survivor, a girl doing what she loves to do and fighting for it !
Comment by Sandy — June 22, 2009 @ 6:21 am
That’s one take on <i>13</i> - the “jilted Blur fan” take, I suppose. Marianne Faithfull’s rebuttal (paraphrased): “It’s this generation’s <i>Pet Sounds</i>.”
Comment by Joseph M — June 22, 2009 @ 6:47 am
BSB wasn’t bringin’ it so that’s when Jive unleashed Britney? Um, no. Britney got famous during the height of BSBs’ career. They could hold their own. Also, I have never heard of copies of Millennium that had a sampler of Britney’s album on them. I’m not doubting that they exist, but between the 40 million copies that have moved of their “Millennium” album, I’m sure those rarer copies with Britney samplers are few and far between. I’m a BSB fan of 12 years, and I have never seen a such said copy of the album myself. Most of what I’ve seen are either the 12-track US version, or some other international versions that had extras such as postcards, mousepads, etc but mostly bonus tracks that were also found on the singles, like “I’ll be there for you,” “My Heart stays with you,” “If you knew what I knew,” “You wrote the book on love” and such.
Where I DO know that Britney WAS sampled on when it came to BSB stuff, however, was an additional extra bonus Jive sampler CD that came with BSBs’ All Access VHS (the tape that has some music videos like “Everybody” (and the making of it), “ALAYLM” (plus on-set footage), “Quit Playing Games”, some live performances, and such). The CD has maybe a couple of Britney’s old songs on it (don’t remember one of the songs, the other one was “Soda Pop”), and songs by other artists that were signed to Jive at the time as well. Most BSB fans I know (myself excluded though) pitched the CD because they already had the only BSB content from it, a performance of “Darlin” that they obtained through another concert special of theirs on VHS—the “Live in Concert” special from 1996.
Comment by Anna from Kansas City, Missouri — June 23, 2009 @ 11:05 am
Those are some pretty grandiose statements for a fairly decent - not great, but decent - rap record, regarding The Roots’ Things Fall Apart.
“Act Too: Love of My Life”, the only love song I’ve heard written for hip-hop as a whole.”
—-Uhm… Common’s “I Used To Love Her” doesn’t apply, huh? I guess because it was five years earlier.
“But if we educated our youth on the true meaning of hip-hop and its roots—socially-relevant lyrics, jazz, blues, and rock and roll—then we, as a people, would be in a much better position to vocalize our thoughts and our emotions through positive music.”
—- What is the “True meaning” of hip hop? I guess rappers, or MCs (emcees) from the late 70’s and early 80’s weren’t full of braggadocio and weren’t interested in superficial materialsim, ie: heavy jewelry, money and “shakin that ass”. That’s what Shyam means, yeah?
Yeah because modern day hip-hop has nothing to offer when the ‘Golden Age’ was all about uplifting humanity because - ahem - it wasn’t.
There’s nothing wrong with identifying with history, having socially-relevant lyrics, referencing or sampling jazz and rock, but I feel too many of us in the “hip-hop community” romanticize the late 80’s - early 90’s hip hop Golden Age, when that era was full of many of the contradictions we see unfolded today.
This is not to argue that hip hop isn’t a “mockery of itself” becoming the new Hair Metal, but if we are truly to “educate our youth”, we have to soberly look at hiphop’s past and understand that the seemingly selfish and seemingly socially uplifting elements of rap have always been apart of the hip hip community and as we see so often (Kanye, JayZ, The Wu, et al)these traits can be occupied by a sole artist all at once.
One can cite a hip hop album that has also stood the test of time from 1999 to get a grasp of hip hop’s contradictory nature: MF Doom’s “Operation Doomsday”. I guess it wasn’t cited because upon release unlike now, it wasn’t very “pop"ular.
This is just the tip of the iceberg.
Even though I love popmatters.com, there’s no need to over-credit an album just for a 10-year look-back retrospective to have relevance.
Sorry, I got work to do.
Paz.
Comment by Hip Hop Attacks? — June 25, 2009 @ 2:54 pm