1998 in music. • Page 9

I love em

Sentiment and feeling aren’t the exclusive domain of heart on sleeve trad rock tho. Death, Refused, Replacements, Elliott Smith, these are also high feeling artists, albeit drenched in less corn syrup.

Goo Goo Dolls are corny cuz they lean on all those well tread cliches and tropes. And they’re really good at it.


My favorite album of 1998 is Adore. Its all good

 

Some rando tracks i love


This Local H album is kind of a snooze (produced by Roy Thomas Baker who seems to have totally checked out), but this song rips:

same goes for this Ash record, haven’t listened in forever though, maybe it’s good:

 

I just don’t agree. And that’s fine. I can’t think of another artist from that era writing “When everything feels like the movies, you bleed just to know you’re alive” or “They painted up your secrets with the lies they told to you”. To me, that’s a unique artistic voice, not a reliance on cliches.

 

Yeah, I love Johnny’s lyrics in that era. The Gutterflower stuff is super interesting and dark. He got more cliche later on, but in this period, he was writing deeply emotional songs in unique ways. I think the fact that most people don’t realize what “Slide” and “Black Balloon” are even about shows how much is below the surface of those songs from a lyrical perspective.

 

It’s refreshing to hear a rock band sing about heroin for once

(Def agree Slide is great though)

 

Honestly I’ve never seen a writer fall off a cliff harder than he did after Gutterflower. Their last few have been pleasant boilerplate pop but that writer’s block he had before “Iris” clearly became permanent after he wrote “Better Days”

 

I like Let Love In a lot, but you’re not wrong. He lost a lot of the depth and darkness he had.

As far as writers losing their mojo, I’ve felt this way about Rob Thomas post-North and Jon Foreman post 2011, though Foreman won me back over on last year’s Switchfoot album. Still waiting for Thomas to come back around.

 

Thomas is 100% correct. On a less forgiving day, I might even say after Something to Be

 

Yeah, he's definitely hit or miss after then, but seems to find it intermittently on Exile on Mainstream, Cradlesong, and North. His third and fourth solo albums, though, are totally devoid of any lyrical personality.

 

if I remember correctly, Gutterflower is essentially all about his divorce from his first wife.

 

Yeah, I think you’re right.

 

1. Smashing Pumpkins - Adore
2. Fastball - All The Pain Money Can Buy
3. Less Than Jake - Hello Rockview

 

gonna leave it open until tomorrow morning, just in case. there are five albums within one or two votes of being first

 

1. System of a Down-System of a Down
2. Alkaline Trio-Goddamnit

An ex girlfriend put Black Balloon on a mix CD for me....in hindsight, probably an omen lol

 

Neutral Milk Hotel's In the Aeroplane Over the Sea wins it with 23 points, our lowest in a while. Lauryn Hill's The Miseducation... came close with 21 and Refused's The Shape of Punk to Come and Black Star's s/t were tied with 17.

I'll work on 99 after cereal.

 

Glad it won, was worried it might get beaten. Feels like all the votes for it came on the first page, haha.

 

Nailed it

 

Have never really gotten into Neural Milk Hotel, though I know a lot of people who hold that album up as an all-timer. Might need to revisit it again.

 

It was definitely a grower for me, mainly because of the vocals I think, but I ended up loving everything about it. The lyrics have a very unique blend of surrealist/emotion that really works for me.

 

it's very good, im a little surprised it won though

 

I thought I'd be less alone in being tired of it. Not an undeserving winner though, hard to argue its impact.

 

justice for Hum

(i know only two people had it in their top 3 but still)

 

Yeah, the vocals were always the hang-up for me. I really love the songwriting in stuff like the title track or "Holland 1945," but I've heard covers of those songs that I like more than the originals.

 

Yeah I'm not quite sure what happened over the years but his voice went from really grating to me to one of my favourites to sing along to, haha. It's what I hope will happen with all vocalists since that's usually my main barrier when getting into new music but few singers have grown on me like Jeff.

 

1999 in music. • forum.chorus.fm

99