The year of Lauryn Hill
Her soulful,
spiritual, thoroughly clear-eyed re-vision of hip-hop restored the thrill to a genre
that had grown as lusterless as it had prominent. |
hat's really interesting about pop is the culture that goes with it: the big trends and fringe quirks that are inspired by and define the music in such a tightly-woven dance that one can hardly say which came first: the song or the craze.
It was the Year of the Soundtrack. Where once crooning over the credits to a movie qualified as a smarmy honor reserved for middle-of-the-road mainstays along the lines of Helen Reddy or Kenny Rogers, 1998 saw everyone from Puff Daddy to Elvis Costello, Busta Rhymes to Bjork hop on board the Hollywood cash cow. In July, nearly half of the albums on the Billboard Top 20 were soundtracks. A cynic might suggest that the influx of powerful, multimedia parent corporations that rule the entertainment industry had something to do with the rampant bedding down of recording artists and moviemakers ... or perhaps the music-loving public was simply ravenous for mediocre sampler CDs.
Either way, the marriage of singers and screen spanned formats large and small. Pop songs were all over television, too, as a tidal wave of teen-oriented dramas like ''Dawson's Creek'' and ''Felicity'' wooed young viewers with tunes as modern and appealing as the adorably bewildered characters whose lives they serenaded. Listeners-viewers flocked to record stores as faithfully as they glued themselves to the TV. Paula Cole's CD ''This Fire'' caught fire - a full year after its release - after the single ''I Don't Want to Wait'' was featured on ''Dawson's Creek.''
But rock is by no means the exclusive domain of the youth culture, and as loyal fans notched one more year, artists also transposed the fruits of maturity into the language of music. It was the Year of the Mother in rock, when no lesser goddesses than Madonna (''Ray of Light''), Liz Phair (''whitechocolatespaceegg''), and Lauryn Hill (''The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill'') released remarkable albums that demonstrated en masse (individual mavericks like Chrissie Hynde and Kim Gordon have been quietly doing it for years) that rocking the baby and rocking the world are not mutually exclusive endeavors.
Speaking of Hill, it was, quite simply, the Year of Lauryn Hill. Her soulful, spiritual, thoroughly clear-eyed re-vision of hip-hop restored the thrill to a genre that had grown as lusterless as it had prominent. And it was the only record everyone on the planet (except for The New Yorker's Hilton Als, but don't get me started ...) agreed on.
Thanks to Hole, Beck, Smashing Pumpkins, and R.E.M., it was the Year of Never Having to Say You're Sorry. All of them released albums that took sharp left turns, delivered unanticipated sounds, challenged our perceptions of who they are. These artists challenged the very notion of how we define pop stardom. Unfulfilled expectations allowed an often extraordinary collection of music - the Pumpkins' ''Adore'' - to languish. R.E.M.'s post-Bill Berry, three-piece effort, ''Up,'' inspired reactions that ranged from reverence to utter disdain, a phenomenon in itself that suggests the record is undeniably important. Beck hightailed it out of the Grammy-winning manic mode and booked himself on a quiet little magical mystery tour (''Mutations''), while Courtney Love and company foiled would-be arbiters of hard rock-chic by releasing ''Celebrity Skin,'' arguably the best pop album of the year. To them we say, touche.
For better or worse (and we say the former; bring on the pain!), it was the Year of the Loser. Elliot Smith and Lucinda Williams released two of the finest evocations of misery to come around in years. Smith's ''XO'' and Williams's ''Car Wheels on a Gravel Road'' were not only gorgeous, smart, and true, but therapeutic. Either you thrilled to be in such fabulously distraught company, or wound up feeling that much better about your own comparatively paltry losses in love.
Maybe it was the movie that planted the bad seed for a City of Angels revival, but for better or worse (the latter; take it from a native) it was the Year of Los Angeles. Malibu, perfect skin, and waitress-actresses dotted the landscape of Hole's album, dredging up the golden myth one presumed had died long ago in the throes of smog and strip malls, race riots, and polluted beaches. Shawn Mullins immortalized the place, where privileged kids in artsy homes got to hang out with Bob Seger and Sonny and Cher, in his huge hit ''Lullabye.'' To top it off, Marilyn Manson moved to Laurel Canyon - ground zero for the California Dream, rock 'n' roll style. Balmy nights, good parties, famous neighbors, endless summer. Who can blame him? It's seductive as a pop song.
