Countdown to 30: My Favorite Album From 1999

 1999

If you told me in 2017 that I would have Switchfoot as a runner up for my favorite album of 1999, I would have said you were crazy, yet here I am. I know my best friend is probably looking at this and thinking that my boyfriend has brainwashed me or something, but I think good relationships are built on the exchange of ideas and musical tastes. His alarm clock is now a They Might Be Giants song, and I'm naming a Switchfoot album as one of the best ones of '99.

Here's the thing: you know in "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, where they're like "feed them on your dreams//The one they pick's the one you'll know by//Don't you ever ask them, "Why?"//If they told you, you would cry//So just look at them and sigh//And know they love you"? Well it's kind of like that. My boyfriend can't imagine why I am so drawn to this early Switchfoot album, he just knows that for some reason I am. 

Boyfriend and me with Switchfoot in 2019.

New Way to be Human is the second album by Switchfoot. The subject matter of the songs ranges from philosophy to Christian doctrine to songs like "Company Car" about working hard to better your position, only to feel like you've sold your soul in the process. The sound Switchfoot went for on this album was probably the most unique of their career so far. The title track, "New Way To Be Human" is like a beautiful crash of grunge, alternative and singer/songwriter. There's a different key for the chorus every time too, and it's all wrapped up with a neat little bow. Some songs sound exactly like you would expect, but then with tape loops randomly thrown in at the right moments. Apparently real Switchfoot fans don't think the album is anything particularly special, but I think it's one of their most interesting albums so far. And "Company Car" is feelings. 

On a totally different note, 1999 is the year of Montreal started to really lock down and polish up their first sound with the concept album The Gay Parade. One reviewer (Jason Ankeny for AllMusic) called it "indie pop's very own Sgt. Pepper." I guess I see what they were talking about but I feel like that praise gives the album more credit than I probably would. "Old Familiar Way" opens the album, and is one of the strongest offerings on it. There's something very vaudeville about some of the songs, which is somewhat fitting for the idea that it's a musical parade. All the songs have a strange kind of sweetness to them that frontman Kevin Barnes' earlier work tends to include, and that his more recent work suffers from the lack of.

My final runner-up probably should have been the winner, not going to lie. But I'm not counting soundtracks, and this is kind of a soundtrack. Only kind of though. 

One of the strangest shows in the early '90s (1991-1996) was Pete & Pete, a show I guess you could describe as a sitcom, about two brothers- both named Pete- and their antics. If you never saw it, maybe you saw Snow Day, which was originally supposed to be a Pete & Pete movie. Or imagine a Malcolm in the Middle that has gone completely off the rails (in my opinion, it may have inspired Malcolm, although the show itself seems to pull from A Christmas Story taken to a wild new level). In the show, there is a mythical band called Polaris that acts not only as the soundtrack, but as the plot to an episode. They are supposed to be incredibly illusive. And in a strange case of life mimicking art, they became just that. The pressing of their album on vinyl sold out rapidly, and is now very valuable. 

We had a cassette when I was a kid that I didn't realize was only available by sending in box tops from Kellogg's Frosted Mini Wheats. I listened to that thing as much as possible. Both sides, the theme song "Hey Sandy" and the ballad "Staggering" and "Coronado II" (which I think was an instrumental?). Because I didn't realize what it took to get the cassette, I also didn't know that that thing now sells for $30-$50 due to its rarity and the cult following of both the show and the band Polaris.

Polaris was formed from members of indie rock band Miracle Legion specifically for Pete & Pete. Music From the Adventures of Pete and Pete came out in 1999, three years after the show ended and after the disbanding of Miracle Legion. The songs are nostalgic for those who grew up with the show, but they're also really good. '90s indie music is different from the later whining of '00s indie rock (don't get me wrong, I love that stuff, as you'll see in the coming articles). It had more of a garage sound. Most of the independent bands in the '80s were similar, but the '90s stuff had grunge undertones. Polaris accomplishes this, but with jangly guitars and soft rock melodies.

The lyricism is great on this album. They didn't coordinate the lyrics with the show at all. They just wrote songs that happened to be for the show. "Everywhere" is a perfect example. It's a breakup song similar to the later "Woke Up New" by The Mountain Goats, about the impossibility of forgetting an ex when there are reminders...everywhere. 

My favorite album for 1999 is ¡Viva El Amor! (Long Live Love in English) by The Pretenders. The cover photo was taken by a recently deceased friend of front woman Chrissie Hynde, namely Linda McCartney. McCartney passed away in 1998, just a year before the release of the album. Linda's daughter Mary McCartney did the photography for the liner notes. 

¡Viva El Amor! follows in the footsteps of Last of the Independents with the juxtaposition of soft love songs like "From the Heart Down" with harder songs like "Legalize Me" and pop tracks like The Pretenders' cover of the Divinyls "Human on the Inside" (retitled simply "Human"). It didn't perform well as well on the charts, but Viva did outperform their follow-up album Loose Screw (2002). 

As this was during Hynde's marriage to Columbian artist Lucho Brieva, the influence of the Spanish language is seen not only in the title of the album, but in her only other cover on the album, a rendering of Cuban folk singer Silvio Rodriguez's "Rabo de Nube." She performed one of her own songs both in English and Spanish on her next album, Loose Screw. 

Viva features the aforementioned "From the Heart Down," a song Hynde cowrote with Billy Steinberg and Tom Kelly, the hitmakers who cowrote "Eternal Flame" by The Bangles, Madonna's "Like a Virgin," and "True Colors" by Cyndi Lauper. It's a touching song that dives straight in from the fore.  

"Biker" would seem like a strange choice with its Buffalo Springfield guitar parts, but it's exactly the kind of song Hynde wrote more of in the coming albums.

Apparently the theme of my school Christmas program in
1999 was "In a couple of weeks, the world might end?"

As I mentioned in a previous article, The Pretenders were pretty important to me in my teenage years. My knowledge of them started with "Don't Get Me Wrong" because of the video referencing one of my favorite TV shows, The Avengers (my name may or not come from the name of the female character, "Emma Peel"). I was a fan of that song for a few years and began to regard Hynde as a style and attitude icon in my teens. I had been letting my hair grow out for a while but at the end of my freshman year, I got it cut like Hynde's. This also marked the beginning of my return to bangs after a few years without.

The sentiment in "Popstar" still cracks me up, this idea that her boyfriend has left her for someone more basic and poppy than the narrator, and she is telling him how high-maintenance and vindictive the girl is going to be. I don't know what place of hurt the song came from, if any, but it's a little amusing, and always useful for playlists about celebrity.

Top single "Human" is one of my favorite tracks honestly though. I didn't find out it was a Divinyls cover until about a year ago, and after listening to the original, I feel like Hynde did a fair bit of transforming. I had the privilege of singing it live at a school fundraiser and it's still on my karaoke shortlist.

This isn't my favorite Pretenders album, it's not one I come back to often, but it's a good album, and my favorite of 1999.

Let's throw it up on the leaderboard!

Join me tomorrow for my favorite album of 2000. New millennium, new albums!

Countdown to 30: My Favorite Album From 1994

 1994

There's really no contest for 1994. As much as I like the runner up, my favorite album of 1994 will always be one of my favorite albums.

The runner-up is Last of the Independents by The Pretenders. This album was a staple of my early high school years. I dropped most of my Christmas money on Pretenders CDs one year, and this one was in the bargain bin, so I had to get it. I absolutely loved it. It was an album I felt properly expressed my feelings going through puberty. It did not, it was way edgier than I was, but it will always hold a special place in my heart. From the blatant sexuality that I knew nothing of, to the songs about identity ("Every Mother's Son") and the activism displayed in "Revolution." There's even a Bob Dylan cover thrown in for good measure. Not to mention the single, possibly one of the most well-known Pretenders songs, and one of my favorite love songs, "I'll Stand By You," which I think I somehow got to be our class song? I don't want to take credit for it, but I only recommended two songs in the class song primaries, and that one ended up on the ballot and as class song, so I think I did it...

Last of the Independents was like my emotional equivalent to a punk album. I thought I was taking on all of these alternative viewpoints and laughing in the face of society or whatever. 

Anyway, I leveled out a little bit by senior year, when my dream was of driving off to college in California whilst blaring my favorite album of 1994: Wildflowers by Tom Petty. 

Wildflowers is almost a Heartbreakers album, but not quite. Drummer Stan Lynch is the only  member of the Heartbreakers not on the album, but the person on drums, Steve Ferrone, replaced Lynch as part of the Heartbreakers lineup the following year. Still, they didn't want to call it a Heartbreakers album, they wanted more freedom. And it doesn't feel like a Heartbreakers album. It feels like you're hanging out with Tom Petty. It's acoustic, intimate. The production is warm, like you're relaxing in the country during the summertime. Originally, the album was planned as a 25-track double album. That vision came close to realization only last year, with the release of Wildflowers and All the Rest. 

The title track kicks off the album with sincerity. As we millennials were all rediscovering Wildflowers in the '00s, "Wildflowers" was the song that spoke to our little snowflake souls. At least that's how I interpreted it. "Wildflowers" has the distinction of being one of Petty's most beloved non-singles. Of the writing of it, Petty said "I just took a deep breath and it came out. The whole song. Stream of consciousness: words, music, chords. Finished it. I mean, I just played it into a tape recorder and I played the whole song and I never played it again. I actually only spent three and a half minutes on that whole song. So I’d come back for days playing that tape, thinking there must be something wrong here because this just came too easy. And then I realized that there’s probably nothing wrong at all."

"Time to Move On" is a solid road song. It has the rambling energy only someone with intense wanderlust can truly understand. I think that song alone made me want to ride to California listening to this album. Singles like "You Wreck Me" and "You Don't Know How It Feels" will always be feel-good radio jams, on par with anything the Heartbreakers released. "You Don't Know How it Feels" and "It's Good to Be King" are both fairly personal songs about Petty's feelings as a public figure. 

Future Tom Petty fan in 1994, hot on the heels of the removal
of an aggressive cyst. I have had plastic surgery, but it was 
when I was 3, and not exactly elective. 

The remainder of the songs on the album are not to be ignored, but it should be noted that they are almost all, delicate presentations. Even with harder electric sounds added in for "Honey Bee," it still has the feel of a live song performed in a barn or similar country setting. "Don't Fade on Me" is almost a whisper of a song, with sparse production and instrumentation.

I got this album on CD at Goodwill when I worked there. The album art and liner notes are printed on a matte paper, unlike the glossy paper of most CDs of the time. When you look at that album cover, it almost feels like you could plant those liner notes and grow your own wildflowers (that's not true though, don't bury your liner notes).

Just before Petty's untimely death, I had the good fortune to see him play with the Heartbreakers, and he played a few songs from Wildflowers live. Apparently, he was testing the waters for a Wildflowers specific tour for its 25th anniversary. He had every intention of making that his next tour. But fate had other plans. 

Wildflowers will always be one of my top chill-out albums. I don't think anyone in their right mind would call it a bad album, and for me, it's my favorite of 1994.

Let's throw it up on the leaderboard!

Join me tomorrow for my favorite album of 1995.

Emma Hath a Song: "Creep"

Some people consider Radiohead to be the mother of modern independent rock. It's interesting to realize that they made such a powerful introduction to the world as "Creep."

Thom Yorke wrote "Creep" in the late 80s, while attending Exeter University, before the formation of Radiohead. Yorke gave a demo version to bassist Colin Greenwood, to get him to help put the band together. When initially released, "Creep" performed horribly in the charts, and only received considerable attention when it was re-released a year later. When the band recorded "Creep," they referred to it as their "Scott Walker" song, making the producers think it was a cover. Guitarist Jonny Greenwood thought the song was too quiet, and he tried to mess it up by playing the hard noises just before the chorus. Yorke loosely based the melody of the song on "The Air That I Breathe" by The Hollies. After "Creep"'s release, Radiohead gave credit to Albert Hammond and Mike Hazlewood as co-writers due to the similarity.

Yorke has said that the song is about a man who tries to get a woman's attention by following her. Supposedly, Yorke wrote the song from his own point of view. The concept of not feeling good enough for someone you have a crush on is easy enough to understand, but Radiohead have reportedly received fan mail from murderers, telling the band how much they could relate to the song.

Radiohead were reluctant to create the radio-friendly version of "Creep," feeling it would imply that they were selling out and that it would disturb the sentiment of the song. Yorke felt the song lost its anger due to the edit.

"Creep" has been covered many times in many varying styles. As early as 1995, The Pretenders performed a moving cover for The Isle of View, almost making it sound like it could have been written by Chrissie Hynde.

More recently, "Creep" has been covered by artists from Kelly Clarkson to Prince. Youtube artist Tom Milsom performed it on the harp at the first Vidcon online video conference. A haunting choral version by Scala & Kolacny Brothers was used in the trailers for The Social Network.

The public remains interested in this song, and in covering this song for fairly obvious reasons. Whatever stalker qualities it might have, "Creep" comes from a deep emotional place, one that many people have either been in or can empathize with. The melody, however simple, is moving.

And that's all that I hath for now.

Seasonal Music Roundup: A Christmas Playlist

Christmas music doesn't have to be good to be enjoyable. It's something about the dorky gushy feelings we can get inside just because of all the lights we use to run up our holiday electricity bills and the snow that makes it harder to drive and the biting cold. I can't imagine living a life in which I don't romanticize these things even just a tiny bit. And the Christmas songs that play on the radio and in department stores every year around this time are yet another cliched staple that I wouldn't live without.

So, needless to say, I have quite a few personal favorites when it comes to "holiday" songs. Here are some non-traditional or revamped traditional "Christmas" songs that I enjoy. For once, I am allowing this playlist to include the goofiest, most childish songs I enjoy. Because...hey, it's Christmas! You only have to worry about these things for like a month, why not listen to whatever you want?

"Sleigh Ride" by KT Tunstall
This is a nice, poppy Christmas cover. Tunstall manages to cover the song without destroying the original piece and without destroying her own artistic style. 


"Snowflake" by Everybody Else
A couple of years ago, Everybody Else released a holiday-themed song and video just a few short days before Christmas. I fell in love with it instantly and was quite disappointed when it was taken down only days later. Luckily, this track did surface again as a Kickstarter prize but the video has yet to return. Personally, I think it's a very cute, heartfelt Christmas tune.
 
"Riu Chiu" by The Monkees
The Monkees performed this old Spanish carol for their Christmas special. The vocal parts are really beautiful.

"December Will Be Magic Again" by Kate Bush
For the young at heart. Not specifically a Christmas song, more just about the joy and wonder of winter and the Christmas season. A very cool song.

"Christmas Wrapping" by The Waitresses
You know how some people have a soft spot for things? I have a soft gaping hole for The Waitresses. This song is just...really sweet? It's one of those early rap songs like Blondie's "Rapture" that is just special. I also think the swear word in this song may be the most commonly overlooked in radio history.

"2000 Miles" by The Pretenders
One of my favorite bands performing an original Christmas song. It's a very lovely song, and it can make me a little emotional. There's also a more strings-oriented live version from Isle of View. KT Tunstall and Coldplay have both covered it as well.

"Little Saint Nick" by Doctor Teeth and the Electric Mayhem
This might be the best cover of any song ever. I do have a tendency to hyperbolize though. But seriously, Animal alone makes this song amazing.

"Christmas All Over Again" by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
This song is frequently overlooked, which is a pity. It's poppier than most Tom Petty stuff, but it's very catchy.

"Carol of the Bells" by The Bird and the Bee
Another example of a great cover of a classic holiday song. This sounds just like a Bird and the Bee song, even though it's clearly a classic Christmas tune.

"Oh Holy Night" by Weezer
Out of an entire album of Weezer Christmas songs, this is by far my favorite.

"Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)" by Death Cab For Cutie
I will listen to almost anything Ben Gibbard sings. Other versions of this song now sound strange.

"One More Sleep 'Till Christmas" by Kermit the Frog
From The Muppets' 1992 film The Muppet Christmas Carol, this is one of the cutest Christmas songs in recent history. I fondly remember singing this song (amended to suit the day) weeks before Christmas.

"Let It Snow" by A Fine Frenzy
This is a beautiful Christmas song, only helped by Alison Sudol's beautiful voice.

"Do They Know It's Christmas" by Band Aid
However you may feel about any of the artists that participated in Band-Aid, this is in-arguably a quintessential Christmas song, as well as being an important historical song.

"Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree" by Brenda Lee
Yet another classic. I enjoy this song greatly, no matter how many times I hear it.

"Merry Xmas Everybody" by Slade

Fans of Doctor Who may recognize this song without knowing why. Apart from being a classic 70s Christmas song, "Merry Xmas Everybody" was featured in the 2005 and 2006 Doctor Who Christmas specials. I thought it was a tradition they'd stick with, but no such luck. Rooney also did a brilliant cover.

"Run, Rudolph Run" by Chuck Berry
Particularly memorable from Home Alone, this song sounds like every other Chuck Berry song, but I still love it.

"Happy Xmas (War is Over)" by John Lennon
You know how sometimes you just like that song because it's embedded in your personal history? But I'm also not going to argue with the message of this song.

"Holly Jolly Christmas" by The Format
When I heard about this cover, I assumed it would be horrible. But Nate Ruess actually makes it sound cute and genuine.

"Christmas is Cancelled" by The Long Blondes
Bearing much similarity to an Elvis Costello song (circa Armed Forces), this is a catchy original Christmas song by one of my favorite bands.