Top 50 Albums of 1999:

1. The Dismemberment Plan - Emergency & I
2. Sparklehorse - Good Morning Spider
3. The Roots - Things Fall Apart
4. Ginuwine - 100% Ginuwine
5. Destiny’s Child - The Writing’s On The Wall
6. Built To Spill - Keep It Like A Secret
7. Superchunk - Come Pick Me Up
8. Eightball And MJG – In Our Lifetime
9. Jay-Z - Vol. 3... Life And Times Of S. Carter
10. Joan Of Arc - Live In Chicago, 1999
11. Missy Elliott - Da Real World
12. Sleater-Kinney - The Hot Rock
13. Method Man And Redman - Blackout!
14. Eleni Mandell - Wishbone
15. Dr. Dre - 2001
16. Tom Waits - The Mule Variations
17. DMX - ...And Then There Was X
18. Lil Wayne - Tha Block Is Hot
19. Beatnuts - A Musical Massacre
20. Beck - Midnite Vultures
21. Nine Inch Nails - The Fragile
22. Mark De Gli Antoni - Horse Tricks
23. Sloan - Between The Bridges
24. Nels Cline/Gregg Bendian - Interstellar Space Revisited: The Music Of John Coltrane
25. Krust - Coded Language
26. Mos Def - Black On Both Sides
27. Incubus - Make Yourself
28. The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
29. Lee Ranaldo - Dirty Windows
30. Counting Crows - This Desert Life
31. Ben Folds Five - The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner
32. Rage Against The Machine - The Battle For Los Angeles
33. Saves The Day - Through Being Cool
34. The Foo Fighters - There Is Nothing Left To Lose
35. Beth Orton - Central Reservation
36. Chris Rock - Bigger & Blacker
37. "Weird Al" Yankovic - Running With Scissors
38. Moby - Play
39. Sonic Youth - SYR4: Goodbye 20th Century
40. Wilco - Summerteeth
41. Sting - Brand New Day
42. Our Lady Peace - Happiness...Is Not A Fish You Can Catch
43. Pavement - Terror Twilight
44. Fugazi - Instrument Soundtrack
45. Ben Harper - Burn To Shine
46. Guided By Voices - Do The Collapse
47. Ani Difranco - Up
48. Squarepusher - Selection Sixteen
49. Macy Gray - On How Life Is
50. Cibo Matto - Stereotype A

Since I finally finished my extensive review of my favorite albums and singles of the 2000s recently, I decided to go right back into the preceding decade, once again going backwards with my 25 favorite albums and 50 favorite singles from each year. Then I kept listening to music and thinking about what was released that year and decided to go for broke with 50 albums and 100 singles.

I was 17 in 1999, and hormones and various formative social experiences tend to leave one with a lot of vivid memories of that age, so a lot of this music is wrapped up in that for me. It was the last full calender year that I lived at home with my mom and brother, so in a way what this list conjures up that the '00s lists didn't is the music I got into via my family and various high school friends (about half of the albums here I first heard because my brother owned them).

In a way 1999 felt, both at the time and more recently in retrospect, like the first year that I regarded the critical mainstream as just as untrustworthy or divorced from my musical interests as the pop mainstream. R&B and hip hop were reaching incredible heights that critics took a limited interest in, while alternative rock had gone so soft and sophisticated trying to differentiate itself from nu-metal that it felt like the beginning of the road toward boring wishy washy indie that I spent most of the last ten years running from. A lot of the albums I grudgingly included on the lower reaches of this list were things like The Soft Bulletin and Midnite Vultures or Black On Both Sides that I never wholeheartedly embraced, but at least hold in higher esteem than the depressing final Pavement and Ben Folds Five albums. In fact outside the top 5, barely anybody here released their best album that year, it just feels like a lot of afterglow and preludes to better things. All in all '99 is one of the weakest years of the decade as far as my taste goes -- I won't have to pad out the top 50 with albums I feel conflicted about as much with most of the other years.

There is some great stuff at the top, though. I got Good Morning Spider during a kind of difficult period of my teen years, and obsessed over that record for a good 6 months. Then, I got Emergency & I and obsessed over that for the next 6 months. I was never a big Built To Spill or Sleater-Kinney fan, but those records have stuck with me, and Come Pick Me Up has become one of my favorite Superchunk records, so in a way 1999 is the last gasp of greatness of a few indie rock staples of the period. Plus, it was just an incredible year for Timbaland and so many of his projects.



Top 100 Singles of 1999:

1. Destiny's Child - "Bills, Bills, Bills"
2. The Roots f/ Erykah Badu - "You Got Me"
3. Rage Against The Machine - "Guerrilla Radio"
4. Jay-Z f/ Jaz-O and Amil - "Nigga What, Nigga Who (Originator '99)"
5. KoRn - "Falling Away From Me"
6. Backstreet Boys - "I Want It That Way"
7. 112 f/ Lil' Zane - "Anywhere"
8. Robbie Williams - "Angels"
9. Tal Bachman - "She's So High"
10. Whitney Houston - "It's Not Right But It's Okay"
11. Ginuwine - "What's So Different?"
12. Jordan Knight - "Give It 2 You"
13. Black Star f/ Common - "Respiration"
14. Lil Wayne f/ Juvenile & B.G. - "The Block is Hot"
15. DMX - "What's My Name?"
16. Kelis - "Get Along With You"
17. Raphael Saadiq f/ Q-Tip - "Get Involved"
18. Incubus - "Pardon Me"
19. JT Money - "Who Dat"
20. Metallica - "Whiskey In The Jar"
21. Mystikal and Outkast - "Neck Uv Da Woods"
22. Train - "Meet Virginia"
23. Limp Bizkit - "Rearranged"
24. Nine Inch Nails - "We're In This Together"
25. System Of A Down - "Sugar"
26. Garbage - "When I Grow Up"
27. Counting Crows - "Hanginaround"
28. Kid Rock - "Bawitdaba"
29. Ginuwine - "So Anxious"
30. Britney Spears - "(You Drive Me) Crazy"
31. Q-Tip - "Breathe & Stop"
32. Jay-Z f/ DMX - "Money Cash Hoes"
33. Rah Digga - "Break Fool"
34. No Doubt - "New"
35. LFO - "Summer Girls"
36. Enrique Iglesias - "Bailamos"
37. TLC - "Silly Ho"
38. Sugar Ray - "Someday"
39. Pastor Troy - "We Ready"
40. Blink 182 - "What's My Age Again?"
41. Tear Da Club Up Thugs - "Slob On My Knob"
42. Pharoah Monche - "Simon Says"
43. Lit - "Zip-Lock"
44. Dr. Dre f/ Snoop Dogg - "Still D.R.E."
45. Juvenile f/ Mannie Fresh and Lil Wayne - "Back That Azz Up"
46. Mobb Deep - "Quiet Storm"
47. Eve f/ Drag-On - "Let's Talk About"
48. Will Smith - "Will 2K"
49. Kid Rock - "Cowboy"
50. Third Eye Blind - "Anything"
51. 702 - "Where My Girls At"
52. Mystikal - "That's The Nigga"
53. Jimmie's Chicken Shack - "Do Right"
54. Christina Aguilera - "Genie In A Bottle"
55. The Goo Goo Dolls - "Black Balloon"
56. Dr. Dre f/ Eminem - "Forgot About Dre"
57. Ben Folds Five - "Army"
58. Mos Def - "Ms. Fat Booty"
59. Lauryn Hill - "Everything Is Everything"
60. Juvenile - "U Understand"
61. Staind - "Mudshovel"
62. Monica - "Angel Of Mine"
63. Sammy Hagar - "Mas Tequila"
64. Lamb - "B-Line"
65. 50 Cent - "How To Rob"
66. Lit - "My Own Worst Enemy"
67. Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Around The World"
68. The Beatnuts - "Watch Out Now"
69. Limp Bizkit - "Nookie"
70. Eminem f/ Dr. Dre - "Guilty Conscience"
71. Naughty By Nature f/ Zhane - "Jamboree"
72. "Weird Al" Yankovic - "It's All About The Pentiums"
73. B.G. - "Cash Money Is An Army"
74. Ginuwine - "None Of Ur Friends Business"
75. Backstreet Boys - "Larger Than Life"
76. Jay-Z - "Jigga My Nigga"
77. Red Hot Chili Peppers - "Scar Tissue"
78. Our Lady Peace - "One Man Army"
79. LL Cool J - "Deepest Bluest"
80. Missy Elliott - "She's A Bitch"
81. Snoop Dogg f/ Xzibit and Nate Dogg - "Bitch Please"
82. Eve - "What Ya Want"
83. Eiffel 65 - "Blue (Da Ba Dee)"
84. Moby - "Honey"
85. Drag-On & Juvenile - "Down Bottom"
86. Ricky Martin - "Livin' La Vida Loca"
87. Sleater-Kinney - "Get Up"
88. Pavement - "Spit On A Stranger"
89. Nas - "Nas Is Like"
90. Gang Starr - "Full Clip"
91. Puff Daddy - "P.E. 2000"
92. DMX - "Slippin'"
93. Sugar Ray - "Falls Apart"
94. Eve - "Gotta Man"
95. B.G. f/ The Big Tymers and the Hot Boyz - "Bling Bling"
96. Jay-Z f/ Beanie Sigel - "Do It Again"
97. Chris Cornell - "Can't Change Me"
98. Fiona Apple - "Fast As You Can"
99. KoRn - "Freak On A Leash"
100. "Weird Al" Yankovic - "The Saga Begins"

I kind of knew that my opinion of albums would diverge a lot from the 1999 Pazz & Jop critics poll, but I was surprised just how much I disagree with the singles choices as well -- I couldn't even stand to put any of the top 4 songs from that poll in my top 100, I really just never want to hear "No Scrubs" or "My Name Is" ever again.

In general, though, I feel better about 1999 as a singles year than as an albums year. It was a time when popular music seemed especially faddish, but a lot of the dominant fads of the era -- boy bands, rap metal, latin pop, amonth others -- reached their peak and yielded some of their best songs. A lot of times the first couple years of a decade are said to 'feel' like extensions of the preceding decade, but if anything I feel like '99 is more of a piece with the 2000s, and if I'd included this year in the '00s lists a lot of this stuff would just dominate.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 19, 2011 at 9:58 AM. You can skip to the end and leave a response.