There’s no way any list could sum up the year in a mere 99 songs - we could roll up to the thousands without running dry. The world was cramming in as many pop thrills as possible before the Y2K crash. There was so much to hear, even great music could get lost in the rush - which is why going back means discovering new surprises. A previously unknown producer named Max Martin presided over the Orlandinavian connection that invaded the radio, in a strange alliance between the Swedes and the Mousketeers. Carson Daly hosted Total Request Live on MTV every afternoon, where a new breed of stars got born: Britney, Xtina, Ricky, NSync, the Backstreet Boys. Nobody realized Napster was about to change everything. “You would hear Kiss-FM or Z-100: ‘Coming right up, Mariah Carey, Blink-182, Eminem, Sugar Ray, and you’re like, ‘What the fuck is happening?”įans bought more music (with money! in stores!) than ever before or since. “The walls came down,” as Sugar Ray’s Mark McGrath told me last year.
The old stylistic boundaries didn’t hold any more. Whatever type of music you loved, this year had it: hip-hop, electronica, indie rock, punk garage, country, R&B, disco sleaze. The hits, the flops, the flukes, the obscurities. So let’s break it down: the 99 best songs of 1999, 20 years later. It was one of those pop moments when all that glitters actually is gold. Let’s put it this way: If you spend an hour at your local karaoke bar, you’re going to hear somebody belt at least one hit from the summer of ’99. So much crazed innovation, all around the margins.
#Minekawa takako plash full#
The radio was suddenly full of shiny new stars. 1999 was the year music exploded, the year when nothing made any damn sense, the year fans had to throw out any old-school rules for how pop worked. The following is a run of singles they released from 98-2002, all quality stuff but for 'complexity' and arrangements in particular check out The Peace and Sou da! Great great pop music with really high quality productions, Hello Project (of whom Morning Musume is but one of the bands (albeit the most important)) were responsible for some of the greatest pop music ever released and really deserve their own thread but, for now, here's that run of singles I was banging on about.Man, it was a hot one. You wanna listen to some quality Morning Musume. If anyone has a minute to read and listen, and also has some intense experience with J-Pop, would you mind schooling me a bit?ĭon't post 3-nin Matsuuri. I'm fairly sure that the song he references directly in the audio interview (which can be heard at the link below) is the same one in the YouTube link below. Admittedly, while I do have a fairly technical ear for music, it does not apply at all to Japanese pop music, most of which I find mildly Satanic (in the disturbing sense, not as the embodiment of the Prince of Darkness). In this NPR article with accompanying audio interview, Friedman talks about how repetitive Megadeth songs became (which is absolutely true) and how he began to find J-Pop far more musically challenging and rewarding. I was slightly less surprised when I learned a number of years later that he'd moved permanently to Japan and became a fixture on Japanese television. As a big Megadeth fan in the late 80's/early 90s, I can still recall being mildly bemused when I learned that Friedman spent much of his time working in Japan, recording classical guitar records and instructional videos. He's also done lots of classical work and is considered in most circles to be virtuoso musician. Friedman, for those of you who don't know of him, is best known for being a guitarist in Megadeth for a number of years. I came across this story on NPR over the weekend, and it really has me wondering if there is more to this stuff than meets the eye (or ear). Or is Marty Friedman simply out of his gourd?
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