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TOM PETTY.
Best Pop Music 1999
By Joan Anderman
In no particular order
1. Tom Petty, Tweeter Center, Mansfield
2. Elliot Smith, the Roxy
3. Bob Dylan, Tweeter Center
4. Richard Buckner, the Middle East, Cambridge
5. The Pretenders, Tweeter Center
6. Ron Sexsmith, the Paradise
7. Red Hot Chili Peppers, Tweeter Center
8. Cry Cry Cry and the Nields, Viking Hotel, Newport Folk Festival
9. Cafe Tacuba, the Paradise
10. Earth, Wind, and Fire, Avalon.
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reamy thighs and perfect navels set the artistic mood, assembly-line dance tracks replaced ingenuity and integrity, and the ensuing shrieks probably damaged the ozone layer. It was the Year of Teen Pop. Britney, Christina, and Jessica (that's Spears, Aguilera, and Simpson, for those who have recently returned from another planet) ruled the charts, in tandem with a clutch of handsome harmonizing young men - Backstreet Boys, 'N Sync, 98 Degrees, LFO, and plenty more you won't hear about until they move 20 gazillion units. Summer of '99 will be forever remembered as a sweltering tribute to the buying power of impressionable youth.
Not that we're complaining. This is, after all, the popular culture - emphasis on popular, as the behemoth becomes increasingly driven by commerce rather than curiosity. Consumer-targeted trends and analyst-approved product vie with groundbreaking, deeply felt innovation for our attention. Fortunately, pop culture is perpetually striving toward equilibrium, and fluffy fads are invariably balanced by dark, artful investigations - and 1999 was no exception.
As if in answer to the music gods' prayers (corporate mergers have left these once-powerful divinities with a mere shadow of their former clout), Nine Inch Nails and Rage Against the Machine released profoundly ambitious, intensely realized CDs, ''The Fragile'' and ''The Battle of Los Angeles,'' respectively. Red Hot Chili Peppers put out ''Californication,'' easily the most mature, gratifying album of their career. Those three alone carried enough weight to make it the Year of Deep, Right-Headed Rockers.
Ricky Martin shook his bon-bon all over the Oscars last spring, and in short order Carlos Santana racked up the first No. 1 single of his 30-year career. Cosmic confluence or lucky chance? Anyway you look at it, it was the Year of Latin Music. Or perhaps more accurately, it was the year superstars of Latin heritage saturated the pop mainstream with English-language albums and Santana got what he deserved. Martin, Marc Anthony, and Enrique Iglesias were the It boys; Jennifer Lopez (she can't sing, but her album cover hit all the right notes) and Christina Aguilera (who sings so well she needn't rely so heavily on her midriff) were both, amazingly, key figures in two trends: Latin surnames and cheesy disco. Best of all, the Latin-pop boom paved the way for more worthwhile Latin artists to be heard: Buena Vista Social Club, Cafe Tacuba, and a slew of other acts that rode Ricky's twitchy hips to greater stateside notoriety.
It was a bad year for women in rock, who were for the most part absent from the radar screen, a.k.a. Billboard charts. So it was with little fanfare that we happily experienced the Year of the Female Singer-Songwriter With no Coffeehouse Roots. Jewel, Sarah McLachlan, and Paula Cole faded into the touchy-feely woodwork as we basked in the attitudinal glow of Fiona Apple's dazzling sophomore effort (''When the Pawn ...''), Macy Gray's quirky, seductive debut (''On How Life Is''), and Mary J. Blige's hardcore testimony (''Mary'').
Sadly, even the cultural imperative for balance doesn't explain the lame and unfortunate existence of Kid Rock, Eminem, Limp Bizkit, and Insane Clown Posse. It was the Year of Rap-Rock Goons. They ushered anything resembling humanity out the door, and embraced misogyny with a brutal fervor. Witness Woodstock '99. Sorry, you sick dudes, the twisted humor/bad childhood excuse just doesn't cut it.
Lest we let all this talk of music and culture obscure our view of what's really happening, it almost goes without saying that it was the Year of the Internet, Again. Last year, the big news was indie acts using the Web to promote and distribute their music, bypassing altogether the demon Goliaths of the music industry: the labels, the press, radio, and MTV. Now virtual storefronts, personalized jukeboxes, and state-of-the-art song downloads are as common as busted jewel boxes. In 1999, the industry launched a mad scramble to catch up with the cyberworld.
The Internet is the hot new promotional tool (Britney Spears was an on-line phenom before her debut album was released), the hot new way to sell concert tickets (750,000 of them in less than an hour for the Backstreet Boys' 11-week tour this fall), and the hot new listening destination. More and more radio stations are streaming (that's broadcasting worldwide on line). Labels are rushing to hammer out legislation that will address on-line sales and MP3 downloading technology. The Internet record label Atomic Pop created a new business model for industry, and more on-line labels are on the way.
Finally, two figures from the early '90s Seattle grunge movement put out delicious pop albums: Chris Cornell, of the late, lamented band Soundgarden, released ''Euphoria Morning,'' and former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl's Foo Fighters got the hell out of Dodge, relocated to a Virginia suburb, and in the process stumbled onto the ultimate rock 'n' roll epiphany (which also doubles as a handy album title): ''There Is Nothing Left to Lose.'' It was the Year Grunge Went Pop. OK, Everclear has been doing it for years. But this year's model smells like postgraduate teen spirit. Cornell threw a bold curve with a beautiful singer-songwriter project, and Grohl made punk safe for grown-ups - something of an oxymoron. But that's another story.
