1997

To me, 1997 was an amazing year for alternative music. The late 90's in general were a melting pot of influences, with the echoes of Nirvana and grunge as a whole still being felt throughout popular music, nü-metal's dreadlocked head was beginning to show itself with Korn's seminal Follow the Leader poised to kick it into high gear in 1998 and Mineral's back to back albums, 96's The Power of Failing and 98's Endserenading paving the way for dozens of emotionally charged albums in the following years.  But 1997 in particular, in my mind, was a catalyst of so many albums and sounds that shaped much of what comes to mind when I think of the 90's and also what created my taste in music, reaching into what I still find myself listening to now.

I think part of this is due to the age I was at the time, just barely beginning to understand what kind of music I actually enjoyed, along with a subscription to the incredibly anachronistic BMG mail order CD service that I'm pretty sure my parents inadvertently signed up for and, of course, a healthy obsession with the radio. Lacking MTV or any other type of media of that nature, these inlets were the only way I heard new music. I still remember, as many my age do, waiting diligently to tape my favorite songs off the radio (I feel like I spent an inordinate amount of time waiting for "Pretty Fly For A White Guy" to come on). Even now, some of those one hit wonders that only really got their moment in the sun for a few months, Verve Pipe's The Freshmen, Harvey Danger's Flagpole Sitta and Luscious Jackson's Naked Eye, they still hit that same spot they hit all those years ago.

Some of those albums that showed up in those frustrating cardboard packages never quite stuck with me. They only really existed in that medium, just a single CD that got tossed in with the rest of the discards that only got played from time to time. I remember the Madonna record, Ray of Light and Jamiroquai's Traveling Without Moving, the hit single "Virtual Insanity" which ended up to be an international superhit with a massively popular video that I didn't actually end up seeing for another 10 years. I never found myself coming back to these records though. The radio stations I could pick up where we lived weren't playing them and at the time, pop music didn't quite make sense to my brain anyways. It took a few more years before I really came to appreciate the pinpoint precision and attention to detail pop music requires. You really have to know what you're doing if you want millions of people to love your songs.

Unbeknownst to me at the time and something I didn't really care about until I gave up being an angsty teenage metalhead and got into electronic music later in my life, the electronic music bubble of the late 90's was really ramping up in earnest in 1997 with Daft Punk's Homework, Chemical Brother's Dig Your Own Hole and Prodigy's Fat Of the Land all coming out within a few months of each other. The big beat sound from the UK and the shuffling French house coming out of the Iberian peninsula revolutionized electronic music and created sounds that could still be heard, albeit filtered through the years, in the now waning electronic resurgence of the early 2010s.

Looking back now, decades on, I still find myself ripping some of those original mail-order albums to my phone, adding them to my Spotify playlists and listening to them till I get sick of them again and again. The singles off these albums have long since lost their meaning and I find myself listening to them straight through. Third Eye Blind's self-titled record is still one of the best sounding albums to come out of that time period as far as I'm concerned and Everclear's So Much For The Afterglow will always has a permanent spot in my rotation. Blur's yellow self-titled indoctrinated me into Damon Alburn's voice and idiosyncratic songwriting years before the Gorillaz showed up and Smash Mouth's Fush Yu Mang is just a testament to what kind of band they used to be before they started making music for Disney movies. There may not be anything special about 1997 in particular, but for me, I have a feeling I'll still be coming back to this music 20 years from now.

That all being said, I put together a playlist of some of my favorite tracks, including some one-hit wonders, a few b-tracks from hit albums and other random tidbits that I think anyone in their late 20's will appreciate.

https://open.spotify.com/user/thoughtography/playlist/1497vmDrCJk4vIAstl0OTA