On to the B's.
Big Wreck - "The Oaf," In Loving Memory Of...
When I think of 1997, the first thing I recall is that "Sex and Candy" song and wanting to knock the mush-mouthed singer right off his coffeehouse stool. That's what having a song become so popular and inescapably ubiquitous does for a band--it makes otherwise reasonable music fans want to do you violence. Better to be underrated, I say.Underrated that year was "The Oaf," which upon first listen sounds derivative of sources so numerous they are impossible to catalog. But dig deeper and there is an original voice here, one strong enough that the song sounds viable and modern thirteen years later. Anthemic and broad, Big Wreck still conveys an intimate understanding of twenty-something anxiety. When Ian Thornley sings about how his "luck is wasted," and that he is "on the run...somewhere," I knew then, and I still know, exactly what he's talking about.
Video Here:
Big Wreck - The Oaf
Billy Bragg &
Wilco - "Secret of the Sea," Mermaid Avenue Vol. II -Lyrics by Woody Guthrie. Apparently ol' Woody had quite a trove of song lyrics for which he had never recorded music. So English folk-singer and rabble-rouser Billy Bragg got together with Jeff Tweedy, John Stirratt, and the other fellers from Wilco to set Mr. Guthrie's words to song. Volume One contained the almost hit "California Stars." Not long after this project, Wilco became alt.country.pysch.rock.whatever giants with their Yankee Hotel Foxtrot album, finding success and attention as a result of the major label drama that accompanied the release of the album.
Volume Two wasn't quite as punchy and novel as the first Mermaid Avenue, but "Secret of the Sea" could've and should've found its way into regular rotation on any adult-alternative station. Purists prefer the Bragg-centered tunes, but Wilco absolutely hits it on the sweet-spot with this song. It is an exceptional pop composition--perfect verse, chorus, bridge--short enough that it leaves you wanting more and full of beautiful imagery courtesy of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie.
Black Star -"Definition," Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star - I won't try to catalog all of the myriad connections Mos Def and Talib Kweli have with the stars of the hip-hop galaxy, suffice it to say that even before they became relatively well-known they were Kevin Bacon-esque in their degrees of separation to nearly everyone with a sequencer and a Technics 1200. This song blew them up with every hip-hop head packing a sharpie and a set of chunky headphones plugged into a discman. Remember those? Twelve years later track is still hotfire on an iPod or in a club. And while the single charted at #3 in '98, it still never quite got them the attention I thought they warranted with this truly smart and danceable song.
"Definition" was a transitional moment for "conscious rap" for lack of a better term. The chorus mourns both Tupac and B.I.G., laments the forces in the rap world that led to their deaths and offers that hip-hop must be a more responsible art-form, without sacrificing the gotdamt fun. Outkast -Aquemini, Common - Like Water for Chocolate, The Roots - Things Fall Apart, all followed the release of this album and single. I gotta believe they all benefited.
The Kweli/Def counterpoint creates a compelling dynamic of two artists trying to simultaneously work together and outdo one another. Def begins dicing rhyme schemes, "from the first to the last of it/delivery is passionate/the whole and not the half of it/vocab and not the math of it," Kweli counters with a bit of intentional dichotomy, "Brooklyn, New York City where they paint murals of Biggie/in cash we trust 'cause this ghetto fabulous life look pretty..." This song should have outsold No Limit and Cash Money by double, but then I'm just a white dude with a computer.
Or if you want sexy splash page ladies, check the video:
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