ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Tuesday, December 31, 1996 TAG: 9612310075
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: FLETCHER ROBERTS N.Y. TIMES NEWS SERVICE
It was a bleak year financially for the record industry, but musically it was far from dormant. One of the biggest noises came not from the distorted guitars of alternative rock or the angry lyrics of rap but from the dance floor.
By summer, the macarena had Americans of every stripe shaking and shimmying - from the waist up - to its infectious pulse: partyers at the beach, the women's Olympic gymnastics team and even the grounds crew at Yankee games. Not since the forbidden lambada had a dance import caused such commotion in this country.
Women, led by two very different Canadians, continued their march to the forefront of pop. Alanis Morissette, who screamed and crooned tales of revenge in her warbling voice, swept the Grammys in February, winning four major awards that helped push sales of her 1995 album, ``Jagged Little Pill,'' beyond the 11 million mark.
Her compatriot, Celine Dion, whose sumptuous ballads embrace a status quo that Morissette rejects, had the year's best-selling album, ``Falling Into You.'' With more than 7 million copies sold, it remained a fixture in the top 10 for much of 1996, and she seems likely to be a prominent face at the 1997 Grammys.
Another dominant female figure was Lauryn Hill of the Fugees, whose slick combination of intelligent rap with a touch of rhythm-and-blues produced a megahit for the group's second album, ``The Score.'' The Fugees' faithful remake of Roberta Flack's 1973 classic, ``Killing Me Softly,'' appealed equally to suburban housewives and hip-hop cognoscenti.
As the pop-rap of the Fugees gained ground, gangsta rap lost several top performers. Tupac Shakur, 25, died in September as a result of a drive-by shooting in Las Vegas, intensifying the debate about the role of violence in rap. Meanwhile, Marion "Suge" Knight, the controversial head of Death Row Records, Shakur's former label, ended the year in jail for violating parole. Dr. Dre, a founding father of gangsta rap, announced that he was cleaning up his act. The video for his new single, ``Been There, Done That,'' shows a ballroom full of couples in evening dress doing the tango.
In a year when young jazz musicians found the beat again, Miles Davis' reputation was burnished posthumously with the release of ``Miles Davis and Gil Evans: The Complete Columbia Studio Recordings'' in September. The six-CD set documents two masters at the top of their game. The jazz world also lost one of its greatest voices and most buoyant personalities when Ella Fitzgerald died in June at the age of 79.
Movie tie-ins continued to be a bonanza as hits emerged from soundtracks ranging from ``Space Jam'' to ``The Preacher's Wife,'' featuring the virtuosic Whitney Houston.
Similarly, the Beatles video ``Anthology'' remained near the top of Billboard's music video chart after its release in September, despite a $159 price tag. Throw in the fact that the three companion double-CD sets are multimillion sellers, and it's clear that the lads from Liverpool haven't lost the knack.
But a number of younger supergroups apparently have. Much-anticipated albums by bands like R.E.M., Pearl Jam and Hootie and the Blowfish were commercial disappointments. A new album by U2 that could have helped the industry was pushed back until at least March.
There were many reasons for the downturn, most notably bankruptcies at several of the country's biggest record-store chains and the decline of alternative rock. Its young listeners are now searching for an alternative to alternative.
The English dance-music maverick Tricky may have beaten the doomsayers to the punch when he named his latest album ``Pre-Millennium Tension.''
LENGTH: Medium: 71 lines KEYWORDS: YEAR 1996by CNB