THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, January 13, 1996 TAG: 9601120068
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY RICKEY WRIGHT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 115 lines
LIKE IT OR not, we'll remember 1995 as the Year of the Hootie.
An estimated 11 million album sales and saturation-plus radio and video play assure that. Whether South Carolina's Hootie and the Blowfish fade into frat-bar obscurity or continue to score hits, we're not likely to soon forget ``Only Wanna Be With You'' or ``Hold My Hand.''
Whether that's a good or a bad thing in your book will color your view of pop-music year '95. But there are few doubts that last year was a snooze, offering little to rally around.
Courtney Love and friends toured but didn't provide another ``Live Through This.'' Modern-rock radio grew as staid as its country counterparts. On the plus side: Country stations made room for Alison Krauss, one of the greatest voices to emerge in the past decade.
Last year, alternative-rock stations WROX-FM and WKOC-FM insisted their formats were the fastest-growing in popularity. Yet, their claims were undercut by the rapid success of ``smooth jazz'' WJCD-FM, which hit No. 2 in the spring ratings with the age 12-plus group. Neither alternative frequency has yet made that rank.
With major labels kept busy offering up their alternative 33 Flavors of the Month, some of us looked ever more intently for something fresher. We found it. (See page E? for my 10 favorite albums released in 1995.) Still, despite the striking presences of PJ Harvey and Coolio, it was easy to hope for a lot more. Not just strong albums, but more vision of the sort that those artists represented.
The ultra-hyped Beatles ``reunion'' was, as expected, something of a fizzle. ``Free as a Bird'' proved itself tuneful and sweet, but no major addition to the canon. The very enjoyable ``Beatles Anthology'' miniseries should improve on home video, where it will expand to nearly twice the length seen on ABC. How much time did the program devote to ``Abbey Road,'' their all-time bestseller? Little more than the three minutes it took to play ``Something''?
Speaking of hype, Bob Dole and William Bennett put on their record-plugger hats, helping keep word of mouth high for rappers Tha Dogg Pound's delayed first album, ``Dogg Food.'' Not surprisingly, the record hit No. 1 in its first week on the Billboard pop chart.
As it got boring even to talk about how boring most gangsta sounds had become, a few cracks began to appear in the monochromatic world of the gat and the 40-ouncer - gangsta for guns and beer. Coolio followed the heatedly delivered common sense of his smash single ``Gangsta's Paradise'' with its namesake album, the year's finest in rap. Between his messages and his sense of fun, Coolio points toward a sea change in commercial hip-hop. Don't be surprised if bored crowds stop flocking to each new gangsta release in 1996.
If it can happen to Michael Jackson, it can happen to anyone. Jackson couldn't move the leaden ``HIStory'' album much past record-store shelves; I'd wager that those shops are ready to send a bunch of copies back. Another prediction: Sony Music will break the CD of Jackson's current material out of ``HIStory'' and relaunch it as a separate product at a tag lower than the original double CD price of $24 to $33.
Hope for the revival of mainstream R&B came from Richmond-to-New York transplant D'Angelo, whose ``Brown Sugar'' was a sly, organ-driven groove. The album of the same name was a little spotty, but still provocatively rich enough to make one wonder about the one-name wonder's next move.
The Artist Formerly Known as Prince couldn't get his adventurous ``Gold Experience'' into the charts for more than a handful of weeks, although it was his best in a good long while. Don't blame his name change so much as his nonstop grousing about Warner Bros. Records, and the weakness inherent in 1994's long-player, ``Come.''
For many, dance music and related sounds, especially British strains like trip-hop and jungle, was where the action was in 1995. There, the changes are happening fast and enticingly. Tricky's ``Maxinquaye,'' the Holy Grail of trip-hop, doesn't convince me it's Album of the Year as so many have proclaimed it. But it's not hard to key into its slow-drag appeal.
As for Britpop, another of the year's big stories: Yes to Oasis, no to Blur. And a hearty, Butt-head-style ``ROCK!'' to Elastica. MEMO: THE 10 BEST ALBUMS OF '95
THE 10 BEST albums of 1995, as chosen by Virginian-Pilot pop-music
writer Rickey Wright:
1. Wilco, ``A.M.'' (Reprise). Jeff Tweedy took his half of the Uncle
Tupelo franchise and made the finest album to come from the new
country-rock movement in 1995.
2. Neil Young, ``Mirror Ball'' (Reprise). Pearl Jam kicked Neil
headfirst into another classic glimpse of America, and lived up to one
of his most surging, all-encompassing songs: ``I'm the Ocean.''
3. Dwight Yoakam, ``Gone'' (Reprise). Highlighted by the Al Green-ish
``Nothing,'' Yoakam's sixth studio album also displays a rare giddiness
here and there, and an awesome eclecticism everywhere.
4. Mudhoney, ``My Brother the Cow'' (Reprise). The bluesiest grunge
ever, with great lyrics about everything from Courtney Love to
religion.
5. Cachao, ``Master Sessions Volume II'' (Crescent Moon/Epic).
Ellington and Mingus comparisons are totally earned by the
septuagenarian Cuban bandleader's second album for Emilio and Gloria
Estefan's label.
6. Luna, ``Penthouse'' (Elektra). Perfectly titled, this Velvet
Underground-drenched group's third disc is at once languid and intense.
7. The Flaming Lips, ``Clouds Taste Metallic'' (Warner Bros.).
Psychedelic sweetness, profoundly benign and incredibly disturbing.
8. PJ Harvey, ``To Bring You My Love'' (Island). She keyed further
into the blues, too, and produced a dense work that should scare off a
lot of latter-day pretenders. (Alanis, anyone?) Killer line: ``We lay in
it for days.''
9. Eric Matthews, ``It's Heavy in Here'' (Sub Pop). Sophisticated
pop-rock with echoes of Love and XTC, and a hushed, dark heart.
10. Coolio, ``Gangsta's Paradise'' (Tommy Boy). From the title track
to ``Kinda High, Kinda Drunk'' to a song for his children, this is his
life. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Coolio: His "Gangsta's Paradise" album stood out as last year's best
in rap.
by CNB