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The 10 Best Albums of 1999

These are the best albums of 1999 as selected by Slant’s music writers.

The 10 Best Albums of 1999

In my introduction to Slant’s list of the 100 Best Albums of the 1990s, I described nostalgia for the decade as “an idealized vision of a time when Bill Clinton was the fresh, young Democrat on the block, beepers were the hottest new tech items, and every major record label and Top 40 radio station was scrambling to discover the next big alternative to run-of-the-mill pop.” I went on to lament: “It’s human nature to look back on things with irrational fondness and nostalgia, overlooking the bad and romanticizing the good. But while the ’90s had its fair share of ‘crap,’ it’s hard to deny that the ‘good’ was exceptionally good.” So good, in fact, that we decided to dust off our lovingly curated list of over 400 albums to compile individual Top 10s for each year of the ’90s. Many of these titles are already widely—and rightfully—celebrated, but these lists also give us the opportunity to honor some typically overlooked gems. Sal Cinquemani

Honorable Mention: Nine Inch Nails, The Fragile; Tom Waits, Mule Variations; Wilco, Summerteeth; Q-Tip, Amplified; Handsome Boy Modeling School, So… How’s Your Girl? ; Beth Orton, Central Reservation; Jay-Z, Vol. 3… Life and Times of S. Carter; The White Stripes, The White Stripes; Fountains of Wayne, Utopia Parkway; Underworld, Beaucoup Fish


The 10 Best Albums of 1999

10. The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs

Chamber-pop misanthrope Stephin Merritt actually lets a little bit of sincerity shine through on 69 Love Songs, though his cockeyed worldview and unparalleled smartassery still permeate each song on his magnum opus. One of Merritt’s strengths as a songwriter is his economy, and the majority of these tracks pack an entire album’s worth of ideas, one-liners, and hooks into songs that barely scratch the two-minute mark. But what works best about 69 Love Songs is that Merritt’s steely precision doesn’t scan as emotional detachment. There’s ample snark in songs like “Time Enough for Rocking When We’re Old” and “Love Is Like a Bottle of Gin,” but “Come Back from San Francisco” and “Papa Was a Rodeo” prove that even the most committed of ironists can try a little tenderness now and then. Jonathan Keefe


The 10 Best Albums of 1999

9. Eminem, The Slim Shady LP

It was once all too easy to label any up-and-coming white rapper as the next Vanilla Ice, and by 1999, with a gimmicky name, bleached-blond hair, and the serviceable-but-mediocre Infinite having gone unnoticed three years prior, Eminem appeared safe for outright dismissal. The stark misogyny and insolence of The Slim Shady LP, where Em even challenged Dre himself on “Guilty Conscience,” changed all that: Marshall Mathers and his various aliases gleefully reveled in malice and chauvinism while still remaining tormented. Irreverent enough to mock the ego and id he saw in the mirror, Em filled Slim Shady with taboo rap and a prankster spirit. As he famously spat in “My Names Is,” he was sent to piss the world off, and as it turned out, no one—not even he—was safe from the crosshairs. Kevin Liedel


The 10 Best Albums of 1999

8. Fiona Apple, When the Pawn…

I don’t think I could survive a fight with Fiona Apple. All that bitterness is enough to make you want to icepick your eardrums. But who would she be if she didn’t have someone to fight with? Call her what you will, but this privileged craftswoman isn’t complacent and her words aren’t mush, and in Jon Brion she found the producer she deserved—someone to beautifully color her confessions without ever sounding subservient to them. Like a lover, his beats often indulge her emotion for emotion, running as fast as her angst often does, but there’s something almost teasing, not exactly mocking, about Brion’s mood-enhancing pop-jazz shadings. Sometimes they push back, threatening to, yeah, fucking go, and by When the Pawn…’s open-ended finale, you don’t know if they have. Apple and Brion’s special genius is their canny, heartbreaking evocation of uncertainty. Ed Gonzalez

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The 10 Best Albums of 1999

7. Rage Against the Machine, The Battle of Los Angeles

More last roar than last gasp, The Battle of Los Angeles is one of Rage Against the Machine’s most pointed efforts, an unnerving blend of socio-political outrage and rock-fueled irreverence that served as an excellent final chapter in the group’s too-short career. For a band that was already masters at delivering jackhammering music with both precision and gusto, Zack de la Rocha and company excel in delivering The Battle of Los Angeles’s explosive salvos: The siren guitars of “Calm Like a Bomb” wail with urgency, “Guerilla Radio” builds like a restless wave, and “Mic Check” is a foreboding stutter driven by de la Rocha’s invectives against overreaching capitalism. Liedel


The 10 Best Albums of 1999

6. The Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin

Having spent the preceding decade as one of music’s most revered experimental pop acts, for 1999’s The Soft Bulletin, the Flaming Lips jettisoned some of the problematic, self-consciously fey trappings of their previous work and distilled the elements that worked best about their distinctive take on modern pop into song structures that were as accessible as they were adventurous. The result was a deliberately constructed, refined new sound and a landmark album that was both influenced by and superior to the music of its era and which, in retrospect, stands as one of the finest, most important and influential albums of its decade. A testament to careful, selective editing, The Soft Bulletin recast the Flaming Lips as far more than a quirky cult act and laid the groundwork for their commercial and artistic breakthroughs in the years that followed. Keefe


The 10 Best Albums of 1999

5. Beck, Midnite Vultures

In which Beck says, in essence, “All right, brain, you’ve got me this far. It’s time for the booty to take over.” One of the rare stupid albums from a smart musician that genuinely seems to trust the value of the former, Beck’s Midnite Vultures attacks any intellectual gestures that would obfuscate horn-dog satisfaction right out of the gate. “I want to find the logic of all sex laws,” he sings in the rollicking, Hee Haw-cum-Soul Train party jam “Sexx Laws.” And it only gets greasier from there, in a manner that should make all the lesbians scream. The viscosity of “Nicotine & Gravy,” “Peaches & Cream,” and “Milk & Honey” is self-evident from the titles alone, but Beck waits until the disc’s climax to guzzle the full two liters of pimp juice when he uses Prince’s falsetto to admit, “I want to get with you…and your sister.” Eric Henderson


The 10 Best Albums of 1999

4. Mos Def, Black on Both Sides

Perhaps the smoothest operator to come out of Brooklyn, Mos Def is blessed with a silver tongue and a charm-your-pants-off flow. Black on Both Sides was his first opportunity to take center stage following a slew of guest spots and a full-length collaboration with Talib Kweli, and fortified his status as one of hip-hop’s most exciting talents. And though it’s only recently that Mos Def has started to deliver on this initial promise, the quality of his work here more than justifies our collective patience. “Ms. Fat Booty” ranks among the finest rap tunes of the ’90s or any decade, and between softer numbers like “Umi Says” and the thunderous “Know That,” the album illustrates Mos Def’s versatility as an artist and his monstrous talent on the microphone. Huw Jones

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The 10 Best Albums of 1999

3. The Chemical Brothers, Surrender

What do you do when your breakthrough album gets co-opted by the media and unfairly saddled with the responsibility of defining an entire, ostensibly “new” genre? Most acts would probably try to branch out to distance themselves from the embarrassment, but if you’re the Chemical Brothers, you stick to your guns and come up with a blitzkrieg of whirling dervishes that show just how much ecstasy can be milked from a basic formula. Surrender rewrites no scripts, reinvents no wheels. All it does is beat its listener into grinning submission with more of the very same chunky drum licks, funk samples, and druggy EQ tweakery that put the Chemical Brothers on the map in the first place. Innovation is overrated. Henderson


The 10 Best Albums of 1999

2. Basement Jaxx, Remedy

As far as critical analyses go, I defer here to Armand Van Helden, who knew exactly what he was saying when he claimed Basement Jaxx’s Remedy took house music and fucked it square in the ass. Not that he had to wrack his brain too hard to come up with the metaphor. It’s right there on the cover: lots and lots of golden-brown ass. Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe dropped their muscular manifesto at the height of house revivalism, but they stood virtually alone in their ability to assimilate a seemingly endless variety of genres and sounds. Remedy reverberates with the energy of Daft Punk, the experimentalism of the Chemical Brothers, and the compositional elegance of Masters at Work. Nothing partied harder like it was 1999. Henderson


The 10 Best Albums of 1999

1. Moby, Play

Today, Moby’s Play sounds out of fashion, but it’s difficult to imagine a time when it ever was in fashion. This is the Little Idiot’s Song of the South, a technofied homage to blues and gospel and black oral tradition that would be offensive if it weren’t so sincere and eerily convincing. At least that’s what you most remember about it. Because Play’s appropriation of black musical styles is so audacious, it’s easy to forget that Moby, who first won me over with his gloriously queer Everything Is Wrong, honors practically the entirety of rock tradition. This ethereal, hour-long trip is rich in gorgeous harmonies and textures, where simple yearnings (“Give me summer”) and memories (“See myself in the pouring rain”) resonate with gloomy sadness. Moby confesses on the nature of the mind, body, and spirit as if he were swimming in some sort of otherworldly fugue state. Gonzalez

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