On a recent forum post (1999-big memorable year for music?) I was interested in, I thought what's your take on music from 1998?

From a nostalgic point of view I liked:

Cher - Believe
Run-DMC vs Jason Nevins - It's like that
The Tamperer feat Maya - Feel it
Stardust - Music sounds better with you
Mousse T vs Hot 'N' Juicy - Horny
Baddiel & Skinner and the lightning seeds - Three lions '98
The Mavericks - Dance the night away
Robbie Williams - Millenium
Fat Les - Vindaloo
Madonna - Ray of light
Manic street preachers - If you tolerate this
Aerosmith - I don't want to miss a thing
The beautiful south - Perfect 10

From that year, I liked Morcheeba's "The Sea", "Whippin' Piccadilly" by
Gomez and the album track "Future Generation" by
the Auteurs.

Because I heard this first, whenever I now hear Michael Jackson's original on the radio, I have the urge to sing Maya's verses all over it.

A lot of those songs you mention sounded great at the time, but haven't aged well, as I think with a lot of 90s stuff. I couldn't listen to Millennium or Music Sounds Better now, even though I liked them at the time.

In fact, I think Robbie's 'I've Been Expecting You' now sounds awful, pretentious twaddle. Life Thru A Lens like 'Lazy Days' has much more charm. On 'Expecting', it appeared that he was taking a 'sideways' and 'wry' take on the whole James Bond thing, and we were encouraged to think he wasn't taking himself too seriously... but he actually was already quite up his own backside by 1998, I think, something that only truly hit people by the start of the 2000s.

I think B*Witched were underrated - their songs were a lot of fun and brightened up the charts for a while.

'Ice Hockey Hair' by Super Furries was an epic song around the summer. I'm not usually a fan of theirs, but I still love that one.

Mansun had the best video with their Action Man one for Legacy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCGt9jZtASA

Of course, the Spice Girls... strangely, I hated all their uptempo numbers but loved their ballads! I think these two songs were among the most perfect pop love songs of the whole decade...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wkuqRFXNvI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eegDtyrSUZw

I was glad 'Stop' didn't get to number one, it was throwaway crap, and I think it encouraged them to release slower numbers as singles for the rest of the year. That was where their voices and harmonies excelled IMO.

Celine Dion, 'the hot dogs go on'... Boyzone... there was a lot of bland rubbish knocking about, and sadly Steps started getting big hits in 98. 5ive weren't too bad for a boyband... I remember them on Top of the Pops during the World Cup, each of them wearing a shirt of a competing nation... Jamaica, Holland, England, Brazil and France IIRC... no Argentina, lol.

AAH! Here they are!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw2zyDAsIzE

It was Italy, not France. Good song though.

Oh, and what about this one!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2aGPo2NqHck

Made me laugh on Top of the Pops. The original singer from the 70s was like an embarrassing dad at a wedding.

Last seen Daz Sampson in Cobden's in Stockport, so obviously he's still an international playboy mixing amongst the very highest levels of society...

Tell you what, thinking about these years on these threads, I far prefer them to the so-called glory days of Britpop in 1994-96. Much more variety in the charts, and nobody trying to declare a load of 1960s copy acts as 'the new youth movement'.

Not really a good era for music from my point of view. Post Grunge and Nu-Metal spawned some of the worse acts erm ever...Creed, Limp Bizket, Papa Roach, Nickelback etc. Pop music had been on the decline since the mid to late 80's - but the late 90's spawned one cheesy shite pop act after another. And dance music was soiled by crappy Ibiza 'choons'.

Still there were some great'ish albums 98...

In An Aeroplane Over The Sea.
Mezzanine.
Deserters Songs.
Yield.
Version 2.0.

actually you have highlighted possibly the songs that epitomise that year. and i dont think they are that bad either...

vindaloo is my fav footy anthem ever, and i hate footy but this track captures the laddishness/yobbishness perfectly!

my fav 20


all time favs
1. Energy 52 - Cafe del mar
2. Nalin and Kane - Beachball
3. Paul van Dyke - For an angel
good
4. The Stereophonics - the bartender and the theif
5. Air - Kelly watch the stars
6. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones - The impression that i get
7. Prince Buster - Wine and grine
8. Fat Les - Vindaloo
9. B*Witched - Too you i belong
10. Air - Sexy boy
11. Da Hool - Meet her at the love parade
12. Space ft Cerys Matthews - The ballad of tom jones
13. Faithless - God is a dj
14. Bryan Adams Mel C - When your gone
15. Madonna - Frozen
16. Catatonia - Mulder and scully
17. Rest Assured - Treat imfamy
18. Catatonia - Road rage
19. Mavericks - dance the night away
20. Madonna - Ray of light

Only the vocal version, featuring Shelley Nelson though.

Wow your music taste is almost close to mine when it comes to classics

Energy 52 . Nalin and Kane , Faithless , Da Hool , Paul van Dyk all favourites of mine and Rest Assured - Treat Infamy such an amazing tune , samples from Bitter sweet Symphony i know also love that track too.

Great pop tracks from B*Witched , Madonna and Catatonia , Bryan Adams/Mel C too

You see I associate these names with the early 2000s, not 1998. Maybe they were around then, but I certainly wouldn't have heard of them yet.

Re Mezzanine, I love 'Angel', mainly because of the Zinedine Zidane adidas advert that was out around the time of the World Cup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KwsOnr2zp5U

The Cher, Robbie, Stardust & Aerosmith tracks you listed are class

Here's something for which I ought to feel ashamed, but don't...

I much prefer Under The Bridge by All Saints to the Red Hot Chilli Peppers original. Again, I heard All Saints first, and it's the Chillis that sound to me like the duff cover...

I actually never heard the Chillis song when it was out in 1992 or 1994... a kid in my class at school really liked them and bought their album, but I heard about 2 songs and didn't like the singer's voice, so ignored the rest of their output.

we have been in agreement many times before dude! especially when it comes to trance!

Great year for music, I would add to that list

Bamboogie by Bamboo
Who Do You Think You Are? by Spice Girls
All About The Money by Meja

I'm trying to think of some more.

Fair enough.

I just never liked the fact that All Saints took a song about heroin addiction and turned it into a simple love song...

Not being a follower of RHCP, I didn't know that, and certainly wouldn't have guessed it from All Saints' rendition.

Of course, a few months earlier, Lou Reed had done more or less the same with his own song, by remaking it with 'Various Artists' for the BBC Children In Need Appeal.

It's funny how lyrics - particularly drug related ones - can be written one way, yet the way they are sung can put a completely different meaning to them. Look at 'Livin La Vida Loca', if we can borrow from the 1999 thread. At the time, I'd hear it and think, ooh, very nice, fun Latino jaunt about some sultry girl... then you read the lyrics as written down and you think.... Ricky the Cokehead!...

Same with 'There She Goes'... as sung by The La's or as sung by Sixpence None The Richer. Very different.

The last good year for chart music before Westlife and Woolworths (with their 99p single of the week). Ruined it all sparking Cowell's eventual domination!

1998 was around the time I was first getting into music.

It was all about Catatonia for me. I loved 'Mulder and Scully', 'Road Rage' 'Strange Glue', 'Game On', in fact most of the International Velvet album. Then there was Cerys' collaboration with Space - 'The Ballad Of Tom Jones'.

I think I was really into rock-ish tracks with female vocals back then, as my other favourites include:

The Cardigans - 'My Favourite Game'
Hole - 'Celebrity Skin'
Bryan Adams & Melanie C - 'When You're Gone'
Madonna - 'Frozen' (OK, more goth-ish than rocky, but you get the idea).

Other than that;


I loved all these.

Then there was 'How Do I Live' by LeAnn Rimes. Not as remembered these days (and certainly not considered "cool" either), but this seemed really popular at the time, and I really liked it.

I liked Robbie Williams' '90s stuff more than anything he did in the 2000s.

A couple of tracks I really liked in 1998 were 'Good Riddance (Time Of Your Life)' by Green Day and 'To The Moon And Back' by Savage Garden, which were hits in the UK in 1998, but were first released earlier in the '90s.

Sheryl Crow - The Globe Sessions
Madonna - Ray of Light
Puressence - Only Forever
Alanis Morissette - Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie

Four brilliant 1998 albums that I still listen to today.

And Tanita Tikaram's single Stop Listening deserves a mention, shame it wasn't a big hit, it's a brilliant song.

Some of my favourites from 1998 in no particular order were:

Goo Goo Dolls - Iris,
Aerosmith - I Don't Want To Miss a Thing,
Billie Myers - Kiss the Rain,
Savage Garden - Truly Madly Deeply,

I think as singles these to certain extents have stood the test of time.

Britpop was on its way out but not without a fight.

In March 1998 I went straight to Wooly's from school to buy Space's Tin Planet.

Cher's Believe is definetly the tune of 1998 I remember hearing it played on the school bus every single morning on Radio 1 and having no idea who sung it as they didn't say for some reason and this was the days when the internet was just starting to become relevant.

It was a shock to finally see the music video and find it was by Cher as the vocodor effect on her voice made it unrecognisable to someone who didn't know.

haha your username rings a bell , probably came across each other in the Trance Thread from a few months ago


Tune


Hahaha so remember it very well , I'm not much of a fan of auto-tune (Which is common in today's music) but it worked for that one track , probably because of Xenomania who make excellent Pop tracks

The reason wound of been due to her age, if someone like Kylie or Madonna have a breakout dance hit like its success R1 will have to play it & they prob won't state the name for ageist reasons :rolleyes

Such an underrated and underplayed song. I still listen to it all the time, the rest too are great and overplayed on Heart FM.

Miseducation of Lauryn Hill, anyone else? It's timeless.