OutKast, Speakerboxxx/The Love Below (2003, 11x Platinum)Ī diamond-selling double-album that won both the Album of the Year Grammy and the Pazz & Jop critics poll, and boasts one of the most popular songs of all-time… but does anyone actually still listen to it? OutKast empirically proved they were more than the sum of their parts by segregating the contributions of Big Boi and Andre 3000 to their own discs, and while the results were rapturously received at the time, S/TLB’s rep sags farther every year since, as fans realize how critical the balance and interplay the duo provided one another was to their overall alchemy. Her “All By Myself” redo fares far better, though, “Seduces Me” is as sensual as it should be, and “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” reaches heights of Jim Steinman-conducted melodrama that even Meat Loaf would only scale with extreme trepidation.ħ7. Gets soggy in the latter half, and covers of “(You Make Me Feel Like) a Natural Woman” and “River Deep, Mountain High” can’t help coming off a little stilted. Celine Dion, Falling Into You (1996, 11x Platinum) When the Ronettes and Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs are butting up against new smashes from Eric Carmen and, yes, Patrick Swayze himself, it works well enough when it’s over-caffeinated synth-pop from Merry Clayton and Alfie Zappacosta getting in the way of “Hey! Baby” and “Love Is Strange,” less so.ħ8.
DIRTY POP NSYNC ALBUM MOVIE
Various Artists, Dirty Dancing Soundtrack (1987, 11x Platinum)Įstablished AM classics from a generation earlier awkwardly mingle with polished contemporary pop from the late ‘80s, a mixer that made marginally more sense in the movie than it does on record. Celine Dion, Let’s Talk About Love (1997, 10x Platinum)ħ9. “Real World” and “Back 2 Good” feel like personal statements in search of coherent theses, “3AM” is strangely lacking in urgency for a song with its title, and “Push” might be the most narratively confused song about domestic abuse ever released.Ĩ6. When Matchbox 20 went supernova in the late ‘90s, it was obvious grunge’s moment was officially over, though what it was being replaced with wasn’t totally clear: Rob Thomas wrote pretty good singles, but what exactly they added up to remained ambiguous. Matchbox 20, Yourself or Someone Like You (1996, 12x Platinum) for not even trying to fudge a “Songs From and Inspired By” collection, but unless you’re really never gonna let go of the late ‘90s, you don’t need this in your life.Ĩ7.
No better testament to the world-swallowing phenomenon that was Titanic than the score going Diamond: Celine Dion’s signature love theme “My Heart Will Go On” is the only song here not a James Horner instrumental, and you have to wait until the very end to get to it. Human Clay at least has some riffs, and “Higher,” a bro hymn as righteous as the sun coming out five minutes before kickoff. Creed, Human Clay (1999, 11x Platinum)Ĭlose, but not quite the nadir of post-grunge alt-rock it’s often made out to be – that’d probably be Weathered, the Creed album after this one. It gets better from there, but not, like, a lot. Nickelback, All the Right Reasons (2005, 10x Platinum)Īll the Right Reasons opens with the not-misleadingly titled “Follow You Home,” featuring singer Chad Kroeger’s promise that trying to murder him would merely slow down his stalking efforts, and follows that with “Fight for All the Wrong Reasons,” in which Kroeger testifies that he’d leave his toxic relationship of “favorable slavery” if only his girlfriend would stop going down on him. Until then, all we can say about Breathless is that it’s not actively unpleasant to listen to.ĩ1.
Some day, a smooth-jazz scholar will make the rounds informing us about why Kenny G was actually a genre innovator and stealth underground influence, shaming us for all the thoughtless jokes made at his expense over the years.
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