It’s fair to say that 1989 will not go down as my favorite year of music, but don’t worry, I still managed to cobble together ten albums to recommend. And bitch about genre labels for a while.
Against my better judgment, I’m undertaking a project to determine my top 10 albums of every year since 1960. Instead of just picking my favorite stuff out of my collection, I intend to explore, re-visit and discover. While I can’t promise to leave no stone un-turned, I am going to go deeper than I ever have before. Why would I partake in a journey that will inevitably take many years and that I ultimately may never finish? Most importantly, to uncover great music that I’ve never heard before. Second, to boost my knowledge of music history and get a sense of what was happening at a macro scale in a snapshot of time. Finally, I want to share my passion for music with you and, fingers crossed, generate a dialogue down in the comments. So without further ado, here is #6 in the series. My random number generator tells me that our next year to explore is 2003!
The Greatest Albums of 1989
As I made my way through the early stages of this project, I started to take the idealistic view that every year of music, while not necessarily equal, was fundamentally of great magnitude that could not possibly be encompassed within ten meager albums. I can’t say that I totally disagree with that assertion now, but I’m not gonna lie… 1989 has shaken my faith. This is the first year that I feel the top ten is a relative step down from the other entries on my list. Don’t get me wrong, the top two would belong in a revered spot on any year’s list, but after that, things get a little dicey. The rest of the top five feels a little more like a typical 6-10, and some of the later entries would have struggled to squeeze into the conversation for many of the years I’ve covered. Young MC’s Stone Cold Rhymin’ and Skid Row’s self-titled debut were both very close to making the list, and while those albums are better than critical consensus might have you believe, they should probably not be on the top 10 anything. There are a contingent of music fans who consider 1989 an apex of sorts, thanks to the debut album of Nine Inch Nails and The Cure’s Disintegration, among others. None of that stuff is really my bag, but it does remind me of this, probably the definitive word on The Cure in my eyes.
The biggest positive for ’89 is that it falls squarely in the “Golden Age of Hip Hop”. Over the prior two years, Rakim had pushed the boundaries of emceeing further than previously thought imaginable, and suddenly everyone’s rhyme game was light years ahead of where it was in 1986. Couple that with the release and monumental success of Straight Outta Compton in 1988, and you can see why so much lyrically-minded gangsta rap was coming out. As a self-professed hip hop afficianado, I am mostly delighted to listen to all of this stuff. I say mostly, because I’m a lot older and (presumably) more mature than I was when I first got into gangsta rap, and there are, admittedly, a fair share of uncomfortable lyrics to wade through. Half the aim of the genre is to provoke offense and entice teenagers to buy the music, but we live in a more enlightened time now, and it can be pretty rough sledding at times. Of course, everyone’s line will be different. I tend to have no issue with the hyper-violent and darkly cartoonish venom that the Geto Boys spit, but Big Daddy Kane’s casually misogynistic and homophobic “Pimpin’ Ain’t Easy” is a bridge too far. Proceed with caution.
1989 also saw the beginning of the end of the so-called “hair metal” era. Returns were clearly diminished at this point. What surprised me was that there wasn’t more legitimate heavy metal of note released that year. It’s no wonder the door was so wide open for grunge to step inside and fill the vacuum. Ugh, this paragraph is full of genre labels that I despise. Let’s just move onto the goods.
1. Paul’s Boutique – Beastie Boys
Paul’s Boutique is the Pet Sounds of hip hop. On the Beach Boys’ 1966 masterpiece, they expanded the acceptable sonic palette for pop music and meticulously constructed a nearly perfect album, where every note and noise had its exact purpose and place. With help from superhero producers, the Dust Brothers, the Beasties did the exact same thing for hip hop in ‘89, just with 100% more references to Adidas.
One of the soundbites critics love to espouse when discussing the album is that it would impossible to create once record label sample-clearing policies changed in the early 90’s. That’s probably technically true, but it undercuts just how genius the production of this album is, as if access to whatever music they wanted enabled the Dust Brothers to just slap together this insane mosaic. Hip hop had a couple of decades without sampling law, and the only other album it produced that was close to this level of intricacy was It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. Paul’s Boutique was a bit of a commercial failure, but I actually attribute that to its brilliance. It must have been disorienting and confusing for fans of the sparse, Rick Rubin-produced Licensed to Ill to hear this never-ending volcano of samples and concepts. Much like the naïve teenagers listening to Marty McFly’s thrash-influenced guitar solo at the “Enchantment Under the Sea” dance, I imagine a legion of kangol-and-wife-beater wearing Beastie Boys fans staring at their tape decks in mute stupefaction.
The album moves from strength to strength, with the trio flawlessly employing their unique tag team rhyming style over classics like “Shake Your Rump”, “Egg Man”, “Car Thief”, “The Sounds of Science”… I could go on and on. The album culminates with the epic “B-Boy Bouillabaisse”, a deliriously manic collection of song snippets that still has the capacity to awe in the sheer density of creativity on display. It’s like a whole other Beastie Boys album, compressed into 15 minutes, maybe a window into where they would have gone if they had continued along the same path instead of re-discovering the joy of live instrumentation and dropping their frat boy hooligan façade. It’s the perfect capper to the Beastie’s best album, and really to the entire first chapter of their career.
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2. Doolittle – The Pixies
I was in no way hip enough at 11-years-old to listen to the Pixies when Doolittle came out. In fact, I wasn’t hip enough to know who the Pixies were for several years after that. That’s probably why Nirvana blew my mind so much when “Smells Like Teen Spirit” dropped on MTV: I had missed out on many of their influences, so it seemed like they had created their sound out of whole cloth. Not that the Pixies are best described as Nirvana’s forbears, mind you, they have their own thing going on. The primal fury combined with catchy-ass songs is a mutual feature, but there’s no real corollary in pop music to Frank Black panting about “hips like Cinderella” over a simple snare beat and a surf bassline. In many ways, you can use Doolittle to draw a straight line between the Ramones and Weezer, but there is plenty of Wire, Roy Orbison, Neil Young and the Ventures on the album to keep things interesting, so maybe it’s not a straight line after all. With songs as great as “Debaser”, “Wave of Mutilation” and “Here Comes Your Man”, it really doesn’t matter what wild confluence of styles the Pixies deploy, it just matters that they stack them up and knock them out with a reckless confidence that indicates they don’t give a shit who you think they sound like.
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3. The Stone Roses – The Stone Roses
I’m trying to come up with a way to describe The Stone Roses without comparing it to a bunch of other music, and I keep coming back to the fact that it just sounds so British. I mean, this is just the most British fucking album I’ve ever heard. I’m not talking about the accents or anything, I just mean that it encapsulates British rock so fully. Which is cool; British rock is great. It practically invaded us at one point. The Roses have the psychedelic jangle of XTC, the versatility of the Beatles, the arrogance of Oasis… shit, I wasn’t going to do that. The fact is, The Stone Roses can’t really be separated from its heritage, and that’s ok. It was such a delightfully incongruous album to listen to with all of the hip hop, cock rock and burgeoning emo that dominated 1989. Few tracks really stand out, but that speaks more to a truly exceptional level of consistency more than anything else. That said, “I Wanna Be Adored” and “Made of Stone” should do as a litmus test if you want to understand what the band is all about and somehow find that my rambling nonsense has not really done the trick.
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4. No One Can Do It Better – The D.O.C.
If you find NWA to be a little too violent or vulgar, then you might want to check out D.O.C.’s No One Can Do It Better. Same vibe, but less over the top. D.O.C. may not have Ice Cube’s verbal dexterity, or the steely intensity of MC Ren, but he’s no pretender: The man can flat out rap, which makes his subsequent vocal cord injury due to an automobile accident more than just a personal tragedy. Given Dr. Dre’s track record for discovering talent (Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Kendrick Lamar… you might have heard of them), it’s fair to wonder what heights that Tracy Lynn Curry could have reached. Luckily, we have one untarnished testament to his ability.
With all due respect to the D.O.C., however, the major selling point of this album is the chance to get another glimpse at Dr. Dre’s genius for production. At the time, you wouldn’t have known to savor it so much, but no one could have predicted how un-prolific he would become in the coming decades. When it comes to hip hop producers, Dre is definitely on the Mt. Rushmore. He is probably the funkiest producer to ever lay down tracks, and doesn’t rely on wholesale P-Funk rip-offs to achieve that, unlike many of his peers. I would actually argue that he is stronger here than he was on the previous year’s Straight Outta Compton, and that it represents the true pinnacle of his pre-G-Funk sound. Of course Compton is still the better record, thanks to the incredible array of personalities involved, and that is evident in the final track of No One Can Do It Better, “Grand Finale”. With Dre on the boards, and guest verses from Cube, Ren and Eazy E, it actually stands as the last true NWA track from the group’s classic lineup. If nothing else, you have to recognize the value in that.
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5. The Real Thing – Faith No More
For a genre that has a reputation for clichéd lyrics that are impossible to understand anyway, Mike Patton is a boon to heavy metal. Even when he’s not getting completely weird, as he frequently likes to do, he presents a more thoughtful approach to his songs. The Real Thing’s first three tracks, “From Out of Nowhere”, “Epic” and “Falling to Pieces” are an incredibly strong opening salvo, each of which turned out to be a single. Right away, Patton’s nasal vocals, the crunchy guitar and especially Billy Gould’s funky bass lines differentiate the band from other metal being released at the time. “Surprise! You’re Dead!” is absolutely brutal, and in the top three songs I would choose as entrance music for my professional wrestling career. “Zombie Eaters”, much like the title so clearly suggests, is a first-person account of a baby addressing its mother (sample lyric: “I like to make a mess, I laugh at your distress; I sit all day in my crib, absorbing all you give; I’m helpless, I’m flawless, I’m a machine”). Even more strange and disturbing, the album closer “Edge of the World” is a darkly serene love song between a middle-aged man and a child (sample lyric: “Give me a smile, let me see those pearlies; I’ll do anything for the little girlies…” Go ahead and take a shower after reading that one, I’ll wait). The only real miss on the album is an unnecessary cover of Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs.” Not only does it add nothing to the classic song, but witches gathering in black masses and Satan spreading his wings sound positively passé compared to the material that Patton & company had already cooked up.
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6. Road to the Riches – Kool G Rap & DJ Polo
Perhaps the most faithful recreation of the template set forth by Eric B & Rakim, Kool G Rap & DJ Polo’s Road to the Riches is the personification of the Golden Age of Hip Hop. It’s all break beats, scratching and hard rhymes. It’s gangsta rap, for sure, but the focus is more on rhymes for rhymes’ sake than NWA’s shock and awe approach. Legendary producer, Marly Marl, sets the tone and DJ Polo acts as a catalyst, driving track after track with a high energy assault of record scratches and horn squeals. G Rap is the real star, though. Maybe the least appreciated of the Golden Age’s masters, his rhymes cascade with nimble acuity, his telltale lisp becoming more pronounced as his delivery becomes more intense. Or, as he puts it: “Kool G Rap the lyric dictator, DJ Polo the fader operator, will crush, squash, rhymes are harsh; All spectators will be brainwashed.”
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7. Blue Earth – The Jayhawks
Alt country is a funny genre label. The alt, meaning alternative, suggests that the music is demonstrably different from classic country (say Hank Williams Sr. or Patsy Cline, two of the purest distillations of country music). In reality, the artists branded with the alt label do sound more modern, usually carrying a little more rock influence, but I find that they are more direct spiritual successors of classic country than the artists who get the unqualified “country” label. Semantics lesson aside, I tend to gravitate more towards alt country for that very reason, and I am finding myself surprised at how far back its tendrils reach. I was not, for instance, expecting to discover a band that sounds so clearly like the template for Uncle Tupelo and the Bottle Rockets while exploring the music of the 80’s.
Blue Earth is a mostly somber album, with lyrics centered on girls, dreams and death, but it isn’t depressing. Apparently just a set of demos that were fashioned into an actual release, the songs are stripped down and earthy, not plain exactly, but utilitarian. In many ways, the Jayhawks resemble the country side of the Grateful Dead (a la Workingman’s Dead), with their simple and lyrical tunes. It’s probably insincere to call this lovely album more country than Randy Travis, Alabama or Reba McIntyre, all of whom had number one albums in ’89, but it’s the version that I’d rather listen to by a pretty wide margin.
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8. Drums of Passion: The Beat – Bebatunde Olatunji
There’s no way 1989 Lucas would have known about this album, relegated as it would have been to the miniscule “World Music” section of my local Tower Records or Digits (remember Digits?) I understand the economics of that in a world with brick and mortar music stores, but any time I see the phrase “World Music” now, I have to cringe. It takes a special kind of arrogance to suggest that we need dozens of categories to cover the breadth of music produced in the U.S., England and Canada, but the sum of the music produced in the world’s non-English speaking countries can neatly fit into one genre.
Despite featuring the renowned Carlos Santana on guitar, Drums of Passion, as advertised, is all about the drums. Co-produced by (Grateful Dead drummer) Mickey Hart and featuring a battery of exotic drums that I can’t pronounce, much less describe, the album is a tidal wave of percussion. Instead of coming off overwhelming and aggressive, however, the nuanced sounds of each instrument create a transfixing, even calming, experience. The interplay of the various drums builds so much complexity to get lost in, that you can find yourself somewhat hypnotized. The warm, almost chanting vocals from Olatunji also add to that particular effect. Sounding unlike anything else on the list, or any of my lists really, I would encourage everyone to check out this gem. I know you didn’t hear about it back in ’89.
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9. Workbook – Bob Mould
Bob Mould has the qualities of an ancient bard. On his debut solo album (after parting ways from punk/alternative rock act, Husker Du), he sounds like he could be singing about great heroes and epic battles and prophecies fulfilled. He’s actually mostly singing about getting older, as far as I can make out, but his earnestness and passion gives the material a serious weight. The music is half folk, half rock, but doesn’t really sound like anything I’ve ever listened to. There is some of the year’s best rock guitar, but the ever-present cello adds an extra layer of gravitas. 1989 has been my least fruitful year in terms of discovering new music overall, but my top ten includes six albums that I didn’t previously own. Not only was Workbook a new purchase, but I had never even heard of it before. The song-writing is so strong, and Mould’s vision so distinct, that I’m going to have to give Husker Du more than passing consideration when I come upon a year that has one of their albums. I still need more time to digest this one, but my initial impressions are very strong.
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10. 3 Feet High and Rising – De La Soul
I’ve always been partial to A Tribe Called Quest when it comes to the Native Tongues collective. To me, they had the best beats and the best rhymes. It’s worth noting, however, how fresh and distinct De La Soul’s debut album sounds in the context of all of the other hip hop released in 1989. A lot of other artists could benefit from sounding so laid back and fun. “Me, Myself & I” is definitely the most famous of the album’s tunes, making an appearance in several recent commercials, featuring a memorable high school-based video and rocking the monster hook from Funkadelic’s “Knee Deep”. Several of the songs are excellent, though, including “Eye Know”, “D.A.I.S.Y. Age” and “Plug Tunin’”.
For better or for worse, skits are an intractable part of hip hop records. They generally fall into one of two categories: Funny skits and skits that play into the mythology and sensibility of the artist. Ice T is usually successful at the former, and the aforementioned D.O.C. & Dr. Dre would secure their place in the funny-hip-hop-skit hall of fame in ’92 with “The $20 Sack Pyramid”. For the latter, think Wu Tang Clan for an artist who has done it well. Despite the positive examples, nine out of ten times skits are a drag on the album’s flow and often outright annoying. The skits on 3 Feet High and Rising absolutely give a great sense of the group’s sensibilities, but I still find them to be a bummer. Fortunately, we live in an age of digital music where you can drop what you don’t like, and focus on the crazy, bouncy, hippie rap music that you do.
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Honorable Mentions
Rock: Skid Row – Skid Row; Sonic Temple – The Cult; Dr. Feelgood – Motley Crue; Bleach – Nirvana; Full Moon Fever – Tom Petty
Hip Hop: Ghetto Music – Boogie Down Productions; The Iceberg – Ice T; Unfinished Business – EPMD; Grip It on That Other Level – Geto Boys; Stone Cold Rhymin’ – Young MC
Other: Djam Leelii – Baaba Maal & Mansour Seck; Batman Soundtrack – Prince; Rhythm of the Saints – Paul Simon
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