In 1997 I was by choice listening to Skunk Anansi, Prodigy, Chemical Brothers… and looking at the charts, they were filled with "Candle in the Wind", Spice Girls, The Verve, White Town, Chumbawamba… It was the height of "Cool Britannia," and apart from the Friends theme I don't think American pop-rock made a huge impact over here at the time (there was a fair bit of US rap and R&B). Oh, I see Smashing Pumpkins did pretty well with their Batman track. I like that one.
I wasn't listening to that stuff much at the time, but my brother was so I was aware of it. I liked Breathe by Prodigy more than most of the other stuff in the genre back then, but I've gained a new appreciation for Chemical Brothers and such in more recent years. The closest I came to that was trip-hop like Portishead, which I was very deeply into. The stuff on the charts I wasn't much into either. I've never been a big fan of contemporary top 40 pop radio music. I was very into rock and hard rock throughout the 90's, primarily the Seattle stuff and similar work, but the Smashing Pumpkins started to get me in the mid 90's. After the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness album, I went back to the earlier stuff (I had previously thought of them as annoying because of Billy Corgan's voice, but learned to deal with it because the rest of it was fantastic, and his songwriting was awesome).
I love this one:
The Smashing Pumpkins - Thru the Eyes of Ruby
I got really into long, epic rock music for a while because of Pumpkins stuff like this, Porcelina of the Vast Oceans, Starla, and Soma. There was plenty of influence from Pink Floyd, like Shine On You Crazy Diamond and the Animals album as well. A little later, Radiohead's epic Paranoid Android blew me away, like a futuristic version of Floyd.
This one? Yeah, I always liked it, too.
This one was also cool:
Yeah, that movie had a cool soundtrack. Great stuff, like Seal's Kiss From a Rose, Offspring's Smash It Up, Michael Hutchence's amazing cover of Iggy Pop's Passenger, and good stuff from Sunny Day Real Estate, Flaming Lips, Nick Cave, and PJ Harvey. Too bad the movie was shit (despite a solid blockbuster cast for that era). This one reminds me of another soundtrack, actually:
Incubus & DJ Greyboy - Familiar
OK, well the concept for the soundtrack was cooler than the album itself, but I love that track. And the movie was better than Batman Forever, but could have still been improved.
Had to go listen to this while I was typing:
Sunny Day Real Estate - Pillars