Grammy's got new stripes
This year's Grammy nominees for album of the year may make you feel like a musical outcast. "If you're over 40 and were a Bruce Springsteen fan in college, this ain't your year," says Howard Kramer, associate curator at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So to prep you for the awards show airing at 8 p.m. February 8 on CBS, we asked Kramer and the experts at Denver's Twist and Shout--rated one of the country's top five record stores by Rolling Stone --to give us the lowdown. In a brutally honest session reminiscent of the scene in the film High Fidelity, store owner Paul Epstein and buyers Patrick Brown and Dawn Greaney ranked the disks, best to worst.
Outkast: Speakerboxxx/The Love Below. Some fans have called Atlanta-based Outkast's two members, Big Boi and Andre 3000, the Lennon/McCartney of hip-hop. In fact, the biggest hits off this sprawling 39-song double album, "Hey Ya!" (played with Abbey Road -style acoustic guitars) and "The Way You Move," have owned the top spots on Billboard magazine's Hot 100 chart for the past two months, a rare Beatle-esque feat. This two-CD album--each member got his own disk--might be Outkast's White Album, says Brown. Much like that fragmented Beatles effort made during the band's breakup, "it's really two solo albums put together." It's our panel's pick for album of the year.
The White Stripes: Elephant. This Detroit duo's fourth album proves that rock-and-roll is still alive and kicking. Lead singer-guitarist Jack White's bluesy, gutbucket tunes sound like "Led Zeppelin meets the Pixies," says Greaney. "It's so classic, but new!" With just White and his ex-wife, drummer Meg White, playing on the album, the music is refreshingly raw. "Parents who were Led Zeppelin fans should buy it and listen to it with their kids," says Kramer.
Missy Elliott: Under Construction. In her opening to this album, Elliott describes herself as a "work in progress." Our panel agrees. Though she ranks among the most innovative artists on the pop scene, the rapper/singer "drowns this album in self-pity," Brown says of songs like "Can You Hear Me," dedicated to Aaliyah, the R&B singer who died in a plane crash. Her just released album, This Is Not a Test, is better, notes Brown.
Justin Timberlake: Justified. Timberlake--a member of boy band 'N Sync --attempts a Michael Jackson-like reach for solo stardom, with surprisingly good results. Guided by R&B producers the Neptunes, Justified offers highly polished, mostly danceable love songs sure to make teenagers swoon. But to rock-and-roll dads, "it's heinous," admits Epstein.
Evanescence: Fallen. Mixing Goth rock, heavy metal, and rap, this band from Little Rock, Ark., "takes all the cutting-edge, good aspects of those genres and puts them in a blandifying blender," says Epstein. Its lack of sexual innuendo may ease parents' minds about their daughter's black lipstick. Where she got her bad taste in music is the real issue.
This story appears in the February 9, 2004 print edition of U.S. News & World Report.