Ode to the forgotten 2000s music of brilliant 80s/90s artists
A dive into selected works from some of the shining stars of the 80s and 90s… but only the undervalued, oft-forgotten tail ends.
Prince: 3121
Multi-instrumentalist funk-pop virtuoso, outrageous tenor, guitar hero, eighties sex symbol — you name it, Prince was it. More to the point, he was a master of reinvention across the decades, and was insanely profilic — consistently so —across his whole career, seamlessly integrating one genre or style after another into the ever-growing musical space he occuppied. Though few related works could ever match 1984’s stellar Purple Rain or its predecessors Controversy and 1999, the purple-outfitted genius of our time had so, so much to say across an unparalleled 39 — yes, thirty-nine — studio albums, dozens of compilations, live albums, singles and posthumous works. No wonder there has been such incredible musical interest in the now-legendary Paisley Park Vault, the sanctum of thousands of hours of his archived and discarded tape recordings.
My focus here is a personal highlight: mid-noughties gem 3121, his thirty-first studio LP. While it’s worth stressing the caveat that there’s undoubtedly a misstep or two throughout, 3121 has all the proof I feel I need to argue that the then-47-year-old still had plenty of purple magic left in him. “Fury” is an immediate standout — one that set the Brit Awards alight in a way that even Muse’s audacious “Supremacy” couldn’t match (and they had actual flamethrowers). “Te Amo Corazón” sees Prince retain his deft, ever-romantic touch, an intriguing bossa nova that acts as foreplay to the even more typically-Prince “Black Sweat” and “Incense & Candles”, every bit as hyper-sexual as many of his earlier funk efforts.
A fascinating, ultimately-unsurprising picture begins to develop; 3121, despite the dozens of albums preceding it, remains curious and experimental in genre, casting a pleasingly-wide net that encompasses not just his signature blend of funk, pop, R&B and rock, but also forays into electronica, Latin and acid/psychedelic rock. The djembe drums and voice manipulation fronting “Incense & Candles” are particular successes (though Prince is no stranger to this box of vocal tricks — double A-side triumph “Erotic City” being a particular example), while the sultry brass of “The Word” and slick chorus-hook combo in “Love” are also worth noting.
But the real gem in dire need of reappraisal here, in my view, is “The Dance”. Actually a darker, exotic and vastly-superior revision of the same song from The Chocolate Invasion two years prior, this simmering, lovelorn slow-burner is a real tour de force showcasing a near-full spectrum of Prince at his musical best. As seductive and sensual as his reputation, but closing on a screeching, pleading tenor every bit as desperate and unflinching as iconic Purple Rain ballad “The Beautiful Ones”, “The Dance” simply offers so much. The piano and guitar work are a real treat, and the bossa nova, rumba-esque poise set the stage for some of the most deft, elastic, explosive vocals I have heard him deliver. The creative structure, climactic payoff and thematic character fitting to its title make “The Dance” a song I will always turn to to showcase Prince’s utter brilliance. And it makes a much better finale to 3121 than the actual finale, lukewarm “Get on the Boat”.
Depeche Mode: Exciter/Playing the Angel
I have to confess, I am not the biggest fan of Depeche Mode’s earliest work. Their debut Speak & Spell, best known for candy-pop hit “Just Can’t Get Enough”, is to me a sort of happy-clappy, humourless Kraftwerk without the innovative genius of the German krautrockers, though it has a coherence, simplicity and charm that was well-received at the time. And while the departure of Vince Clarke induced a drastic, brooding change in their songwriting, it took a couple of albums to wind up to the striking success of Some Great Reward, Black Celebration or Music for the Masses — success that bled into the early nineties with the exceptional Violator LP, best known for rock anthem “Personal Jesus” and Sweet Dreams-esque earworm “Policy of Truth”.
Lesser-known is the work of the brilliant electronic outfit in the noughties (and beyond). While less coherent and universally acclaimed than some of their predecessors, 2001’s Exciter and 2005’s Playing the Angel both standout to me as flawed but strong proof of a remarkable longevity and continuation of form that few bands enjoy. The latter’s singles “Precious” and “John the Revelator” stand tall and proud against their older siblings in Mode’s back-catalogue, while no other album of theirs quite matches the stylistic diversity of Exciter, which required a real confidence for a band heading into their 20th year. Surprisingly-organic, glitch-tech opener “Dream On” and slumbering tech-ballad “Freelove” both occupy very unique spaces in Mode’s sonic world, which contrast perhaps the most straightforward ‘similarity/evolution-not-revolution’ criticism with which one could charge the band’s output as a whole.
The real standout here for me has to be “Lilian” — how this song did not gain a lot more traction than it did I will never know, though its track-listing as part of a John the Revelator double A-side was probably partly responsible. I am gutted the Basildon trio never seemed to have great confidence in this song — it was never played live, but easily merited a music video and individual single release. The cutting synth-snares — every bit as striking as Radiohead’s “Idioteque” — are as addictive as the delicate middle-8 guitar hook and Dave Gahan’s pleading baritone delivery. And what really makes the difference here is the marriage of its musical and lyrical properties; seductive, poisonous, eponymous ‘Lilian’ is just as effectively described through the hypnotic, captivating percussion and vocal performances as she is by the lyrical narrative. On-the-nose chorus lyric definitely aside (“Pain and misery always hit the spot/Knowing you can’t lose what you haven’t got”), “Lilian” has gone in my books as an underappreciated stunner.
(Special non-noughties mention here to 2017’s “Where’s the Revolution”, which is every bit as bombastic and synth-heavy as you’d expect it to be, with a killer hook (“Where’s the revolution?/Come on people you’re letting me down”) to boot.)
R.E.M.: Reveal
2001’s Reveal — a golden 12th studio album from the American alt-rock giants —provides an often-missed refinement to the established R.E.M. formula. Most appreciators of their earlier triumphs (1992’s Automatic for the People being the deservedly-obvious choice) hold the not-unfounded view that, come the late nineties (and with the exception of Man on the Moon), R.E.M. sailed off to a world of half-baked electronics and creative obscurity.
Reveal decisively challenges this view. As a whole album, it is my favourite of R.E.M.’s catalogue, and very recently I’ve been able to say so with far grater confidence — in April this year, now twenty years after its release, even frontman Michael Stipe himself has come to refer to it as his favourite of R.E.M.’s work.
One of its biggest selling points has to be opening track “The Lifting”, which does exactly as its namesake suggests. Its chorus provides a real rush of energy; it is the musical equivalent of a bright and breezy summer’s day, capturing a clarity and abstract freedom that Stipe’s character struggles to access and battles towards. It sets the tone for the album perfectly, and also introduces a hint of jittery electronic ambience for a bit of extra colour, a really welcome evolution on their classic sonic palette.
Soft-rock numbers “She Just Wants to Be”, “I’ll Take the Rain” and lead-single “Imitation of Life” are all trademark R.E.M., the latter being far more “Shiny Happy People” than the former two but all able to hold a candle to much their great work in the 20th century. The furthest deviations from their typical output — for instance the sparse, glitchy “Saturn Return” — add very welcome variety, and on a personal note are the biggest reason for my love of this album. I had always found R.E.M. a bit samey growing up, so the deviations in Reveal were very satisfying to discover, especially as I took a punt on buying the CD for an impressive 99p.
David Sylvian: World Citizen EP/Snow Borne Sorrow
A more enigmatic entry is David Sylvian, ex-frontman of art pop/new wave pioneers Japan. Japan grew from an awkward, heavily-dated glam rock act in the late seventies into something far more special and idiosyncratic, and found themselves somewhat-accidentally leading the UK’s continued divergence of new wave from its punk roots, unwantingly becoming an unlikely New Romantic contemporary to Duran Duran, Ultravox, Visage and Boy George.
While their commercial success was limited — first entering the charts with third LP Quiet Life then peaking with “Ghosts”, a sparse, vulnerable stroke of genius — their critical success with LPs Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Tin Drum make for much more fascinating reading, and helped pave the way for a relatively successful Sylvian solo career after creative and highly personal disagreements took an untimely toll on the misfit group. It’s also fairly well-established that much of the New Romantic look, style and musical content of Duran et al. was partially but significantly influenced by Japan, so theirs — and Sylvian’s — place in this inspired moment of pop music history is always worth stressing.
Sylvian achieved noteworthy success as a singer-songwriter through the eighties and early nineties. Standout moments include highly-regarded Brilliant Trees, with its lead single “Red Guitar” charting well, and heart-wrenching “Forbidden Colours” serving as chief soundtrack to Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, starring David Bowie and “Forbiden Colours” collaborator Ryuichi Sakamoto. His curiously collaborative, unsentimental attitude to song-writing has since voluntarily relegated Sylvian to the lost, skeletal fringes of pop music, and his noughties output is testament to the resultant creative success of this approach.
Snow Borne Sorrow —born from his work as part of the Nine Horses project — is a precious collection of dark jazz-pop, slow-roasting Sylvian’s mature baritone over the sparse, calculated contributions of brother Steve Jansen and electronica artist Burnt Friedman. The vacant pause of “Atom and Cell” (“Where are the stars?/Didn’t you promise us stars?”) in particular stopped me dead in my tracks. Similarly, the World Citizen EP presents an enigmatic Sylvian and Sakamoto at the very fringes of pop, second track “(I Won’t Be Disappointed)” exemplfying this hybrid of ambient electronics and broken, vulnerable, but ever-controlled ballad vocals (quite unique to Sylvian) at its most intriguing and emotionally potent. That you can just about dance to its glitch-tech beat is a staggering bonus.
Eurythmics: I Saved the World Today
Okay, I admit that technically this song was released in late-1999, as debut single to eighth and final studio LP Peace, so I’m pushing my luck a bit here. But what “I Saved the World Today” and Peace represent is key to why I include them, as it marked a brief revival of this iconic eighties double-act, preceding the last hurrah of their mid-noughties Ultimate Collection compilation and marking a significant departure from Annie Lennox and Dave Stewart’s previous output. While Peace was met with positive but far from stellar reviews, “ISTWT” is a real standout moment that made the Lennox-Stewart reunion more than worthwhile.
I’m a big fan of lyrical and thematic content that exists on both a personal/introspective level and a reflective, macrocosmic level simultaneously, and “ISTWT” does just that — it has been interpreted both as having a strongly-idealised pacifistic sentiment and as devastating insight into Lennox’s experiences of depression. The juxtaposition between the chorus’ intentionally-childlike frivolity (“Everybody’s happy now the bad thing’s gone away/Everybody’s happy now the good thing’s here to stay”) and the guilt and anguish of its verses is a real treat, and the two opposites flow seamlessly into one another, reflecting in both lyrical and musical content the volatility of one’s wellbeing. Stewart’s use of a layered 12-string Rickenbacker, and Lennox’s expressive, velvet contralto are also the real icing on the cake here.
What do you think about the albums I’ve discussed? Do you have any of your own 2000s albums from top acts of the 80s and 90s that you think go by unnoticed or underappreciated? Comment below/on my social media or get in touch! A part 2, featuring David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Stewart Copeland from the Police and more, will be heading your way if people like pieces like these.
written by Joel Holmes
