Greatest Albums of 1998

Featuring: Massive Attack, Garbage, Ms. Lauryn Hill, PJ Harvey, Outkast, Pulp, Lucinda Williams

No intros, just vibes.

Massive Attack - Mezzanine

I got a little scared that I’d left this album off my 1997 list - turns out it was released in 1998! - but it might be my favorite “new to me” discovery of the past few years. The sounds of this album just hit me as so original, such a balance between totally digestible beats and experimental tracks that pushed entire genres forward. It’s the album that taught me what Trip Hop was, and that it’s something I want to listen to a hell of a lot more of. I would have absolutely devoured this as a music-discovering kid if I’d known about it at the time - but fortunately for me, I’ve grown up approximately zero percent since I was fourteen and so I think I’m still getting the full experience.

This album is so immersive, like jumping in a pool and hearing the rush of the bubbles past your ears, not being able to focus on anything else. I love the dreamy, floating vocals from Elizabeth Frazer of Cocteau Twins on several songs, I love the grimy feeling of the beats. As Frazer sings on “Teardrop” : “love, love is a verb / love is a doing word”. In this case, that doing means spinning this album every chance I get.

Ms. Lauryn Hill - The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill

I don’t know how much more I can add to the discourse about one of the greatest albums ever made. On a personal taste note, any album displaying this level of singing and rapping talent over any measure of reggae vibes is gonna be a winner for me. The production is stellar, the songs and performance feel utterly unforced, which is a sure sign of the work that went into them. It’s one of the seemingly few albums that I love equally for it’s academic merit and personal enjoyment.

PJ Harvey - Is This Desire?

PJ Harvey’s 4th studio album is, as seems to be her way, a pretty wild departure from her previous work. There are moments that veer close to the emerging world of trip-hop or noise rock, which as you may know is the surest way to my heart. But at the same time, it’s an effort to get out of the guitar-rock rat race and into something moody and soundscape-y, which as you may know is the surest way to make me turn on a band altogether (cough cough, Radiohead). In the end, I think PJ Harvey pulls it off far better than others have, at least to my taste. It’s not an easy listen by any means, more like one long unrelenting expression of woe mixed with the occasional break in the clouds. But it’s PJ Harvey - even with the mix of ingredients that I often dislike by themselves turn into a good listen in her hands.

Pulp - This Is Hardcore

This album plays like a version of britpop that’s been left on the counter just a bit too long and it’s starting to grow some mildew, going a little green around the edges. Some reviewers called it a midlife crisis of an album - I think it sounds like more of a last breath of a genre, like the band still loves the distinctly British genre they helped popularize but realizes that the glory days just might be over. But that being said, it’s a mystery how this still manages to be such a fun listen. It’s as if this album is searching for the limits of how much gloom you can throw at the “keep calm and carry on” attitude before you break it.

Garbage - Version 2.0

Fascinating fact - part of the analog drum tracks, including some on “I Think I’m Paranoid,” my personal favorite track on the album, were recorded in an abandoned candy factory, which explains the haunted sugar-rush vibe that I was struggling to find words to describe until now. Sarcastic and saccharine might be words a more highbrow critic would use to describe this album, in an effort to tie back to the candy factory thing in a punny way, but I’ll avoid such nonsensical descriptions for your sake.

The pop hooks and electronic-ified production (referenced sardonically in the album title) make this approachable, but there’s a complex kind of nostalgia I get from the album, which is probably a result of the band’s desire to channel their favorite songs across generations. One of the artists Garbage wanted to pay tribute to was the Beach Boys - I’ve always found the Beach Boys sound to have a hard-to-define longing sound to it, like they’re reaching into the universe for a feeling they don’t really understand, and that feeling is reproduced very well on this album in the vocals of “Medication” or the backing guitars of “When I Grow Up,” and the “don’t worry baby”s of “Push It”.

This is a fantastic album that references many of my favorite artists. It gives the sense that Garbage were not only talented artists in their own right, but also massive music fans, which is the kind of attitude that should drive the creation of great music in my opinion. In 2025 it feels like most artists, no matter how derivative their music, seem to think they’re inventing the art of music for the first time. It’s great to listen to a band who can be badass in their own right while remembering that they, like every band who ever lived, at least partially stand on the shoulders of giants.

Outkast - Aquegemini

Aquemini is known as one of the best southern hip-hop albums ever for a reason. A lot of people think of Atlanta and the American southeast as the land of slow smooth drawls and fried food and sweet tea and people who walk a little slower (mostly from the heat, in my opinion), and that’s all true. But it’s also a place of stereotypes, and Atlanta hip-hop almost had no choice but to find its own way between the NYC and LA scenes to avoid being lumped into just another set of Southern stereotypes.

It’s perhaps stated best on “Slump,” when Big Boi talks about the competition “talking ‘cause they makin’ some flow / But still ain’t did nothing that ain’t been done before / You can’t be trying to showcase, just put it down for your spot / And improvise and work with that little you got”. This album feels like a result of the need to be original, and in many ways that effort was probably helped along by the unique inspiration of late 90’s Atlanta.

Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels On A Gravel Road

I went back and forth about including this album. I’ve written about it before; about a year ago I found it to be one of the, uhhh, least good-sounding examples of country singer-songwriting I’d ever heard. In my own words, “the first part of the album sounded like it were written by an AI caricature of a country artist.” In my notes I wrote that it was “like a country album made by a Rhode Island socialite who took a connecting flight through the Atlanta airport once,” which is a great line that I kind of regret not using, despite the unnecessary meanness.

So in the end I gave this album a re-listen, to see if I’m evolving or if I’m just the same old overdramatic little kid I was a year ago.

I still think “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road” is the title, and type of lyric, that probably represents what someone from an entirely different country thinks represents the American South. I don’t know why that feeling is so strong, to be honest. For one, a Southerner would say “tires” instead of “wheels” and pronounce tires like “tahhurz”, and also it wouldn’t be a car it would be a truck, and also a gravel road is only for folks who can afford such luxuries. Plus the sound of tires crunching on a gravel road is the kind of surface-level stereotype imagery you associate with poor rural life when you’ve only ever seen it in movies, kind of like imagining the American West as coyotes howling and cowboys singing around a fire. It’s like painting with nothing but primary colors, like a child’s oversimplified view of what a tree looks like, all bright green with no understanding of the subtle desaturated tones that make up the reality.

There’s been a lot of critical acclaim for this album through the years. But for me, it’s just cloying. Lucinda’s singing voice sounds forced, the country-ness and folk-ness of the album sounds forced, her southern accent sounds forced, and even a few examples of really solid songwriting can’t override those feelings for me. I even played this album for my wife to see if I was just being weird, and she laughed when “Car Wheels” came on, then got a little mad at how (sorry) awful Lucinda’s voice sounds on that song, thinking I was playing a joke on her. Oh well. We tried.