Ye Olde Hit Parade: Somethin' Hot

Editor's note: Ye Olde Hit Parade takes a look back at my favorite songs year by year (starting in 1978, when I really started paying attention to music).

1998: The Afghan Whigs - Somethin' Hot

Things were changing in 1998. Big things. A couple of nerds founded a search engine with the weird name Google, but nobody really paid them any attention at the time. Some other nerds started MP3 download sites like MP3.com, introducing the joy of using your crappy dial-up modem to download songs at an excruciatingly slow rate. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa revived interest in baseball with a home run race that shattered records (and later was found to be assisted by certain performance-enhancing substances). And it was discovered that President Bill Clinton had an affair with intern Monica Lewinsky, which led to an even messier impeachment trial later in the year.

As for me, I was still working as an editor at Opus Communications, traveling a fair amount to conferences (including a fun trip to New Orleans) and generally having a good time. I was playing a lot of softball (three weekly leagues) and thanks to my girlfriend, who ran the Boston Marathon in the spring, I started running seriously in the fall, something I've continued to do to this day.

Musically, the year was notable for one-hit wonders: Semisonic, Harvey Danger, Fastball, Natalie Imbruglia, Eagle Eye Cherry, Shawn Mullins, Marcy Playground, New Radicals. It was also big teen pop (Britney Spears, N*SYNC, Backstreet Boys) and mainstream pop-country (Garth Brooks, Leann Rimes, Shania Twain). But for rock fans, it was a big time for rap-rock and nu-metal: Korn, Kid Rock, Limp Bizkit ruled the airwaves and kids wearing wallet chains and oversized JNCO jeans were suddenly everywhere. And the biggest albums of the year were the Titanic soundtrack and releases from Celine Dion, Brooks and Twain. Oh, and Aerosmith had a huge hit with the nauseating "I Don't Want to Miss a Thing" from the Armageddon soundtrack, but the less said about that, the better.

None of that stuff was my bag. I was listening to a lot of indie rock and old funk and soul. My most-listened-to new albums included Sloan, Frank Black and the Catholics, Beck, Pearl Jam, Pulp, Jerry Cantrell, Page and Plant, Fugazi, Girls Against Boys, Rocket From the Crypt, Rancid, R.E.M., Beastie Boys, The Tragically Hip, Bob Mould, Soul Coughing, PJ Harvey, Buffalo Tom and Sonic Youth. Concerts included Boss Hog, Foo Fighters/Rocket From the Crypt (twice), The Tragically Hip (three times), Girls Against Boys, Cheap Trick, the Afghan Whigs and the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion.


But where it all came together for me was on the Afghan Whigs' album 1965, specifically the lead single "Somethin' Hot." I was already a big Whigs fan for several years and while they were on Sub Pop at the same time as Nirvana et al., they always had a different sound and an appreciation for old R&B (which they often covered as B-sides). On 1965, they fully integrated the soul side with the rock side and channeled into a tour de force celebrating love and lust. Frontman Greg Dulli had explored the darker side of love and self-loathing with the band's previous three excellent records, but on this one, he was seemingly in a better place. The album should have been huge, but the label didn't know what to make of it and it barely made a dent, only hitting #176 on the Billboard album chart. For industry lunkheads who just thought the Whigs were another Seattle band (which is laughable because the band was from Cincinnati but got lumped in with the grunge acts because of its Sub Pop home), they couldn't get their brains around the band's evolving sound. Which is too bad, because "Somethin' Hot" had crossover appeal. I think I saw it once or twice on 120 Minutes; makes you wonder what might have happened if they played it when people were actually awake.

Honorable mentions: The Afghan Whigs - "Uptown Again"; Sloan - "Money City Maniacs"; Sloan - "She Says What She Means"; Frank Black and the Catholics - "Suffering": Frank Black and the Catholics - "I Gotta Move"; Beck - "Cold Brains"; Beck - "Tropicalia"; Queens of the Stone Age - "If Only"; Pearl Jam - "Brain of J"; Pearl Jam - "Do the Evolution"; Pulp - "Party Hard"; Jerry Cantrell - "Cut You In"; The Tragically Hip - "Fireworks"; The Tragically Hip - "Poets"; Girls Against Boys - "Park Avenue"; Rocket From the Crypt - "Eye On You"; PJ Harvey - "A Perfect Day Elise"; Beastie Boys - "Intergalactic"; R.E.M. - "At My Most Beautiful"; Buffalo Tom - "Rachael"; Rancid - "Bloodclot"; Fatboy Slim - "The Rockafeller Skank"; Chef - "Chocolate Salty Balls"; Rob Zombie - "Dragula"