waging a war on parallel universes, every ghost is confiscated from every sock drawer. millions are rockface, botoxed, by rain of time, into no one.
a bouquet is thrown, as if a molotov, and vice versa. the last known reference to Pythagoras blazes, in a book burning, as night sky hangs like a clothesline.
constellations drape, redefining “drip”; oily faces glimmer like silver spoons. our hunger pains jam a la silhouettes in that old iPod commercial, pro Bono:
(“I’m at a place called Vertigo. It’s everything I wish I didn’t know”).
“i love you” cannot “fill in the blank”. a whisper, in a Guinness World Records game of telephone, made of plexiglass; every student became deaf to dial tone.
in a time capsule, a portrait of you; the paint is a smorgasbord of sidewalks, collected from a skateboard’s wheels.
you slit the matchbook like it’s a wrist; Neil Armstrong spilling ink on the moon. in a few moments, no gray area is left.
Power FM Power Music 1998 Pop / Adult Contemporary / Pop-Rock / Hard Rock / Blues-Rock
Holy hell, folks. Here’s something that really exemplifies some of that true, spin-the-wheel, anything-goes, compilation madness. This is a release from EMI’s South Korean subsidiary, with an aesthetic that, sure as shit, presents itself as an ephemeral Now That’s What I Call Music!-type of affair, but in actuality, is a hybrid slate of about half contemporary mid-to-late 90s hits from the US, UK, and continental Europe, and half a completely inexplicable assortment of songs from both the 70s and early 90s…?!?
So, a bunch of songs on this are good, but having them on the same album is definitely a total head-scratcher; like, Natalie Imbruglia’s great radio pop classic, “Torn,” and Radiohead’s brilliantly dark and cavernous “Exit Music (for a Film)” happen to appear alongside The Knack’s irresistibly catchy—and also mind-numbingly stupid—power pop smash, “My Sharona,” as well as an over six-and-a-half-minute live version of Thin Lizzy guitarist Gary Moore’s “Parisienne Walkways” from 1993???
But the true coup de grace here comes towards the end, and I will tell you all this much: you will *never*, in your life, *ever* be prepared enough to experience anything quite like the transition that takes place on this album between the selections of the sweet piano pop of Lou Reed’s “Perfect Day” and the plainly terrible German Eurodance of La Bouche’s “You Won’t Forget Me.” Whoever decided to wreak this havoc should really be working for the CIA or something, because you *thoroughly* fucked my head up with that brief sequence there.
Every single 90s female pop playlist that’s ever been curated has always come with Britney and Christina on it, but someone who’s more likely to be missing from those sets is their direct Swedish predecessor, Robyn. Robyn’s claim to fame these days is as a global vocal EDM superstar, but in her younger days, she was a teen pop sensation who never really quite caught on in the States. She managed to land a pair of back-to-back top-ten pop hits between 1996 and 1997, but then quickly faded into US obscurity. However, she happened to be produced by the same Swedish teen pop stable—Cheiron Studios—that would soon make Britney into a superstar herself, and they’d also churned out hits for the Backstreet Boys by then as well.
Blond, short-haired Robyn definitely didn’t present nearly as sexily as Britney would, and her lyrics weren’t as playfully tempting as something like Christina’s “Genie in a Bottle” either, but “Show Me Love” was still a terrific late 90s teen pop bop that predated both of those icons’ own landmark debuts. And you can totally hear the smacky drum track and rhythm of “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart),”“As Long as You Love Me,” and “I Want It That Way” on it too, but I would argue that it actually has a much richer, fuller, and sleeker sound than that trio of enormous Backstreet Boys hits. It has a warm and dubby bassline, great string pads, an ever-so-subtly whistling g-funky synth at certain points, and above all else, an infectiously catchy chorus. Just such an oft-forgotten midtempo pop earworm that deserves way more remembrance than it’s received over the years. And same goes for Robyn’s other US Hot 100 hit, “Do You Know (What It Takes),” too, by the way.
So, overall, a very strange late 90s South Korean comp here that doesn’t actually have any Korean talent on it whatsoever, but is still a fun, yet seemingly very random collection of tunes. And it has one of my absolute favorite teen pop tunes of the late 90s on it too, the ever-underappreciated “Show Me Love,” by Robyn.
Just went down a Wikipedia rabbit hole and learned that one of the artists on this comp, Vanessa-Mae, became an Olympic skier by a frog’s hair, qualifying in the 2014 Winter events; although perhaps not through entirely legitimate means. She was banned, after competing in the Olympics, for four years by the International Ski Federation, who accused her of rigging the qualifying event in her own favor. The ban was later reversed, but with the caveat that the scores that originally qualified her be voided, meaning she could no longer compete in the Olympics.
