Acclaimed Music Top 30 Albums from 1997 poll

this is apples and oranges, c'mon man.

I'm just saying that I owned both albums, liked OKC, but was blown away by "The Rain" in contact (Homogenic too).

*on contact

I could not get past "Beep beep/Who got the keys to my jeep?/VROOOOOOOOM"

I did think the video was hilarious, though

Seeing/hearing the 'The Rain' video for the first time was mesmerising.

I'm just saying that I owned both albums, liked OKC, but was blown away by "The Rain" in contact (Homogenic too).

― The burrito of ennui (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 19, 2015 2:20 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

There's a commonly-held wisdom (especially in the UK musicsphere) that says 1997 was the year pop started going space-age. So yeah, you had all these albums, OKC, Ladies & Gentlemen, Homogenic, maybe even Urban Hymns (but I never cared to listen to the Verve), going for a grander, artier, more 'futuristic' vision maybe as a counter-attack to Oasis' 'real rock for real people'.
There's an inkling of truth in this, especially if you viewed music through a UK rock/pop lens (like I did at the time, admittedly), and you could easily lump in things from other plains - in the US, Mellon Collie from a few years before, the Sophtware Slump a few years later; and of course stuff in other genres like rap and r'n'b, although I find it hard to make connections between the timelines and scenes as they seemed quite separated.
Late 90s feels like a transitional period for me, music-wise, and '97 was the start of that transition from listening primarily to Britpop and grunge and starting to embrace other styles - hip hop, electronic music, 60s and 70s music etc. Looking back I think Radiohead represented a big part of this - moving away from the acoustic and hard rock of The Bends and into a more 3-dimensional sound. The difference might feel extremely subtle now, but as a UK teen it was a big deal to me; OKC seemed to be looking forward in a way that Blur and Oasis hadn't managed to in any way up until then, sharing more in common with Portishead than those bands or even old Radiohead.

I can agree with you on the crucialness of OKC while still thinking that it still is p moldy. Kid A does,a much better job of portentously/symbolically granting pop a vision of its future while at the same tkme being a compelling listen

Also imago I heartily recommend Laddio Bolocko and that Gravitar album to you