Same with David Bowie, whose 1997 album Earthling is also an underrated rock/techno hybrid.

Zooropa. It's just so weird and singular and inventive. It's like a time capsule of the pre-internet cyberpunk / new world order globalization / pomo hyperreality era

My first - and still second favourite - U2 album. I think I'm alone in that.

1997 was such a schizophrenic year. It was when I first discovered 'current' music - which was right in the middle of a massive zeitgeist-shifting transition. Among the first CDs I bought with my own money were Radiohead's OK Computer, The Verve's Urban Hymns and Prodigy's The Fat Of The Land. Those three all promised…

At the root of these articles is the modern poptimist idea that all music from the past should be judged on how it matches the music and fashion trends that are popular today..

I went back all the way to Screamadelica - because the British press couldn't stop raving about it, even in 1997 - and I only bought XTRMTR a few years ago, alas.

Indeed, Chemical Brothers lead me to go back a few years and discover the music of Beth Orton and Primal Scream.

Yeah, and much more sympathetic to the fans who lived through that era

Give it another listen. It really holds up.

100% agree. It's a tragic story. Not one to be gleefully celebrated.

1997 was the year I belatedly started paying attention to popular 'hip' music (I was 17), and many of the albums you listed were some of the first I bought and they're still among May all-time favourites: Urban Hymns, Pop, OK Computer, Fat Of The Land, Dig Your Own Hole.

The AV Club seems to have bought into the idea - that they themselves are pushing with that '1996' article they link to twice here - that the 90s alt rock boom was some kind of aberrant mistake that was swiftly forgotten. Instead of a major artistic flowering that produced innumerable timeless touchstones for a…

I think you're absolutely right about people being wrong-footed after the acoustic chamber pop of Automatic.

100% agree. New Adventures, IMO, combines the best of the old folksy REM ('New Test Leper', 'Electrolite'), the the art rock weirdness of their glory days ('E-Bow The Letter', 'Undertow', 'Leave') and their proto-garage rock revival phase ('The Wake-Up Bomb', 'Bittersweet Me').
It's still my favourite REM album.

Monster rules thou

You mean Squirrel-Girl?!

The fact that there haven't been any notable rock stars to even have feuds since around 2004 make me really depressed. And it's not as if these two are household names to begin with.

That's too much of a generalization I guess. But you'd be hard-pressed to tell the difference in terms of the t-shirts, piercings and hair styles.

I went to the last Soundwave festival in Sydney Australia a couple of years ago. I was just too catch the great grunge-era bands during their heyday, so at this festival I was able to see Soundgarden, Faith No More, Smahing Pumpkins, Marilyn Manson and Ministry for the first time. As well as metal legends Judas Priest…

I just want to own my music, I don't get whether it's LP, CD or MP3.
I'll buy a new vinyl if I really love the artwork and the music, but otherwise I just love finding music cheap at garage sales and charity shops.