A Year of Maturity and Daring

Who would have figured that two of the most affecting qualities of pop music during 1998 would be gentleness and humility?

And who imagined that Pearl Jam and Alanis Morissette would be the artists who best expressed them?

In the early ‘90s, Pearl Jam and its singer Eddie Vedder helped define grunge, the raw rock ‘n’ roll style whose main emotional gears are anger and angst.

Similarly, Morissette hit the pop scene in 1995 with such a confrontational work, the snarling “You Oughta Know,” that she was quickly dubbed pop’s angry young woman.

The fact that both returned this year with such comforting and disarming album tracks as “Wishlist” and “Thank U” is a sign of their maturity and daring as artists.

The easiest path in pop music, especially for artists at the multi-platinum sales level of Pearl Jam and Morissette, is to stick within proven commercial boundaries, which is one reason so much of pop music tends to be heartless.

The measure of an artist, however, is to reach inside for new insights and to allow those findings to shape the emotional tone of your music--and it is that standard that Pearl Jam and Morissette met during 1998. The result is music so nakedly personal that it stands with the best moments of the ‘90s.

That personal quality echoes through much of my list of the year’s 10 most noteworthy singles or album tracks. (The year’s Top 10 album list will appear in Sunday’s Calendar.)

1. Pearl Jam’s “Wishlist” (Epic). This track from the “Yield” album is part daydream and part shared prayer, a record that is all the more disarming because it’s sung by someone who has often been portrayed in the media as spoiled because of his frequent complaints early in the band’s career about the pressures of stardom.

In the heart of the song, Vedder outlines various idealistic, feel-good images. He wishes he were a messenger and the news was always good. He wishes he were the moonlight shining on a Camaro’s hood. But the key line is the one that acknowledges his own blessings: “I wish I were as fortunate . . . as fortunate as me.”

You can imagine him writing the first part of the line and being surprised himself when the image of his own good fortune comes to mind. What makes the song memorable, however, is the way Vedder in turn invites listeners to reflect amid the pressures of life on their own good fortune.

2. Alanis Morissette’s “Thank U” (Maverick). “How ‘bout getting off of these antibiotics,” may be the strangest opening line of a pop song in the ‘90s, but it’s a sign to the listener that the tune is anything but conventional.

Like her “Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie” album, the song--co-written by Glen Ballard--chronicles Morissette’s search for self-affirmation, a sometimes painful exploration that resulted in an appreciation of all life’s experiences, positive and negative. It’s a lovely, liberating record.

3. Public Enemy’s “He Got Game” (Def Jam). In such landmark albums as “It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” and “Fear of a Black Planet,” Public Enemy’s Chuck D. emerged in the late ‘80s as the Bob Dylan of rap. He showed a mainstream pop-rock audience that rap could move beyond its original party-minded image and be a meaningful forum for social commentary. In this track from the soundtrack for the Spike Lee film of the same name, Chuck D. challenges some of today’s best-selling rappers to put more content into their music. He also tips his hat to the socially conscious spirit of ‘60s rock by incorporating into the song a slice of Stephen Stills’ Buffalo Springfield anthem “For What It’s Worth.”

4. Fatboy Slim’s “The Rockafeller Skank” (Astralwerks). For those who think the list leans too much toward commentary and content, here’s a moment of pure recess--a record that fits into today’s novelty pop climate without sacrificing its individuality. In putting together this irresistible sonic collage, England’s Norman Cook touches on everything from twangy surf guitar to electronica for the best funk soul brother exercise since Beck’s “Where It’s At.”

5. Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” (Ruffhouse/Columbia). Now it’s back to the serious stuff. Like much of Hill’s “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill” album, this hit single is as much an attempt to educate as to entertain. Here, she cleverly uses the romantic innocence of the ‘50s doo-wop tradition as a backdrop to lecture young men and women about the realities of sexual politics.

6. Wyclef Jean’s “Gone Till November” (Ruffhouse/Columbia). Hill’s Fugees partner brings a stylish sense of cinematic detail to this hip-hop story about the price a man and his loved ones pay for his criminal lifestyle.

7. Vince Gill’s “If You Ever Have Forever in Mind” (MCA Nashville). If Gill and Troy Seals had written this heartbreak ballad in the ‘50s, you can bet that Ray Charles would have recorded it on his splendid “Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music” album. But it’s doubtful Charles could have improved on Gill’s own soulful version.

8. Everlast’s “What It’s Like” (Tommy Boy). On one level, this is just an update of the old “walk a mile in my shoes” story, but former House of Pain frontman Erik Schrody puts it in such a seductive hip-hop setting that the theme takes on new life. The acceptance of the record in the alt-rock world may also open the widest door for white rappers since the Beastie Boys fought for their right to party more than a decade ago.

9. OutKast’s “Rosa Parks” (LaFace). This Atlanta rap duo packs an album’s worth of ideas into a five-minute song. The point may only be that OutKast can rock the club better than anyone, but the wordplay is fresh, and you’ll probably wonder if you’re hearing right when they step away from the record’s soulful groove at one point for a country hoedown.

10. Aretha Franklin’s “A Rose Is Still a Rose” (Arista). You realize how much Lauryn Hill respects the queen of soul when Hill agrees to give a song this good to Franklin rather than save it for her own album. “Rose” is a classy salute to Franklin’s 1971 version of Jerry Leiber and Phil Spector’s “Spanish Harlem.”

Robert Hilburn can be reached by e-mail at [email protected]