The Grammys may have come and gone, but as always, the music lingers on long after the awards show. And this year’s edition of the Grammy album has an even richer collection of music than most. It covers nominations in the “Record Of The Year”, “Best New Artist” and “Best Male Pop Vocal Performance” categories, and includes some of the past year’s most hummable tunes.
First on the list is Santana with “Smooth”, easily one of the most successful singles of 1999; then there’s Sting with “Brand New Day”, Lou Bega with the get-up-and-groove “Mambo No. 5”, and Andrea Bocelli with the slow and tender “Sogno”. The teen brigade is well represented as well - the album has Christina Aguilera [“Genie In a Bottle”, soft pop with tinges of R&B melodies], TLC [“No Scrubs”, typical girl-power music], the Backstreet Boys [“I Want It That Way”] and Ricky Martin [“Livin’ La Vida Loca”, dance music with a Latin flavour]; it’s also got this reviewer’s favourite song of 1999, Britney Spears asking planet Earth to “Hit Me, Baby…One More Time”. There are also some new artists present - check out Latin soulmaster Mark Anthony, Macy Gray and the husky-voiced newcomer Susan Tedesci crooning “It Hurt So Bad” to the accompaniment of a blues guitar. The only black mark - Kid Rock’s truly terrible rap number, “Bawitdaba”.
All in all, Grammy Nominees 2000 has a fairly good compilation of tracks, and it’s the kind of album that you should pick up for your collection, if only to get some great pop and rock numbers all packaged in one single album. It would have been nice if they’d also added nominees in the “Best Female Pop Vocal Performance” category - maybe next time…
This article was first published on 12 Apr 2000.