Everything he lacks he makes up for in denial

Continuing my trip back through the 1999 album charts.

07/02/99 : Americana - The Offspring

I vaguely remember the lads did something I found quite annoying, but can't remember what - I'm not expecting to like this, but I may be pleasantly surprised.  Either way, it's certainly one we've never owned (21/47).

Ah yes - "Pretty Fly (For A White Guy)" - that was the one.  And I actually didn't find it that annoying - probably because I've not heard it in years.  When I started this album, my immediate thought was "the guys soooo want to be Green Day", but I initially thought they didn't have the wit, intelligence or skill.  But, as time went on, maybe I didn't come to think of them as Green Day but I did think I'd been a bit harsh - there's certainly some wit and intelligence involved, but not consistently throughout the album.  They also make some "interesting" musical choices - the mostly instrumental sitar-based prog number and the mariachi reprise of "Pretty Fly" certainly weren't expected (or, indeed, merited).  A final couple of comments on "Pretty Fly" - for a dumb song, it's actually pretty clever but I bet it was mostly bought by the sort of guy it's commenting on.  And, most importantly, why does it count in "1-2-3-4-5-5-6"?

We're at #10 in the charts this week on their sixth week of a surprisingly impressive 40 week run. with this being as high as it managed.  The top five this week were Fatboy Slim, The Corrs, Robbie Williams, Steps and The Corrs (again) and the highest new entries are a somewhat surprising one-two combination of a Chicago best-of (#21) and a Dr Hook best-of (#24).

Wikipedia has a fair amount on the album, but there's very little of interest there.  Most of it talks about how successful the album is, but it's not their most successful album with that being their '94 breakout Smash (which I'd never even heard of before, but has sold 11 million copies globally).  The album artwork was done by Frank Kosik who was apparently a big thing in the post-punk/grunge poster world - he was friends with Dexter Holland, the vocalist but wasn't keen to take the work (because of what his fans would think?!?), so charged them a fortune for it.  Which I guess is one way of going about making friends.

The critics were mostly nice enough about the album but The AV Club were most amusing in their scathing review saying it was "bad enough to create a backlash against not only pop-punk, but also novelty songs, guitars, smug thirtysomethings, and the human race".  The public didn't care what they thought though with the album hitting #2 in the US, France and Finland and #1 in Australia, Austria, New Zealand and Poland - they really loved it in Austria because it was #1 in their '99 year-end list (and #7 in the US year-end as well).  Globally it's sold over ten million copies - which I find somewhat surprising but what do I know about these things?

"Customers also listened to" Green Day (who knew?), Lit, blink-182 and No Doubt - some definite similarities there.  I didn't hate this as much as I was expecting but I did think it was a bit inconsistent - it also definitely didn't deserve to sell ten million.

31/01/99 - A completely pointless album
14/02/99 - Not my thing, but not hateful