Hey folks!

Today’s Best Album of 2001 match is:

#28 Andrew W.K., I GET WET

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

vs.

#101 Garbage, BEAUTIFUL GARBAGE

Listen on Spotify or YouTube

To vote, follow this link to the Google Form. You will need a Google login to vote. If you can’t or won’t have one, let me know ASAP (either through this newsletter, my email [kentmbeeson@hey.com] or on the Best Album Brackets Bluesky account) and I’ll see what I can do.

We have three Designated Cheerleaders today! Two are for BEAUTIFUL GARBAGE and one is for I GET WET. Although I normally post the DCs in seed order, I’m reversing that reasons I think will make sense.

First up, for BEAUTIFUL GARBAGE, it’s @kezme.bsky.social. Take it away, kezme!

I’m aware that BEAUTIFUL GARBAGE is widely looked-down on – their deliberate attempt to broaden their sound beyond their alt-rock roots predictably didn’t go down well with a portion of their existing fans, and it seemingly wasn’t pop enough to win many new ones either. Sisters and brothers, I am here to tell you that looking back at it now, it is plain to see that Garbage were right to take the stylistic risks they did. BEAUTIFUL GARBAGE should be considered an unqualified success and an album that stands up considerably better than most do after a quarter century.

The major change here is veering in a synth-pop direction, but there’s identifiable DNA here from everything from Motown to Madonna – and Garbage make it clear that they haven’t forgotten how to punch out the guitar-driven rock they’re known for either. This album begins with what has to be one of the strongest opening tracks in the tournament, into a solid run of tracks making up the first half of the record, including the surprisingly good ballad Cup Of Coffee.

I’m sure everyone reading this already has firm opinions one way or the other on the single Cherry Lips which had considerable airplay, but I can relay that of all the best-of-2001 albums that I’ve played in the car, this track was the one that my 15 year old was most interested in. The album does threaten to sag in the middle, but thankfully the last two tracks Untouchable and So Like A Rose bring things back up and stick the landing.

The album is self-produced by the band, as you’d expect when the band in question includes Butch Vig, and I think avoids the charges of blandness that several of its fellow competitors are facing. Anyway, consider my fuschia and rose pom-poms shaken for Garbage, to a chorus of “go baby go”.

Thank you, kezme!

Next up, also for BEAUTIFUL GARBAGE, it’s @lanna.bsky.social! Take it away, Alana!

I started out disliking Garbage, actually. Like many queer people, I had a phase of rejecting the word “queer,” believing it couldn’t be washed free of stain. The song, one of their first singles, didn’t feel like a reclaiming with its title, its lyrics. It felt like the word was being pushed in my face, trying too hard to be edgy. I felt the same way about Shirley Manson herself, this beautiful woman who kept telling everyone how ugly she thought she was, despite being a sex symbol to every man I knew.

I enjoyed “I’m Only Happen When It Rains” but I also thought it was silly, like something a teenager would write.

It wasn’t till almost a year later from when the singles started dropping when I fell in love with the album. I was at a birthday party with some friends, sitting comfortably on couches in the birthday girl's parents’ house by the landfill. Night had fallen as we were talking, and “Queer” came on. In the darkness, relaxed, happy, it was the perfect song for a group of Rocky Horror misfits at the birthday party of the Gothiest girl we knew. Soon after, I picked up the CD for a dollar or so in the resale rack of the local music store, and that was it for me.

(It was this and a nighttime makeout session to Portishead that made me realize that day and night music were two very different things to me.)

When Version 2.0 came out, I wasn’t immediately enamored of it. It was too slick, too electronic, too radio-friendly (for me, a person whose favorite album is almost always the most radio-friendly one!). It took a road trip for me to realize that it’s day music, and also? Amazing for road-tripping.

I was ready for Beautiful Garbage. Another Garbage album? Yes, please! I wondered what it would be more like, the debut or 2.0. I read something (in Rolling Stone?) that said it was going to be their darkest album yet. And then it came out and…it had “Cherry Lips” on it.

I needed a second to readjust my expectations, but Garbage wasn’t going to give me a second on this one.

Day music? Mostly! This album is all over the place, but not in a bad way. There are a lot of influences being worn on sleeves here–including girl groups!--but what the album ends up being as a whole is a display of Garbage’s ability to sound like themselves no matter what they are excelling at doing. From the “the worst part of making music is everything else” realness of “Shut Your Mouth” to the big 60s heartbreak sound of “Can’t Cry These Tears Anymore” to the trans-inspired anthem of “Cherry Lips (Go Baby Go),” Shirley Manson and company twist and dance through styles while serving up a more direct approach to lyrics that somehow manages to neither get lost in any of the music nor drown it out.

Manson was going through a divorce at a time of making the album and was an emotional mess. Her trainer told her to seek psychiatric help. What was supposed to be a dark album, despite everything going on in her life, has some of the most optimistic lyrics Garbage had ever done. To me, this album is still very Gen X, as Gen X as the debut. No song on the album feels more that way to me than “Parade.” In it, Shirley Manson’s still down on the wannabes and the brainwashed masses, but harnesses that still-very-90s positive energy (remember how the 90s wanted to be the 60s so bad?) to rally fans to want more from themselves and others while still acknowledging how tough that can be:

“Believing in nothing / makes you** so boring / So let’s pray for something / to feel good in the morning”

I’m writing this the night before Garbage goes up against Andrew WK’s I Get Wet. These are two big albums with fun singles. They were both played a lot at my house–and especially in my car–in the early 2000s. But, all these years later, I’m finding myself going back to Beautiful Garbage and finding new favorites to put in heavy rotation, while with Andrew WK I’ve only got “I Love NYC” left on my playlist. (I got sick of “Party Hard” for a long time, and I’m side-eyeing the lyrics to “She Is Beautiful.” I’ve forgotten every other song on there. As far as my memory is concerned, it’s just “Party Hard” over and over like John Mulaney at a diner, where “I Love NYC” is slipped in once like “It’s Not Unusual.”)

Vote Garbage. They took some big swings here, and I think they knocked it out of the park.

**the internet says this might be “life”--it works either way but I sure don’t hear “life”

Thank you, Alana!

Finally, last but not least, we have @saga.iam.bi with (I believe) a unique DC, for I GET WET. Saga, the stage is yours:

Wow. Thank you, Saga!

Click here to see the current results for the entire tournament, and click here to see the current results for the prediction bracket contest.

Yesterday, in a close upset, #69 Air, 10 000 HZ LEGEND defeated #60 Tenacious D, TENACIOUS D, 114-108-3.

Thanks,

Kent