1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times, by Ross Benes, University Press of Kansas, 296 pages, $32.99
In 1982, Prince first sang that he planned to party "like it's 1999." But on New Year's Eve of 1998, as MTV counted down to the actual year 1999, it wasn't the Purple One who performed that song in Times Square. As Ross Benes notes in his new book 1999: The Year Low Culture Conquered America and Kickstarted Our Bizarre Times, it was the nu metal band Limp Bizkit that performed one of the 20th century's most recognizable dance hits, swapping the original's synths and funky basslines for chugging guitars and hip-hop breakbeats.
In retrospect, Benes writes, this signaled more than just a programming decision: For Limp Bizkit—"proud sellouts who halfway rap and halfway rock about boning"—to appear on "the youth station as the clocks turned over demonstrated low culture's domination."
