In retrospect, 1998 feels like a music year in transition. In the mainstream, the surge of “alternative” music energy that had powered the first half of the ’90s was starting to fizzle; grunge had been fully co-opted, and nü-metal was ascendant. The tide of the CD boom was still lifting all boats, even as Napster and mp3s were right around the corner, and teen pop was about to have its big moment. Mixtapes were still being traded and everyone had a cassette deck, perhaps the last one they would ever own. Below the radar, the underground was healthy: Independent labels were roaring, and some of the bigger ones were still living large on the cash they’d made earlier in the decade, when they served as farm teams for major-label-bound acts. Out in the world, fans were starting to build communities electronically—including those reading a two-year-old electronic zine called Pitchfork—and Google would debut later in the year. And there were many great records that stuck with us, that defined this era and remained timeless.

Experiencing music in 2018 means being bombarded with new and rediscovered music simultaneously. Here at Pitchfork, now that we’re 22 years young, we thought it would be fun to look at the albums of 1998 and rank our favorites. Our voters for the list were a mix of those who were engaged critically with music that year and those who’ve learned about much of it in hindsight. (And some of our favorite releases from the year—including DJ Shadow’s Preemptive Strike, the Beta Band’s The Three EPs, and Stereolab’s Aluminum Tunes—were excluded because they were collections of material released earlier.) Here’s how we hear 1998 now.