Who sucked out the feeling?” A Knox-ville-based rock band, Superdrag, asked that question in a hit song that got played endlessly on MTV and rock radio last summer. Each time singer John Davis bore down on the word “feeling,” his voice broke and slipped off-key in exactly the same way. Obviously, someone involved in the recording heard Davis do this once and got the bright idea of using the same vocal trick throughout the song. It was an annoying contrivance designed to make the song sound emphatically real—but in the most manufactured manner possible. Before long, every time Davis asked, “Who sucked out the feeling?,” I found myself thinking, “You did, asshole.”

In 1996, such transparent manipulation seemed to play itself out in nearly every genre of popular music. Whether it was a skinny alternative-rock geek singing with detached irony, a phony gangsta spinning street-rap fantasies about guns and bitches, or a shiny-faced young man in a brand-new cowboy hat going on about pickup trucks and pure-hearted young women, the formulas that worked so well throughout the ’90s failed to generate much excitement in the last 12 months.

How uninspired was modern rock this year? Not only did a Van Halen greatest hits package reach No. 1 on the pop album charts (only one year after a live album with the same songs died a quick commercial death), but Journey(!) had a No. 1 single more than 10 years after the band’s breakup. In addition, Journey’s greatest hits collection sat at No. 3 on the charts the same week that Van Halen was on top. This sort of trend suggests that neither young nor old fans found anything new around which to rally. As Beck said when Spin notified him that he was the rock magazine’s artist of the year, “I don’t mean to sound rude, but to be honest, there wasn’t much competition.”

Still, nothing regenerates pop music like an artistic and commercial slump, and several bright spots this year suggested that there might be some interesting developments on the horizon. And just as it happens every year, plenty of good music got released, even if radio wasn’t interested in spreading it to the masses. Like a diner who searches out the best hidden restaurants in town, a music fan willing to dig past the corporate fodder this year was well-rewarded by the artful work of performers who don’t make the video channels or the hit parade.

In rock, Beck’s exuberantly funky studio collages proved by far the most galvanizing musical collection of the year. Similarly, groups like Cibo Matto, Ruby, and Soul Coughing found fresh ways to combine sampling, singing, and studio instrumentals into intelligent, fun, and fresh rock music. Social Distortion reestablished the power of conviction in rock, while Rage Against the Machine and Tool did the same for political convictions, funky rhythms, and steel-belted power riffs.

In rap, gangsta music was already dying before Tupac took it to the grave with him. His posthumous release generated an initial flurry of excitement that slipped once word got out how bereft of inspiration or imagination it was. The same went for albums by Snoop Doggy Dogg, Ice Cube’s Westside Connection, and Ice-T this year. Pushing them aside were the more thoughtful and more enjoyable advances of The Fugees, A Tribe Called Quest, and Blackstreet, all of whom proved that hip-hop is still alive—and ready to celebrate life rather than degrade it. Similarly, the work of studio auteurs like Tricky and DJ Shadow breathed new life into urban music and moved it far beyond street hype.

In country, LeAnn Rimes reminded Music Row that traditional torch songs will always grab the listener—something Patsy Cline proved both in her lifetime and in her film-driven revival a couple decades later. Meanwhile, it took Deana Carter’s sensitive evocation of the hit “Strawberry Wine” to illustrate that listeners can tell the difference between sentiments steeped in real-life occurrences and those based on silly puns or shallow drama. Throughout the year, romping musical traditionalists such as BR5-49, Keith Gattis, Deryl Dodd, Gary Allan, the Cox Family, and Don Walser generated excitement among the hard-core fans who managed to hear their music. Unfortunately, radio thus far has ignored most of these artists—they’re too country for country music, as the mantra goes. That’s going to make it tough for them to gain the extensive following they’ll need to stay alive in today’s sell-a-million-or-get-lost business atmosphere.

Me, I found plenty of music that I’ll revisit years from now. Nearly 75 albums from 1996 sit on the shelf where I keep CDs that I listen to for self-enjoyment. This might be a small percentage of the tens of thousands of albums released since January, but it’s still a healthy amount of good music to be released in one year.

As I’ve said before, year-end top 10 lists are mostly a media contrivance; when we rank, tabulate, and enumerate, we ascribe more significance to our personal biases than we should. Music, for me, is as much a solitary pleasure as it is a communal gathering point. So don’t look at any reviewer’s list as a judgment from a mountaintop; as always, a list of a person’s favorite albums—or movies or books or political movements—says more about that individual than it does about the creative world at the moment. In the end, it takes a lot more guts to put one’s own creative urges on the line than it does to sit back and judge someone else’s.

What follows are my favorite rock and pop albums of the year. Next week, I’ll write about the year’s best country albums, along with a few jazz, blues, and unclassifiable favorites.

The top 10

1. Alejandro Escovedo, With These Hands (Rykodisc) The culmination of a few years’ experimentation with exotic instruments, With These Hands delivers guitar crunchers and acoustic ballads with textures ranging from tender to brutal. In the process, Escovedo’s heart-wrenching honesty and spiritual searching are given the weight they deserve.

2. Amy Rigby, Diary of a Mod Housewife (Koch) Drawing on ’60s pop, psychedelia, and ragged country, Rigby’s first solo album uses humor to explore the problems of a couple striving to combine domestic bliss with a rock ’n’ roll lifestyle. Equal parts Erma Bombeck and Liz Phair, Rigby struggles with the polar responsibilities of family and career while striving to maintain her balance and her commitment in a world filled with temptation and dirty diapers.

3. Aimee Mann, I’m With Stupid (DGC) With clear and chilling effect, Mann reduces pop-rock to its barest elements: a comely voice, a tuneful melody, acid lyrics, and some basic guitar chords. She sings with a venomous precision, then juices her cleverly stated anger with whispers of distorted guitar notes. It’s a memorable goodbye note to a ex-lover, written with a poison pen.

4. Social Distortion, White Light, White Heat, White Trash (Sony 550) A relentlessly rocking album packed with jackhammer riffs and anthemic melodies, Social Distortion’s sixth LP burns with a passion rarely heard in these days of irony and aloofness. It’s an unapologetic punk rock album put together by a post-recovery adult who finds deliverance through confessing his mistakes and sins. It’s as sensitive as a raw nerve and as cleansing as a hard rain.

5. Tricky, Pre-Millennium Tension (Island) As inventive as last year’s fine Maxinquaye, but more brutal and boastful, Tricky’s second solo album creates a thick, paranoid wall of shadowy sound that blends dub, funk, and hip-hop, highlighting the coarse sensuality of each. Less sexy than his past work, the album prowls and beats its chest, pumped up with passion and alert anger. Tricky sounds ready to pounce or seduce, depending on his mood.

6. The Dirty Three, Horse Stories (Touch and Go) With influences ranging from Celtic airs to John Cale to free jazz, this remarkable Australian trio of violin, electric guitar, and drums creates mesmerizing, emotional instrumentals full of melancholy, violence, and passionate beauty.

7. Los Lobos, Colossal Head (Warner Bros.) In some respects, this LP combines the hard-bopping R&B and traditional rock of the group’s ’80s albums with the groundbreaking sonic experimentation of its early ’90s work. It’s as if Los Lobos wanted to return to making straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll but couldn’t forget what it had learned. The songs cast a groove with catchy hooks, then always turn in unexpected directions.

8. Elysian Fields, Elysian Fields (Radioactive) To use a film analogy, Elysian Fields is edgy French New Wave in the age of the American blockbuster. Artful and erotic instead of obvious and tawdry, the Manhattan quintet offers velvet-textured, minimalist rock that slithers and bites, moving with a moody, languid grace. The record is proof that a group of avant-garde musical explorers can make a mass-market move without compromising their art-school convictions. The band released a full-length album, Bleed Your Cedar, in the fall, but this earlier four-song EP is the place to start.

9. Curtis Mayfield, Brave New World (Warner Bros.) The master of the slow-baked groove, the wah-wah guitar, and the tough, community-minded lyric returns with a silky, introspective album of social and spiritual songs. His work here is every bit as powerful, and as timely, as “Superfly” and “Freddie’s Dead” were a quarter of a century ago.

10. Andy Kaulkin, Six Feet Seven and Rising (Bong Load) Kaulkin plays balls-out rock ’n’ roll, but he incorporates just enough strange effects and fierce attitude to make this LP a totally modern affair. A piano pounder backed by outstanding guitarists and a swinging rhythm section, he drags his songs through the alleys of New Orleans, Memphis, and Chicago, then spills them out onto the cheap neon glare of a Hollywood boulevard.

The next 10: Bikini Kill, Reject All-American (Kill Rock Stars); Beck, Odelay (DGC); Ashley MacIsaac, Hi™, How Are You Today? (A&M); Cub, Box of Hair (Mint/Lookout); Syd Straw, War and Peace (Capricorn); Jason & the Scorchers, Clear Impetuous Morning (Mammoth); Me’shell Ndegéocello, Peace Beyond Passion (Maverick); Clive Gregson, I Love This Town (Compass); R.L. Burnside and Jon Spencer, A Ass Pocket of Whiskey (Matador); Fluffy, Black Eye (The Enclave).