The Year's Best.

Critic Ann Powers picks her faves of 1999

The Grammys will have their say later this month in Los Angeles. But Ann Powers, pop music critic of The New York Times, has her own ideas. Here are her top 10 recordings of 1999.

1. FIONA APPLE, WHEN THE PAWN ... (SONY/EPIC). Pundits made fun of her pretensions, yet instead of the expected rantings of a pinup girl, Apple offered some of the most immediate, individual, and just plain human music of the year. This is no pawn, but a well-armed knight on a visionary quest.

2. MARY J. BLIGE, MARY (MCA). Women's voices lifted rhythm and blues out of the doldrums last year, from TLC's blockbuster to promising debuts from Macy Gray and Melky Sedeck. The queen of hip-hop soul enjoyed a quieter triumph. Mary shows Blige's talent in full bloom, steady and refined, but still electrifyingly emotional.

3. STEVE EARLE AND THE DEL MCCOURY BAND, THE MOUNTAIN (E-SQUAREDCOEI). Earle, a great country-music bad boy, is audacious even when bowing to tradition. He set out to write certifiable classics for this trip into hard bluegrass, enlisting the genre's top band to render them immortal. This was the year's richest journey into roots music's living history.

4. FOUNTAINS OF WAYNE, UTOPIA PARKWAY (ATLANTIC). This power-pop gem is a concept album about suburbia, but even if all the songs were about pasteurized milk, their melodies would stick like glitter makeup on a teeny-bopper's face.

5. JOE HENRY, FUSE (MAMMOTH). Creeping up like the thoughts that maliciously wait until your head hits the pillow, the songs on this subtle album ennoble the term "adult contemporary." Top-notch studio musicians helped build a bridge between Henry's quirky vision (and voice) and the kind of smooth pop that permeates the atmosphere, creating a portrait of one man's inner life as a quiet storm.

6. MAGNETIC FIELDS, 69 LOVE SONGS (MERGE). Stephin Merritt, the artiste behind this three-CD epic, is a miniaturist with grand ambitions, an ironist who cannot resist the pleasures of sentimentalism. Made from the scrapheap of pop history, this is his monument to the music of romance.

7. NINE INCH NAILS, THE FRAGILE (NOTHING/INTERSCOPE). Trent Reznor's memorial to the writer's block he finally overcame is narcissistic and grandiose. But check out the bricks in the thing: each riff, sample, or rhythm fascinates, and they all hang together in mysterious patterns that lay bare the effort of their construction while defying gravity.

8. TAJ MAHAL AND TOUMANI DIABATE, KULANJAN (HANNIBAL). Taj Mahal has been tracing the worldwide path of the blues for decades. This collaboration gently melds his country style with the virtuoso stylings of kora master Toumani Diabate. Other Malian musicians, including the nightingale-voiced Ramatour Diakite, enrich this delicate and deep cultural exchange.

9. KELLY WILLIS, WHAT I DESERVE (RYKODISC). The Austin-based singer-songwriter Kelly Willis used country-rock's inherent conflict between roots and horizons to evoke that moment in early midlife when the future starts showing its borders, and self-acceptance becomes a painful necessity. It is a guidebook for people learning how to live with their dreams.

10. QUANNUM SPECTRUM, QUANNUM PROJECTS, AND THE FUNKY PRECEDENT, NO MAYO (LOOSE GROOVE). While corporate hip-hop milks hackneyed hooks and poses, hope lies with the historically conscious, forward-looking underground. These two collections encapsulate a scene that overflows with what hip-hop needs: skilled lyricists, innovative DJs, grass-roots politics, and lots of laughs.