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World Cafe 30th Anniversary Playlist: 1998

World Cafe celebrates 30 years with a 1998 playlist.
WXPN
World Cafe celebrates 30 years with a 1998 playlist.

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of World Cafe, we're looking back and posting playlists from each year of the show. As music has evolved over the years, so have our playlists, which have grown to reflect a much wider range of music than when we first set out.

The year 1998 saw the release of some excellent albums: Air's Moon Safari, Massive Attack's Mezzanine, In The Aeroplane Over The Sea by Neutral Milk Hotel, Lauryn Hill's legendary Miseducation, Elliott Smith's XO and PJ Harvey's Is This Desire?, Lucinda Williams' masterpiece Car Wheels On A Gravel Road, a wonderful collaboration from Wilco and Billy Bragg, Mermaid Avenue, Beck's Mutations and Aquemini by OutKast.

In honor of 30 years of World Cafe, let's take a look back at what we were probably listening to around the studio, 23 short years ago.

Copyright 2021 XPN

Bruce Warren is assistant general manager for programming of WXPN in Philadelphia. Besides serving as executive producer of World Café, Warren also contributes to Paste magazine and writes for two blogs: Some Velvet Blog and WXPN's All About The Music Blog.