Placebo – Black Market Music (2000)

Back in the start of the millennium I used to love Placebo. Their dark and bleak music was perfectly melancholic for a young adult in Finland. The singer Brian Molko's voice has lots of nasal and it's not necessarily that pleasant for a more conservative ear. I used to love it, because it was so different from anyone else and it really worked brilliantly in the context of this band's music. Black Market Music, as an album, was my least favourite Placebo album for a long time. The first two albums were superior in songwriting and sounds, and even the album that came after, Sleeping With Ghosts, was more to my liking. Any albums since then, though, have been a move to a worse direction and today, Black Market Music is still a part of Placebo's golden era. I very rarely listen to Placebo anymore, but I still have lots of respect for their music.



Placebo has heavier guitar sounds than most of the bands I normally listen to. Then again, as a teenager, I used to listen to trash metal and hard rock, so this was a move to a lighter direction. Basically I always think of Placebo as a pioneer emo-band, before the whole commercial emo genre was properly born. That's why I normally associated my style and musical taste with the emo-genre, even though I never really listened to the biggest emo-names, such as My Chemical Romance or Fall Out Boy. Those bands always sounded really fake in my ears. But I did dye my hair black back in the day and have been known to appear in black eye-liner on a few occasion. I'm prepared to say that Placebo was one of the strongest influences on my identity as a young adult.

More recently, I have stopped dyeing my hair black and my musical taste has broadened a lot and most of the stuff I listen today is a lot lighter when it comes to sounds. Along with my personal changes, Placebo's music has started sounding a bit old.

Even though Black Market Music was never one of my favourite Placebo albums, there are some excellent tracks on it. Days Before You Came reminds me of the first couple of albums. This song still has that desperate melancholy that I was so fond of with Placebo. Special K was the hit song from this album. Sure enough, it has a catchy melody, but I nevertheless, never really understood why this song was such a hit when the band had so many better songs as well. I've always adored Placebo's ballads. Even now when I don't listen to much of their other stuff, I get shivers from their dark and menacing ballads, such as Blue American. The piano and treble-filled bass along with chiming guitars makes the sounds quite amazing. The last proper track on the album, Peeping Tom, is perhaps my favourite song on the album. There's something truly beautiful in the melody of this song. After this song, there's the completely unnecessary hidden track in the 90's style that nowadays prevents me from putting this song on my iPod, because I don't want to use space for many minutes of silence.

The music video for Taste In Men is a perfect illustration of why I thought of Brian Molko as a style icon back in the day. The black mid-length hair was exactly what I wanted to have, but I never quite pulled it off as well.

Placebo may be more of a historical band to me personally at this point, but it's had a huge impact on who I am and it will always have a place in my heart even if I don't listen to it that much anymore.

Listen to the album on Spotify.