An alternative guide to the history of pop music - Part 5 - The 2000s

The 2000s

There are various themed bars dotted about the place that celebrate certain decades in music.  There’s ‘Flares’ which just plays music from the 1970s, ‘Reflex’ which plays only 80s music and ‘Boom’ which plays 90s music.  Now we’re in the... erm... tens... I've not noticed the same sort of nostalgia for the 'noughts' as there was in the late nineties for the eighties. 

A lonely child waiting in the park

There are no 00s bars around which just play music from the 2000s. Probably because it was a nondescript decade and didn’t see any new styles of music or throw up any interesting sub-genres. Every decade since the 1950s has been distinguishable in pop music by the fashions, styles, musical production values, and legendary exponents such as Elvis, Queen, Michael Jackson, The Beatles and H from Steps; strong identity in the music and stars who you wanted to be.  

We will always remember him as our favourite member of Steps

In the 00s, all they had was autotune so that literally anything that could make a discernable noise could become a pop star (e.g. The Crazy Frog).  Most music was by now produced electronically using loops and software which was becoming so cheap, it was possible for anyone to make a song at the touch of a button. Gone were the days when you had to win a record contract and spend months in an expensive studio honing your songwriting skills and having to tour the country touting your wares.  As a result, Calvin Harris is now famous as well as Mark Ronson and Will.I.Am (a descendent of Henry VIII.I.am). YouTube was responsible for Justin Bieber which is the main reason it should be discontinued immediately so it doesn’t happen again. I thought history was supposed to help us learn from our mistakes?

 

Justin Bieber during his 'Middle Aged Woman' years

At the beginning of the decade, a lot of 90s artists were still hanging around, such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and the Backstreet Boys. Travis were still churning out dirges and the likes of Dido and Keane were plodding along, doing their best to add some half-decent pop songs to the landscape. Hip Hop was dominant however with human smartie and rap-experiment gone rogue, Eminem outselling most and song-talkers Jay-Z, Snoop Dogg, Missy Elliott, Young Jeezy, Ludacris and Kanye West (yes we can) were taking over not just the charts but also the world and everything in it so they could use their videos as cheap adverts for products their production companies also sold. 

It's nice of Beats to let Jessie J be in their video

You’d think that because rappers became more about the beats than the music, they’d have a chance to work on their lyrics to say something poignant or relevant. Well, you’d be wrong as the lyrical quality of rap/hip hop plunged to deeper depths than anyone thought possible. If the lyrics weren’t disrespectful to women, then they referenced how much money the rapper had and their videos were filled with scantily clad women who were apparently there because the wanted to be there and were dressed exactly how they wanted to be dressed, encircling several rappers dripping in jewellery and shiny track suits with massive trainers on, making gestures to the camera, sneering and fully believing they were surrounded by women because of the rappers’ attractiveness and amazing personalities.

 

They continued doing what this man parodied, but with straight faces

Avril Lavigne was flying the flag for rock in the early part of the decade whilst Fall Out Boy were shielding the flame of punk with just their hands in a metaphorical wind tunnel. Snow Patrol looked to have a promising career at one point too without ever really reaching the kind of heights they might have had they existed in the 90s. The White Stripes were a bit odd; nobody knew whether that was Jack White’s sister on the drums or not and spent most of their live performances thinking about that instead of listening to his random screechings.

'Yallrite Sis? I mean, wife... er... second cousin?

TV Talent shows started to appear in the 2000s with Pop Idol, X-Factor, Fame Academy and American Idol winners all going on to have varying degrees of success. Simon Cowell singlehandedly destroyed the race for the Christmas Number One until Rage Against the Machine broke the cycle and made over £100k for charity in the process. Emo broke into mainstream culture too in the 00s, but he soon got bored and went back to Sesame Street. No, hang on - that’s Elmo.

 

The original Emo

The Killers were referred to as a retro-80s revival act as were their contemporaries ‘The Bravery’ but neither sounded like they belonged in the 2000s or the 1980s. The Darkness tried to resurrect what Queen were doing twenty five years earlier and Feist did a fair impression of Steeleye Span to modest success.  Boybands disappeared entirely in the mid-00s with ex-boyband members such as Justin Timberlake and Ronan Keating having solo success. Girl Groups were almost entirely represented by the Pussycat dolls (who don’t really qualify as a musical ensemble), The Sugababes (whose line-up changed daily) and Girls Aloud (who were cobbled together in a TV raffle).

The current Sugababes line-up

Pink’s career started off slowly, singing soul and bitter ballads before going all pop and rock with ‘Get the party started’ and ‘Don’t let me get me’ before going all shouty in ‘So what’ and then writing every single song since then about her break up with her husband. Anastasia, who was the product of scientists finally getting Taylor Dayne to work properly, broke loads of speakers with her powerful voice in 2004.

Anastasia v1.0

Jennifer Lopez was described by some in the 00s as a triple threat.  She threatened our ears with her voice, threatened our laughter reflexes with what she called ‘dancing’ and then threatened our eyes and sanity with her acting. Nelly Furtado was like a bird in 2002 and a Maneater in 2007. Maybe she was a Vulture all this time? Janet Jackson, Madonna and Kylie Minogue managed to stay relevant and the Spice Girls broke up after clinging on to their last crumbs of fame by a finger nail after Geri Halliwell left. They all had number one singles as solo artists except poor Victoria who couldn’t sing and had to get help from Dane Bowers, bless her.

 

One of the greatest singers ever to be born on 28th November 1979 in Sutton and David Beckham's Wife

Bands who played their own instruments were trying desperately to help us all hold onto hope for the future of popular music with the likes of Artic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand and Kaiser Chiefs consistently hitting the top 20.  Kate Nash also had hits despite singing in her natural accent which was a cross between Cockney and Australian. Oasis broke up in 2009 - hooray! If the music died when Buddy Holly's plane crashed, God knows what was happening to it whenever Noel Gallacher opened his mouth.  U2 continued into their fourth decade and continued to leave bands like Coldplay and Muse languishing in their slipstream.

70's tribute act and music torturer, Liam or Noel Gallacher

Children’s music started to become popular as both High School Musical and Hannah Montana got into the charts like a dirty protest. Sean Paul (despite letting us all know his name several times in all his songs) had some success in the Reggae genre.  His hit ‘We be burnin’ never really let us know why he be burnin.

 

Why you be burnin'?

Grime became popular for the first time since the coal mines closed in the 80s, with artists such as Dizzee Rascal and Tinchy Stryder singing or rapping or whatever. A man going by the name of ‘Example’ got a bit shirty on TV when someone asked ‘What do you do?’ and he stroppily explained that he was a ‘singer’.  No evidence of this claim exists however so we just have to take his word for it.

An 'Example' of someone with no discernible talent, making lots of money from 'music'

Duffy thought it was a good idea to dip into the 60s for the production on her hit ‘Mercy’ and subsequent singles. Joss Stone also revived ghosts of the past with her Janis Joplin impression whilst Corrine Baily Rae, Amy Winehouse and Adele had some success with proper real music and some proper real singing.

One of the reasons the 60s stayed in the 60s

The 2000s can be summed up as a disappointment by looking at who was named Billboard artist of the decade.  Previous winners were the supremely talented Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Elton John, Michael Jackson and Mariah Carey.  The 2000s honour went to Eminem and destroyed any credibility the list had previously engendered.

 

LOOOOOOOOOOOOL!!!!!

The saddest moments of the 2000s came when S Club 7 and Atomic Kitten split up but it wasn’t all bad news as Jo O’Meara and Liz McClarnon had solo careers that lasted 18 minutes and 13 minutes respectively.

 

Liz there, regretting everything she's ever done

By the end of the decade, pop was being strangled by the likes of Katy Perry (who said she kissed a girl but she didn’t really), Lady Gag-gag (who asked us to poke her face - gladly!) and Justin Bieber (whose hair had more personality than he did). Michael Jackson released his last studio album ‘Invincible’ in 2004 and then sadly passed away in 2009.

And we'll never see the likes again...

Rihanna massacred ‘Tainted Love’ for her hit ‘SOS’ and then trampled all over ‘Wanna be startin’ something’ on her hit ‘Don’t stop the music’.  Flo Rida metaphorically urinated on ‘You spin me right round’ on his hit ‘Right round’ and even Britney Spears had to dip into history to have hits with ‘My Prerogative’ and ‘I love rock and roll’. Alien Ant farm covered ‘Smooth Criminal’, Madonna shredded ‘Gimme Gimme Gimme’ in her hit ‘Hung up’ and even today, it’s impossible to find a song in the top 40 that hasn’t got a sample or cover of a song from at least ten years ago. Worse was to follow in the 10s.

This is an excerpt from the book 'The worst pop lyrics in the world EVER!' by Peter Nuttall.  Available in Paperback and on Kindle here :
Barnes and Noble
Amazon

An alternative guide to the history of pop music - Part 4 - The 1990s

The 1990s

Music began to evolve in the 1990s away from contemporary straight-laced pop into fusions of different genres. Urban music had offshoots which blended with soul, jazz and funk to create new jack swing, neo-soul, hip hop soul, g-funk and whatever Martika has started doing after she went to Prince’s house one afternoon. 

Martika, in the kitchen

Grunge became popular because people couldn’t be bothered to wash and comb their hair. Britpop happened and everyone wished it hadn’t. Then there was the emergence of industrial rock (produced in massive factories) and alternative rock emerged alongside it. Electronic music gave rise to trance (what happened to you when you listened to more than 15 seconds of it), Techno (which was cool until that bloke from 2 Unlimited shouted the word eighty times in one of his songs), happy hardcore (two words which should never have been put together), drum and bass (which are two instruments most bands have had since the 1920s) and trip hop (which taught us to always tie our shoelaces before attempting to go anywhere on one foot).

2 Unlimited, the wilderness years

In the 90s, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers sang ‘Under the Bridge’ but nobody could hear them so they started performing in theatres instead. There were more shouty bands around such as Linkin Park, Pantera, Sepultura and Pearl Jam. Marilyn Manson also decided to make us all feel a little bit uncomfortable with his one weird eye but the antidote to all this was Alanis Morissette who was herself ‘a bit shouty’ but could enunciate so it was clear what she was angry about (ex-boyfriends mainly).

What's known as 'A bit odd'

Alanis and Sheryl Crow paved the way for more female singer-songwriters to emerge such as Tori Amos and Lisa Loeb (a 90s Nana Mouskouri). Bryan Adams released ‘Everything I do’ which despite containing the same graceful and intricate rhyming couplets as a deaf woodlouse would write, stayed at number one for fifteen years.  Shania Twain (the female Bryan Adams) also released what some called ‘music’ but it didn’t impress me much.

Never trust a man who plays guitar in the woods

Madonna made us all gag when she released the album and art project that was ‘erotica’. Anyone who experienced any of that went immediately to have a wash, paying particular attention to their eyes and ears with powerful soap. Something similar happened when Celine Dion released ‘My heart will go on’ though people decided to squirt cavity wall insulation in their ears until the song stopped being played everywhere.

What's known as 'a little bit odd'

It seemed people couldn’t get enough of buying bland music. As mentioned before ‘Everything I do’ by Bryan Adams topped the charts for far longer than it should, ‘I will always love you’ by Whitney Houston stayed at the top of the chart for a bazillion weeks and Wet Wet Wet had to stop production of their record ‘Love is all around’ because even they couldn’t stand it being number one for another week.  They, as we did, wanted Right Said Fred to have a chance. Whitney and her contemporary Mariah Carey brought Gospel music to the masses and gave every single female X-factor contestant something to murder in their auditions for the next twenty years.

 

I can't sing, but I've got a great back-story.

Urban Adult contemporary music was also born in the 90s through artists such as SWV, Mary J. Blige, Toni Braxton, Brandy, Monica, Brandy and Monica, R. Kelly, your Kelly, my Kelly, Sean Combs, Puff Daddy, Puffy, Diddy, P. Diddy and Boys II Men (who later became just ‘men’).  Being ‘retro’ became cool and the use of old songs to make new music was prevalent in the 90s (as was the practice of one artist ‘featuring’ another, as you’ll see).  ‘U can’t touch this’ by MC Hammer ‘sampled’ the song ‘Super Freak’ and ‘Ice Ice Baby’ made use of the riff in the Queen song ‘Under Pressure’.  Other aberrations of this practice include, ‘Jump Around’ by House of pain, ‘Mo money Mo Problems’ by Notorious B.I.G., ‘Killing me softly’ by the Fugees, ‘I’ll be missing you’ by Puff Puffy Diddy Daddy FEATURING Faith Evans, ‘Gangsters Paradise’ by Coolio FEATURING L.V.,  ‘Hey Lover’ by Boyz II Men FEATURING LL Cool J and every single song Will Smith has ever released.

 

For the early part of the 1990s, everyone wanted to move to Madchester, despite it not existing. The Happy Mondays made it cool to spend all your money and time on ‘recreational substances’ and end up with no teeth and a brain that’s always about three months behind your mouth. 

Apparently, it was all worth it

The Stone Roses also adopted the ‘cool’ look of having your eyes half open, crouching a bit on the spot whilst murmuring into a microphone about pretty colours and imaginary friends. Oasis continued this ‘green anorak-parker-thing’ look into the mid-90s but ‘borrowed’ heavily from the Gallagher’s parents music collection of 70s glam rock and 60s Mersey-beat so much so they might as well have called themselves The Beat-Slade-Rex-les.

Beatles tribute act, Oasis

The mid-90s for most people was a Blur where they Preached on Manic Street, wore Suede, beat themselves to a Pulp with Verve on some Super-Grass whilst wearing Shell Suit bottoms with an Elastica waist band. However, we’re all still waiting in anticipation for the Boo Radley’s follow up single to ‘Wake up it’s a beautiful morning’.

Jarvis Cocker and some other people who may or may not have been in Pulp

Pop music still held a firm grip on the world’s attention by the end of the 90s with the Backstreet Boys achieving massive commercial success and Britney Spears asking us to hit her one more time. The Spice Girls set the foundations for both Britney and Christina Aguilera to come along and sing lots of innuendo-laden yet purportedly innocent pop music. Backstreet Boys were closely followed by NSYNC (including a fluffy haired Justin Timberlake), girl group ‘Hanson’, Jennifer ‘from the block’ Lopez and Destiny’s child. Cher returned with a wobbly mechanical voice on her song ‘Believe’ making us all ‘believe’ that she’d taken the plastic surgery too far and had in fact been made into some kind of immortal robot.

An android from the future

The Corrs proved that you could still get in the charts with a violinist in your band (most notably following Dexy’s Midnight Runners) and with the lead singer playing the penny whistle and the one at the back playing the bodhrán now and again. Robbie Williams left Take That and had a solo career which was even better, then co-wrote ‘Angels’ which he modestly introduced at his live shows as ‘a really really good song, this’. There was a Seal in the charts at one point too along with Milli Vanilli who didn’t actually do anything other than dance about a bit and mime. Boyzone were a kind of ‘Diet’ Take That, again proving that you only need two people in a group of five who can actually sing. Then Aqua came along and killed everything Kurt Cobain, Freddie Mercury, James Brown, Marvin Gaye and Tina Turner had worked so hard to build when they got to Number One with ‘Barbie Girl’. It proved that novelty acts still had a look-in and variety was still the spice of the charts with acts as diverse as Sinead O’connor, The Cranberries, Los del Rio, The Prodigy and Roxette competing for chart space.

 

I just want to be your friend

Music began to die when computers took over the world in 1998, or at least allowed people with no musical ability to make tunes happen in their bedrooms.  Moby started the trend along with ‘White town’ and his/her single ‘Your Woman’.  It started the decline of people with discernible talent in the music industry and led us to where we are today, with DJs ‘making’ the music with computers instead of playing it on their turntables after it had been performed by actual people with actual talent and actual musical instruments. Culprits include Paul Oakenfold, Sasha and Pete Tong who ironically made everything go a bit ‘Pete Tong’ in the charts. 

This became famous somehow

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Garth Brooks was tearing up the record books for album sales and concert attendance with his honky-tonk ways and songs about heartbreak, loneliness and mamma’s hot apple pies. Thanks to Garth’s intervention, ‘boot-scootin’ boogie’ was on the rise and line-dancing took over the world, metaphorically. We all had an ‘Achy Breaky Heart’ at one point and we were all asking ‘How do I live without you’ whilst concurrently stating that ‘You’re still the one’ but eventually along came The Mavericks and ruined the entire decade for everyone. Also, Dr. Alban, Scatman John and Haddaway happened so we’re just going to have to accept it.

It's a Scooby-dooby-doooby-scooby-dooby-mel-o-dee

In other news, Australia gave us more Kylie (not that we asked for it), Natalie Imbruglia (another soap actress), Tina Arena (who sounds more like a venue than a person), Savage Garden (which sounds like an awful place to look at butterflies) and Peter ‘ooh, look at my tummy bits’ Andre.  Thanks Australia, no really. Oh, and New Zealand gave us a band called OMC. How Bizarre!

Thanks very much the 90s, no really, thanks a lot

This is an excerpt from the book 'The worst pop lyrics in the world EVER!' by Peter Nuttall.  Available in Paperback and on Kindle here :

Barnes and Noble
Amazon