Popular '00

The Face’s singles of the year – as far as I can remember, this was the only writers’ poll I ever took part in in which I voted for the single that topped the list. I assume I also voted for Still D.R.E. and B.O.B., and possibly The Time Is Now.

Interesting that Say My Name ranked so high despite coming from an album that was well over a year old by that point – admirable lack of hipper-than-thou-ness from the contributors to a style mag.

1. Aaliyah: Try Again
2. Azzido Ba Bass: Dooms Night
3. Spiller: Groovejet
4. Destiny’s Child: Independent Woman Pt.1
5. Dj Falcon And Thomas Bangalter: Together
6. Eminem: Stan
7. Destiny’s Child: Say My Name
8. Daft Punk: Daft Punk One More Time
9. Madonna: Music
10. DJ Ronaldo: Knight Of The Jaguar
11. Eminem: The Real Slim Shady
12. Modjo: Lady (Hear Me Tonight)
13. Crage David: Fill Me In
14. Dr Dre: Still D.R.E.
15. Moloko: The Time Is Now
16. Alan Braxe And Fred Flake: Running
17. Zombie Nation: Kernkraft 400
18. All Saints: Pure Shores
19. Outkast: B.O.B.
20. Black Legend: You See The Trouble With Me
21. Darude: Sandstorm
22. Nelly: Country Grammar (Hot)
23. Toni Braxton: He Wasn’t Man Enough
24. Sisqo: Thong Song
25. DJ Zinc: 138 Trek
26. Britney Spears: Oops! I Did It Again
27. Dr Dre And Eminem: Forget About Dre
28. Lambchop: Up With People
29. Kelis: Caught Out There
30. Laurent Garnier: The Man With The Red Face

Voted for 23 out of 42. More than I would have thought. Of course, the songs I voted for today may or may not have matched up with those I gave 6+ to over the past six months.

Anyhow, the US number ones of 2000. An unusually large number for a year in the Soundscan era:

Smooth – Santana featuring Rob Thomas

– 2 final weeks of carryover. Split between two years, it was both the 10th biggest hit of 1999 and the 2nd biggest of 2000. This allowed an opening for something that hadn’t occurred since 1965…

What a Girl Wants – Christina Aguilera

– The first new number one of the century goes to Christina. Britney would have to wait some time for her first 21st century #1.

I Knew I Loved You – Savage Garden

– The inverse relationship between the size of Savage Garden’s hits and my opinion of them continues. This isn’t actually bad, but they’ve had a lot better.

Thank God I Found You – Mariah Carey featuring Joe and 98 Degrees

– A new decade doesn’t stop Mariah (yet). Also, the only #1 for 98 Degrees. Not the last for Joe however (the most generic artist name ever?)

Amazed – Lonestar

– For all of country’s ascendancy during the 90’s, there still hadn’t been a country #1 on the Hot 100 since 1983. This changed due to the poppier version of Lonestar’s huge country radio hit from the previous summer. It wouldn’t be the highest ranking country song on the year-end chart however.

Say My Name – Destiny’s Child

– IW1 would be a bigger hit, but for me, this is probably their best song.

Maria Maria – Santana featuring The Product G&B

– Another 10 weeks for Santana. Don’t know much about Product G&B who never had another hit, but Wiki says they’re connected with Wyclef Jean somehow. Explains why this record is often misattributed to Wyclef.

Try Again – Aaliyah

– And inevitable chart history is made as 18 months after Billboard’s policy changed we have the first #1 without a commercial single release. Of course no one knew at the time it would be her only #1 before tragedy stuck.

Be with You – Enrique Iglesias

– His 2nd, and I think final, #1.

Everything You Want – Vertical Horizon

– My favorite hit of the year and one of the slowest ever rises to #1, taking a full six months to get there. And they’re local for me too, having formed in not especially musical Washington, DC. I was surprised to learn this missed the UK top 40. They only had two more chart hits before falling back to obscurity.

Bent – Matchbox Twenty

– Led by Rob Thomas of “Smooth – Santana featuring…”, apparently another band that never broke the UK. Considered bland and faceless by many, but they’ve certainly sold a lot of records. I used to wonder if their name derived from the #20 car in the Matchbox 75 series (apparently not).

It’s Gonna Be Me – NSYNC

– NSYNC accomplishes what the Backstreet Boys never did. The relative inability of the era’s boy bands, as well as Britney, to top the Hot 100 has been discussed before. We’ll eventually see Justin again though.

Incomplete – Sisqo

– Classic example of someone hitting #1 with the “wrong” hit as he’s much better known for “Thong Song”. In fact I don’t really remember this at all.

Doesn’t Really Matter – Janet Jackson

– Still going strong in 2000, but I like her 2001 chart topper better.

Music – Madonna

– Already discussed. Still her most recent (and last?) number one.

Come on Over Baby (All I Want Is You) – Christina Aguilera

– Some confusion here as some sources switch title and subtitle. I’d attribute Christina’s early lead over Britney in the number ones tally to her more credible image allowing for more airplay at the time. She’d eventually manage to screw that up of course.

With Arms Wide Open – Creed

– I usually think unhip bands like Nickelback and Matchbox 20 get more hate than they really deserve as they’re obviously appealing to someone even if that someone isn’t me. Not so with Creed who I despise with the passion usually reserved for the pure evilness of boiled potatoes or the New England Patriots. Basically the smugness of Bono, the blandness of Nickelback, and the bad behavior of Oasis combined into one festering package. A look at Wikipedia shows they were significantly less successful in the UK. Be happy.

Independent Women Part I – Destiny’s Child

– Already discussed. 11 weeks at #1 to close out the year and head into 2001.

And Billboard’s top single of the year was….none of these. For the first time since 1965, the year-end Hot 100 leader was a song that never reached #1 on the weekly chart, specifically “Breathe” by country singer Faith Hill. It’s easy to forget how huge she was at the time considering how she seems to have fallen off the face of the earth since then. Taylor Swift beware?

#5 Wow. I think this is the first of these lists where I don’t recognize a single song. Showing either 1) the US/UK music dichotomy at the time, 2) how out of touch I was in 2000, or most likely 3) both.

Voted for 19/42. Glad this pace of change at the top didn’t quite keep up, as there’s a lot of eminently forgettable stuff among the other 23…

Quite happy to think of “Try Again” as my single of the year. Album of the year: certainly PJ Harvey’s “Stories From The City, Stories From the Sea”

I don’t know half of those US number 1s (and I don’t think this is just wilful ignorance or complete detachment from popular culture on my part) – more that there was still a very evident divide between UK and US tastes, which is arguably not so much the case at present…at least if based on number 1 singles. Although marketing and globalization….Are obviously the key words here…

Here’s the top 30 singles from Select – unfortunately it’s just a scan so can’t copy and paste. It really looks like the magazine is barely clinging to life if this is how they present their singles of the year – as indeed proved to be the case. Some interesting choices though – ones which didn’t appear in the other lists so far – The Facts of Life, Playgirl, Thong Song – as well as some shockers.

Re10: That is a stunningly bad bit of design. There’s also a classic instance of Emapism at its worst in the writing: ‘this staggering record left jaws with no choice but to drop.’ Yuck.

Also not on the Select list but not on the others is Gravel Pit, the Wu-Tang Clan’s only UK hit, and their most pop moment, I think.

Another favourite of mine from the year, up at #5 on the Peel list, is Broadcast’s Come On Let’s Go, which was as close as they got to a hit (No82).

16 for me and a whole bunch of those were 8s and 9s – Eminem, All Saints, and Craig David at the tops of their games, Ellis-Bextor and Beyonce coming on strong, and U2, Madonna (in one instance), Robbie, and Kylie all with good showings made for one of the best #1 years IMHO in a long while. Yay.

Inspired / alarmed by my failing memory, I took a look at the Kid A tracklist to see how many I could remember.

For Everything In Its Right Place I can sing the title phrase, for Idioteque I can drum the beat. The National Anthem is the big band one, right? The Morning Bell has a trumpet?

Somehow alarming, how little I can recall. On the the other hand, I can remember every word of Bob The Builder, so that’s something.

(Er, I now see Idioteque is on the Peel list, too. So that makes three that I’ve heard of.)

It’ll be interesting to see which of the two All Saints biggies comes higher. Pure Shores is winning at the moment #TeamPureShores

I was vaguely aware of the hits in the UK charts via radio, TV and the enthusiasms of the pupils I was teaching but I had largely lost interest in UK and US ‘rock’, indie or otherwise. Instead I was starting to listen to Brazilian pop in 2000 after getting a free Tom Ze album with a Wire subscription and following up on a ‘Tropicalia and beyond’ Primer in the same magazine. To my ears this was music that combined sonic inventiveness, rhythmic subtly and beautiful melodies.

#16 surely you remember “The National Anthem” from this year’s GAME CHANGING Tidal launch press conference

@21 – I’d go as far as saying it’s actually P.J Harvey’s best album. It’s in her nature to try something different with each release, so why not a polished album packed with tunes.

19 out of 42 for me, too, most of them concentrated in the first half of the year.

Here were Australia’s number one singles in 2000:

Eiffel 65, “Blue (Da Ba Dee)”
Macy Gray, “I Try”
Killing Heidi, “Mascara”/”Leave Me Alone”
Chris Franklin, “Bloke”
Madonna, “American Pie”
*NSYNC, “Bye Bye Bye”
Bardot, “Poison”
Destiny’s Child, “Say My Name”
Britney Spears, “Oops!… I Did It Again”
Madison Avenue, “Who the Hell Are You”
Kylie Minogue, “Spinning Around”
Bomfunk MC’s, “Freestyler”
Anastacia, “I’m Outta Love” (highest seller of the year)
Madonna, “Music”
Kylie Minogue, “On a Night Like This”
Pink, “Most Girls”
U2, “Beautiful Day”
Spiller featuring Sophie Ellis-Bextor, “Groovejet (If This Ain’t Love)”
Wheatus, “Teenage Dirtbag”
Baha Men, “Who Let the Dogs Out?”

“Can’t Fight the Moonlight”, “Stan” and “Can We Fix It?” also reached the top there in 2001. (If I’d posted this a week ago, I could have written “here” rather than “there”… just back from my first trip home in five years, hence my lack of Popular comments lately.)

Hi Stevonicus!

I gave sod all 6pluses which is weird because I thought of this as a bumper year during it’s Popular run. I have got really stingy with my marks. My threshold for a 6 these days is ‘would I choose to listen to this for pleasure at least once or twice’. Something I can only enjoy analytically (“this is interesting/well-made”) would be a five or four if it has other irritating qualities. There are always several songs I can’t remember so they miss out on a tick due to ignorance on my part.

Contemporary stuff I remember from this year would be Dre, Eminem, Britney, Destiny’s Child (big floor fillers at student nights those last two), lots of Drum&Bass I can’t name cos it was on mix tapes in people’s cars or in ACTUAL PROPER NIGHTCLUBS. Oh and Coldplay and Limp Bizkit for stuff I “hated” I.E. Didn’t like enough not to join in with the snarkfest. I actually made a T shirt of Fred Durst with “This is your enemy” underneath which was a bit twatty in retrospect…

Probably not very far! He was a bell-end and a terrible rapper but there’s no glory in publicly hating an obvious target daft pop star like it’s some sort of badge of outsider cool (especially if you’re only really hating on Durst because an older lad at uni who you sort of hero worshipped hated him too). Let he who was not an idiot at 19 cast the first stone.

Other big “going away to uni” tunes: Wu Tang’s Gravel Pit (this was also the year I got properly into 36 Chambers), Jurassic 5 Concrete and Clay, Foo Fighters’ Breakout and Stacked Actors (and Learning To Fly but that was rubbish) and At The Drive-In’s One Armed Scissor (though I preferred Pattern Against User once I got the Relationship Of Command Album). We also played loads of NWA as befits very white middle-class boys away from home for the first time. And Pixies. RHCP and Santana were also big in our halls of residence (in Knightsbridge! Now luxury flats) but I was and am ho-hum about them. My neighbour in halls (with whom I became besotted) was an obsessive Michael Jackson fan (her room was literally a shrine to the King Of Pop) so I probably heard loads of his stuff too, I remember learning Billie Jean on the guitar to impress her…

#21/26/33 – I’ll have to check that PJ Harvey album out: I’ve always thought of her as someone who I would like but the few songs I’ve actually heard didn’t leave much impression on me so I’ve always had it in mind to devote some time to her back catalogue looking for a way in/seeing if anything grows on me. Any other PJ nube tips appreciated!

28 – Bomfunk MCs’ “Freestyler” was huge internationally – in Germany it’s gone down as a classic, and still gets played a lot. Strange, since the lyrics aren’t that easy to understand, even for fluent English speakers.

I preferred their fellow Finn Darude. Someone needs to redress the balance 🙂 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fq4ikWktEOQ

Seems I forgot to post this at the time, despite having it prepared, so here goes…

1. No. 1 in Scotland but not UK

1) R.E.M. – The Great Beyond
2) Sash! – Adelante
3) Bloodhound Gang – The Bad Touch
4) Travis – Coming Around
5) Delerium ft Sarah McLachlan – Silence

No. 1 in UK but not Scotland
1) Gabrielle – Rise
2) Chicane ft Bryan Adams – Don’t Give Up
3) Craig David – Fill Me In
4) Oxide & Neutrino – Bound 4 Da Reload (Casualty)
5) Five & Queen – We Will Rock You
6) Craig David – 7 Days
7) Melanie C – I Turn To You
8) Madonna – Music
9) All Saints – Black Coffee
10) A1 – Same Old Brand New You
11) Destiny’s Child – Independent Women (Part 1)

Letting a song as grand as understatedly melancholic as “The Great Beyond” get to no 1 makes me feel particularly kindly inclined towards the Scottish list of 2000. I can do without the frat-boy idiocy of the Bloodhound Gang and the workmanlike charmless tedium of Travis, and regret the failure of Destiny’s Child and All Saints to do the business with the Scots – but otherwise, well, they mostly missed a lot of rubbish.