Singles '00s

[koganbot]

Singles (as opposed to nonsingles). OK, here's where the decade barrier gets in the way: for me the arc of modern music starts in approximately '97 when Timbaland begins hitting with Missy and when Max Martin scores in the U.S. with the Backstreet Boys, and the Dirty South is bubbling up nationally, though I didn't connect to most of this other than Missy until '99 when Chuck enticed me back into the public eye. '99 is one node, with "...Baby One More Time" and "Back That Azz Up" and "Nann Nigga" and the flowering of the Ruff Ryders sound. Incredible year. '03 is another node — the top three on my list! — among other things for the dominance by the Dirty South, crunk coming to the fore. Then '04 and '05 are the peak of the rock confessional, what we've been calling "teenpop" but it's really young-woman pop that teens and tweens were lucky enough to be the prime consumers of, shepherded by men and women like John Shanks and Kara DioGuardi and the Matrix etc.; it brought my heart back into the business in a way that no one earlier in the decade except Eminem had done. I really needed Ashlee et al.'s lyrics, 'cause there's only so far I can care about whether someone gets low or not. The end of the decade doesn't have a node, exactly; country bumps in and out of the other stories, dallying with hip-hop in '04 and then Taylor Swift leaps into the rock confessional gap with her Taylorness, which is pretty much its own genre. Despite having written what I think was one of the significant bits about Destiny's Child, and liking Mya etc., I didn't start really clicking with — or on — r&b until '06, reaching back into the late '90s from there and then Lex has been a big help in my feeling it now.

Top Ten Singles Of The '00s

1. Panjabi MC ft. Jay-Z "Beware Of The Boys"
2. Lil Jon & The Eastside Boyz ft. Ying Yang Twins "Get Low"
3. 50 Cent "In Da Club"
4. Hilary Duff "Come Clean"
5. Missy Elliott "Get Ur Freak On"
6. Jay-Z ft. UGK "Big Pimpin'"
7. Eminem "The Real Slim Shady"
8. Kelly Clarkson "Since U Been Gone"
9. ATC "Around The World"
10. Kelly Clarkson "Because Of You"