The decade 2000-2009 wasn’t an especially great time musically so you can’t blame this compilation CD because it isn’t better. The compilers didn’t have much to work with.
But there’s plenty of ear-worm material here. Shaggy’s “Wasn’t Me” can still be heard currently in Cheeto’s TV and Discover Card commercials. When Britney Spears was “freed,” there was an explosion of “Oops!…I Did It Again.” “Just Dance” is my favorite Lady Gaga song.
“Since U Been Gone” made Kelly Clarkson a star, but now she’s selling Wayfair furniture. Katy Perry’s “I Kissed a Girl” riled the Religious Right back in the day before Homosexual Weddings were deemed legal by the Supreme Court (who may just rescind that ruling after squashing Roe v. Wade).
Do you remember these songs? Any favorites here? GRADE: B
Tracklist:
1. Oops!… I Did It Again – Britney Spears
2. I Kissed A Girl – Katy Perry
3. Just Dance – Lady Gaga feat. Colby O’Donnis
4. Bye Bye Bye – *NSYNC
5. I Gotta Feeling – Black Eyes Peas
6. SexyBack – Justin Timberlake
7. Low – Flo Rida feat. T-Pain
8. Survivor – Destiny’s Child
9. Family Affair – Mary J. Blige
10. Thong Song – Sisqo
11. It Wasn’t Me (feat. Ricardo Ducent) – Shaggy
12. U Got It Bad – Usher
13. This Love – Maroon 5
14. Party In The USA – Miley Cyrus
15. Since U Been Gone – Kelly Clarkson
16. Kryptonite – 3 Doors Down
17. The Reason – Hoobastank
18. Hanging By A Moment – Lifehouse
19. How To Save A Life – The Fray
The Oughts was certainly a Decade…it’s what Everyone calls a decade. And there was plenty of good music in that decade…perhaps not too much that was 1) cheap already and 2) in what was left of Top 40 formats.
Todd, the 2000s was the decade where streaming music really started to take off. Radio TOP 10 formats lost audience which translated to more Talk Radio.
This is a decade I remember little. My kids were gone and Phil put the radio on a classic station.
Patti, there are fewer and fewer Classical Music radio stations now. Even the Canadian radio stations only play classical music a few hours per day.
My kids were tweens and teens in the Oughts, so I have the opposite situation from Patti: this music was everywhere in my life—and I must confess that an old Disco Dolly like me really enjoyed some of them. Of the songs here, my favorites are “I Gotta Feeling,” “SexyBack,” “Since U Been Gone,” and “Hanging By A Moment.” And today each of them is on my “21st Century” playlist on Spotify.
Deb, I’m sure your 21st CENTURY playlist is extensive! I remember when Patrick had FIVE iPods full of music. One of his iPods was devoted entirely to Bjork’s music!
I can’t recall a single one of them. I was too busy starting a family and having a life.
Jerry, I listened to all these songs while I was driving to work. On the ride home I sometimes switched to classical or jazz.
I’ll admit to having heard three of these–Spears, Perry, and Clarkson, and will admit that the latter is sorta catchy. It’s also the only thing I’ve ever heard by Clarkson. When I do hear music of this sort it’s usually on television. I don’t buy it and don’t listen to the sorts of radio stations that play it. Clarkson’s Wayfair commercials are increasingly annoying but aren’t yet near the top of the Loathsome List which is topped by those godawful Liberty Mutual ads starring an asshole and an emu.
Michael, I’m semi-fond of the Struggling Actor (“Liberty Biberty”) in those Liberty Mutual commercials. But I agree with you on Doug and LiMU. Here are some facts you might enjoy: The first commercials were directed by award-winning Australian director, Craig Gillespie, who collaborated with the Mill, a visual effects studio, to bring LiMu Emu to life. As explained by the Akron Beacon Journal, LiMu is a mix of real emu and CGI.
Libery Mutual commercials can be a lucrative market, as Jim Cashman proves. It is estimated that the Progressive commercial star has an annual salary of around $500,000 and a net worth of $2 million. He truly lives up to his last name of Cashman.
*fingers in ears*
Not gonna listen and you cna’t make me.
Jeff, and I’m sure the kids will stay off your lawn, too!
I like Lady Gaga but that is about it. Top 40 radio lost me back in the 80’s. Now it is mostly lightweight pop, boy bands or hip-hop. In the early n90’s I was listening to younger artists like The National, Wilco, Beck, The Foo Fighters, The Eels and the Dandy Warhols. There is still a lot of rock still out there, you just have to look for it. You won’t find it on top 40 radio.
And Jazz only interests me if it is from the 50’s and 60’s. Contemporary jazz I find to be a big snooze fest.
Steve, you’re right about contemporary radio. I used to listen to FM radio stations that featured talented groups like The National and artists like Kate Bush. Those are pretty much gone now. The radio stations in my area focus on hip-hop and totally commercial music, even the Canadian radio stations which were once adventurous in their musical choices. Those days are gone. Even the Canadian jazz station plays a lot of mainstream stuff now, not classic jazz from the 1950s or 1960s.
You can find the good stuff, but you pretty much have to Sirius.
Steve, I have Sirius/XM and listen to every time I drive around. Our local radio stations, even the Canadian ones, are vast deserts of soulless music.
Just as there is still interesting rock music (say, Arcade Fire), there is still interesting jazz (say, Maria Schneider’s orchestras). Opening ears always a good idea.
Todd, the diversity of music on the ratio during the 1970s completely diminished when the 21st Century started. As Steve notes, you have to search for great music…mostly on Sirius/XM Radio.
I only ever played the radio when I couldn’t play my own music — like going to sleep with a clock radio. I had one clock radio that could pick up a great station with a weak signal, the only device I had that could reliably get that. When the alarm broke on it, I kept it anyway.
Jeff, it was a Sad Day when I gave up my transistor radio. It was about the time I passed my Driving Test. After that, when I was in the car, the radio was alway on!
Not really, George. I listen to contemporary music randomly. I mostly still listen to English songs from the golden years — 60s through 80s with a bit of 90s — and discover “new” singers almost every time I do.
Prashant, I’m with you on the 1960s to 1980s music. It was a Golden Age. We have a couple of Oldies stations, but they don’t always play the music from that era that I want to hear. Hence my thousands of music CDs…
George, these days I mostly listen to music on Spotify, which has an amazing collection from all over the world.
Prashant, I listen to Sirius/XM Radio when I’m driving around now.
Same here!
And I’m lucky that the station which has the traffic info does the same so often I let them run while driving. If they have too many songs I don’t like I switch on a CD.
The titles George listed mean nothing at all to me.
Wolf, now that I’m retired I don’t have to listen to traffic reports any more. I do a quick check on my computer if I’m going anywhere outside of Buffalo.
The insurance ads are almost uniformly irritating, except for the Progressive ads where the life coach instructs the 30-40-somethings how not to be like their parents, pretty amusing. For a few weeks, there were a couple of life insurance ads where a schlub dodges murder attempts by his wife and kids after taking out a policy. Not funny, just dumb, and these days, who knows how many idiots out there will get ideas; I haven’t seen those ads in the last week or so, maybe somebody put pressure on the company to find a different tack.
Fred, I’m amused by the Life Coach Progressive commercials, too. But I wonder how that translates into getting people to buy their insurance.
Bye Bye Bye is my only favorite out of this bunch.
I wasn’t listening to a lot of “new” music in the 2000s. Metro Milwaukee had a great Classic Rock station then that I really ventured past.
Beth, we’re down to one Oldies station. We used to have several. There are a couple of contemporary rock stations, a R&B station, and two feuding Country Music stations. The rest is all Talk Radio…mostly ultra-conservative.
Since our “true oldies” station now begins with the ’80s, and the “classic rock” station seems to be gone, we listen mostly to CDs in the car (or the news channel). In Florida, we have Scott Shannon’s True Oldies Channel, which does play music from the mid-’50s through the ’60s and ’70s and some ’80s. You can also listen to it online (I am right now – “Get Together” by The Youngbloods). Just go to trueoldieschannel.com.
Jeff, thanks for the link! Yes, our Oldies station occasionally plays a song or two from the 1970s, but mostly the “oldies” now start with the 1980s, too.
None of this crap interessts me! Surprise!
Bob, I’m sure you consider the music of the 1970s the pinnacle of Rock & Roll.
Radio in the Philadelphia area includes the Temple U station (split classical/jazz format…I toyed with trying to get a slot on it when they were advertising), WHYY (basically all spoken-word local and NPR with a few syndicated series, still), a smattering of other university and college stations, the most powerful signal being that of rock/alternate rock-oriented U/Penn station, but some actual student-programmed stations audible in the Jersey burbs where I live, and the usual mix of R&B/rap, Christian, oldies rock and pop, leased time international stations, the formerly CBS news/chat station on AM also getting an FM signal, a few interesting items on AM (I can leave my old-style manually-tuned AM/FM radio, a Radio Shack Realistic no less, tuned on the dial to WHYY and switch to AM and hear some of the Black Information Network’s programming, if what’s on WHYY is particularly dull–I have to wonder if the BIN station didn’t seek out that AM frequency for just that likelihood…a lot of old radios still out in use). Some country, of course, and some folk mostly on the U Penn station and, when it was still syndicated to public radio, LIVE FROM HERE, the successor to A PRAIRIE HOME COMPANION…of course, I miss having a bluegrass station, as we did in DC on WAMU and then on a low-power station on “real” FM that American University leased…and whose owners rented it eventually instead to Russian propaganda radio from Radio Sputnik…led to WAMU putting Bluegrass Country exclusively on “HD” radio and the web. Then again, Mary Cliff’s TRADITIONS, a folkie staple of WETA-FM for decades, was summarily dumped by them and ended up on another relatively low-power FM signal, that of community radio station WERA. Sic transit radio fun…but most of it can be heard one way or another. I gather a whole lot of the interesting stuff on Sirius XM is starting to evaporate, as well.
I did carry on my SWEET FREEDOM radio series, started at WGMU-AM at George Mason U in Fairfax, continued on WEBR Cable Radio in Fairfax County, VA, and then, after moving to Philadelphia, on community station WPPR-FM/Radio Mutiny up here…
Todd, you were a pioneer with SWEET FREEDOM.
Todd, Sirius/XM Radio tracks their audience. They can cater to fringe factions as long as the subscriber base keeps growing.
Kelly Clarkson’s primary gig these days is her tv chat (and song) weekdaily hour, mostly on ABC stations, I think (maybe NBC). Much as Drew Barrymore’s is on CBS stations, mostly. Or entirely. I could look ’em up. JEOPARDY! is a co-production of Sony and CBS that runs mostly on ABC stations, along with its duller also-Merv Griffin-devised companion. Taking in each other’s washing Still Rules OK. One can watch Jay Leno and Kevin Eubank’s retirement-job revival of YOU BET YOUR LIFE in many markets on the Fox Broadcasting station just after JEOPARDY! on the ABC (or…), and that is clearly no accident, though YBYL is not exactly going to perplex most quiz fans with its difficulty.
Kevin Eubanks’s, that is.
Todd, performers like Kelly Clarkson tend to branch out because music is not as lucrative a profession these days. Kelly’s WAYFAIR commercials probably pay better than her current song.