1)Faith Hill, “Breathe”
SONG: Oh, okay. I suppose the chorus, with that rising chord sequence, is not so bad, or at least it’s the kind of thing that might have caught my ear as being sort of pleasant in the background if I were hearing the song for the first time. I didn’t remember which year or which time period this song even came out in, and aside from being a generically beautiful and generically vocally talented blonde who married Tim McGraw I have no idea whatsoever happened to her or what she’s doing these days.
VIDEO: Generically utterly beautiful blonde lounges around in bed with her perfect hair strategically flared out on the perfect pillow perfectly behind her. Then she goes out into Krusty The Clown’s Alkali Flats in a silver gown and spike heels to do a rain dance and yoga moves in the heat. During the last 30 seconds of the video she makes a very sad facial expression at the camera, or fails to, making it immediately clear why she didn’t become some successful actress.

2)Santana & Rob Thomas, “Smooth”
SONG: Almost dodged this bullet in 1999, but it had to come back to pop me. It was cute to see an old 60s-70s guitar hero get a few minutes of fame and recognition, I guess, but beyond that, this is just another “it wasn’t that obnoxious the first two or three times you heard it” song at best. As Tabs pointed out Santana’s soulful guitar hook is beaten to death before the end of the song. Rob Thomas’ vocals are overbearing and overmodulated, like when he pronounces “ocean” as “oaww-shenn” or “moon” as “mouuuhnn.” You can practically see him contorting his mouth in some sort of Jim Carrey-ish manner when you hear him sing like that. The “or else fohgett about it!” hook is enunciated in a way that threatens to push this song into Train or Creed territory. Not good.
VIDEO: Hipsters hanging out in the street doing the song. Rob has bangs, a dumb Stifler-esque facial expression, hipster Perry Ellis-type shirts, not one but TWO earrings (this is the most hilariously dated detail…though to be fair, I’m kind of on the prowl for whatever is the most dated about these videos) and in a few scenes, a cowboy hat…and yeah, he’s contorting his mouth when he sings just like I thought, but not as much as I thought he would. He humps the microphone a bit.

3)Santana & The Product G&B, “Maria Maria”
SONG: Lyrics loudly announce the guitar is being played by Carlos Santana. I guess he sounds okay, but this song is still more about The Product G&B than Santana. I laughed a little when the lead vocalist mentioned “growin’ up in Spanish Harlem.” The song is inoffensive R&B-mixed-with-Latin but nothing special. Honestly, I don’t even remember this song from 2000. Was it everywhere? “Yo Carlos man, you makin’ that guitar cry,” roll-eyes.
VIDEO: Night version of the “Smooth” video. Not much to report. Guys dancing do whirly kicks at each other almost knocking heads off.

4)Joe, “I Wanna Know”
SONG: Was wondering when the generic R&B was gonna show up. The song is as generic as the performer’s name. Very generic lyrics too. This is The Quiet Bore. I do not remember even hearing this song in 2000 but that’s probably because it’s interchangeable with about ten thousand other songs just like it.
VIDEO: Joe and some girl watch the Joe video in the girl’s apartment. Then he performs in a padded looking white corridor left over from that TLC video last year. Starts with about a FULL MINUTE of lamely acted dialogue. Generic hip hop dance line moves towards the end.

5)Vertical Horizon, “Everything You Want”
SONG: Wash over me, generic late-90s/early-aughts mainstream alt-rock!! Bring me your dudes with soul patches and newly shortened/slicked-up hair! Bring me your guitar and vocal hooks, rehashed leftover moderate angst that seems to be crossing R. E. M. with Alice In Chains’ Jar Of Flies! Okay, I confess–this isn’t actually half bad of a song, just an embarrassing one to “love.” The angsty chorus and every verse ending with the same three-note vocal hook could have been a lot worse. And I do remember the song, just like I remember seeing about two million copies of that CD they put out with the girl doing the backflip on the cover in CD Tradepost used bins.
VIDEO: Starts out with the bald lead singer (I’d forgotten about him and don’t know his name) walking along towards an encounter with his doppelganger on some street with a gross blue filter on the camera. What is this, Massive Attack? Then stupid slanted text messages start inexplicably appearing on the screen, shit like “every six seconds you think about sex” and “NO,” thus predicting the worst of Youtube culture over the next couple of decades. And they shift from the bald singer dude to some fat guy in the band bothering his girlfriend. This video failed!!!

6)Destiny’s Child, “Say My Name”
SONG: S’my name, s’my name. Do they ever really say “say,” or is it like the “y” being left out of the word “hey” the first time Neil Finn goes “he’now, HEYYY now” in “Don’t Dream It’s Over”? I’ve never forgotten that. Beyonce’s slightly-rapped vocals during the parts of the song that speed up kind of sound like crap, marking her as the weak link in this song, which is hilarious considering I don’t think anybody has even mentioned Destiny’s Child in years without mentioning how Beyonce’s career completely obliterated the other two, the black-pop-music of people not being able to mention the Strokes in any context without mentioning the hype and backlash they went through in 2001. Hey, that’s the year after this!
VIDEO: Color-coding. Cute. Goes well with all those nonstop midriffs. Beyonce’s hair looks like she was going for the 2000 equivalent of poor old emaciated Whitney Houston in the “Just Wanna Dance With Somebody” video. Which I have seen!

7)Savage Garden, “I Knew I Loved You”
SONG: Oh goodie, generic WHITE R&B. Give me Color Me Badd over this gentle forgettable slushy shit any day. Replace the drums in the song with a generic 1990 Casio drumbeat and you wouldn’t have to change anything else to have the song come out in that era. These guys sucked!!
VIDEO: They’re on a subway with Kirsten Dunst. I cannot look at Kirsten Dunst from that era in any context anymore without immediately thinking of Gabby Petito. That’s really quite sick as fuck of me, I’m very sorry, but my mind makes weird associations like that all the time. All Kirsten does in the video is smile a couple of times, mind you.

8)Lonestar, “Amazed”
SONG: Shitty pop-country monster ballad. The big chorus is so similar to a million other songs that they should have been sued for plagiarism a million times over. If it weren’t for “Achy Breaky Heart” and that Alan Jackson song that rhymes “Chattahoochee” with “hoochie coochie,” this’d be the worst country song I’ve ever heard. Shit lyrics and shit guitars and shit shit.
VIDEO: Generic performance footage on some blue set with the lead singer making lots of godawful sensitive facial expressions at the camera and some blonde in a tub to make it sexy. Fuck you. I looked up a few details about the band and the lead singer was 38 when this was recorded, which is the only standout detail I can find about this song in any way shape or form. Hey, just like Bon Jovi during his awful comeback that year!

9)Matchbox Twenty, “Bent”
SONG: I was about to say under the “Smooth” comment that I don’t remember any other Matchbox Twenty/Rob Thomas songs at all, and…uh, right, I don’t remember this one, either. It’s just some mainstream rock song with less annoying vocals than “Smooth.” It’s forgettable, or else fohgett-abouddit. Geez, I found myself WISHING for Carlos Santana to show up and beat his guitar hook to death! That’s better than this, anyway!
VIDEO: Rob and his bangs and his two earrings get hit by a car and it only gets less good from there. He gets robbed (get it?), some douche takes his wallet, he bumps into some dork with a cowboy hat AND also two earrings, who tries to intimidate him and mouths “motherfucker” at him. Then somebody chases him down a rainy alleyway and stomps his ass. He’s about to get run over again at the end, but doesn’t. I LOVE THIS VIDEO, except for the ending!

10)Toni Braxton, “He Wasn’t Man Enough”
SONG: Mildly uptempo R&B. Her vocals sound deep and manly, maybe she was taking a cue from Cher.
VIDEO: Toni in a red tunnel. Club footage. Toni with a midriff and big psychedelic blue jeans, or Toni in a dress with her stringy pink p-p-p-panties showing in the front. Her hair has been straightened and I think they were trying to make her look less black or something, or maybe like Jennifer Lopez with less butt-cheek emphasis? This video starts with some sort of goofy anime bit, which got my attention more than Toni’s purty pink p-p-panties.

SUMMARY: I turned 18 in 2000 and don’t remember my 18th birthday at all. I spent the year mostly listening to the Van Halen debut album, which had come out 22 years prior, and four before I was born. No shame there–that’s a fucking AWESOME album to get into while high school is still going on.
SONGS I DODGED BY ONLY DOING THE TOP 10, AND THANK GOD BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO LISTEN TO ANY OF THEM:
Creed - “Higher” (#11) (BLECCHH!!! God did I ever dodge a bullet!)
Sisqo - “Thong Song” (#14) (Was he the biggest one hit wonder of his era? Did he have other hits? Do kids today know who he is? Do you guys even know this stuff, should I even ask?)
3 Doors Down - “Kryptonite” (#15) (Ranks with Nickelback…hell, far worse than Nickelback, as Exhibit A in the case of When Guitar Based Rock Music Officially Ran Out Of Ideas.)
Madonna - “Music” (#17) (What were her SUCCESSES during this era? Isn’t pretty much everything she did for about a 10 year stretch there completely reviled now?)
Christina Aguilera - “What A Girl Wants” (#19) (Sadly, unlike “Genie In A Bottle,” I remember this one.)
N’SYNC - “Bye Bye Bye” (#21) (I’m pretty stunned, not to mention thankful, that the top 10s for 1998, 1999 and 2000 had so few boy band songs, given what a big deal those were back then)
Creed - “With Arms Wide Open” (#36) (this is even worse than “Higher” and these guys were even worse than Train…were they? This is like asking which of my nuts I’d rather cut off)

NP: The Pretty Things - “Roadrunner”