‘03 and Me: Annivyrsary 2003
ISSUE #266
2003 was one year before my cultural awakening, which means when I sat down to write about what was arguably one of music’s most dominant years, I had no idea how to start. This was one year before I found I Love the 90s, my comprehensive and preeminent history lesson, so I was completely on my own trying to put myself back in time. I do remember that this is the year I got a Nintendo Power subscription though. And I do remember one day, flipping through said Nintendo Power in the back seat of the family van, my parents slid a revolution into the CD player. That was the day I first heard Now!That’s What I Call Music! 14.
That CD is what cracked it all open for me. The whole musical world. That 2003 disc is one of the most stacked and iconic Now CDs in history: It kicked open the door with “Crazy in Love” and followed it up by firing off “Where is the Love?” It cruised through some of the hits that were dominating the radio like Chingy’s “Right Thurr,” before melting into a back half that started with Liz Phair’s “Why Can’t I” (famously victim to the rudest Pitchfork 0.0) and introducing me to a murderer’s row of mid-2000s rockers: Fountains of Wayne (“Stacy’s Mom”); Good Charlotte (“Girls & Boys”); The Ataris (“Boys of Summer,” still one of the G.O.A.T.’s); and Nickelback (“Someday").
That Now! CD probably had more influence on how I construct a playlist than almost any other. In the compilation industry, this bad boy was a blockbuster, and it showed me how you can arrange by genre to create a narrative. So today, I’d just like to say: Happy 20th birthday to my playlist sensibility. We love you, babe.
When I started gathering my research for this Annivyrsary back in January, one thing became clear—1974 was not a good year for music. This was very much a puberty period, an awkward personality vacuum that comes between shedding the old and fully realizing the new. This was to be my Waterloo.
Something preposterous happened in 1964: On the week of April 4, one artist had the top five songs on the Billboard Hot 100. It’d never happened before and it hasn’t been matched since. Mere weeks before, in the warming days of March, America found that no fewer than 60% of all records sold were songs by the Beatles.
Safe to say three of the most consequential albums of my life came out in 2013, and that list doesn’t even touch the dozen other nearly perfect albums from this year—Trouble Will Find Me, Modern Vampires of the City, Cupid Deluxe, Yeezus… 2013 changed music as we know it, and a lot of the biggest artists today cemented their status or debuted this year, from The 1975 to Beyoncé.
I do remember that this is the year I got a Nintendo Power subscription though. And I do remember one day, flipping through said Nintendo Power in the back seat of the family van, my parents slid a revolution into the CD player. That was the day I first heard Now!That’s What I Call Music! 14.
So for me, ‘93 was the first year of the 90s, and its evidence lies in several places: in the birth of the Riot Grrrl movement and third wave feminism with Bikini Kill’s “Rebel Girl”; in Nirvana’s dyspeptic final album before Cobain’s untimely death; and in Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers), the harbinger for the soon-to-be golden age of hip hop.
Some stories of note in 1983: the invention of Detroit techno, as embodied by the single “Clear” by Cybotron; the birth of English indie rock as we know it with The Smiths debut and follow up singles (“Hand in Glove” and “This Charming Man,” respectively); and the birth of American indie rock as we know it with R.E.M.’s Murmur.
If you want a little taste of what 1973 was like, go watch Licorice Pizza, the title of which refers to the old LP, a.k.a. the vinyl record—and boy, was this year firmly the middle of the Album Empire.
It’s time for the first of our Annivyrsaries, my favorite history class, and we’re starting with the sounds of 1963. So naturally, I want to focus on something that hasn’t been touched as much by scholars—the rise of the Surf Song.
It was the year the world was supposed to end. For music, in a own way, it did. As the 2009 class of indie darlings delivered underwhelming follow ups (Shields, Centipede Hz, Swing Lo Magellan—many now, in ten years time, seen as unsung greats), critics were reckoning with the rise of poptimism.
In 2002, I was listening to All That You Can’t Leave Behind from the backseat of a minivan while I flipped through the pictures in Nintendo Power. I thought all songs debuted through Now That’s What I Call Music! I was Coldplay’s perfect mark—I had no idea what a cliché even was.
I must’ve gotten my hands on Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas in 2004, when I was 10 or 11 years old. Grand Theft Auto maintains a dual reputation as one of the greatest video games of all time as well as one of those Matrix-level Y2K-era youth corruptors.
The first time I went crowd-surfing was in a stranger’s dark living room to “Come On Eileen.” I remember being lifted on shaky hands and the warm breeze borne from the drunken crowd. It was during that thumping chant of the bridge, every foot moving to the brow-beating stomp. My nose scraped the ceiling as I sang along.
At the height of his fame, David Bowie forged Ziggy Stardust to help him withstand the heat of the limelight. He quickly came to resent it. He was starting to think that he was Ziggy. He even went as far as trying to kill Stardust off one summer in London. “That fucker would not leave me alone for years,” he once said.
Pretend it’s 1962. Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring hits The New Yorker in June. In a month, heavy smog descends upon London; the first Walmart rears its head in Arkansas. Another month, and Marilyn Monroe is dead. The world could collapse any day now.
1984 has been called the greatest year in pop, and I think it might still be true. If 1974 was music’s fallow period, ten years later was its opposite. We danced in the dark beneath the killing moon and under purple rain—this was the year the critics and the people met in the Minneapolis streets.