Earlier this week--April 27 to be precise--marked the 10-year anniversary of the release of "I Want It That Way." Easily the Backstreet Boys' greatest pop anthem, the song is an important marker to an era in popular American music. The release of the boy band's second album marks a golden age in American pop (though some could date this to the January 1999 release of Britney Spear's debut ...Baby One More Time).
The period between May 1999 and May 2000 saw the height of the boy band and pop princess craze. Although the seeds of the pop phenomenon were planted much earlier, this was the explosion. Records were selling at unseen highs, Times Square was getting shut down when "N Sync visited and a nobody named Carson Daly on a show called Total Request Live was at the center of it all. Tiger Beat was cool again, and sugar-coated pop was it. Sure, this 12-month stretch is notable for And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out, Knock Knock and Summerteeth among other musical feats more deserving of our attention. But this was the sound of the times, and TRL told us so. Moreover, has there ever been a time when it was cool to have Christina, Eminem and Fred Durst on the same radio station?
Over the next year, the Playground will be revisiting this period, recounting the hits and sort-of-hits. Our bookends will be the releases of "I Want It That Way" and the two big releases of May 2000: Britney's sophomore surge album Oops!... I Did It Again and Eminem's great The Marshall Mathers LP. Along the way, we'll encounter TLC, Mariah Carey, 'N Sync (naturally), Korn and many more as we look at how the world was and how it has changed through pop music. It will be like Rob Gordon's record collection, only less self-centered.
The series begins tomorrow and will then appear each Wednesday through May 2010. See you in 1999...
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