Now That Was Totally On The Radio and Stuff! Vol. 2: Forgotten Singles of the Early 2000s

i hear that pearl jam pretty often on any non classic rock station i'm likely to hear pearl jam on

yeah i don't think anything in pearl jam discography has been forgotten.

i've tried

mm y'all may be right... i was going to say "well sure but if any pearl jam DOES qualify as forgotten, it's that, right? but they DO have more forgotten songs... nonetheless i think it's in the lower tier of their 2000s output.. just going on spotify plays ("nothing as it seems" sits at 1.133 mil), the following 2000s singles beat it: "the fixer" (6.54 mil), "amongst the waves" (2.92) "i am mine" (2.6), "man of the hour" (2.06), "life wasted" (1.60), "world wide suicide" (1.55), and "light years" (barely, with 1.25). oh and something called "just breathe" at 24 million - beating "jeremy" (22) to come in third in their catalog after "even flow" (28.5) and "alive" (34.2). even allowing for maybe some gaps in time for adding stuff to spotify that seems bonkers to me.

anyway so those all beat "nothing as it seems" and i couldn't sing most of them with a gun to my head. ("the fixer" is a jam though.) that still leaves more-forgotten tunes like the laughably-titled "love boat captain" and "bu$hleaguer" though.

I think "Just Breathe" wasn't released until the Ten reissue. That's a lot of spins.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DnClm_LZ0D4

Method Man & Busta Rhymes - What's Happenin' - A fine little two-man cut, suggestive of the energy of Meth's earlier collabos with Redman, kept going by very thorough sampling from Asha Bhosle (!)'s "Dum Maro Dum." Heard the original at the bar the other night and was immediately struck by that nagging "wait, where...." feeling. Very certain Method Man has more obscure singles, but I always thought this could have been bigger.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RPN88D_HjMU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2GEoTO0igI

Probably not the right place for this, but - "Ich Kenne Nichts" by Xavier Naidoo feat. the RZA, a #1 hit in Germany for the schmaltzy, spiritual balladeer, utterly unknown in the US for pretty obvious reasons. I really like the dinkiness of RZA's production, which highlights that super-fakey Yamaha keyboard "distortion guitar" sound to good effect on the chorus; reminds me somehow of Alicia Keys's later "No One."

The top video is the German hit version; the second is the English-language one, which I don't think was a hit anywhere. It's notable for RZA's endearingly goofy verse (which the video actually depicts him phoning in):

Ayo shorty, I never met someone so beautiful
From your hair follicle to your fingernail cuticle
Struck by the arrow of Cupid, this love is deep-rooted
Like someone took my heart, sampled it and looped it

German soul. Never heard a track like that before.

I am now reminded of the time when Icelandic Rap Rock group Quarashi tried to make it in America:
[YouTube monN9Ok0El8]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=monN9Ok0El8

Also would Glenn Lewis count as "Forgotten"?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tc4mRi7W2Ls

he told me not to, but i did

Forgotten all-female group Dream's "He Loves U Not". Amazing production (that drum sound!) and sass

quarashi is a good call.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A12-KN5UijA

The Crystal Method - The Name of the Game. The "calling all freaks" song with Tom Morello guitar work and the creepy guy with a nose for a head. Heavily MTV2'ed in my memory, and heavily used in soundtracks and search according to Wiki. But it's built out of a bunch of fragmentary hooks, almost waiting to be re-excerpted for little momentary interstitial blurts of sound, leaving it feeling less like a song than, say, "Trip Like I Do."

Not sure if this is quite "forgotten" or just one of those songs that people forget the artist's name:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZkM_nOJ3d4

Also tends to occupy the same space in my mind as BBMak's Back Here, which I do still here from time to time in supermarkets.

Before I even heard the song, or knew who Avril Lavigne was, I remember seeing mentions that there was this new "Complicated" song that was enterring the charts, and I thought they were talking about this song:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dl8CVYeV1Fk

aw, that Evan and Jaron song is (and they are) adorable...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3LE6_y8J0s

Soulfly - Back to the Primitive. Much-mocked around my dorm room (similar to Mudvayne's "Dig" and that Slipknot video where a kid has only rusty, dirty water to pour in his Froot Loops). No idea what just knocked it loose from my memory. Horrendous nu-metal injected with exoticizing hippie bullshit and a video rendered virtually unwatchable through amateurish knob-twiddling re: contrast and saturation. Essentially, "What if Disturbed were more brightly lit?"

my pick for rolling worst songs of 2000 btw

hey i'm a huge fan of "dig" and have never knowingly listened to soulfly so here goes

ok yeah that's rough and i think roots is kind of a masterpiece

I now just remembered the existence of Kottonmouth Kings:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba1H-0nNTT8

[ "I Will Be Waiting" by D-Cru/Craig Smart ] - This is one of those Canadian songs that seems instantly recognizable to me, as if I've heard it a ton of times, but I'm not sure if it's because it got a lot radio play here in Canada, or if it's a shameless knockoff of a more popular song that I just can't quite identify

The D-Cru cut has shades of "Truly Madly Deeply" in the verse and the chorus sounds like, kind of a million things I think. lol at the torso video.

At first I heard it as "Backstreet meets Uncle Kraker"... (um... "Krackstreet"?). It might be one of the most shamelessly derivative songs in history! Too much well-known stuff to list. (The chorus alone is Richard Marx's 'Right Here Waiting' plus maybe a bit of "Like A Prayer"... plus, well, that's enough).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDDh93CSRqE

Matt Darey's Mash Up feat. Marcella Woods – "Beautiful"

Speaking of things that sound like things :-) Around the millennium, a lot of UK radio sounded like this. What I'd tentatively call, um, "trance"? "Summery Euro vibes?" "This [track] cannot be classed as Trance it is more like old skool garage music i would say if you count the beats in the record". Well, whatever it's called, dance music was huge then. It made up 37% of UK singles sales in 2000.

(Probably a lot of generic/uninteresting stuff among it, but maybe some hidden gems too. I'm not qualified to judge, evidently!)

I heard that Evan & Jaron song at Wal Mart the other night.

Also: My local Waffle House had a double-sided "Crazy For This Girl" single in it's jukebox for about as long as they had a singles jukebox (8-9 years).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2AsLRPzqdpc

Ozzy Osbourne - Gets Me Through (2001). Lead single from his first album in six years (and his last pre-Osbournes). Lyrically tied up in a not-very-interesting meta-commentary on Ozzy's career and his relationship with his fans, but some okay riffing and stuff.

I remember that video, but not the song.

The follow-up single, Dreamer, I remember quite well.

Black Crowes - Lickin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arU46YyLSP0

Mostly I just remember hating the song because I found it obnoxious and annoying, and thought the video was boring.

I wonder if I know the Ozzy more from commercials for it, featuring clips of the video, than of the whole video? Most of it didn't really seem all that familiar, just mainly the "I'm not the Antichrist or / the Iron Man."

The Crystal Method - The Name of the Game. The "calling all freaks" song with Tom Morello guitar work and the creepy guy with a nose for a head. Heavily MTV2'ed in my memory, and heavily used in soundtracks and search according to Wiki. But it's built out of a bunch of fragmentary hooks, almost waiting to be re-excerpted for little momentary interstitial blurts of sound, leaving it feeling less like a song than, say, "Trip Like I Do."

Not to mention that this was used in SO MANY COMMERCIALS, it was totally unavoidable that year

Love that Bad Ronald was mentioned upthread. I heard the song once on MTV and liked it but never heard of them again. "I've been waitin' all day for that Bad Ronald, man!" - one of the alltime greatest song intros, if you ask me

that crystal method was kinda sneakily unavoidable, didn't actually crossover to become a radio hit but managed to be everywhere in some capacity. the last big beat track to manage that kind of profile iirc.

THE BRAVERY - HONEST MISTAKE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O8vzbezVru4

Kinda exploiting a New Order vibe.

yeah i suspect "name of the game" was heard way more than much of the stuff in this thread, but without it leading to people knowing it as a piece of music in its own right, even as a thing with no name or artist (the way "rock n roll pt. 2" is) - just some sounds you heard a lot one particular year.

yeah i'm not sure i ever heard it on the radio (i would imagine it got a little airplay on eg 99x but by that point altrock radio was starting to die out and really diminished in terms of having an impact on the larger culture), it never got a high profile film/tv appearance like fatboy slim or lofi allstars and unlike 'days go by' or 'remind me' it use in ads wasn't so prominent and the tune itself wasn't so distinct or songlike as w/ 'days go by' and 'remind me' that it could create a groundswell of interest, it was just generic doritos music.

it's interesting cuz its mainstream profile was probably slightly higher than 'one more time's at the time ('one more time' managed some video airplay but that was it) but 'one more time' had this immediate afterlife as a jock jam and then daft punk become embraced in this profound way in 97 w/ the tour and kanye and bloghouse in general being tied to them so that by the time their effective followup (in that they let everyone know that hey, they're making an effort this time) they'd be well known enough in the mainstream they could get hyped pre-release on kelly ripa and michael strahan.

ha, "doritos music." yeah. i definitely saw that awful nose guy a lot on MTV2 in the dorms, but that pretty much says it all. ha, i was just going to bring up lo-fidelity all-stars - do people know "battleflag" as a song? i was watching coyote ugly with some friends the other night and somehow that was the most jarring and embarrassing musical cue in the whole thing.

"one more time" was off their 2001 album btw; dunno that they ever were well-known in the mainstream til "get lucky" but they went from something that dance people and avid watchers of mtv's electronica programming knew about to something that radiohead/flaming lips people knew about (and liked), and having both in your pocket is probably very helpful for building hype and connections with your kanyes and your blogs and such. i do remember a girl i had a crush on in high school, who was generally not into outlandish or weird music, talking to me in english class about catching this crazy "around the world" video on TV and being really interested in it. so who knows.

"battleflag" got a good bit of radio airplay and was featured very very prominently in a very very big episode of e.r.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAJR8EX40is

Moony - Acrobats (Looking For Balance)

I'm sure I remember this being played on the radio? it was the follow up to Point Of View and Dove (I'll Be Loving You), both of which were huge hits, but this one only reached #64 in the UK charts. apparently Moony released another album in Japan and Brazil in 2009 but I can't find any information on what she's been up to since then.

is Point of View remembered in the US? wikipedia says that it was a 'U.S. Billboard Hot Dance Music Club Play number-one single', but I don't really understand how the US charts work, is that a big deal? did you see a lot of the video with the cardboard woman?

billboard dance music chart is imo the weirdest and most mysterious chart in terms of methodology and what it signifies

iirc they poll a hundred british twentysomethings at random and more or less go with that, but i am not really a regular attendee at Hot Dance Music Clubs. have never heard, or heard of, "moony" before, anyway.

no that chart decidedly doesn't have an anglophile tilt

never seen any tom petty on it either fwiw

hardy har har

Many XPs..."Battleflag" was a Top 10 Modern Rock hit, and was sufficiently recognizable that my local station had a station id tag based on it's chorus for awile in the early '00s.

I think it may have varied a bit regionally? I remember my buddy in Auburn railing against it, like it was this major sensation that they were playing every hour, and me being like "huh, I don't even know what that is." I'd heard it but it wasn't as big of a deal.

it's def '99. from same spring as "praise you" and "let forever be."

oh yeah, wasn't submitting it as "forgotten" here, just following up balls on it being a point of comparison

in retrospect spring 99 peak big beat in america, "rockafeller skank" also peaked here then thx to she's all that - http://youtu.be/r4mQmoD72tc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7iY2pE0mpo

Scent - "Up & Down"