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

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"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6m7Ga1uRjQ

Bubba Sparxxx - "Lovely" (2001). Probably not so forgotten on websites that host Timbaland track polls (it didn't place). The followup and, I guess, conceptual twin, to "Ugly," but not burdened by trying to offer up a theme song intro number to this new countrified rapper. (The video in particular sheds all the pig-ridin', road-house folks stuff from its predecessor.) The hook is decent and there are some memorable rhymes in there though I can certainly see why it didn't take off. Suspect for most folks his discography has effectively contracted to "Ms. New Booty" and, for the hep cats, "Deliverance."

I liked Deliverance at the time. Were any of the singles from that album on the radio n stuff?

I think I heard/saw "Deliverance" at least a little, but I might be mixing it up with it getting really good reviews and me checking it out? In my mind this was a Pitchfork-hyped album but now I can't find anything about it there. Anyway it made #9 on the US Rap chart so it must have gotten at least a decent amount of airplay for a minute. "Jimmy Mathis" and "Back in the Mud" otoh went absolutely nowhere.

Another pick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zKEWdRPRf3I

Fatboy Slim - Bird of Prey. This was big in the UK, but in the US it was a career-suicide single that I remember getting played on MTV2 for maybe a week or so. It sounds better to me now than it did then, when I was mostly just baffled - this trippy, dreamy little meditation on Jim Morrison (and, apparently, atomic-war pilots on acid) is how he's going to follow up the wacky good times party jams of his smash album? Oookay....!

'lovely' was so dope, to me better than 'ugly'

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

Scapegoat Wax - Aisle 10 (Hello Allison)

Had this brought to my attention tonight. Don't remember it whatsoever but several other people seemed to know it well. Kinda in the interzone between Elwood and "Shaniqua."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMOZRk74QrY

Jin (with some Wyclef interjections) - Learn Chinese

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7F3vWGQsVI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FR4WrdUyf7Y

The Breeders - "Huffer" and "Son Of Three." Neither is probably much forgotten by ILX alt-rock types but they're both great songs which were kinda out of time in the radio rock landscape of 2002 (the year of Linkin Park, POD and Chad Kroeger - though "You Know You're Right" did very very well).

The latter's single version is a completely different recording from the album - faster, generally more energetic. Gets stuck in my head all the time. If I find the door... I am the son of Go.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sB2_MmtMoIc

DMX - Who We Be. Top ten US Rap and had a good stretch of video airplay for a minute but this kind of relentless BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! BA-DUM! had a pretty limited shelf life I think. At the time we reacted to it with easy take-offs, since at first blush he seems to just be listing things and we couldn't make out a lot of the words, so: point at random objects in the room and blurt out their names to the rhythm of the song. Actually reading the lyrics it seems much more pointed and, potentially, powerful than I'd thought. Still can't really get past the sound, personally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ILCNAln_7Z4

Trick Daddy - I'm A Thug. #16 on US Rap, following the lower-charting but, I think, much bigger "Take It To Da House." The production on both audio and video could really not be from any moment other than the 99-01 pop interzone.

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

The Offspring - Original Prankster. Also very much of that period (I think the video, which I can't find, would bear that out) and easily one of the shittiest songs of its entire genre. I've definitely bitched about it on ILX before - a garbage rewrite of the already godawful "Pretty Fly For A White Guy," with a pointless guest turn by Redman, and painstakingly-enunciated first-draft lyrics that bend and contort to try and fit the rhythm without making any real sense. It hit #2 on U.S. Alternative, but if you asked somebody to name a dozen Offspring hits I doubt they'd get to this one.

"Who We Be" is a great song!

Feel like there's a pretty deep well of sunny, club-oriented NOW! pop from this period that's sort of, not forgotten, but probably at a low ebb. Like, JoJo's "Leave (Get Out)" was 2 big a hit 2 be 4gotten... but is there any venue/outlet where it would be heard today? Maybe CVS I guess?

The SiriusXM station Pop2K is all about these.

As for FM, some Top 40 stations have lately been throwing in occasional Pop2K hits from lower in their respective "Hot 100 of the year" lists.

wow, willa ford "i wanna be bad" is a pretty naked rewrite of "sock it 2 me," huh

also at the risk of offending ilx's new wave contingent, adding New Order's "Crystal" to the playlist

"Crystal" is a good choice. This thread goes deep in the MTV2-core.

What was the name of the show on MTV2 where people would vote online for 1 of 3 videos and the voting percentages would update on the screen in real time?

i recently heard iio's club-to-radio crossover "rapture" and honestly am not entirely sure if i heard it back when it was out! it sounds very familiar but is also just slight enough that my mind could have easily forgotten it unless it had been ubiquitous, which it wasn't (in the u.s. -- apparently overseas it was quite a big hit). nice tune either way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wThg2FgIKuI

Deftones - Back to School

Apparently that song was a sop to the label who wanted a lead single for the album, and the band always hated it. But I admit, I like it, late-90s rap-metal corniness and all. The beginning of it is thrilling.

I thought it was cool that they were doing a smash up the school jam seemingly so soon after Columbine & upgraded zero-tolerance policies in schools. Genuinely felt rebellious given that most other Rap Metal was about general angst, swearing, and 5-string bass/7-string guitar.

It was also funny that the label made them cut it for a first single, and then it (relatively) flopped and "Change (In The House of Flys)"--which was about as out-there as one could get in early Clear Channel Rock Radio--blew up.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1f4SVqnbKg

Wyclef Jean ft. The Rock, Melky & Sedek - "It Doesn't Matter"

have never stopped loving that one

who could ever forget

IT DOESN'T MATTER IF YOU NEVER FORGOT

(xp: even if whoever runs Wyclef's youtube channel forgot that his brother and sister were a group)

tbh I hadn't thought of it since Tuesday night, when I saw 2manji

and imagined The Rock still having hair

I think Wyclef "911" fits for this.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghGgycFEg64

Tori Amos - Strange Little Girl

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7D27mL2JkI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4VpE-0zitU

Cypress Hill - "(Rap) Superstar" and "(Rock) Superstar." Saw "Josie & the Pussycats" the other night and was startled into memory of this dual-marketed track by the odd decision to have Alan Cumming quote the chorus at one point. Feel like I heard these about thirteen times each back in 2000, and then never again since. The "rock" one is really just a rock remix of the same song, similar to "All About the Benjamins" but with more limited meddling.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=97CtEReZEaQ

Cannot fathom this being released in 2003

jesus christ at those tans. early undocumented teal-and-orange color timing job? what a weird video premise btw. jurassic five obviously one-upped them tremendously on the viewmaster gimmick with "quality control."

it was a very saturated era for pop video colors. i just started watching the "who let the dogs out" video on mute while this one still was playing and it was syncing up eerily well.

Cannot fathom this being released in 2003

That's because it was released in 2000.
Or do you mean you couldn't fathom something like this being released anytime later than 2002?

Recently identified this video that I had vague memories of. Mostly remember it for the video, since the song isn't very good:
Handsome Devil - Makin Money
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nRieAoGTW0

Not exactly forgotten but curiously far from every day consciousness.

The video isn't even on YouTube, although that's possibly for NSFW reasons.

Add N to (X) - Plug Me In

https://vimeo.com/88573125

yikes, NSFW indeed.

no memory of that one at all - a UK thing maybe?

I guess mileage does vary with this kind of stuff, but a lot of what's in this thread I never even heard of. Granted some of these that I've googled were VERY minor hits, if that, (ie. never charted at all or hit like #67 on the rap single sales chart for a single week or received airplay in certain markets but didn't really impact elsewhere or w/e)

Either way still cool to be exposed to these songs - some which reveal quite clearly why they never really "made it".

Anyway, my contribution for "once a hit, now totally forgotten" would be Guster's "Satellite" and their lesser hit "Amsterdam"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekt6PELAcEg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0TQVbiWeEs

Once recurrent on Triple A / Adult Top 40 stations (my local "Dave Matthews and friends" AAA certainly did anyway) circa the mid-late 00s, I don't recall having heard these played anywhere this decade whether on terrestrial radio, satellite radio, grocery store/mall PAs. In fact, I totally forgot they existed until some music journo types brought them up on twitter.

saw a promo 12-inch for this one in the racks at a record store recently:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MBe1ybJarMo

don't ask me how, but i recognized it as one of a number of tunes pushed to top 40 radio from new/unestablished artists in 2001 that ended up going basically nowhere.

a few others fitting the same description:

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

this one i remember hearing, but very little. it might have gotten voted off the new music battle that my local station would air on weekday evenings.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAo7TTM81gU

like "hottie," another example of the sort of youthful 'rhythmic'/dance hybrid sound that was being somewhat more successfully taken to airwaves via artists like jessica simpson ("irresistible") and christina milian ("am to pm")

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

i definitely heard this, but i'm not sure if it was on the radio or on tv?

Oh yeah, “Miss California”, massive hit in Europe (number 1-ish in these parts) - but true, I had completely forgotten about it, even though I quite liked it at the time.

Also in People who have obviously written their own Wikipedia entry: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dante_Thomas

oh i had no idea "miss california" was a big hit internationally. makes sense tho, pretty catchy tune even if the artist is not an especially distinctive presence on it... lol that wiki page is really something

listening to the lindsay pagano song again and tbh the chorus melody is kinda great, too bad the verses are horrible/clunky/aimless and sound like they're part of an entirely different song

you're good, dyl! these threads inherently involve subjective experience and the vagaries of memory. i mainly just want to shake out things a step or two above "effectively unreleased and unheard," but below stuff that nobody on ILM needs reminding of even if it's faded away a little.

the production on that ashley ballard one is a real time capsule of like, two years before it came out, and amanda's "everybody doesn't" isn't much more a creature of 2001.... or did this stuff hang around longer than my brain is remembering? the hooks just all sounds like rewrites of "sock it 2 me" and "genie in a bottle" to my ears.

huh wow i've definitely heard that Satellite song plenty of times but never knew it was Guster, who i figured must have broken up after their contributions to the late 90s equivalent of this thread. it's from 2008 though - is it time to establish a late-2000s edition?

just updated the spotify playlist with various recent additions. "Miss California" isn't available but that's no mark of shame - to this day, "Land of a Million Drums" languishes off the grid. sigh!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVYSW8swX5I

Rage Against the Machine - Renegades of Funk