'00s Hits

The start of the 21st century may not have brought the flying cars and robot butlers predicted decades earlier, but it did unleash an onslaught of senses-shattering sounds from all across the musical map, that scaled the charts and stole our hearts. OutKast made a startling scientific breakthrough by distilling pure unadulterated joy into the boundary-breaking pop/hip-hop concoction “Hey Ya!” Kanye West’s “Gold Digger” was a groove-fueled time machine that catapulted Ray Charles’ “I Got a Woman” into the hip-hop era with a vocal assist from Brother Ray’s silver-screen embodiment, Jamie Foxx. And jazz-pop chanteuse Norah Jones made the whole hectic world slow down for one miraculous moment to hone in on the hushed beauty of her head-turning ballad “Don’t Know Why.”

In Next Steps, ladies lead the ’00s evolution with dance-floor dynamite and soul sensations.

The first decade of the new millennium was filled with forward-looking ladies taking things someplace new in almost every musical style. Taylor Swift proved that a Nashville teen with an ear for unstoppable hooks could turn the country and pop worlds upside-down, with “You Belong With Me.” Madonna hooked up with French techno-pop production wizard Mirwais, giving birth to the electro-groovin’ worldwide dance smash “Music.” And Macy Gray introduced the world to one of R&B’s most original, unforgettable voices when she exploded in our ears — and hearts — with her impossibly infectious neo-soul torch song “I Try.”

Discover the rich roots of the decade’s prime musical movers in Deep Cuts.

The ’00s may have been filled with fresh sounds from groundbreaking artists, but that doesn’t mean the new breed had no sense of musical history. The Dixie Chicks did more than anyone to tear down the walls between country, pop, and rock, and it didn’t hurt that they found a way to put a sweet new spin on Fleetwood Mac’s mellow ’70s classic “Landslide.” The Strokes opened the floodgates for a roughshod revolution of NYC rockers by channeling the spirits of the Velvet Underground and ’60s garage rock with a modern alt-rock flair on their first big hit “Last Nite.” And when Daniel Powter’s sympathetic serenade “Bad Day” became a new era’s angst eliminator, the tender troubadour took his place in a pop pantheon that goes back to sensitive songsmiths like Cat Stevens and Elton John.

By the time the ’00s rolled around, the Information Age was well under way and music’s every stylistic strand seemed to be sewn into a single thread. Instead of occupying their own separate worlds, rock, pop, R&B, and country could all share the same space in our heads and on our iPods. Shuffle wasn’t just a playback mode; it was a way of looking at — and listening to — the world. That’s how the raw-boned garage rock of the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army” could thrive alongside the laid-back surf-pop of Jack Johnson’s “Flake” and Amy Winehouse’s bad-girl soul confession “Rehab.” That’s the way we rolled in the ’00s, and we’ve made the same kind of moves in gathering together the decade’s most undeniable hits, capturing ten years of titanic tunes in one dynamic dose.