Music Emblematic of the 2000’s
The first ten years of the 2000’s are over and this post is about a year late. What music is going to emerge as truly representative of that period? More importantly, what do we call that decade? So far nothing has emerged in the pop-culture lexicon as a short and catchy name for the first ten years of the 2000’s. That, I think, is the biggest problem when trying to identify the music we’ll remember from that period. When we hear the “60’s”, “70’s”, and “80’s” those phrases evoke very specific ideas about the lifestyles people lived and the music of those times. If we can’t name the first ten years of the 2000’s does the music have any chance of being remembered in its context? Let’s try anyway.
Of course, my musical tastes lean toward guitar-driven rock. I looked through my iTunes library and actually found a lot of memorable 2000’s artists. I whittled the list down to just ten. These aren’t necessarily my favorite artists of the past decade but are the ones who have been the most popular and stand the best chance of being remembered as emblematic of the past decade. According to my judgement anyway.
- Arcade Fire
- Coldplay
- Disturbed
- Gorillaz
- The Killers
- Kings of Leon
- Linkin Park
- Muse
- System of a Down
- The White Stripes
- Audioslave
We always think the music happening today isn’t as good as the music from 10 or 20 years ago but I don’t think that’s actually true. I just think we’ve had more time to mentally process older music. As time goes on we tend to put things on a higher and higher pedestal. We remember only the great music of olden times because the bad stuff has been forgotten about. Today we have to weed through it all so it’s easier to see the past as being better in comparison.
