Revisiting the Music of 2000

For a recent listening club session with friends, the theme was music from the year 2000. Nineteen years ago. Before smartphones. The peak of Napster. Just after the anticlimax of Y2K. The end of the first dot com bubble (more 2000 trivia here). I was living in San Francisco, recently returned from Seattle, soon to quit working as a junior associate at a big law firm and take a research fellowship at Berkeley.

On revisiting what I was listening to that year, I was struck by the narrowness of my musical exposure: I was very focused on Americana/alt-country singer-songwriters. This is a testament to how different things were when you had to buy a CD to try something--there was a lot less trying things out. So I kept to my lane: singer-songwriters. In the era of subscription streaming music services, I can now roam much more broadly, thankfully.

My favorite albums that year were:

• PJ Harvey, Songs from the City, Songs from the Sea
• Joseph Arthur, Come to Where I'm From
• Ida, Will You Find Me
• Thievery Corporation, The Mirror Conspiracy
• D'Angelo, Voodoo
• Shelby Lynn, I am Shelby Lynn
• k.d. lang, Invincible Summer

In retrospect, I would probably demote the k.d. lang, Shelby Lynn, and Joseph Arthur albums. I still like them, but none feels indispensable now. I still stand by the others, especially PJ Harvey and Ida.

But looking at the sampler CDs I made for my friends that year, I see Dar Williams, Buddy Miller, Emmylou Harris, Neko Case, Rickie Lee Jones, Eleni Mandell, Elliott Smith, Noelle Hampton, and Sarah Harmer (strong showing by the singer-songwriter axis). There's also some electronica, showing the enduring influence of 1998's Kruder & Dorfmeister album and 1999's Moby album. So my samplers included tracks from Thievery Corporation (The Mirror Conspiracy), St. Germain (Tourist), and DJ Shadow + Cut Chemist (Brainfreeze).

Stand-outs that, in retrospect, I didn't love enough (and, in several cases, I didn't even hear):

• Grandaddy, The Sophtware Slump
• Sigur Ros, Ágætis byrjun
• Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven
• Elliott Smith, Figure 8 (although I don't think it's as great as some of his earlier stuff)

Albums that critics think I should have loved in 2000, but I'm still not loving:

• Radiohead, Kid A (yes, I appreciate that it's pivotal, but no, I don't find myself reaching for it)
• Outkast, Stankonia (yes, B.O.B. is great, as is Xplosion, but about half the tracks do nothing for me, plus all the misogyny) 
• Eminem, The Marshall Mathers LP (I missed the whole Eminem thing, and I don't think I missed much in retrospect)
• The Avalanches, Since I Left You (an album I appreciate, and that I can't manage to like as much as I'm supposed to)

And I'm still angry that it took so long for the music industry to approach the ease-of-use and infinite inventory that Napster was already providing in 2000.