The 2000’s: 2000
2000: Favorite Music
The year 2000 was the climax and beginning of the end of the pop regime that had taken over the music scene over the past half-decade. N*SYNC was on top, but it was becoming more and more obvious who was going to survive from that group and turn into the new King of Pop.
2000 also saw the return of some greats (U2’s All That You Can’t Leave Behind), the continuing genius of others (Radiohead’s Kid A, Matt Nathanson’s Still Waiting for Spring), and the debut of some artists that would be playing an integral part of my musical experience over the next decade, including Coldplay’s Parachutes, Ryan Adam’s Heartbreaker, and my favorite album of the year.
Dashboard Confessional: The Swiss Army Romance
The beginning of my listening experience with DC is kind of funny. It was late 2001, I saw him on MTV, liked the song so I went out to buy his album. Except I wanted to buy The Places You Have Come To Fear The Most, and accidentally bought this album. Obviously, dumb 14 year-old me was pissed it wasn’t the one I heard on TV. However, it was a mistake I am now glad I made.
Though it was Places that made Chris Carrabba famous, that album is by far his worst. Not only that, it pegged him as the posterboy for “emo”, something that he has been trying to throw off since.
However, it was The Swiss Army Romance, his debut album from 2000, that showed the talent that he has for lyrical composition and melodies that will stick in your head for days. Screaming Infidelities is a completely different song on this record, unlike the one that most people have heard. On here, it is merely a song about losing trust in someone and the anger and jealously that can come with it, but without the kind of whining sound that is found all over Places. My favorite song has to be “A Plain Morning” which fully encapsulates the emotion of being away from the people you love, always just out of reach.
After TSAR, Carrabba added a full band and with albums like 2003’s A Mark, A Mission, A Brand, A Scar and 2007’s The Shade of Poison Trees he gained a fully developed sound that has filled countless hours of my life over the past decade.
By Ryan Hoffman
A Second Opinion
New Found Glory: New Found Glory
Ah. The year 2000. The Y2K crisis was over. People were real pumped for some reason about the new millennium. I was ten years old and in the 5th grade. Times were good. Gas was cheap.
The year 2000 in music was full of Backstreet Boy knockoffs and waning 90’s alt-rock bands. I was tempted to choose The Beatles 1, but I mean, compilations are kinda unfair. Green Day’s “Warning” is still a vastly underrated album and the last before there transformation into…whatever the hell they are now. So the obvious choice for me after ten years of reflection is New Found Glory by New Found Glory.
The album doesn’t break any grounds musically, lyrically etc. but it does manage to give the listener a good time. From the second “Better Off Dead” starts to the end of “Ballad for the Last Romantics” (which is anything but a ballad) New Found Glory’s relentless pop-punk never gives you a chance to take a breather. Unless of course you’re listening to it on the bus to school in your brand new CD player. I might have done that hundreds of times.
The album also contains one of my favorite tracks ever, “Dressed to Kill”. Why do I like it you ask? I don’t know. It’s just a simple pop punk CD. It shouldn’t be on any best of lists in any major magazines. It won’t be. I guess it really is just a representation of my youth, my ten year old self. That smiling, short haired, tony hawk clothes wearing boy. Weird…now I have an uncontrollable urge to wear real long shorts and spike my hair up. Pretty odd.
