End of an Era: Ten Years of TRL

Despite the fact that MTV hasn't played a full length music video since 2005, its flagship music video program, Total Request Live, has remained on the air up until its final episode last night. TRL, which was created in the hopeful pre-9/11 climate marked by the rise of teen pop, has been on the air for ten years. To commemorate its run, MTV aired the TRL finale featuring Carson Daly, Beyonce, and the top ten most important music videos of the era. Of course, in traditional TRL mode, the videos were NOT shown in their entirety. I guess that's what YouTube's for, right? Britney topped the list, just in time for Circus to leak in its entirety all over the net. Kid Rock's inclusion makes me happy. I'll bet Kanye will be PISSED when he finds out MTV dissed him again.

10. "Hey Ya!" - OutKast
9. "What's My Age Again?" - Blink 182
8. "Yeah" - Usher & Co.
7. "Crazy In Love" - Beyonce feat. Jay-Z
6. "Bawitdaba" - Kid Rock
5. "Dirrty" - Christina Aguilera
4. "Bye Bye Bye" - N*Sync
3. "I Want It That Way" - Backstreet Boys
2. "The Real Slim Shady" - Eminem
1. "...Baby One More Time" - Britney Spears

2008: The Year In Rewind

I began 2008 in Redding, California playing Bible Challenge and wondering what the next twelve months held for me. I ended it back in Phoenix watching the video clip for "I Seen Beyonce At Burger King". What a year.

We only have one year left in this decade and I'm not sure that we've come to a consensus about what to call it yet. Regardless, 2008 was monumental in more ways than one. Billboard turned 50. So did Michael Jackson and Madonna. TRL finally died. Lil Wayne sold a million copies of Tha Carter III in a week. A few years ago that would be nothing, but today, that's huge. Britney Spears started her year off in rehab but ended up smashing the (week old) record for biggest jump to #1 when "Womanizer" soared from #96 to the top in a single week. Mariah Carey scored her 18th chart topper, the most for any solo artist ever and behind only the Beatles for the all time number. Her uber-campy "Touch My Body" did the trick before she disappeared into irrelevance once again. 67 year old Neil Diamond proved that age ain't nothing but a number when his Home Before Dark debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 making him the oldest person to have a #1 album.

Here's a look at the top stories of the past year:

• Year End Wrap Up Lists
• Sego Fest 2008
• 2008 MTV Video Music Awards
• 50 Years of Billboard
• Sarah Palin Gives Adele A Major Boost
• 17 Tracks Hosts 90's Dance
• Taylor Swift Takes On The Recession
• Britney Spears' Circus Floods The Internet
• End Of An Era: Ten Years of TRL
• Kanye West Proclaims Himself the 'Voice of Generation'
  
• Collaborations: How Much Is Too Much?

The Decade: A Retrospective Introduction

Author and political scientist Francis Fukuyama proclaimed the "end of history" following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1992. He predicted that a new era of global unity and mind boggling prosperity was upon mankind. Its hard to believe that there was a time when his predictions didn't seem so ridiculous.

Being a 12-year-old living in 1999, it seemed like we were living on the edge of history. I watched reruns of "The Wonder Years", wondering what it felt like to live in exciting times when history was actually being made. I was shocked my dad wasn't concerned about the Y2K "bug". I assumed that with the coming of the new millennium, my closet would be filled with silver clothes and I would watch 3D television.

Ten years later, my dad ended up being right about the Y2K "bug". I've watched the news knowing that the images I was seeing would end up in my children's history text books. I still wear polo shirts, none of them are silver, and television isn't 3D yet (but HD is quite an improvement, isn't it?).

This decade has been a tumultuous and exhilarating for music. In 1999, we didn't have any notions about the direction music would take in the following ten years. I don't think anyone could have possibly predicted the changes and trends that have come.

How was anyone to know in 1999, holding their clunky CD players, that an even smaller device than that would be able to hold and play all the music they owned?

How was anyone to know that owning music would transform from buying a CD at a record store for $15 to buying a song from the comfort of your bedroom for 99 cents?

How was anyone to know that buying music would eventually become unnecessary and getting any song you wanted for free would be as easy as it is today (and still illegal mind you)?

Despite the travails of the record industry, the 2000s have given birth to some of the most innovative, exciting music. Genres overlapped and collided as a generation refused to be classified in their musical tastes and told the world via social networking sites that they liked "everything".

Yet for all the eclecticism the youth of the 00s has displayed, music and culture in general has fragmented. We listen to what we want to listen to. There is no more Ed Sullivan to tell us which bands to follow. There is no more TRL to show us the hottest new music videos. In the place of the cultural funnel that force feeds music for the masses, there is YouTube, there are thousands of blogs, there are friends posting new finds onto their Facebook pages.

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Join 17 Tracks in the closing days of the 00s as we look back on the decade.

11/30 - Timeline Part I

12/1 - Timeline Part II

12/2 - Top 25 Albums

12/3 - Top 100 Songs (100-86)

12/4 - Top 100 Songs (85-71)

12/5 - Top 100 Songs (70-56)

12/6 - Top 100 Songs (55-41)

12/7 - Top 100 Songs (40-26)

12/8 - Top 100 Songs (25-11)

12/9 - Top 100 Songs (10-1)

12/10 - Reader's Poll

12/11 - Epilogue

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