It was a very exciting time in the first half of the decade for alternative music. It was all so promising and fresh; with garage rock band “The Strokes” releasing “Is This It?” in 2001 amid a swell of media hype who pronounced the New York band as “the new saviours of Rock n Roll.”

We started the decade with “This Is It” and we finished with Michael Jackson’s beleaguered tribute film “This Is It”- how apt.

The early promise heralding a “new wave” of music; rock and indie music looked to be really onto something; fulfilling its audience with a vastly new creative outlook. Franz Ferdinand set the ball rolling with their unique self-titled debut, and “The Libertines” brought poetry to the masses, spawning countless pretenders who wanted to live the debauched rock n roll lifestyle. The Pete Doherty show continued through the decade, but mostly through the tabloids instead of the recording studio.

Of course, what comes up must come down, and the “indie bubble” did drift into the second half of the decade.

Ignoring the second half of the noughties, we’re here to celebrate the first half and how different, refreshing, fulfilling and interesting it all was. Dizzee Rascal had just started off, showcasing his broad palate of influences in his critically acclaimed first album “Boy in Da Corner.” Metal guitars, synth lines, found sound and even Japanese court music all featured on Dizzee’s eclectic debut. Grime suddenly became thrilling and for a while it really seemed like the future.

In regards to merging and reinvention, Radiohead really did lead the way. “Kid A” surprised their audience after the commercial success of “The Bends” and “OK Computer.” The Oxford quintet have continued to push the boundaries, increasing and varying their repertoire with everything that they did- challenging their audience along the way with their constant restless ingenuity.

Of course, all the initiative from our beloved British artists couldn’t last forever, and the year 2000 will be remembered for a band called Limp Bizkit. Sweeping all the good work that had gone before them, millions of American and British teenagers were seduced by the latest and most basic brand of music- nu-metal.
“Chocolate Starfish and The Hot Dog Flavoured Water” sold over a million copies in its first week- a new record for a rock album and brought nu-metal back from the dead and into the conscious of millions. It only lasted a few years, and music thankfully moved on.

The Future

2000-2004 was that time before YouTube, Lastfm, MySpace and Spotify; and the ever important question is when these new mediums came into the mainstream, did it help bands out, or did it hinder them?
There’s no questioning how Rupert Murdoch’s MySpace brought music to the masses (if it wasn’t already) and really did do brilliantly in getting young people to engage with music. However, the ease of downloading music, mostly illegally, brought up important questions for the artist and their fans.
Many bands such as Metallica, opposed new plans by file sharing site Napster- used by 60 million people around the world at its peak in 2000-2001. The site paved new ways to “share music” but was closed down by court order in July 2001 and ordered to pay back millions of pounds back into the record industry.

Hip-hop reinvented itself in the noughties, mainly thanks to the idiosyncratic and fearless delivery of Eminem and Kanye West. After merging with Dido on “Stan” in 2001, Eminem showed that rap and soft rock can mix and he has been the catalyst, or even the face of Rap and Hip-Hop from 2000-2004. Eminem’s second LP “The Marshall Mathers LP became the fastest selling rap album ever on May 30th 2000, shifting 1.76 million copies in its first week.
Kanye West’s “The College Dropout” released on February 2004 was another example of the new found creativity in hip-hop. The Chicago man’s debut merited itself in any record collection and became rap’s sweetest superstar overnight. Leading the way for the UK rap scene was the Streets seminal debut album “Original Pirate Material” recently named by Observer Music Magazine as album of the decade. It was shortlisted for the Mercury Music Prize in 2002, but was explicably beaten by Ms Dynamite’s “A Little Deeper.” All three pioneering artists have gone from strength to strength throughout the decade, although sadly, never quite reaching their early peaks.

You could pretty much sum up the difference between the first and second half of the decade by briefly studying the career of Amy Winehouse. Vibrant, fresh and bursting with critical acclaim and creativity with her debut “Frank” Amy looked to be onto a winner. Despite her brilliant “Back to Black” selling unprecedentedly, the jazz/ pop star… well we all know what happened. And it was a great shame

Music was different, often thrilling from the years 2000-2004, but could it sustain itself through to the present day?

Mike Somerville’s songs of the (first half of) the noughties.

Dizzee Rascal- I Luv U

The Strokes: Last Nite

Black Eyed Peas: Where is the Love?

Ms Dynamite: Dy-Na Mi- Tee

Franz Ferdinand- Take Me Out

White Stripes- Seven Nation Army

Girls Aloud- Sounds Of the Underground

The Killers- Mr Brightside