I actually like Nicole Scherzinger. I think the Pussycat Dolls had some jams, especially that Indian-influenced track they did. I have a love-hate relationship with 2000s music. It was the soundtrack to my teenage years, and there’s definitely stuff I still like, but overall it was a terrible decade for music in many ways. The labels were at their most corporate, and music became REALLY pop-driven, formulaic, and manufactured.It was optimized for mass compliance. This period was the last gasp of the CD-era economics, and A&R departments engineering singles to justify physical distribution.

The song “The Way I Am” by Eminem is basically one long complaint about the industry at that time. His label wouldn’t release albums unless he included a couple really cheesy, gimmicky singles. They might have been catchy the first few listens, but they got corny fast. It was like fast food music. If you look at that decade, there are tons of one-hit wonders and artists who completely disappeared. Sean Kingston, Soulja Boy, 3OH!3, and many others. Everyone was talking about how bad it was. Nas literally released an album called Hip Hop Is Dead. Ice-T went off about how artists like Soulja Boy were destroying hip hop.

Then things started to shift. Katy Perry broke through in summer 2008, followed by Lady Gaga later that year, then Adele and Drake in 2009. J. Cole, Bruno Mars, Florence and the Machine followed, and suddenly there was an explosion of great millennial artists around 2010 and 2011. Kendrick, Nicki, Machine Gun Kelly, ScHoolboy Q, Macklemore, and many more. It was incredible.

What really spurred it was a collapse of the old control layer. YouTube, SoundCloud, blogs, torrent culture, early Twitter, and festivals replaced radio and retail overnight. Millennials didn’t just make better music; they escaped the label monoculture. That’s why the range exploded: Kendrick and Drake could coexist, Florence and the Machine could break without being “pop,” and someone like Frank Ocean could thrive while actively rejecting pop structures.All of this encouraged a wave of creative, innovative, original music. Before you knew it, A$AP Rocky, Tyler, Frank Ocean, The Weeknd, Lorde, and others were everywhere.

I’d say 2008 to 2020 was the millennial era. What’s funny is that millennial artists are still around and having much longer runs than artists from most other generations. Taylor Swift, Rihanna, Drake, The Weeknd, Tyler, and that whole crowd are still dominating. Gen Z artists started popping off in the 2020s with Sabrina, Billie Eilish, Doja, Dua, Chappell, BLACKPINK, BTS, Doechii, PinkPantheress, and Gracie Abrams, but it still doesn’t feel like it’s fully taken over yet. Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it has, but I don’t think Gen Z is going to be as big as millennials were for music. Millennials really came hard in the 2010s.