During the 2000’s, there was a lot of different events that happened which had a huge influence on the music produced at the time. For example, 9/11.
9/11 was a terrorist attack that happened in Oklahoma city, USA. Originally, the first plane that hit the twin towers was claimed to be an accident, however, it wasn’t, the terrorists overtook the communication systems of the plane so it became very hard for the people on the plane’s to call for help or even call their families to say goodbye. There was only 18 minutes between the first plane hitting the twin towers and the second plane hitting the towers, this gave nobody chance to really get out. As a result, approximately 2605 people died. Along with the towers being hit, the pentagon and a field was also hit. This caused huge devastation, not just in the USA but worldwide. The whole world mourned the death of innocent civilians that got caught up in a war between the government after they went to Iraq and killed their innocent civilians. 143,000 lost their jobs, as many people had to close their businesses for a few days whilst people mourned and fixed the destruction.
This caused a lot of different musicians to be inspired and many wrote about this event and it’s effects on them. Many people can still remember their exact place of the time that day and their reactions. Bryan Adams “Heaven” became associated with the event after many people had lost their dads in the even and this song reminded them of their fathers etc.
In the 2000’s there was a lack of streaming platforms so therefore they needed radio plays, which also caused more people to be influenced by social events. However, if they went against the government or radio stations rules, they didn’t get radio plays. As more streaming services became available, we saw a drastic change in what artists were producing, such as Ariana Grande hasn’t made a song influenced by 9/11 as such because she wasn’t around then so she wouldn’t be influenced by it. Yet, Little Mix, for example, have made a song for the lgbtq+ community, even though in many countries it’s still banned to be gay, yet that song succeeded. This is all because as time evolved and we got more streaming services, artists didn’t need radio plays as much as they had to in the early 2000’s, this came with much more freedom in what they could sing about.
Another big social event was the Millennium Bug. The Millennium Bug was basically just an error in computers clocks as it only went up to the year 1999. People questioned what would happen when 12AM hit on New Years Eve because they didn’t know what year the computer would think it was and they thought it would completely reset or the world would end. This caused people to freak out because as of late 90’s, everything was on computers, banks, data, everything, so if they reset, it would cause a lot of problems and up-raw. This mainly effected banks, because of interests etc, power plants, because of water pressure and radiant levels, and transportation’s, because people thought it would bring down the plane’s at midnight. There was even a movie made about it, Y2K, that had to say at the end of the trailer that it’s just for film purposes and that non of it’s real because people were really scared of what happened. But of course, when midnight hit, nothing happened.
Film and Tv also had big years in the 2000’s because Avatar, for example, was revolutionary for its CGI but it was also 1/5 movies to earn $1,000,000,000 and it did it in just 3 weeks! Blu-ray had also just come around, which is like a higher definition version of movies. It was also a big time for music in the film industry because they had started to incorporate film scores with modern genres with classics too. Artists became more than just artists as people like Whitney Houston was a producer on “The Princess Diaries” and NSYNC were extras in “Star Wars Ep 2”, this was cut but it still shows the potential. In modern times, Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper also did “A Star Is Born”.
Another revolutionary thing in the 2000’s were sampling! Sampling is where you use a piece of someone else’s music to influence your song, or you can use it directly in your own song. An example of this was when “Crazy – Gnarls Barkley” used sampling from “Preparati La Bara!”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qe500eIK1oA
“Crazy” used a chord structure of just 4 basic chords yet he switched from minor’s and major’s in order to make the song sound complex so it would create an ear-pleasing beat. This shows that you don’t need complex music or lyrics, because the chorus is literally just a question three times and then an answer, for the song to be popular. It’s all about how you structure them in order for them to sound catchy and ear-pleasing.