Britney Spears
The 35 Best Videos of the Last 35 Years
SPIN launched in the peak MTV era, when an innovative — or even just salacious — music video could make or break an artist. Thirty five years later, YouTube is an obligatory part of any promotional push, but no one’s counting on a mind-blowing clip to sell a record. (The views do often matter — just not always the creativity.) A sizable chunk of the best videos came out during the ‘90s alternative bloom, when directors like Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry and Hype Williams experimented with the style and substance of this malleable medium. But the format hasn’t died with MTV: artists like Childish Gambino, Kendrick Lamar and Miley Cyrus all made this list for a reason — and it wasn’t to meet a decade quota. Here are the top 35 from the last 35. Ready or not, here we go again. – Ryan Reed 3...
The 50 Best Songs of the Year 2000
The year 2000 looms large in pop culture history: the Y2k non-scare, the Seinfeld “Newmannium” episode, the “In the Year 2000″ sketch from Conan O’Brien’s original late-night show, the Hulu series PEN15. And just like, say, the grunge-defined 1991, the year immediately conjures specific sounds: gleaming teen-pop, earnest radio rock, the Neptunes and Timbaland. There’s never a bad time to revisit this music. But in the middle of a pandemic, with America on the verge of collapse, it feels extra comforting — a blast of nostalgia for a time when you could safely exit your home, visit your local mall’s Sam Goody and buy Mystikal’s “Shake Ya Ass” CD single. For this list, our only criteria was that the songs appear on albums or soundtracks released in 2000. Here we go. 50. Papa Roach, “Last Reso...
The 101 Best Albums of the 2010s
Why now? Because — and there’s no reason to ignore the elephant in the room: SPIN stewardship has changed hands many, many times since we made the online jump — we got our chance. Because plenty of our favorite albums of the last 10 years could still use a boost. Because some of the already unanimously beloved music on this list still merits further praise. Because we relish excuses to sound off on the music that’s affected us the most and to enlist some of our favorite writers to do so. Because the works of art below serve as a reminder that the 2010s weren’t all bad. Because lord knows we need the distraction. Because it’s fun. There’s a lot of music that isn’t on this list. Which, duh, but plenty of artists whose work defined the decade for many, many people, including many of us, ...
My Question to the Early 2000s – Why Did We Dress Like This?
The early 2000s was a strange time for pop culture. A time where women kissing was seen as shocking (Britney, Christina, and Links”>Madonna at the 2003 VMAs), but using people and pets as accessories wasn’t ( Links”>Gwen Stefani‘s L.A.M.B, and Links”>Paris Hilton‘s Tinkerbell). The early aughts was bizarre, for sure, especially between 2003 and 2006, which created some of the worst personal style of the past century. Yeah, it was that bad, which is why we absolutely love it. Early 2000s fashion sense might be trash, but it was totally iconic. We had a strange obsession with really long torsos. Not sure where that came from, but all signs seem to point to the debut of The Simple Life in 2003. Paris Hilton made Juicy Couture track suits, tiny dogs...
