NEW YORK (Top 40 Charts) - 2001 in music saw its fair share of eyebrow-raising events, comments, and mishaps - onstage, offstage, in the studio, and beyond. In part one of our third annual not so serious look back at the year, we look at The Good.
Oops! ? They Did It Again: For the second year in a row, 'NSync goes down as having the best first-week sales of the year. In 2000, No Strings Attached sold 2.4 million and in 2001, Celebrity sold 1.8 million in week No. 1.
Best Band Name That Never Was: Basket Full of Puppies ?- Anthrax's self-suggested new band name following the anthrax deaths.
Best Entourage: Rapper Nelly's posse of 3,000 at the Shooters 21 club in Lake of the Ozarks, Mo.
Strangest Bedfellows: Eminem and Elton John hooking up onstage at the GRAMMY Awards for "Stan."
Most Clever-Clever Album Title: Blink-182's Take Off Your Pants and Jacket.
Dixie Chicks |
Isn't It Ironic?: Despite the fact that the Dixie
Chicks have sued Sony because, among other things, they weren't paid enough, the country group made it into the Guinness Book of World Records for having the all-time best-selling country album by a group with their debut effort,
Wide Open Spaces.
Most Resourceful: While other acts cancel performances if they chip a nail, Alanis Morissette's show went on in Boston in December despite the fact she had laryngitis. Instead of singing herself, she had her audience and the Barenaked Ladies handle vocal duties on her four-song set.
Best Tour Name: Godsmack's Wake The Fuck Up Tour.
Most Premature Break-Up, er, 'Indefinite Hiatus': At the Drive In.
Madonna |
Best Return To The Stage: Madonna. The Material Girl proved that you don't need to be a teenager to put on a great pop show in her first tour since 1993, the Drowned World Tour.
Most Promising New Act For Next Year: Chris Cornell fronting the remains of Rage Against the Machine.
Quietest Success Of The Year: R. Kelly. He might not have made the rounds in the press and on TV as much as other artists this year, but the R&B singer went home with the most awards (six) at the 2001 Billboard Music Awards, over such artists as Destiny's Child, U2, and Madonna.
Most Daring Fashion Statement: Bjork's swan dress at the Oscars. The bizarre outfit landed itself as a joke on the Emmy Awards in which host Ellen DeGeneres came out in a bad copy of the dress.
Who Wudda Thunk?: In a year where the angry antics of nu-metal rocked the roost, it was actually the spiritually-inclined Creed who scored the best rock debut of the year. Weathered, the band's third album, bowed at No. 1 in November with first-week sales of 887,229.
Most Sought After Producers: Pharrell Williams and Chad Hugo, otherwise known as the Neptunes (Mystikal, Jay-Z, Ol' Dirty Bastard, No Doubt, their own N.E.R.D. project, and more to come).
Ladies Marmalade |
Best Collaboration: Christina Aguilera,
Pink,
Lil' Kim and
Mya getting busy as the ladies of
Moulin Rouge with an amazing cover of
Patti LaBelle's "Lady Marmalade."
Rock Star Of The Year: Lenny Kravitz.
Most Welcome New Trend: Nu-soul (Alicia Keys, Musiq Soulchild, Indie.Arie, Sunshine Anderson, to name a few).
Best Ad Campaign: No, not the Gap. Death Row Records' incarcerated head Marion "Suge" Knight's full-page ads thanking Snoop Dogg, who left the label, for still making him money.
Best Non-Music Festival Attraction: Mullet contest at Gathering of the Juggalos Festival this summer in Toledo, Ohio, which featured Insane Clown Posse, Vanilla Ice, Suicide Machines, and Three 6 Mafia.
Best Act Of Patriotism: All of the artists from all genres of music around the world who donated money and/or participated in benefit concerts to help the victims and relief efforts of Sept. 11's terrorist attacks against America.
