As 13-year-olds growing up in Southeast Portland, Tony Diep and his friends carefully closeted their love of bubble gum pop music. Instead of partaking in the wars waged among Britney, Christina and the plethora of 1999 boy band fans, the teens opted to lip-synch to DMX beats played on Jammin’ FM 95.5. Secretly, Diep rooted for the Backstreet Boys while his ‘N Sync-crazed friend “hated them.”
“In 1999, everyone was trying really hard to be cool,” Diep said. “It was the beginning of the crazy pop phase; a less extreme version of it.”
Among things Diep remembers from seventh grade are Seventeen and YM magazines, Latin-infused pop music, Napster, MTV “kind of still playing music,” Abercrombie and Fitch, people stocking up in fear of Y2K, frosted highlights, futuristic fashions, and platform shoes. “A’ight” replaced all right, “threads” meant clothing and CDs surpassed cassette tape collections.
Diep, a University senior and self-proclaimed pop culture aficionado, offered his reflections on the turn of the millennium.
MUSIC
Latin music was “huge” not only in the Latino neighborhood where Diep lived, but across the country, with artists such as Carlos Santana, Jennifer Lopez, Enrique Iglesias, Marc Anthony and Ricky Martin dominating charts in 1999.
“‘Smooth’ was the hottest song,” Diep said. The Santana and Rob Thomas collaboration won the 2000 Grammy for record of the year. “Even regular pop artists like Christina Aguilera tried to do Latin. She was horrible.”
Eminem emerged with his “Slim Shady LP” and quickly garnered popularity among a crowd Diep coined as “the white boys who wanted to be hood.”
“They thought, ‘we finally have a representative,’” Diep said.
On radio stations such as 95.5 and Z100, Diep remembers hearing a slew of “man-bashing” tunes, including “Bills, Bills, Bills” by Destiny’s Child and “No Scrubs” by TLC.
LFO popularized Abercrombie and Fitch with its reference to the store in “Summer Girls.” Other sugary pop favorites included Smash Mouth’s “All Star,” Lou Bega’s “Mambo No. 5,” Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” and Sugar Ray’s “Someday,” according to popculturemadness.com.
Diep received his first computer in 1999 and could find anything on Napster. Internet access and celebrity gossip magazines developed the foundation of his now seemingly encyclopaedic pop culture knowledge. “We had a dial-up modem then and I had to ask my mom, ‘give me 10 more minutes!’ before she got on the phone.”
University junior Andrew Pomeroy said that Limp Bizkit, another popular group of 1999, “sewed the seeds of his rebellion” before he realized how awful they were.
MOVIES
In its Nov. 26, 1999 issue, Entertainment Weekly said 1999 was the year that changed movies.
“American Beauty” won five Oscars, including best picture. Other hyped movies included “Being John Malkovich,” “The Blair Witch Project,” “Fight Club,” “The Matrix,” “The Sixth Sense,” “Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace” and “The Green Mile.”
While Diep admitted he didn’t have the attention span to sit through movies at age 13, he remembers the many teen flicks of 1999, among them “Never Been Kissed” and “10 Things I Hate About You.”
“After that was ‘Not Another Teen Movie’ in 2001 and then they ended,” he said. “I watched lots of TV then but not a lot of movies. I remember that I couldn’t understand ‘The Matrix.’”
TV
Recently, Diep watched an MTV marathon and noticed that he didn’t hear music for 48 hours. He reminisced that in 1999, MTV still played quite a few tunes and was not filled with nearly as many reality shows.
Outside of MTV’s “Undressed” and other shows that made him want to grow up “so bad,” The WB’s lineup was Diep’s favorite.
“I got home from school and watched TV; ‘Roswell,’ ‘Charmed,’ ‘Dawson’s Creek,’ ‘Ally McBeal,” he said.
“Who Wants to be a Millionaire” premiered in 1999 and its computer game counterpart came out shortly after.
“We played for hours and hours and memorized the answers to cheat,” Diep said.
Diep noted that 1999 featured “flashy and fun” teen entertainers who spurred futuristic fashion trends. Made-for-TV movies such as “Zenon,” pop music videos and concert series highlighted Disney Channel programming.
PREDICTIONS
In 2009, Diep predicts bleak futures for entertainers who have recently pervaded pop culture. According to him, “Beyonce-itis” will sweep blasé fans.
“She’s the biggest chick in the game right now,” he said. “Something crazy will go down with Miley Cyrus and her 20-year-old boyfriend. She’s the textbook example of a child star who can finally make up her own mind.”
Diep anticipates that no one will pay attention to the American Idol winners from now on. “No one has really cared since Carrie Underwood,” he said. Music, he predicts, will cease to play on MTV with Total Request Live’s finale, and reality shows will continue to create the “dumbification” of TV.
Pomeroy added, “I can’t say with certainty that this will happen, but I sure hope that Soulja Boy and hyphy fade out. Everything is getting whored out to auto-tune. There’s a deficit of real, committed artists.”
“‘Harry Potter’ was for the sort of nerdy crowd,” Diep said. “‘Twilight’ is the next ‘Harry Potter’ series for the emo-indie crowd.”
Diep anticipates that with Obama coming into office, there will be much more dimension to celebrity status; a “revitalized energy” after a “tricky 2008” that came with numerous celebrity deaths and the recession.
Overall, Pomeroy projected that 1990s nostalgia will become more prominent in 2009. “VH1 jumped the gun with ‘I Love the 90s,’” he said. The show aired in 2004.
“The 2000s are less defined and more complicated than 1999,” Diep said. “They include everything. It’s not like the 1950s, when doo-wop was defining.”
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