My friend Ken and I decided to listen to an album every day this year. Each week is themed. At the end of each week, we rank what we listened to. To be clear, we aren’t ranking every album that fits the theme. We are only ranking what we chose to listen to during the last seven days.
This week’s theme is “early 2000s europop,” meaning pop albums released by European artists before 2005. Frankly, this theme was a bit of a failure. Ken’s initial theme was “2002 pop,” meaning pop albums released in 2002, but his first selection accidentally rocked a bit too hard to qualify. So, we pivoted to Europop more broadly. As the week shaped up, his first selection still didn’t make a ton of sense, but we let it slide. More on that later.
#7 Planet Pop by A Touch of Class (2000 - Germany)
On the first track of Planet Pop, A Touch of Class talks over a gurgling synth to let you know what you are about to experience:
Hi everybody, we’re gonna take you
On a journey through planet pop
This journey starts in Australia
And it goes to ItalyFrom England to New Zealand
And all over the world
Our motto is people of the world come together
A big welcome from ATC
Enjoy the ride
“Wow,” I thought to myself after hearing this. “We’re about to go on an international musical journey. This is going to be epic.” It was not epic. Sure, hits like “Around the World (La La La La La)” are fun, but I would hardly describe this as a Phileas-Fogg-style circumnavigation of the world’s pop music. It’s bland Eurodance with way too many lackluster ballads scattered throughout (e.g., “Mistake No. 2”).
Also, there was no reason for this album to run for an hour. I understand that you theoretically need a lot of time to take us on a global pop journey. But if you aren’t actually going to do that, please get in and out in 35 minutes.
#6 The Platinum Album by Vengaboys (2000 - Denmark)
If you’ve heard Vengaboys late 1990s hits “We Like to Party” and “Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!”, you have no need to hear anything else the Dutch group produced. It’s all silly, occasionally horny, dance pop (e.g., “Skinnydippin’”).
Well, mostly. For some reason, they insisted on closing the album with an imitation-Disney ballad called “Forever as One” and a 7-minute instrumental whose name makes you think they’re taking themselves too seriously: “Opus 3 in D#.” By the end of that one-two punch, I was almost begging for the headache-inducing beats of “Kiss (When the Sun Don’t Shine)” and “Cheekah Bow Bow (That Computer Song).”
#5 DiscO-Zone by O-Zone (2004 - Moldova)
In 2003, the Moldovan trio O-Zone released “Dragostea din tei,” the lead single from their forthcoming album, DiscO-Zone. Despite a delectable hook, “Dragostea din tei” did not have the makings of an international hit. Moldova was just not known for producing music that connected outside of their borders.
But there was something special about “Dragostea din tei.” After topping the charts in nearby Romania, it began to spread throughout Europe. In order to capitalize on the phenomenon, the Romanian singer Haiducii released a cover a few months later. That cover started to compete with O-Zone’s original, soon topping the charts in a few European nations. O-Zone would get the last laugh, though.
Right around this time, an animated video of cats dancing to O-Zone’s original began to go viral in Japan. A young American named Gary Brolsma saw the video and decided to record himself lip-syncing along to the song. In a world before YouTube, Brolsma uploaded the video under the title “Numa Numa Dance”—a play on the song’s lyrics—to a site known as Newgrounds. The video went massively viral.
Internet virality is so common these days that it requires no explanation. But back in the early 2000s, nobody was sure what to make of it. A 2005 article in The New York Times described Gary Brolsma—“a pudgy guy from Saddle Brook, [New Jersey]”—and his video as a “cautionary tale.” The paper of record wrote:
But with the Internet, humiliation—like everything else—has now gone public. Upload a video of yourself playing flute with your nose or dancing in your underwear, and people from Toledo to Turkmenistan can watch.
Brolsma went along with the virality at first, but then it became too much. He stopped answering requests for interviews and television appearances. This all seems very quaint today, but “Numa Numa Dance” remains a landmark in the history of the internet. Not only that, but it was an early illustration of how a song could go viral without the artist’s involvement (see Chapter 12 of my book).
“Dragostea din tei” was so popular that it rendered everything else on DiscO-Zone and in the O-Zone catalog a mere footnote. As evidence, it would later be sampled/interpolated by David Guetta and Rihanna, along with soundtracking multiple films.
Yet all these years later, “Dragostea din tei” remains a tremendously fun dance record, one where the pulse of the beat and the sound of language is more important than what the record is actually meant to convey. Throw it on and be reminded of the power of pop music.
#4 Feels So Good by Atomic Kitten (2002 - United Kingdom)
Though the albums this week were performed by groups from across Europe, nearly all of them were shaped by one country: Sweden. During the 1990s, a producer named Denniz PoP helped launch a group called Ace of Base out of his Cheiron Studios in Stockholm. PoP died way too young, but his acolytes—the most famous of which being Max Martin—shaped pop music throughout the 1990s and 2000s by working with artists like Backstreet Boys, NSYNC, and Britney Spears (see Chapter 11 of my book).
As noted, the Cheiron sound shaped nearly all of the albums this week in some way. Atomic Kitten’s Feels So Good might bear the most influence, though. You can hear the Swedish sound in the deadened programmed beats on songs like “It’s Okay” and “Walking on Water.” You can hear it in the massive choruses on “Baby Don’t You Hurt Me” and “Softer the Touch.” And you can hear it in the precisely edited guitars on the Liverpool group’s cover of “The Tide is High.”
When the Cheiron sound is perfectly executed, it is pop music that rivals Motown (e.g., “...Baby One More Time”, “I Want It That Way”). But when the writing isn’t as strong, the production can fall flat. For me, Feels So Good falls on the flatter side for most of its runtime.
#3 Don’t Stop the Music by Robyn (2002 - Sweden)
Speaking of Max Martin, Denniz PoP, and their addictive brand of pop music, Robyn actually emerged from the Cheiron scene. Both Martin and PoP are credited across her first few albums, along with other Swedish tunesmiths. In fact, the duo was involved in her first two hits in America, “Do You Know (What It Takes)” and “Show Me Love.”
Robyn has managed to transcend the Cheiron sound during her career, though. She’s just more interesting than your average starlet. And I think you can really see the beginnings of her transformation on Don’t Stop the Music.
You still get cookie-cutter Swedish pop on Martin co-productions, like “O Baby.” But songs like “Blow My Mind” see her experimenting with vocal production. Others like “Breakdown Intermissions” have beats that could give Michael Jackson’s crazed “Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'” a run for its money. I don’t think Robyn had fully arrived on this record, but she was on her way.
#2 D-D-Don’t Stop the Beat by Junior Senior (2002 - Denmark)
This was the release that inspired the entire week. Ken had heard a song from the Danish band and selected “2002 pop” as the theme so that we could listen to the rest of the group’s best-known record. “I don’t want any rock. I don’t want any hip-hop,” Ken told me at the beginning of this week. He went on, “God help you if you give me jazz.” The funny thing is that he didn’t really follow his own rule with this pick.
It’s not that D-Don’t Stop the Beat has nothing to do with pop. Tracks like “Go Junior, Go Senior” and “Move Your Feet” clearly take cues from the pop songwriting world. But this album is closer to pop rock or power pop than the pure pop we ended up listening to throughout the rest of the week.
Despite not following his own rule, I forgive Ken because this album was more fun than almost anything else we listened to. The rhythms were tight (e.g., “Rhythm Bandits”), the hooks were huge (e.g., “Shake Your Coconuts”), and the vibes were playful (e.g., “Chicks and Dicks”).
#1 Fever by Kylie Minogue (2001 - Australia)
Another rule broken by Ken. Kylie Minogue is not from Europe. She’s from Australia. But as with Junior Senior, at least he was breaking rules for music that was good. If he’d broken a rule for A Touch of Class, we would have had a problem. Kylie Minogue gets a pass.
Fever is a dance record if there ever were one. From the opening thump of “More More More” to the funky fade out of “Burning Up,” Minogue wants you on your feet. And she largely succeeds. Fever is more rhythmically interesting than nearly any other dance record we heard this week. And, much to the Aussie’s credit, she doesn’t foist drab ballads on you, like Vengaboys or Atomic Kitten.
I did enjoy this record all the way through, but it is worth noting how much stronger “Can’t Get You out of My Head” is than the rest of the album. It’s the perfect combination of insatiable rhythms with singable melodies. And the “la-la-la” hook deserves direct induction into the nonsense lyric hall of fame, right next to The Crystals “Da Doo Ron Ron” and The Beatles “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da.”
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The point about 'Dragostea din tei' really stuck with me, that its power comes from the pulse and sound of the language more than what it's actually saying. Most people who blew it up via 'Numa Numa' probably never knew or cared what the lyrics meant. That kind of disconnect between a song's massive popularity and its actual content is a version of the thing I love writing about. Fun rundown of a chaotic pop era.
I might have to try this album a day exercise next year! It’s definitely motivating to see your results and rankings, and how have I never seen that “Move Your Feet” video before??