“Hi my name is David and I voted for Christina Aguilera’s “Genie in a Bottle”! WOO HOO I LOVE YOU CHRISTINA! You’re so hot and I bet you’ll be a judge on some bad singing show and be less hot so I WANT TO SEE THIS ONE NOW! BRITNEY SUCKS WOO!”
Yes people. Today we are reliving something that I’m sure many of you would like to forget. Teen pop stars were all the rage and we had to endure this man daily:
Or should I say....Daly
Bad word play aside I know many people see him as the host of () now, but I don’t watch that crap so he’s a much smaller part of my television viewing. “Total Request Live” helped sky rocket people like the two women mentioned above, numerous boy bands and inadvertently made the station so popular that Tom Green was famous for a while. Oh well, I’m grabbing my ear plugs and some giant posters because I’m going back in time and camping out at Times Square.
"I CAN SEE EMINEM'S BUTT! WOOOOO!"
The huge explosion of music videos coupled nicely with the explosion of teen pop. Want to make a star? Shove a 17 year old girl out there in a belly shirt. Have a homogenized song you want to be hit? Dress up 5 guys in similar yet different outfits and have them dance. MTV took these two things and rolled them into a phenomenon. It’s almost ironic now. The thing that launched the channel into the cosmos (again) is now all but disappeared. We can’t even blame the internet because it happened before Youtube was a thing. MTV decided that making MTV2 play music and only playing 42 seconds of Nelly’s “Country Grammer” was a good idea. Of course what the hell do I know because “Awkward.” and “Teen Mom” are killing it. Who needs NSYNC anymore?
No one. Especially not the guy with his face covered.
Boy bands faded eventually. Honestly once my sister stopped watching it after school I did too. I learned to like Blink 182, Green Day, Linkin Park and POD because of this show. That may sound like a slight, but it introduced me to rock music and I’m very thankful for that. God if I still liked popular music I’d be listening to Drake suck right now.
If you can believe it, TRL ran until 2008. That’s right, I was done with my first year of college when it ended. I stopped watching it in like 2002ish? I’d have to have my sister correct me but I don’t care to ask. That had to be the only thing still playing music on the station right? I can’t believe it took Youtube three years to finish ”TRL” off.
I probably didn’t do a good job explaining the sheer mania of this program. Girls were fainting they were so excited. I know the last time I watched was when Aguilera’s “Dirrrty” video came out. So I never watched after 2002 officially. Anyway it may seem inconsequential (and it was) but there is a reason why 30 year old women were losing their shit when NSYNC got back together for the VMAs this year. The fact that an award show for music videos exist still is pretty great too.
I was young. I can't be blamed for this. Also look at this and let's cut Hannah Montana some slack. This used to be on Mickey Mouse's channel too.
