3 Pop Songs From the Year 2000 That Kicked the Decade Off Right

Just when you thought 1999 was the greatest year in pop music—thanks to debut singles by Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera—here comes 2000 to throw down the goods. If the late 80s and early 90s were all about gangsta rap and grunge, then the late 90s and early 2000s flipped that. Those years were all about bubblegum pop.

Videos by American Songwriter

That’s right, you couldn’t throw a puka shell necklace in the early 2000s without hitting a teen pop star. And that’s just what we wanted to dive into below. We wanted to highlight three exquisite pop tracks from 2000 that still leave us floored. Indeed, these are three pop songs from 2000 that kicked the decade off right.

“Bye Bye Bye” by *NSYNC from ‘No Strings Attached’ (2000)

In the summer of 2000, *NSYNC dropped their classic signature tune, “Bye Bye Bye”. The song, which marked the end of their relationship with former manager Lou Pearlman and also served as a breakup track, cemented the boy band as perhaps the biggest group in the world, thanks, in part, to the handsome Justin Timberlake. It’s funny—the sound of the five singers of *NSYNC is now a nostalgic one. What was the biggest part of culture 25 years ago is now a thing of the past. But it’s also so of the past. Ah, memories.

“Shape Of My Heart” by Backstreet Boys from ‘Black & Blue’ (2000)

Speaking of memories, the Backstreet Boys provided a lot of them for pop fans with this sentimental offering. While “Shape Of My Heart” may not be the most danceable pop track ever, it’s one that gets to your bones. The passion, the desire to connect. These are staples of the pop genre. You can’t live without the other, and this is the ode to that feeling. Cheesy, maybe. Lovely, yes.

“Oops!…I Did It Again” by Britney Spears from ‘Oops!… I Did It Again’ (2000)

We couldn’t let the boy bands have all the fun here. It’s only fitting to bring in the queen of millennium pop, Britney Spears. While she landed in 1999 with a bang thanks to her debut LP, she followed that up quickly with the new album, Oops!… I Did It Again. And on that LP was the titular single, which had Spears playfully lamenting breaking yet another heart. What an icon.

Photo by Tim Roney/Getty Images