9/11 and the Launch of Pop Radio’s Greatest Era

The years leading up to 9/11 primed us for pop music’s evolution. And in our post-9/11 grief, we enjoyed pop radio's peak.

On Sept. 20, 2001, Mariah Carey released her passion project, Glitter. Carey starred in the film and performed on its soundtrack, a companionship perfected by Whitney Houston and The Bodyguard nearly a decade prior. 

By the late ‘90s, Carey was at the top of her game, however, 2001 saw a narrative change. She crossed into the new millennium with her lowest-selling record to date, followed by a mental-health crisis. The media was not kind to her, which chipped away at her popularity. Combine everything and Glitter was destined to fail months before its release. 

The film made $5.3 million at the box office, nearly a quarter short of its $22 million budget. Carey, though, blamed Glitter’s low box office returns on the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

“I don’t care if it was the best one of my life, anything released the week of 9/11/2001 was not going to work,” she told The New York Times in 2005.

Much has been written about Carey, Glitter and her connection to 9/11, so I won’t add to the discourse. What I want to acknowledge are the kernels of truth in Carey’s claims. 

Pop radio was on the brink of a renaissance.

Pop music’s switch

The years leading up to 9/11 primed us for pop music’s evolution. 

Grunge and alternative were on their way out and bubblegum pop was on the way in. After a few years of feeling our emotions very, very deeply, American culture craved something shinier. We were entering the new millennium, after all. A milestone marked by bright metallics that did not align with our comfortable (oh my god, I was so comfortable back then) flannel. 

Leading the cultural shift were Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, all-male groups that focused on harmonies over instrumentals. Or, more colloquially, boy bands. The brainchild of Lou Pearlman— who ended up leading a Ponzi scheme and is now dead, RIP bb—the two acts took over where New Kids On the Block left off. 

This era also reminded us of an important aspect of pop music: women, specifically young women, often drive sales. It is a trend that is timeless, from The Beatles and Elvis to Taylor Swift and Beyoncé. In this instance, young heterosexual women were desperate for an attractive man to promise them the world. 

Before boyband mania, options for young, heterosexual women weren’t as shiny and styled. Few songs promised them the world and there was a heaviness that hung onto popular radio. Anything that didn’t fit a grungy mold fell into the “songs you hear while in the dentist’s chair” genre. The landscape was dire and these women were HUNGRY.

Unfortunately, I was not one of those young women. In 1997, I was 13 years old and in my prime angst years. I was perfectly fine listening to Fiona Apple, No Doubt, Sheryl Crow, Jewel and the very moody Buffy the Vampire Slayer soundtrack over and over and over until I died. I even have a very clear memory of a classmate asking “Why do you hate the Backstreet Boys so much?” in the locker room. I couldn’t come up with an appropriate answer then, however, I can 26 years later: I AM MENTALLY ILL, SARA!!

While I was busy pushing back on the cultural shift, millions around me were leaning in. Country artists capitalized on crossing over into the pop genre and, in 1999, we were introduced to who we now know as our pop princess: Britney Spears. By the time we entered the new millennium, we were on a steady diet of bubblegum pop. And in the following years, our cultural appetite for feel-good pop became insatiable. 

Healing in the club 

The Billboard Hot 100 during the week of Sept. 11, 2001 hinted at pop music’s direction over the next few years. Artists of color held the top seven chart positions, with hip-hop and R&B having a heavy influence on pop radio. 

Hip-hop continued to shape mainstream radio, moving from rap-only stations and settling nicely into poppy airwaves. It’s a trend that continued to rise in 9/11’s aftermath, and if you look closely, you can see how 2003 was a pivotal year for pop. 

Similar to the Billboard Hot 100 on Sept. 11, artists of color owned the charts in 2003, claiming six of the top 10 slots. 50 Cent, R. Kelly (Editor’s note: fuck that guy), Sean Paul, Beyoncé, Jay-Z, Chingy and Aaliyah all had a place at the top. 

The biggest clue, however, was nestled in Billboard’s No. 11 slot: “Get Low” by Lil Jon & The East Side Boyz. Over the next five weeks, “Get Low” gained steam, eventually peaking at the No. 2 slot on October 19, 2003. Right behind “Get Low” were Nelly, Ludacris and YoungBloodZ, only expanding hip-hop’s takeover. 

Concurrently, our relationship with alcohol shifted. 

It’s no secret that trauma and alcohol use often go together. So, in my curiosity, I looked into America’s alcohol consumption in the decade following the September 11 attacks, and well, lookie here: 

“Data from the National Health Interview Surveys (NHIS, 2013) showed an increase between 2000 and 2010 in the proportion of high-volume drinkers among U.S. adults 18 and older that was partially offset by a decrease between 2010 and 2011 (National Centers for Health Statistics, 2012).”

Pop music followed suit and shifted focus to the crunk genre. Established in the early ‘90s, crunk is a hip-hop subgenre that emerged in the South. Rooted in club culture, the term “crunk” is slang for “drunk.” You see where I’m going with this.

In our post-9/11 grief, we turned to crunk. 

Usher, who was already topping the charts, took note and incorporated the genre into his 2004 album, Confessions. He brought in Lil Jon and Ludacris for the album’s lead single, “Yeah!” and it proved successful. Released in January 2004, “Yeah!” sat at the top of Billboard’s Hot 100 for 12 consecutive weeks. (Fun fact: Usher knocked his own song off the top spot with his single, “Burn.”)

Crunk’s success, assisted by “Yeah!,” only grew. On Sept. 11, 2004, the No. 1 Billboard single was “Goodies,” the debut track from Ciara. Crunk had hit the top of the charts again.

Pop’s Peak

Americans spent the next few years indulging in some of the best pop music ever created. Boy bands were on their way out and hip-hop had finally secured a permanent space for itself on pop radio. While I didn’t know it at the time, my karaoke standards were in the middle of being birthed. 

It was around 2005 when we evolved from radio having a crunk influence to nearly every pop song centering around club culture. Benefiting from this pop evolution was Carey, who saw another commercially unsuccessful album with 2002’s Charmbracelet. 

Throughout her career, Carey was instrumental in getting hip-hop onto pop radio. Missy Elliott, Bone Thugs-N-Harmony, Jermaine Dupri, Snoop Dogg, Jay-Z, Nas, Busta Rhymes, Jadakiss, the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard and dozens more hip-hop artists were featured on Carey’s tracks between 1995 to present. In fact, dozens of articles now pay tribute to her collaborations. 

Carey leaned hard into these collaborations for her 2005 album, The Emancipation of Mimi, which was produced by a combination of early-2000s powerhouses: the Neptunes, Kanye West and Jermaine Dupri. Leading up to the album’s May release, Carey released two singles, “It’s Like That” and “We Belong Together,” with the latter spending 14 nonconsecutive weeks at No.1 on the Billboard Hot 100, raising the bar for pop stars to follow.

The combination of hip-hop and club culture was a trend that continued into 2006, with hip-hop’s influence touching nearly 70-to-80 percent of the Billboard Hot 100 singles. Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie,” featuring Wyclef Jean, was the song of the summer and Nelly Furtado surprised everyone when she evolved from folk-pop songstress to Timbaland’s muse. As a music lover, I feel confident in saying 2006 was one of the best years for pop music. 

Good times, though, don’t last.

Exiting the crunk era

In 2008, pop charts saw another shift. Women began to take over.

It was a year after Britney Spears’ mental health crisis and whispers of a new record were on the horizon. She was coming off the underappreciated Blackout album and eyes were still on her, with people mostly rooting for her failure. Her single “Womanizer” proved everyone wrong. It debuted at No. 96 on the Billboard 100 and jumped straight to No. 1, breaking the record for the biggest chart jump. 

Around 2009, pop music began to break away from crunk. The genre, and hip-hop in general, finally had their place in pop but listeners started pushing for more diverse sounds and visuals. 

Contributing to the breakaway was a new artist—an artist who would take everything pop music built up until that point and blow it out of a cannon. But it would be a slow burn, as listeners didn’t immediately grab onto her debut single—one that incorporated the early 2000s’ club-culture spirit but opted for a sleek disco sound over hip-hop influence. 

After five months of battling the charts, “Just Dance” by Lady Gaga finally hit No. 1 on Jan. 17, 2009. Helping the single’s success was her heavily stylized music video, which took inspiration from David Bowie, disco and just being young and hot. 

Capitalizing on the success of her singles “Just Dance” and “Poker Face,” Lady Gaga reissued her album, The Fame, with eight new songs that also stood alone as an EP. Titled The Fame Monster, the new batch of songs included “Bad Romance” and “Telephone,” featuring Beyoncé,  who had recently wrapped up a No.1 run with “Single Ladies.” 

The Fame Monster became a cultural phenomenon, and the pop girlies took notice. It can be said without argument that Lady Gaga owned this era of pop, building on the influences that came before her, creating a melting pot of pop creativity. Peers that were coming up around the same time—Katy Perry (the worst offender, imo), Nicki Minaj, Rhianna and Kesha, for example—took inspiration from Gaga’s glam and theatrics. So much so that reporters even started to notice the imitation. 

By 2011, crunk and hip-hop didn’t have the same hold on the charts as they used to. Listeners wanted a change and when Adele’s single “Rolling in the Deep” hit No. 1 in May, we held on tight and still are not letting go. 

Pop music today

At the risk of sounding old, I believe we are currently in a pop-music funk.

That doesn’t mean everything is bad. Beyoncé’s Renaissance Tour and Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour were 2023’s hottest concert tickets, with both artists breaking records. Beyoncé broke the record for highest tour numbers in one month and Swift’s tour was the first to hit $1 billion, beating Elton John’s previous record of $939.1 million.  

Both Beyoncé and Swift, though, gained popularity in the early 2000s, with Beyoncé releasing albums with Destiny’s Child since 1998. In fact, looking at 2023’s top tours, only two artists—Luke Combs and Morgan Wallen—have released debut albums within the past seven years. Compare that to 13 years ago, when Lady Gaga’s Monster’s Ball became the highest-grossing tour for a debut artist.

Pop radio does have potential, however. I haven’t heard a Dua Lipa song I don’t like, Olivia Rodrigo is helping us tap back into our teen angst and Megan Thee Stallion is the best rapper in the game.

 But a shakeup is still needed. Currently, the top six artists on the Billboard Hot 100 are white. Only three are artists of color, with Doja Cat holding No. 7 and No. 8 on the chart. A complete 180 from where pop radio was 20 years ago. 

Knowing music ebbs and flows, I don’t believe pop music’s golden era is gone forever. Digital media has given listeners the power of choice. TikTok sounds have launched years-old tracks to number one and Sophie Ellis-Bextor is seeing a new generation embrace “Murder on the Dancefloor,” thanks to its inclusion in the film, Saltburn. 

Right now, I think listeners are learning what they want out of pop music. They’re in discovery mode, allowing one track to stick at a time. It’s a refreshing way to engage music, as it has put more power into the artists and listeners, as opposed to labels. Artists culturally pushed aside are seeing a new fan base and once-panned bands are getting respect. 

We may no longer be in pop music’s prime but we are in the middle of an unpredictable moment in culture, and isn’t that kind of exciting? 

I live with chronic migraine, which affects how much work I can take on. On average, I lose one workweek a month to migraine attacks. Not a Fit for Our Publication is my way to raise funds to manage my disease while offering something in return. You can help me out by subscribing to Not a Fit for Our Publication, sharing the website, sharing a free blog post and gifting a subscription.