I was first introduced to Skid Row in either the spring or summer of 2007. I was listening to XM’s 80’s on 8 and “18 And Life” came on, and I remember thinking to myself, “Why haven’t I heard this before? This is awesome!” When I started getting into hard rock and heavy metal, I checked out more of their material from their first two albums, such as “
PrinceMonkey Business”, “Slave To The Grind”, and “Youth Gone Wild”. Their singer, Sebastian Bach, is a very… bizarre guy.
But he was very talented and had a great voice. When the rest of the band fired him for his ego in 1996, they replaced him with their current singer, Johnny Sollinger, and, in my opinion, they have been sucking since. As much as I loved their 1989 self-titled debut and the follow-up, 1991’s
Slave To The Grind, my favorite song from them is actually from their third and final album with Sebastian, 1995’s
Subhuman Race. I was unsure whether or not to check that album out because I heard about their change of sound on there, but a friend of mine recommended it to me in late 2010, and was completely BLOWN AWAY by this ballad. Incredibly underrated song and one of the best ballads ever.
Fifteen years ago, she would’ve, without a doubt, been #1. I used to love this girl SO f*ckinG MUCH omg. I know I’ve told this story I’m about to tell you guys countless times over the years on here, but you know what? I don’t care. This is MY countdown and I will repeat AS MANY STORIES AS I WANT. GOD.
Anyway, I was first introduced to Britney Spears in January 1999 when I was six years old. I had the day off from school because it was Martin Luther King day, and since Nickelodeon was airing Nick Jr. at the time and wasn’t going to air regular Nick programming until like 2:00, I spent most of the early part of my day watching VH1 and MTV. Both channels kept airing THAT DAMN LENNY KRAVITZ VIDEO FOR “FLY AWAY” and I wanted to get away from it SO BADLY!! I HATED that song omg. I still do! I was so afraid whenever it would come on because I knew I’d have a bitchfit. At one point, VH1 cut to a commercial, so I checked to see what MTV were playing. It was the last minute of “Baby One More Time” – the scene where she’s at the gymnasium. I’ve never heard the song before in my life, but just a few seconds into it and I was singing along! Unfortunately, I didn’t get to see the credits so I had no clue who the artist was or what the song was called (although I was pretty positive that it WAS called “Hit Me Baby One More Time”), all I knew was that I LOVED this song and NEEDED to know who it was. A few days later, I found out through Mike that it was Britney and that is when my love affair with her began. Oh, and guess what video MTV decided to play right after Britney’s? “FLY AWAY”!!! UGH!!!!!
For the next one year and eight months it was Britneymania in the world of JessieLou – I had posters, dolls, albums, a backstage pass book, even a Britney Spears TEDDY BEAR! Whenever I was in my room and my parents were watching TV, if something Britney-related was on they’d call me in there.
I remember recording on my VCR the MTV
Making The Video premiere of “Oops!... I Did It Again” – I wanted to watch it live but it was at 10PM and I had to go to bed for school.
I watched it the next morning and I LOVED IT and that’s all my friends and I talked about that day.
During the summer of 2000 though, I still loved her, but I did notice that something was changing about her – her image seemed very different, but I was 7 and couldn’t put my finger on what it was.
Then when she performed “Oops!” at the VMA’s and did that striptease, I wanted nothing to do with her and Britneymania came to an abrupt end.
I started liking her again, I believe around the time “I’m Not A Girl, Not Yet A Woman” was out, but definitely not to the degree that I did, and she got on my shitlist yet again after the video for “Everytime” came out. Oddly enough, the problem I had with Britney back in 2004 was the same problem I have with Lady Gaga right now – I felt like she was going out of her way to get naked. “Everytime” was her second nude video in a row. I thought that was a little ridiculous and I’m not gonna lie I still do (although Gaga is far, faaaaar worse.
). I started liking her again once and for all in late 2006, for nostalgic reasons. During that time I was listening to her old stuff again and remembering how much I loved her. I really want to love her again the way I did back in the day, but with songs like “It Should Be Easy”, “(Drop Dead) Beautiful”, and “Chillin’ With You”, she makes it very, very difficult. It would be dumb of me to expect her to be that 16-year-old in the schoolgirl outfit forever, but I believe if she kept making music in the same vein as, say, her 2008 album
Circus, she would’ve placed much higher on this list. But enough of the negativity, let’s remember the good ‘ol days when Britney Spears was the queen of music!
Tagging the world’s biggest
American Idol fan, @wife, for his reaction to this.
I was an avid
American Idol watcher from the very beginning up until 2006 when the show jumped the shark after Ryan Seacrest said, “And the winner is… Taylor Hicks!” I watched it for the contestants and the music – the rest of my family watched it for the bad auditions and Simon Cowell.
I remember seeing Kelly’s audition and really liking her, but what made me LOVE her was hearing her performance of Aretha Franklin’s “Respect”. That was actually pretty early on in the season, but after that performance I was dead set on wanting her to win. Every single week I looked forward to hearing her sing. Back then, you could only vote through your cell phone and I believe it cost money. I didn’t have a cell phone back then because I was 9 and in my day 9-year-olds didn’t have cell phones, so I was begging my Dad the night before the season finale to vote for Kelly on his phone, and he wouldn’t because of the charges. He was being a total diva.
But she ended up winning and I was soooo happy!!
I can proudly say that I have been following her from the very beginning up to now – I remember when “Miss Independent” first came on on AOL First Listen and I couldn’t stop listening to it! I remember slacking off on doing my homework in seventh grade because “Since U Been Gone” leaked. I remember insulting the crap out of that stupid jerk Clive Davis because of all the things he was saying about
My December. I remember one morning in early 2009, the first thing I did was go on MySpace to see if “My Life Would Suck Without You” came out. And I remember seeing her live on her
Stronger tour in February 2012. I own all five of her studio albums, plus
Wrapped In Red, and I was one of the, like two people who actually liked
From Justin To Kelly.
To me, she’s the perfect pop star – I love all her albums, I can’t remember ever hearing a song of hers that I didn’t like, she has natural beauty and isn’t getting surgery like a madman, and she’s extremely down to earth – the attitude she has now in 2014 to me is no different from the attitude she had in 2002. Ariana Grande – TAKE SOME NOTES.
Kelly has so many great songs, but my favorite song from her is actually one of her most recent ones, from 2012:
Pretty sure @xfer is going to pull my weave out once he sees this.
None of you guys were around for Britneymania because I didn’t join this board until 2004, and even though I still love Kelly, you guys weren’t around in the very beginning when I was rooting for her on
Idol because, again, I didn’t join this board until 2004.
However, a lot of you guys were there when I first started getting into Tori Amos, so let’s take a trip to memory lane, shall we?
I was first introduced to Tori back in late 2002 because her song, “A Sorta Fairytale”, spent a few weeks on VH1’s Top 20 Countdown. I HATED it – not because of the song, but because the video crept me out. Dude, her HEAD was on a SKATEBOARD!! WTF?? Fast forward to two years later in 2004, around the time that I was becoming more interested in 90’s alternative and singer/songwriters due to the success of Alanis Morissette’s “Eight Easy Steps” on my chart, @xfer posted a Tori Amos song called “Tombigbee” in Play It Or Trash It. I really liked it – to the point where it got all the way to #2 on my chart, and was one of the “eight easy songs” to be blocked by “Eight Easy Steps” from #1! Torimania, however, didn’t REALLY begin until the very beginning of 2005, when the lead single from her then-upcoming album
The Beekeeper, “Sleeps With Butterflies”, was released. I was SO IN LOVE WITH THAT SONG omg. Then after “The Incident” from January 2005, when my parents grounded me from M4B and contacting any M4B members, they only allowed me on the computer for one hour a day. During this time, I spent that one hour watching Tori music videos. You couldn’t be around me in 2005 without hearing me mention Tori at least, like 50 times.
I own all of Tori’s studio albums up until 2007’s
American Doll Posse. I still love her older material (especially the 1992-1998 stuff), but I unfortunately have not LOVED a Tori song since “Bouncing Off Clouds” and “Teenage Hustling” from 2007. Her latest album is actually not bad at all, but it’s just very unmemorable to me. Shit, I haven’t listened to
The Beekeeper in years, and I STILL remember what all those songs sound like! Now I kinda wanna listen to it again.
Tori has a lot of great songs – “Spark”, “Caught A Lite Sneeze”, “Jackie’s Strength” (especially the dance mix), but my favorite from the very beginning was, and still is, this:
I was a BIG *NSYNC fan growing up. I always preferred the Backstreet Boys, but I loved both sooo much. All their hits totally take me back to the late 90's-early 2000’s, which was the most AWESOME time for music! I mean, just last Saturday, “Bye Bye Bye” came on XM, and I was totally willing to do the dance from the music video if I wasn’t sitting in a car at the time.
Aside from that song, some of my other favorites from them include “It’s Gonna Be Me” (another iconic video right there), “This I Promise You” (one of their most underrated), and “I Want You Back”. However, my favorite from them is still the very first song from them I heard:
COMING UP: