“Hey, guess where YOU’RE gonna be in 10 years, Lindsay!”
Looking back at what was dominating the pop culture headlines in 2004, the immediate reaction is “wow, that person/band/movie was around 10 years ago?” The changes in entertainment over the past decade have been subtle.
The year’s biggest scandal — Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” as she and Justin Timberlake sang “Rock Your Body” at the Super Bowl — was a few months behind us at the time the first Metro hit the streets in New York.
The angular sounds of Franz Ferdinand and The Killers were dominating rock radio with the singles from their debuts, the former coming out in February of that year, and the latter in June. And Modest Mouse achieved crossover success with their “Float On” single. Lupe Fiasco would later sample the song in 2010. OutKast dominated hip-hop in 2004 with their double-album “Speakerboxx/The Love Below,” which had come out in September of 2003.
Beyonce was still releasing singles from 2003’s “Dangerously in Love,” and her husband-to-be, Jay Z had held a “retirement party” concert in November of 2003. But he came out of retirement to collaborate with Linkin Park in 2004 to create mashups with each other’s music. Speaking of mashups, the art form was just beginning to gain some serious momentum in 2004 as Danger Mouse released his mashup of The Beatles’ “White Album” and Jay Z’s “The Black Album,” and called it “The Grey Album.”
In television, “Arrested Development” had just wrapped its second season and Michael Cera had not yet branched out into a film career. “Friends” finished its 10-year run on May 6, 2004 and star Jennifer Aniston was still married to Brad Pitt. The couple would announce their separation at the dawn of 2005.
Although many things that were held in high regard at this time in 2004 still are, one person who isn’t quite in the same position is Lindsay Lohan. Ten years ago today, Lindsay Lohan was 17 and her first breakthrough movie that was not geared specifically towards kids, “Mean Girls,” was the No. 1 film at the box office in its opening weekend. Lohan was a promising comic talent, being given the seal of approval by the film’s writer Tina Fey, who in 2004 was just readying her post-“Saturday Night Live” agenda. (Meanwhile Jimmy Fallon began his post-”SNL” odyssey in 2004.) “Mean Girls” also starred other talents who have actually made good on their promising talents, such as Lizzy Caplan, Rachel McAdams and Amanda Seyfried. Another noteworthy event in cinema was the release of “Shaun of the Dead,” the breakthrough comedy from Nick Frost, Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright came out in April of 2004.
In other gossip of note, 10 years ago Britney Spears was married for 55 hours to a childhood friend named Jason Alexander. She would become engaged to Kevin Federline in July of 2004. K-fed, we hardly knew ye.
