2001 in Music

The morning no one was listening A rapper releases his sixth album on September 11, the same morning two planes hit the World Trade Center. The record was moved up a week to combat bootlegging. It still debuts at number one with 427,000 copies sold, despite a country where retail has essentially shut down. The production is built almost entirely on chopped soul samples, four of them handled by a twenty-four-year-old producer from Chicago whose career launches from these sessions. The album's lead diss track ignites the most consequential rivalry in hip-hop since the mid-nineties.

Three days in Memphis for five thousand dollars A duo from Detroit, a man and a woman who claim to be siblings, records its third album at a Memphis studio in three days for five thousand dollars. No bass player. No overdubs beyond the occasional piano or slide guitar. The guitarist plays through a plastic department-store amplifier. The drummer can barely keep time. The record sounds like it was made in 1965 and accidentally shipped to 2001. A British music video director will later shoot a clip for one single using nothing but Lego stop-motion animation. The album sells a million copies and makes the pair the most talked-about rock band in the country.

The record the label didn't want A band from Chicago finishes its fourth album after a year of sessions that cost a member his place in the group and were captured by a documentary film crew. In June, the label informs the band the record has been rejected: not radio-friendly, no singles. The label gives back the master tapes for free. In September, the band streams the entire album on its website. Tens of thousands download it. Another subsidiary of the same parent company eventually signs the band and releases the album in April 2002 to universal acclaim. The parent corporation has now paid for the same record twice.

Thirty-five hundred samples from vinyl An Australian group spends years assembling its debut album from over 3,500 samples sourced entirely from secondhand records, feeding them through hardware samplers and a digital mixer in Melbourne. Every sound is borrowed: soul vocals, easy-listening strings, disco bass lines, library music, spoken-word clips. No original instrument is played. The record is released domestically in late 2000 but reaches international audiences throughout 2001, delayed by the sheer complexity of clearing sample rights. One single builds a collage from spoken-word psychiatric recordings, orchestral stabs, and turntable scratches into something that sounds like a fever dream directed by a DJ.

A classical pianist walks into a record label A twenty-year-old pianist from New York, classically trained and already dropped by one major label as a teenager, releases her debut on a newly founded imprint. The lead single is built on a descending minor-key piano figure she plays live, the production spare enough that her voice and the instrument feel like one thing. The album debuts at number one. At the Grammy ceremony the following February, she wins five awards in a single night, tying a record for most wins by a woman. The album eventually sells twelve million copies worldwide.

One thousand songs in your pocket On October 23, a technology company unveils a portable music player with a five-gigabyte hard drive and a mechanical scroll wheel. The device costs 399 dollars and only works with one operating system. Its slogan promises a thousand songs in your pocket. A FireWire cable can transfer an entire CD in under ten seconds. Initial sales are modest. The player will not become a mass-market phenomenon until the company launches a music store two years later and adds compatibility with the dominant operating system. But the premise is already clear: the album is no longer a physical object you carry. It is data.

Fibonacci in the time signature A band that has not released an album in five years, stalled by a legal dispute with its former label, delivers a seventy-nine-minute record whose title track encodes the Fibonacci sequence into its vocal syllable counts: one, one, two, three, five, eight, thirteen, then descending. The drums shift between 9/8, 8/8, and 7/8 in the chorus. Fans later discover an alternate track order that follows the same mathematical sequence and creates new thematic arcs across the album. The record debuts at number one with over 555,000 first-week copies.

Armenian scales on a major label A four-piece from Los Angeles, all of Armenian descent, releases its second album on September 4. The music braids Middle Eastern melodic scales into punk and metal structures, vocals alternating between operatic singing and rapid-fire political lyrics about drug policy, imperialism, and genocide. The lead single is pulled from radio a week later when its lyrics land on a broadcast conglomerate's list of 162 songs deemed lyrically questionable in the aftermath of the attacks. The album still reaches number one and eventually sells twelve million copies worldwide.

The argument that ended the conversation A band from Washington, D.C. that has spent thirteen years maintaining a five-dollar door policy, all-ages shows, and no merchandise markup releases its sixth album in October. For the first time, the arrangements incorporate piano, cello, and a second drum kit, expanding a sound that had been defined by two electric guitars and a rhythm section into something almost orchestral. The album becomes the group's most acclaimed work. Two years later, the band goes on indefinite hiatus. They never officially break up. They simply stop.

A plane in the Bahamas On August 25, a twenty-two-year-old singer boards a twin-engine plane in the Bahamas after filming a music video on the islands. The aircraft is overloaded by 700 pounds. It crashes shortly after takeoff. All nine people aboard are killed. Her self-titled album, released seven weeks earlier, surges from number nineteen to number one, becoming the first posthumous chart-topper since 1980. The album's production, a collaboration with the same team that shaped her sound since her teens, represents the furthest edge of experimental R&B on a major label.

A quiet man's loud departure On November 29, a guitarist who helped reshape popular music as one quarter of the most famous band in history dies of lung cancer at age fifty-eight. He is cremated within ten hours in a cardboard casket. His ashes are later scattered in two rivers in India. A re-release of his most famous solo single reaches number one in the UK two months later. A tribute concert at the Royal Albert Hall on the first anniversary of his death, organized by a fellow guitarist and the widowed spouse, becomes one of the decade's definitive memorial events.