2000
What must be remembered about the year 2000 was how unsure and anxious everyone felt as we entered a new era.All the disaffection and apathy which had characterised the 90's began to turn into fear, as it became apparent that things were being transformed by innovations such as the internet in unprecedented ways, in particular the fact that music could now be obtained for free, a revelation that left the music industry terrifed. In addition to the rise of file-sharing came the rise of a new Right in politics and it's questionable morals, embodied by the person of George W Bush, a fundamentalist Christian who was controversially elected US President. A number of the key albums of this year embodied this millenialism, either in the form of the post-Millennium Bug sense of imminent catastrophe of seminal albums by Radiohead and Modest Mouse, the concern over the impact of this new technological revolution upon us of Grandaddy's The Sophtware Slump, or the willingness to embrace the future seen in Primal Scream's XTRMTR and OutKast's Stankonia, both of which seemed to revel in the production advances of the new era.