Britney, Taylor and Beyoncé defined the 2000s. How they changed pop culture forever

Growing up successful a tiny municipality successful New Hampshire, Nora Princiotti lived 2 hours distant from the nearest mall, truthful the Scholastic Book Fair was her lifeline to popular civilization purchases.

In autumn 2003, the then-9-year-old made a beeline to the just and bought gum, glitter gel pens and “Metamorphosis,” the 2nd workplace medium from “Lizzie McGuire” prima Hilary Duff.

At that time, Duff was “the azygous astir important idiosyncratic successful the satellite to maine extracurricular my contiguous family,” Princiotti writes successful “Hit Girls: Britney, Taylor, Beyoncé, and the Women Who Built Pop’s Shiniest Decade.” “This is the archetypal time of the remainder of my life.”

This proclamation is nary exaggeration. Duff’s CD was Princiotti’s gateway to the vibrant popular euphony beingness of the 2000s — an epoch that “Hit Girls” thoroughly examines done the lens of immoderate of the decade’s euphony icons.

The chronological publication opens with Britney Spears reigniting manufacture involvement successful mainstream popular aft the roaring occurrence of her snappy debut single, 1998’s “…Baby One More Time.” Princiotti subsequently devotes chapters to Rihanna’s world-shifting creation euphony and savvy usage of technology; the scrappy (and occasionally bumpy) pop-punk odyssey of Avril Lavigne; and the analyzable narration betwixt indie stone and pop, exemplified by “American Idol” sweetheart Kelly Clarkson.

She besides reexamines with a overmuch kinder oculus the euphony of Ashlee Simpson, whose vocation cratered aft she was caught lip-syncing connected “Saturday Night Live,” and then-tabloid fixtures Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton.

(Ballantine Books)

Princiotti, a unit writer astatine the Ringer who covers popular euphony and the NFL and co-hosts the podcast “Every Single Album,” says she was definite which artists needed to beryllium included successful “Hit Girls.”

“I had the thought a small spot earlier the Y2K resurgence that we’ve experienced implicit the past fewer years,” she says. “But it was trickling into the ecosystem. And I had this precise wide thought that determination are each these disparate segments of the popular prima satellite and the mentation of that satellite that existed successful the 2000s. … Even though that euphony is different, it each acceptable unneurotic to maine truly obviously, due to the fact that I was the fan.”

Princiotti augments her rigorous probe with colorful memories from this era, including chatting connected AIM (her grip was mangorainbow99), digging up Taylor Swift rarities connected YouTube and proceeding Lady Gaga’s “Just Dance” astatine a precocious schoolhouse dance.

Finding a cohesive communicative of the 2000s was much challenging. “The question that I had to reply [in the book] was, ‘Other than the assemblage — and different than having this feeling wrong maine that a publication that covered the emergence of Britney Spears besides needed to screen ‘Rumors’ by Lindsay Lohan and besides needed to screen Ashlee Simpson, due to the fact that that’s however I lived it — what really ties these artists together?’”

That uniting thread is Spears. The publication deftly traces the parallels betwixt the improvement of Spears’ vocation and however the decennary itself unfolded — from the mode her euphony broadened beyond teen popular (e.g. the electro-disco “Toxic”) to the antagonistic interaction the aggravated tabloid scrutiny had connected her intelligence health.

“She is the creator of the 2000s,” Princiotti says. “If you deliberation of the aughts arsenic a whole, it starts with Britney, [and] she manages to support it going. There’s truthful galore things that I deliberation conscionable travel backmost to that 1 woman.”

Princiotti besides concludes that the pistillate popular stars of the 2000s helped legitimize popular music.

“There’s thing astir what each of these women — due to the fact that it is women successful the publication — did to spot distant astatine the thought that popular is disposable and unserious music, that someway got america to this spot wherever it is much often recognized arsenic a superior creation form, thing that moves civilization [and] is worthy of real, heavy criticism,” she says.

“You’re seeing each time wherever determination are thesis-driven projects astir Taylor Swift and the euphony of Taylor Swift, and [people asking,] ‘What does she mean to society?’ and ‘What does she mean to culture? The happening that struck maine was, ‘Oh, we didn’t person that. It wasn’t similar that — and present it is.’”

“I came distant with an appreciation of conscionable however aboriginal successful her vocation she laid the blueprint of however she would make her instrumentality base,” Nora Princiotti says of Taylor Swift.

(Ballantine Books)

Given the book’s constrictive clip framework — “Hit Girls” starts conscionable earlier Y2K and ends successful the aboriginal 2010s — the publication besides takes a antithetic rotation connected the careers of Swift and chap superstar Beyoncé.

The second was recently emerging arsenic a solo creator with 2003’s “Dangerously successful Love” aft breaking done with Destiny’s Child. Princiotti argues that Beyoncé’s occurrence connected the popular charts opened doors for hip-hop and R&B artists, which had a seismic interaction connected civilization arsenic a whole.

Although these genres had started making monolithic inroads into the popular charts and mainstream euphony starting successful the precocious 1990s, Princiotti observed successful her probe that mag and tabloid covers inactive mostly prioritized achromatic artists.

“While determination was a wide narration betwixt the involvement successful an creator similar Britney Spears’s beingness and the involvement successful her music, that feedback loop did not beryllium for a batch of Black artists,” she writes. “Which meant that hip-hop could predominate fashionable euphony portion being unopen retired of the elite personage spaces that beforehand existent popular stardom.”

Swift, meanwhile, was an earnest country-pop wunderkind gathering her instrumentality basal 1 MySpace remark astatine a clip — and adjacent past happened to beryllium a genius astatine knowing the science of fandom and the online habits of her followers.

“I came distant with an appreciation of conscionable however aboriginal successful her vocation she laid the blueprint of however she would make her instrumentality base,” Princiotti says. “When it’s each said and done, we volition look backmost astatine her creator legacy, yes, arsenic the songwriter of a generation, yes, arsenic the writer laureate of young women.”

“But I bash deliberation that the bequest of Taylor Swift is going to commencement with the communities of radical that she brought unneurotic wrong her instrumentality basal — and however almighty and sometimes scary and however mobilized that instrumentality assemblage has become, and however she built it to beryllium that way.”

As with Swift, galore of the artists successful “Hit Girls” stay fashionable today. Lavigne and Beyoncé are presently connected large tours; Clarkson has recovered occurrence with her daytime speech show; Rihanna is simply a billionaire concern mogul acknowledgment to her brands Fenty Beauty and Savage X Fenty. And Duff, who present has 4 kids, starred successful the TV amusement “Younger” and, astir recently, the short-lived “How I Met Your Father.”

Near the extremity of “Hit Girls,” Princiotti explores the ongoing power of these artists and this decennary — from the existent harvest of young popular stars led by Olivia Rodrigo and nostalgia festivals similar When We Were Young to manner trends specified arsenic acheronian denim, “going-out” tops and butterfly hairsbreadth clips.

Princiotti herself maintains a emotion of popular stars and offers coagulated theories astir wherefore this circumstantial epoch remains specified a fascination: a heady premix of nostalgia, 2nd chances and perspective.

“For radical similar maine who lived done astatine slightest immoderate of it, it’s the quality to spell backmost a small spot older and wiser,” she says. “We tin instrumentality the champion of it and past reexamine the worst of it with much unfastened eyes. And there’s thing to maine that’s precise satisfying astir that.”