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The Thing That Changed Pop Culture 20 Years Ago

Author Aimee Thomas
Britney Spears arrives at the 'blue carpet' launch of Pepsi's new TV commecial at the National Gallery on January 26, 2004 in London.

I’m getting ready to head to my 20-year reunion. 20 years! What? It made me think back to the year 2004 and the crazy pop culture things that happened. One of the crazy things from 2004 was nothing was “trending”. It wasn’t even a word that we used frequently. But that doesn’t mean that the world didn’t know if something nuts happened. We got our celeb info from TRL, Star, and People magazine.

Some people remember when Ashley Simpson got caught lip syncing on Saturday Night Live. Not only did she get the biggest laugh of the night it extended for a few months and people were still laughing.

If you know me you know my favorite show ever is “Friends” and they wrapped up the show in 2004. It was the most watched show of the 2000’s and when the last episode had 52 million viewers. Crazy yes, but not the craziest.

All throughout high school I remember my best friends and I walking to McDonalds (when we had metabolisms) and ordering nuggets and a super size french fry. Senior year we were unable to do that because the Super Size menu went bye bye. That was around the same time “Super Size Me”, the documentary came out. A man did an experiment and ate only McDonalds for a month to see what would happen to him. As you can imagine he gained weight and his energy dropped significantly.

On top of the documentary “Super Size Me,” and “Mean Girls”, there was a lot of great T.V. coming out as well. The show “Lost” premiered and hooked us all in for 6 seasons. Desperate Housewives also came out and continues to release new spin-offs still today.

But the thing that changed everything 20 years ago and would shake pop culture then and still does today… Ladies and gentlemen that is the year that Britney Spears married Kevin Federline. I don’t want to say that was the worst mistake of her life because they got two beautiful boys out of it but it actually changed pop culture and how the press and the paparazzi handle things still today. Aggressively. It was the hottest story and stayed in the headlines when they got divorced in 2007 and continued for the last 20 years.

Aimee Thomas is the morning show co-host of Aimee + Shawn on 102.7 VGS. She has been VGS since the birth of the station in 2022 and has been with Beasley Media Group for nine years doing mornings at various stations in the cluster. Before working in radio Aimee was a bartender at a local restaurant in Las Vegas when a local radio veteran thought she would be perfect in radio because of her crazy stories, knowledge of pop culture, and contagious laugh. Aimee loves writing about new recipes she creates in her kitchen, her favorite artists and actors, and being a mom of two boys.

See Google’s Top Trending Pop Culture Searches of 2021

Google has unveiled what we were searching for most this year, reflecting the biggest moments in pop culture for the last 12 months.

Yesterday (December 8), Google unveiled the top trending searches, which involved a variety of pop culture-related searched terms. After all, it was the year of Britney Spears being freed from her conservatorship, Bennifer 2.0, Adele’s 30 album release and the end of Kim and Kanye, to name a few.

The below list reflects the U.S. searches that had a high spike in traffic over a sustained period in 2021 as compared to 2020.

  • Dr. Dre

    2021 got off to a scary start for the music mogul after he suffered a brain aneurysm on January 4, a month before his 56th birthday. After more than a week, he was released from the hospital.

  • Kim Kardashian & Kanye West

    2021 was a rollercoaster for Kimye. While Kim filed for divorce in February after nearly seven years of marriage, the rapper has more recently made it clear that he wants his family back together…while his estranged wife has seemingly moved on.

  • Kim Kardashian & Pete Davidson

    Moved on with Pete Davidson, that is! While fans were keeping their eyes peeled for whichever guy the reality star was going to date next, her budding romance with the Saturday Night Live comic was not exactly on everyone’s 2021 bingo card.

  • Mare of Easttown

    https://youtu.be/bm7RmpzCeyk

    The HBO saga of a Pennsylvania detective investigating a murder while trying to keep her own life together gripped viewers. It became one of the year’s breakout TV hits and landed Kate Winslet an Emmy Award.

  • Zendaya & Tom Holland

    After years of trying to dodge romance rumors, the Spider-Man co-stars’ relationship was officially out of the bag when the two were photographed kissing in July.

  • 'Montero (Call Me By Your Name)'

    Lil Nas X made an undeniable splash when he dropped his first single of the year and its accompanying music video, which has amassed more than 400 million views. The track debuted at number one and was nominated for two Grammy Awards for Song and Record of the Year.

  • Jennifer Lopez & Alex Rodriguez

    2021 saw the end of J.Lo and A-Rod, who officially announced the end of their engagement in April after four years together.

  • Jennifer Lopez & Ben Affleck

    A month after announcing her split from Alex Rodriguez, Jennifer Lopez shocked fans once again when she vacationed with former flame Ben Affleck. Nearly two decades after they called off their engagement and broke up, Bennifer was back—and has been going strong ever since.

  • 'All Too Well'

    https://twitter.com/_heyautumn_/status/1466401970848088073?s=20

    When Taylor Swift released her re-recorded 2012 album, Red, she released a 10-minute long version of “All Too Well.” She also released a short film she directed for the song starring herself, Sadie Sink and Dylan O’Brien.

  • Jake Gyllenhaal & Taylor Swift

    With Swift’s release of “All Too Well,” fans were quick to resurface Taylor Swift and Jake Gyllenhaal’s past relationship. After all, the track—and its red scarf mentions—are rumored to be all about the rise and fall of their short-lived romance.

  • 'Easy on Me'

    Six years after she last released music, Adele showed fans she still got it when she returned with the ballad of 2021, “Easy on Me.” The new single was an immediate success and the music video has since been watched more than 190 million times.

  • Adele

    https://youtu.be/oKAkR4L7HNk

    After becoming a recluse in the years since her last album, Adele was the name on everyone’s Google search bars—after she emerged with a new album, concert specials and a sit-down with Oprah Winfrey.

  • Jennifer Aniston & David Schwimmer

    HBO’s Friends reunion in May had fans of the beloved sitcom thinking of Ross and Rachel in a brand new light when Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer revealed they had a crush on each other while filming the show. However, those feelings were left to their TV characters. “Honestly, I remember saying one time to David, ‘It’s going to be such a bummer if the first time you and I actually kiss is going to be on national television,'” Jennifer said. “And sure enough, the first time we kissed was in that coffee shop…We just channeled all of our adoration and love for each other into Ross and Rachel.”

  • Bridgerton

    Even though Bridgerton released on Netflix last December, fans continued to burn for the show into the new year. Factor in leading star Regé-Jean Page’s Saturday Night Live hosting debut, adding to those Google searches.

  • 'drivers license'

    18-year-old Olivia Rodrigo’s debut single had everyone revisiting their teenage heartbreak this year.

  • Olivia Rodrigo

    Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album, Sour, was a smash hit this year, debuting at number one. She’s since earned seven Grammy nominations, including ones for Best New Artist and Album of the Year.2

  • Squid Game

    The hit series has become Netflix’s most-watched show to date—and has viewers thinking of childhood games like “Red Light, Green Light” in a much different way.

  • Travis Scott

    Two months after Kylie Jenner revealed she and Travis are expecting their second child together, the rapper’s annual Astroworld Festival in November became the site of immense tragedy when ten concertgoers died and hundreds were injured.

  • Shailene Woodley

    In February, Aaron Rodgers took fans by complete surprise when he revealed he got engaged to Big Little Lies‘ Shailene Woodley.

  • Space Jam

    More than two decades after the original, Lebron James’ Space Jam: A New Legacy had fans thinking about the Space Jam universe all over again.

  • Eternals

    The star-packed Marvel movie was finally released in November, a year after it was originally scheduled to come out before the coronavirus pandemic.

  • Dog the Bounty Hunter

    https://twitter.com/alan_xbt/status/1451316047202566165?s=20

    Amid the search for Brian Laundrie, the man who returned home from a cross-country trip without fiancée Gabby Petito and later went missing, Dog the Bounty Hunter emerged to help track him down.

  • Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings

    The new addition to the Marvel Cinematic Universe, starring Simu Liu, was one of the highest-grossing movies of the year. If that wasn’t enough good news for fans, a sequel was also confirmed to be in the works.

  • Olivia Wilde

    Photos of the Don’t Worry Darling director and the movie’s leading man, Harry Styles, holding hands at a friend’s wedding in early January sent the internet in a tizzy. The two stars have been dating ever since.

  • Alec Baldwin

    While Alec Baldwin and wife Hilaria Baldwin started the year off on a happy note by welcoming their sixth child, their year took a dramatic turn south in October when Halyna Hutchins, the director of photography on his latest project, Rust, was fatally shot on set. He later said in an interview that he did not pull the trigger, but that the gun went off when he let go of the hammer during a marking rehearsal.

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Author Aimee Thomas
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