Top 10 Iconic Pop Culture Moments of Each Year (2000-2009)

Every year, red carpet fashion has some standout attire, but there are few that can compare to J.Lo and the green Versace dress she wore to the 2000 Grammy Awards. It’s interesting to note that the dress had been worn earlier by Ginger Spice to an awards show in France and the designer, Donatella Versace herself had worn it previously as well. But it didn’t make waves until J.Lo rocked it at the Grammys. And it wasn’t just waves; it was more like a tsunami of attention from the moment she arrived. In fact, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said that there were so many google searches for the dress at the time that it led to them to create Google Images.

The “Harry Potter” phenomenon started back in 1997 with the release of the first book, but it jumped to a whole other level of worldwide fandom with the release of the first film. In November of 2001, “Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone,” or “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” as it was released in the US, came to a theater near you - and it was the blockbuster of the year, initially grossing over $970 million worldwide. If somehow you had avoided book Potter-mania for the last 4 years, there was no way you were going to avoid it anymore. In the end, there were 8 films released over 10 years grossing over $7.5 billion dollars.

Do you remember who won “American Idol” last season? How about the season before that? Odds are, there are plenty of people who can’t and some that don’t even know that the show is back on the air. But back in 2002, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who didn’t know the name Kelly Clarkson or even the runner-up, Justin Guarini. The show was a true pop-culture event and, with few exceptions, the ratings kept going up for every episode, eventually hitting over 22 million viewers for the finale. The show made stars of the winners, some of the losers and even the judges. And it would continue to do so until around season 13 when the ratings started to drop precipitously.

It started off with Britney and Christina doing a “Like a Virgin” duet dressed in white wedding attire. Then out came Madonna to sing “Hollywood” followed by Missy Elliot joining the ladies on stage for some “Work It” beats. But honestly, we wouldn’t be surprised if even people in attendance don’t remember any of that. Because just before Missy ran out on stage, Madonna made out with Spears and then locked her lips with Aguilera’s - and that is all anyone was talking about during and after the show. Well, moreso the Madonna/Spears kiss, since the camera cut to Britney’s ex Justin Timberlake right after that, missing most of the Aguilera makeout sesh.

The incident in question took place during the Super Bowl XXXVIII (38) Halftime Show when Justin Timberlake tore off a part of Jackson’s dress, revealing her breast - with nipple shield - to the world. It might not sound like that big a deal today, but in 2004 it was a huge deal. Jawed Karim, who co-founded YouTube, has even said that the event led to the video-sharing site being created. Timberlake called the incident a “wardrobe malfunction” and emerged pretty much unharmed. Meanwhile, Jackson, who saw herself blacklisted by numerous radio stations, alleged that the malfunction was something JT had thought of beforehand in an effort to upstage what his ex Britney had done at the VMAs.

How many times have you literally jumped for joy? How many of those times did you do it multiple times on national television during an interview with Oprah Winfrey? Unless you’re Tom Cruise, the answer is probably zero. You’d have thought he had just won the award for Scientologist of the year, but instead he had fallen in love with Katie Holmes and he couldn’t hide his enthusiasm. Take that, Pacey and Dawson! The outburst became a meme before a meme was really a thing and was parodied by “Family Guy”, and more.

Today, Twitter is an ubiquitous part of our lives. Either you tweet, you read tweets or you have someone that tells you about tweets they read. It, along with Facebook, which launched a couple years prior, helped introduce the term “Social Media” into mainstream vocabulary. Even one of the best late-night bits of this generation involves Twitter: when Jimmy Kimmel has celebrities read mean tweets about themselves. But in 2006, it launched without an “e” in the name and people using 140 characters or less to announce things like what they had for lunch. From those humble beginnings, it would only be a few years until the “Twitter Revolution,”'' when the network would become a tool for protestors fighting tyranny around the world.

It began in 2005 as the highly secretive Project Purple 2 and on January 9th, 2007 Steve Jobs introduced it to the world as the iPhone. Sure, there were other smartphones at the time and even other touchscreen devices, but the beauty, the simplicity and the marketing of the iPhone made this one the one to have. And a lot of people had it, with the company reaching the sale of its 1 millionth device only 74 days after the iPhone first came out. Time magazine even called the device the Invention of the Year. Smartphones have changed our lives, and even Apple-haters have to admit that no smartphone has been more popular or more influential than the iPhone.

2008 was a big pop culture year at the movies. It was the year that saw the beginning of the “Twilight” saga and saw the first “Sex and the City” feature film hit the big screen. But 2008 will mostly be remembered, and rightly so, for the sad passing of Heath Ledger and his brilliant performance as the Joker in “The Dark Knight,” which was released after his death. Ledger passed away from an accidental overdose of medications just a few months after wrapping, but the performance he put on film is one that will be remembered forever. And it earned him loads of accolades, including a posthumous Best Supporting Actor Oscar.

He was a child music star, he has the best-selling album ever, he revolutionized the music video and he moonwalked his way to history. And even with the disturbing sexual misconduct allegations that plagued him for years, The King of Pop was one of the most loved stars of the century. His death in June of 2009 shocked the world and easily overshadowed anything else that happened in pop culture that year. Jackson’s memorial service was broadcast live and viewed by an estimated 1 billion people around the planet. Also, in 2011 his personal physician, Conrad Murray was convicted of involuntary manslaughter for Jackson’s death, but was only in prison for 2 out the 4 years he was sentenced to.