The Good & The Ugly: 2002

Welcome back to another installment of The Good & The Ugly. Last time, I talked about the fantastic rap and R&B music from the year and the dying breaths of generic rock and pop stylings. In 2002, it was even hard to write about but not because a lot of the music on the charts were predominantly bad. On the contrary, pop music was great this year, hip-hop continuing to dominate the best of the pop charts and some of the rock music was actually interesting. No, we’ll eventually get to a year in pop music limited in compelling songs. The problem lies in how sluggish and boring the bad stuff was. The worst kind of pop music is the fluff with no redeeming qualities. It simply exists. I’ll get to the bad stuff momentarily. First, however, are some honorable mentions: Nickelback- “How You Remind Me”, Ja Rule- “Always On Time”, Usher- “U Got It Bad”, Fat Joe- “What’s Luv”, Mario- “Just a Friend 2002”, and Ludacris- “Move Bitch”/”Rollout”. The song I wanted to dive into first was a song that barely made the cut in a really solid year.

Best: Avril Lavigne- “Complicated”: Initially, I had Ja Rule and Ashanti’s “Always On Time” in this slot. I was…