If you're of a certain age, you might be able to remember a time before the coronavirus, where people would go out to places called nightclubs and dance in tight spaces in even tighter clothing. And if you're of a certain age, you might remember doing it at the turn of the last decade, when electronic dance music or EDM collided into pop music to energise a new generation of club goers.
And in the middle of this mix of auto tuned vocals, swirling synths and syncopated beats were the Black Eyed Peas. The band had always been a chameleon of sorts, jumping between rap, soul, funk and dance music. But with their latest release, which producer and rapper Will.I.Am dubbed electric static funk, they wanted to push their cross genre musical style into the next milennium, and leave every body else on the charts behind in 2000 and late.
They became the first group in 19 years to score three Billboard Hot 100 chart-toppers from one album and would define the mainstream dance music, laying the ground work for other artists to continue on with the iconic late 2000s EDM sound The E.N.D. was nominated for six Grammy Awards in 2010 and won the award for Best Pop Vocal Album, and also sold around 11 million copies worldwide.
Which is why it's no wonder that the Jonas Brothers' fourth studio album Lines, Vines and Trying Times, released just under two weeks later, is hardly remembered at all. It also went to Number 1 on the Billboard 200 and inexplicably has sold over one million copies world wide.
How well have the club beats and teeny bopper ballads of 2009 aged? Why do Pedro and I insist on torturing ourselves with albums like this? I guess we're gonna find out. Welcome to When Albums Collide.