Bestselling albums and singles from the summer of 1999 and 2000.
As we get ready for another new year, Emma Gleason turns back the clock to see what was dominating Aotearoa’s airwaves at the turn of the Millennium.
Cast your mind back to the halcyon summer days of 1999. The world was worrying about the Y2K Bug – Aotearoa even had its own “Y2K readiness commissioner” and $2.5 million campaign - and New Zealand was one of the first countries to greet the new Millennium when the clock ticked over to the year 2000 on January 1. Thousands welcomed the New Year at The Gathering music festival in Tākaka.
The nation was moving forward too. On December 1 the drinking age dropped to 18, supermarkets were allowed to sell beer and liquor shops could operate on Sundays. On December 10, the late Georgina Beyer was sworn in as the world’s first transgender MP. After racing through February, by March Team New Zealand had won themselves the America’s Cup.
The Feelers had won the album of the year at the 1999 New Zealand Music Awards, Che Fu the single, Ardijah’s Betty-Anne Monga was awarded best female vocalist, and Bic Runga earned the International Achievement award.
The Herald’s Russell Baillie and Graham Reid wrapped up their favourite albums of 1999, granting the top spot to Shihad – who plan to split in 2025 – for The General Electric. Their list featured big names Groove Armada, TLC, Macy Gray, Moby (Play would be 2000’s NZ-best seller), Pavement; local acts like Salmonella Dub, The Stereo Bus and Stellar*.
Popular music was at its most powerful, dominated by the robust retail of physical music and minimal competition for consumer attention. Kiwis listened to the radio.
ZM broadcaster Grant Kereama was on air back then.
“It did seem like a really optimistic time,” he says.
Kiwis felt positive about the Government and new Prime Minister Helen Clark. “It was a really big time for women in music,” and listener appetites were shifting to “female-friendly” genres. “It was a great time, I loved it,” Kereama says. “Radio was king.”
We tuned in at home and in the car. We watched the music countdowns on the family television, went to gigs and bought CDs. It couldn’t be more different to now, with streaming, algorithms and hyper-personalised Spotify Wrapped.
Twenty-five years on, a look back at the turn of the Millennium’s music is telling – or at the very least a nostalgic trip down memory lane.
What was soundtracking that summer? It started with Lauryn Hill and Bob Marley at the top of the singles chart with Turn Your Lights Down Low, and by the end of February Beth Hart’s LA Song (Out Of This Town) was at number one.
She played at the Big Day Out in Auckland in January 21, 2000, which saw some of the world’s biggest acts grace Ericsson Stadium (now Mount Smart). Blink 182 and Red Hot Chili Peppers played; so did the Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, The Chemical Brothers and Basement Jaxx.
The Kiwi contingent included Shihad, Salmonella Dub, Fur Patrol, Goodshirt and The D4, and Australians Killing Heidi.
It’s a line-up that is hard to believe now, but was business as usual for the festival during its heyday.
Also hard to believe now, we used to queue for tickets.
Kiwis had cult favourites, but a look at the music charts captures what was resonating with the masses on a national scale.
Shania Twain’s Come On Over dominated the summer album charts through to the new year with its blend of country and pop, going on to be the best-selling album in New Zealand in 1999.
It held on to the top spot until the middle of January when it was usurped by Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Californication – though not for long. A week later Macy Gray hit number one with her debut album On How Life Is. It would stay there until the end of February (when the Chili Peppers rose to the top once more) and the single I Try became the top single in New Zealand.
Over December 1999, and January and February 2000, Aotearoa’s top 10 albums were largely reflective of international acts achieving similar success globally.
Pop was a hit-producing machine and debut albums from young, marketably attractive, vocally blessed artists smashed onto the charts.
S Club, the first album from UK pop group S Club 7 was in the top 10 all summer, with the aggressively catchy hit S Club Party the number one single in New Zealand for three weeks – topping the charts from December 26 through January.
Fellow Brits Five were in the top 10 with their single Keep On Movin'.
Artists from Latin America were also making a splash. Puerto Rican pop star Ricky Martin released his first English language album in May. The self-titled release - the second-best-selling album in New Zealand that year - broke records, featured hits like effervescent Livin' la Vida Loca, and by December it was firmly entrenched in the charts, bringing South American heat to the southern hemisphere summer.
Enrique by Enrique Iglesias was also in the top 10. Bailamos was the second best-selling single of the year, while Rhythm Divine peaked at number two in our Top 40 Singles chart and stayed in the top 10 until the end of February.
Carlos Santana’s “career-reviving album” Supernatural hit the charts here too, with the Herald’s Russell Baillie heaping praise on the album, calling him the “comeback king of 1999”.
Jennifer Lopez’s Waiting For Tonight enjoyed weeks in our top 10, following the success of her debut single If You Had My Love earlier that year.
Lou Bega (and Angela, Pamela, Sandra and Rita) scored New Zealand’s highest-selling single of 1999 with Mambo Number Five.
Latin flavour also helped UK duo Shaft’s song Mucho Mambo (Sway), with its vivacious trumpets and dance beat. It hit number one in New Zealand at the start of summer.
Groups from the other side of the world were also enjoying favour in Aotearoa during that heady summer. Ireland’s musical export success occurred amid the Celtic Tiger period of economic buoyance.
Westlife’s self-titled debut was in our top 10 from January 14 until the end of summer, and their boy band harmonising and emotive singles like Flying Without Wings and If I Let You Go proved to be stirring stuff. With their matching outfits and gelled hair, they were like the Backstreet Boys with more sorrow.
Not to be outdone by a new generation of talent, the ever-so-slightly more senior Boyzone - the groups were established in 1998 and 1993 respectively - released their (first) greatest hits album By Request, which also included another hit from 1999, Ronan Keating’s Notting Hill-famous When You Say Nothing at All.
The Irish Tenors made it onto New Zealand top 10 that summer too, with their self-titled album charting over Christmas and New Year.
It may have been the festive mood of December, but classical artists proved they could compete with the pop stars; Andrea Bocelli’s Sacred Arias and Celine Dion’s All The Way … A Decade of Song were both in the top 10.
Lauded local soprano Kiri Te Kanawa’s album Maori Songs would stay on the list for weeks, peaking at number four.
Other New Zealand artists made a dent in the domestic charts too. Dave Dobbyn’s Overnight Success: The Definitive Dave Dobbyn was smartly released ahead of Christmas (great for dads up and down the country).
Mix by Stellar*, released in July 1999, was back in the top 10 by mid-January, and would go on to sweep the Aotearoa Music Awards in March of 2000.
Hitmakers from across the ditch, Savage Garden, a duo who topped the American charts twice before breaking up, had their second (and final) album out in time for the last summer of the 20th century. Affirmation was in the New Zealand top 10, and if it felt like their hit single I Knew I Loved You was playing every time you turned on the radio or went into the supermarket, it’s probably because it was.
Emotional ballads worked for pop’s bad boys too. With songs like She’s The One in the top 10 all summer, Robbie William’s The Ego has Landed album showed a new side to the Take That star. It also featured the aptly titled (though originally released in 1998) single Millennium.
Will Smith had a more timely nod to the end of an era, with Will 2K from Willennium charting in New Zealand’s top 10 singles. Cliff Richard released The Millennium Prayer which was number two by Boxing Day 1999.
A distinct tenor of masculinity was also thrusting its way into the charts, with the sun-baked, anti-establishment Americana of Korn (Issues), Limp Bizkit (Significant Other) and Rage Against The Machine (The Battle of Los Angeles) in the top 10 albums, and the Californian fatalism of Red Hot Chili Peppers’s single Otherside hitting a nerve.
Enema of the State was lodged in New Zealand’s top 10 albums, and Blink 182 poked fun at the whole pop industry with their video for All The Small Things. Parodying boy bands and fame, it appeared alongside the very material it was satirising in the televised music countdowns of the era (appointment viewing).
Sex was everywhere; the charts were steeped in it. The carnal lyrics of Bloodhound Gang’s The Bad Touch were explicit enough that you can imagine there was some fumbling for the volume nob on a family car trip.
Ricky Martin encouraged listeners to Shake Your Bon-Bon while the Vengaboys suggested you Kiss (When The Sun Don’t Shine). Their record, unambiguously named The Party Album, stuck around the New Zealand top 10 until the end of the decade. Its camp, catchy songs have gone on to become party classics, and have come to define the cartoonish extremes of the era.
Who could forget the animated aliens of Eiffel 65 and the earworm Blue (Da Ba Dee). It was weird and kind of amazing, and the single hovered in the local charts all summer.
The futurism of the era was decidedly optimistic – especially compared to the tech-dystopian vibes of 2024.
It was the dawn of a new century and the future felt bright, and it showed in what Kiwis were listening to. Ann Lee’s hit single 2 Times was kooky and cheerful (with era-requisite gerberas in the music video) and by January had reached number two. M2M’s Don’t Say You Love Me had a sweet naivete with its high-octave vocals.
Women were in, or at least, finding commercial success for their skill. TLC and Mariah Carey were both in the top 10 over the course of summer, courtesy of Dear Lie and Heartbreaker respectively. So were Kiwi duo Deep Obsession with One & Only, which had reached number one in New Zealand by the end of November.
There’s arguably nothing more definitive of late 1990s culture than the wave of adolescent girls who were turned into pop stars. Marketed with a conflicting mix of innocence and sexuality, they were served up to the market at the end of the decade to worldwide fame.
The next decade would prove challenging for many, in ways that have been much documented, but the summer of 1999 felt untarnished; the image was still intact.
1999 saw the debut of teenage Britney Spears with her first album ...Baby One More Time released that year. Crazy (You Drive Me) was still in New Zealand’s top 10 at the start of December, and as summer progressed would be usurped by her peers.
Christina Aguilera’s What A Girl Wants hit number one in February, and by the end of the month Mandy Moore – in her brief blonde era – had cracked our top 10 with Candy, so very 2000s with its VW Beetle and a Discman.
At the same time another girl had entered the New Zealand psyche. Who was the enigmatic Glorafilia and why did Zed write a whole song about her?
It was the perfect holiday tune, a dreamy fantasy about sun and tying ribbons in her hair (dreadlocks, because it was 2000). And it turned out that she was a fantasy too. “Glorafilia is fictitious,” the band told The Spinoff’s Alex Casey in 2019.
Emma Gleason is the Herald’s lifestyle and entertainment deputy editor. Based in Auckland, she covers culture, fashion and media.
The Hollywood star is 70 but has no plans to retire from acting.