Review Summary: Welcome to this place, I'll show you everything
The first five installments had seen the United States iteration of the NOW series go from spinoff to full blown juggernaut - selling millions of copies, and reaching the top of the extremely competitive turn of the millennium Billboard album charts. With an abundance of TRL sponsored boy-bands and teen pop superstars, the NOW series was only getting more popular. Case in point,
NOW 5 (which would end up being the most commercially successful edition in the series) was already certified 4x platinum by the time
NOW 6 was hitting store shelves in April 2001. NOW was no longer just a novelty - it was a legitimate way to find new music and keep up with the newest singles from your favorite artists.
Even though it ended up selling less copies than
NOW 5,
NOW 6 actually holds up leagues better than its predecessor. There are some absolutely timeless early 2000s tracks on here that still have legs nearly twenty five years later, and it’s not limited to just one genre. Pop is well represented with *NSYNC’s immortal “Bye Bye Bye,” a door-slammin’ Britney Spears song in “Stronger,” and the endlessly memeable “It Wasn’t Me.” Kids, it may surprise you that Beyonce was still fronting bangers all the way back then, and here she is on
NOW 6, calling out Lucy Liu with Destiny’s Child’s “Independent Women, Pt. 1,” which goes toe to toe consecutively after Jennifer Lopez’s “Love Don’t Cost a Thing.” Maybe most importantly, the Backstreet Boys continue their Cal Ripken Jr like streak of appearing on every. single. one. of these early NOW albums with “Shape of My Heart” (that’s six volumes, and six Backstreet Boys songs for those keeping score at home).
There are really only a couple of songs that are truly dated here: the inclusion of a R. Kelly song (don’t worry, it’s a compilation, you can skip it), and the hilariously auto-tuned over the top “Crazy” from K-Ci & Jojo. The latter isn’t bad, but boy it is a lot to take in. Even the hypnotic dinging of ATC’s “Around the World (La La La La La)” still honestly bangs, that’s how on point this compilation remains all these years later. These early NOW albums tracked pretty well, so before you know it, you’re firmly in rock territory, which spans from Dawson’s Creek (Evan and Jaron’s boppy “Crazy For This Girl”) all the way to post-grunge. Yes, Creed’s immortal “With Arms Wide Open” is here, right after Fuel’s biggest hit “Hemorrhage.” Coldplay’s (overplayed, generic) first hit “Yellow” makes an appearance, along with Incubus’ “Drive,” one of U2’s better post 2000 songs in “Beautiful Day,” and, presumably, another Everclear song about hating your Dad; just kidding, it’s the Smash Mouth-y “AM Radio” and it’s fine, I guess.
NOW 6 was released halfway between the drama of the 2000 US Elections and, well,
that, and a quick search reveals that exactly nothing important was going on during the Spring of 2001 besides frantic sell offs of Y2K rations and bunker supplies. As a result, the music on this compilation was still generally positive, which mimicked the vibe of the other installments of this series to that point. But, maybe there’s a lesson here; everybody at that point in time had been listening to Dan Rather go on and on about “hanging chads” for months on end and turned to this music to escape. Maybe the key to avoiding the endless spin of what’s happening in our world is to pop this compilation into our CD walkman...or CD boomboxes, or CD car stereos (we can all still play CDs, right?!) and try to let the good times roll - at least for about 71 minutes.
