Quick note: monthly rankings are based on weekly positions on the Billboard charts collected and scored. Rankings are in [brackets] and will correspond to the position on the playlist provided above. Some months not all songs are available to stream and cannot be made available for a playlist, so sometimes we pretend they didn’t exist, sorry.
May 2001 was an important time for me as at this time I was preparing for graduating High School and tackling my final exams and I was beginning to look out over the horizon to see my immediate future of going to school in the city of Boston (well, Brookline). I didn’t notice all too much about what was charting this month and I’m all the better because, wow, what a month.
Janet Jackson continues to stay at the top of the charts with “All For You”[1], not straying from the number one position every week in May. While songs like Destiny’s Child’s “Survivor”[2] and “Lady Marmalade”[5] were close to reaching the apex Mount Billboard, it truly was an “All For You” spring. ( not to be confused with a brat or Subaru summer)
Shaggy’s grip of the top of the charts began its final descent as “Angel”[8] would fall out of the Top 10 by the end of the month. Month-end chart topper Joe would also face the same fate when “Stutter”[11] would slip out of position and would eventually drop out of the Top 40 next month.
Again, doing these retrospectives is so interesting to me as I am watching while compiling the lists of songs lose chart positions so quickly after reaching number one. Compare that to two songs like “Thank You”[4], by Dido and Lifehouse’s “Hanging By A Moment”[3] where neither reached number one on the weekly charts at all but managed to stay on the charts for most of the calendar year for 2001.
A good amount of country songs debuted on the charts this month joining the likes of The Chicks (“If I Fall You’re Going Down With Me”[43]), Tim McGraw (“Grown Men Don’t Cry”[37]), and the impossibly bad “Mrs. Steven Rudy”[48]. “There You’ll Be”[49] by Faith Hill entered the fray along with “I’m Already There”[51] from Lonestar and Gary Allan’s “Right Where I Need To Be”[53] to form a trifecta of locationally vague song titles.
One case of a locationally specific song title made an appearance for just one week as Trick Daddy’s “Take It To Da House” cracked the top 50. What was once deemed a “guilty pleasure” twenty five years ago has been upgraded to an “absolute pleasure”. Perhaps it’s the KC & The Sunshine Band’s “Boogie Shoes” sample that makes it so fun or the fact that the tracks just bounces along so recklessly, but it’s a great song and one I was happy to come back to, especially after sifting through some of the dreck that charted this month.
Somewhat related, while YouTube video “crate digging” I discovered that “Boogie Shoes” was covered by Alex Chilton at some point in time and it is pretty great.
Looking back it certainly felt like there wasn’t much moving the needle for me and it’ll be interesting to see how it plays out for the rest of Summer ’01.
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