00sThe comeback

Natalia Lafourcade

Where it said pumpkin she put flowers

The story says she rescued the son jarocho with reverence on *Un Canto por México*, but "La Bruja" is not on that record: she recorded it on *Cancionera*, on 24 April 2025, and rewrote the lyric. Where the son turns the man into a pumpkin, she sings that she filled him with flowers: "a cancionera is a kind of sorceress". Twenty Latin Grammys, a house rebuilt in Jáltipan and a harpsichordist father who left Chile two days after the coup.

André Rieu

It was not from the jazz suite

The waltz with which André Rieu reached half the world is not from Shostakovich's Suite for Jazz Orchestra No. 2: it is from the Suite for Variety Orchestra, which the composer did not assemble, and it was born in 1956 as music for a Soviet film about settlers in Kazakhstan. The error comes from a misprint in volume 10 of the complete works (Muzyka, Moscow, 1984), corrected only in 2001. And the title "The Second Waltz" was invented by his wife, because the real one did not sell.

Shakira

Eight minutes in a Barcelona court

In 1993, at sixteen, Shakira came third in the Competencia Internacional at Viña del Mar, behind an Italian song: the Gaviota de Plata was not taken away from her, she did not win it. Thirty years later, on 20 November 2023, the Barcelona tax fraud trial was resolved in eight minutes, with a three-year suspended prison sentence and a fine of 7.3 million euros.

The Rasmus

Nine years and four albums before the leap

The Rasmus had nine years of career and four albums behind them when "In the Shadows" reached number one in Finland, Germany, Hungary and New Zealand in 2003. They had formed in Helsinki in 1994 playing funk rock and were called Rasmus, with no article, until 2000. And they did not open the way: HIM had already done so in the same markets.

Peter Bjorn and John

The whistle was provisional

Björn Yttling whistled the melody of "Young Folks" as a placeholder, only so as not to forget it, and they decided to keep it. The single came out on 7 August 2006, with Victoria Bergsman as guest, and it was not no. 1 anywhere: no. 13 in the United Kingdom, no. 9 in Finland. Live it is whistled by Peter Morén, and the trio never broke up: nine albums.

Empire of the Sun

Eight years to reach the Hot 100

"Walking on a Dream" came out on 30 August 2008 and was an Australian no. 10; it only entered the Billboard Hot 100 in 2016, at no. 65, pushed along by a Honda Civic advert. "We Are the People" was no. 1 in Germany in December 2010 and never entered the Hot 100. Nick Littlemore has not toured since 2009: the show is held up by Luke Steele alone.

Juanes

The shirt Italy read backwards

"La Camisa Negra" reached number one in seven European countries, and in Italy it was adopted by neo-fascist groups who read the title as Mussolini's camicie nere. Earlier, in 1997, the same Latin turn had cost him Ekhymosis. At Viña 2026 he won the Gaviota de Oro, which is not the festival's highest: the Platino went that year to Mon Laferte.

Duffy

She told it first

Rockferry (2008) was the best-selling album of the year in the United Kingdom, with 1,685,000 copies, three BRITs in 2009 and the Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album. In 2020 Duffy told it herself, before anybody else, that she was drugged, held captive and raped. And it is not an epilogue: a new song in 2024, a Disney+ documentary announced in 2025 and a signing with TaP Management in 2026.

Florence + the Machine

The catharsis had a name

The band formed in London in 2007 and "the Machine" comes from the keyboard player Isabella Summers. Florence Welch has said that she stopped eating at seventeen and that she stopped drinking around 2014: the catharsis in her music has a concrete content. She has five British number ones, the last with Everybody Scream (31 October 2025), nominated for the 2026 Mercury.

Thirty Seconds to Mars

The seven-year law

In August 2008, EMI sued them for thirty million dollars for breaching a 1999 contract they had signed before releasing a single record. They defended themselves with a Californian employment law that voids contracts of more than seven years, closed a settlement on 28 April 2009 and signed with the same label again. The Guinness record they ended up with is not a box-office one: it is three hundred and nine concerts on a single tour.

Avril Lavigne

Six years with no album

Between her 2013 album and Head Above Water, of 15 February 2019, Avril Lavigne released no records because she was seriously ill with Lyme disease: diagnosed in December 2014, she told it on the cover of People in April 2015. The comeback album is about that, and Love Sux (2022) returned her to pop-punk on Travis Barker's label.

Panic! at the Disco

The exclamation mark came back when the one who hated it left

Ryan Ross wrote the lyrics and the concept of Panic! at the Disco's first two albums and left on 6 July 2009; days later the exclamation mark he had had removed on Pretty. Odd. returned to the name. From April 2015 Brendon Urie was the only official member, and the project closed on 10 March 2023 in Manchester.

Paramore

The drummer who came back six years later

Hayley Williams signed with Atlantic on her own in 2003 and the rest of Paramore with a subsidiary: in December 2010 the Farro brothers left, accusing the label of having manufactured a product. Zac Farro returned as official drummer on 2 February 2017, and with him came After Laughter and the group's three Grammys.

The Temper Trap

Two and a half weeks before the film

The film did not discover "Sweet Disposition". It was released in Australia on 16 September 2008 and was No. 14 on ARIA; it entered the British chart on 15 August 2009 and (500) Days of Summer opened in the United Kingdom on 2 September, two and a half weeks later. Its peak was No. 6, on 17 October 2009.

Stereophonics

Sacked just before the only number one

Stuart Cable, drummer and co-founder, was sacked in September 2003 for a lack of commitment: "Dakota", the band's only singles No. 1 in the United Kingdom, was recorded in 2005 without him, with Javier Weyler on drums. He died on 7 June 2010, aged 40, choked on his own vomit from acute alcohol poisoning.

Snow Patrol

Number six and the most-played of the century

"Chasing Cars" is, according to the PPL's 2019 count, the most-played recording of the twenty-first century in the United Kingdom, and it was never No. 1: it stalled at No. 6 in Britain and No. 5 on the Hot 100. Behind it were seven years without a record because Gary Lightbody stopped drinking only when a doctor told him that either he stopped or he would die.

Kings of Leon

Two generations and the same bottle

Ivan Leon Followill left the Pentecostal ministry in 1997 because of alcohol and after divorcing. Fourteen years later, on 29 July 2011, Caleb walked off halfway through the Dallas concert and did not come back: on 1 August the rest of the tour fell. The statement spoke of vocal exhaustion and Jared of bigger problems in the band; both versions were true.

The Killers

Five hundred weeks without a number one

"Mr. Brightside" did not come from Brandon Flowers: the riff is Dave Keuning's, recorded on a four-track cassette. The song entered the Official Singles Chart on 5 June 2004 straight in at no. 10 and never climbed above it, but it has accumulated more than 520 weeks on the chart as of October 2026. It is the most successful single in British history never to reach no. 1.

Klaxons

The joke that won the Mercury

"Nu rave" was not invented by the press: it was invented by the bassist Jamie Reynolds as a joke to get the media talking about something that did not exist, and the spelling came from a poster that said "neu rave" after krautrock. With that joke they won the 2007 Mercury ahead of Back to Black; afterwards the label rejected their second album and in 2015 they went on indefinite hiatus.

Kasabian

The statement came a day early

Kasabian announced Tom Meighan's departure on 6 July 2020 as a "mutual agreement" and "personal issues". The following day he pleaded guilty to assault by beating against his partner, Vikki Ager, and received 200 hours of unpaid work within an 18-month community order. With Pizzorno singing, the band now has eight consecutive number ones in the United Kingdom.

Arctic Monkeys

The MySpace was made by the fans

They uploaded nothing to the internet: they gave away CD-Rs with eighteen demos at their concerts and the fans did the rest, including the MySpace profile — the band did not know what MySpace was. Their debut sold 363,735 copies in January 2006, a record Susan Boyle broke in 2009 with 411,820. The bass on that album was played by Andy Nicholson, not Nick O'Malley.

Interpol

The bass that left before the record

Interpol was not led by Paul Banks: the guitarist Daniel Kessler founded it in 1997 and it never had a main songwriter. The melodic bass everyone praises was Carlos Dengler's, who recorded the self-titled album and left on 9 May 2010, before it came out on 7 September. The comparison with Joy Division was not a lineage: it was a label the band rejected.

The White Stripes

The surname was the drummer's

They said they were brother and sister: Jack repeated it in interviews as "the two youngest of ten". In fact they had married on 21 September 1996 and divorced in March 2000, and when the press exposed it in 2001 they carried on insisting. And the surname was hers: Jack was born John Anthony Gillis and took Meg's when they married.

Queens of the Stone Age

The desert went through Seattle

Kyuss broke up in 1995 and Josh Homme went to Seattle as touring guitarist for Screaming Trees: there he met Mark Lanegan, a full member of Queens of the Stone Age between 2001 and 2005 and the second voice of Songs for the Deaf (2002), the album Dave Grohl played on. Nick Oliveri, also from Kyuss, was sacked in 2004. The band has nine Grammy nominations and no statuette.

Incubus

Twenty-two years later they recorded it again

Incubus arrived with the nu-metal wave and their biggest hit was an acoustic song: "Drive" reached number one on the Modern Rock chart on 3 March 2001 and number nine on the Hot 100. Morning View was recorded in 2001 in a beachfront mansion in Malibu, and in May 2024 the band re-recorded the whole of it as Morning View XXIII.

Staind

The sleeve that nearly cost them everything

In October 1997, Fred Durst tried to pull Staind off the bill at the Webster Theatre in Hartford over the sleeve of their home-made record; then he listened to them and signed them. In 2001, Break the Cycle debuted at number one on the Billboard 200 and "It's Been Awhile" spent sixteen weeks at number one on the Modern Rock. Jon Wysocki, founding drummer, died on 18 May 2024.

Creed

Ninth in sales and first in mockery

Creed were the ninth best-selling act in the United States in the 2000s: fifty-three million records worldwide, Human Clay certified diamond and a Grammy for "With Arms Wide Open". They were also the easiest joke of that decade. In 2014, Scott Stapp suffered a psychotic episode brought on by alcohol and drug abuse; the band came back in 2023, pushed by baseball and TikTok.

Lifehouse

The number one of the year that stalled at two

"Hanging by a Moment" was the number one on Billboard's year-end Hot 100 for 2001 — the most successful song in the United States across the whole year — without ever being a weekly number one: its ceiling was number 2, on 16 June 2001, after fifty-four weeks on the chart. It was the third song in history to manage it, after "Wooly Bully" (1965) and "Breathe" by Faith Hill (2000).

Deftones

The record they left in the drawer

Formed in Sacramento in 1988, years before nu-metal, it won its only Grammy with White Pony in 2001, for "Elite". When Chi Cheng showed signs of consciousness after the 2008 accident, the band shelved Eros and recorded Diamond Eyes in its place. Cheng died of a cardiac arrest on 13 April 2013.

Sinergia

The song everyone misread

Almost all of Chile heard "Mujer Robusta" as a joke. The band says the opposite: it is a vindication, and they have stopped radio stations using it mockingly. Even the name of their genre was given to them from outside.

t.A.T.u.

The song got away from the script

t.A.T.u. was not a band that formed: it was a project built by producer Ivan Shapovalov around two girls of fourteen, with a romance between them written as a commercial strategy. In 2004 the two of them broke their contract with him. In 2014, Yulia Volkova said on television that she would condemn a gay son.

The Strokes

A small amplifier

In 2001 they sounded revolutionary by sounding old. They recorded the vocals through a cheap practice amp on purpose, leaving the good gear unused.

Nickelback

The band the whole world decided to hate, and that filled stadiums for twenty years anyway

The internet picked them as the worst band in the world and turned contempt into a sport. Meanwhile they were selling some fifty million records and filling stadiums for twenty years. The gap between those two things is what's worth looking at.

Bomba Estéreo

The drum plugged in

They plugged cumbia and champeta into electronica without betraying either. And out of it came an anthem for everyone who has ever felt like the odd one out.

The xx

Silence as an instrument

While pop competed to sound bigger, they turned the volume down. And their most recognisable song was never a chart hit: it peaked at number one hundred and twenty-nine.

50 Cent

He was shot nine times, survived, and turned that into an empire

He survived a point-blank attack in Queens in the year 2000 and put that story at the center of his persona. Then he did the rarest thing in rap: turning fame into capital, with a drinks brand that Coca-Cola ended up buying and television series of his own.

Alicia Keys

The classically trained pianist who swept the Grammys at twenty-one

She arrived in 2001, when pop was lip-syncing and choreography, with a real piano, classical training and songs of her own. At twenty-one she took home five awards on her first Grammy night; years later she decided to appear in public without make-up.

Norah Jones

The quietest album of the year swept the Grammys

In 2002, with the charts full of loud pop and heavy rock, a handful of quiet piano songs sung in a velvet voice sold tens of millions and took home eight Grammys at the 2003 ceremony. There is also an illustrious surname she decided not to use.

La Cabra Mecánica

The shopping list

Lichis wrote the tenderest love song of his generation from a poor man's kitchen, among the discount tuna and the grease stains. His gift was looking at the people nobody looks at and finding the poetry in them.

Julieta Venegas

The accordion and the border

She took Latin pop and made it personal, sophisticated and deep without ever losing the hook. A girl from Tijuana with a conservatory training and the soul of a ska band, who also had a Chilean marriage.

Coldplay

They chose to be enormous

They went from four shy students with melancholy songs to an anthem machine with confetti and light-up wristbands. That journey explains why they inspire so much love and so much rejection at once.

Keane

Rock without guitars

They became one of the biggest bands of the 2000s without a single six-string guitar. And they are childhood friends who came through fame, and an addiction that nearly broke them, together.

Gorillaz

The band that doesn't exist

Behind the four cartoon characters sits one of the most serious ideas in modern pop. With no human face out front, that band could be anything and could call on anyone: the mask did not hide the artist, it set him free.

Limp Bizkit

The heartbeat that arrived eleven days late

«Break Stuff» never entered the US singles chart. Twenty-five years later it topped the hard rock chart, eleven days after the death of the bassist who played it — and no academy put it there. People did.

Limp Bizkit

The barrier the band asked for and was refused

Jessica Michalik was sixteen. A coroner spent twenty-one months finding out why she died, and her report points at the organisers: they had ignored a safety recommendation and refused the band the barrier it requested in writing.

Franz Ferdinand

The stall was the only deliberate part

«Take Me Out» is not two songs stuck together: it is one, assembled backwards on purpose. The part that sounds like a mistake is the only one that was fully planned.

Amy Winehouse

The whole truth

She wrote about her own life with raw frankness, and people loved her for it. Then, when that truth became hard to look at, a whole country consumed her agony in slow motion. People who are drowning are helped, not watched.

Evanescence

The voice the label imposed on her

The male voice on «Bring Me to Life» was not an artistic idea: it was a commercial condition. Amy Lee wrote the words that man sings, and he is not among the song's writers.

System of a Down

They only sing when there is something to say

«Chop Suey!» was called «Suicide». The label said no, and the band split the word in two without changing a comma of the truth. They have gone twenty-one years without an album, and the silence is also a way of speaking.

Chester Bennington

So that no one would be alone

He screamed his pain and then whispered it, in the same song. Chester Bennington sang abuse, addiction and depression from the inside, and a whole generation felt that someone understood them. He helped many to keep going; he could not do it for himself.

Eminem

Saying it before the other guy

In the final battle of "8 Mile" he doesn't wait for the blow: he says every one of his own miseries before his rival can use them. That was the strategy of his whole career.

Gustavo Santaolalla

One single note

He won the Oscar two years running by putting in the bare minimum: a string, a long silence, another string. And he produced half of Spanish-language rock unseen.

Cristián Cuturrufo

The Trumpet and the Port

Cristián Cuturrufo, or how to marry two worlds that in Chile almost never spoke: conservatoire jazz and the music of the northern fondas. He worked cueca and cumbia into bebop, invented the "swing nacional", and did it from Coquimbo rather than Santiago.

El Macha

The Party and the Sorrow

Aldo "el Macha" Asenjo, or why some tributes cannot wait. A punk who missed home during a European winter came back with cumbia under his arm and gave Chile back its right to have a good time. And with the sad project, the bolero one, he filled the Estadio Nacional.

Miranda!

Permission to have a good time

Twenty years into a career, the normal thing is to live off nostalgia. Miranda! did the opposite: they handed their songs to the next generation to sing alongside them, and won Argentina's album of the year with it. A record of covers of themselves.

Lady Gaga

Under the costume, a piano

Piano from the age of four and her own ballad at thirteen. She conquered with the mask first and took it off later, once she no longer needed it.

Daft Punk

Hiding so you'll be seen

They became two of the most famous musicians on the planet without ever showing their faces, and could buy bread without anyone looking twice.

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