The Best 2000s Music You Completely Forgot

Dave Holmes reflects on a forgotten age of music. [Image] [Image]( A Decade of Music Is Lost on Your iPod. These Are The Deleted Years. Now Let Us Praise Them. From the late 1990s until whenever we stopped burning things onto compact discs, I gave my friends, family, and colleagues a year-end best-of mix as my Christmas card. I kept it to my favorite 20 songs of the year, the final track listings subject to last-minute switches, bold additions, and sequence changes that were controversial to only myself. During a recent decluttering of my office, I found a whole bunch of them, from 2003 to 2009, and as I popped each one open and looked at the seven years of soundtracks I fretted over for seven solid Decembers, I was faced with one important question: What the hell are most of these songs? Now, listen: I can tell you my favorite music from 1987, because I still have my Replacements, George Michael, and Tommy Keene records. I know my favorite music from 1997, because I’m hoarding CD booklets overstuffed with post-Oasis Britpop, Ben Folds Five, and Soul Coughing. I can call my favorite music from 2017 right up on my phone, because I make year-end playlists in both Apple Music and Spotify and post them on Twitter at Christmas (which I think we can agree is not the same as burning a CD). But if you ask me to name my favorite songs from 2007, I might need to use a lifeline. The music of the mid-aughts to early-teens is largely gone, lost down a new-millennium memory hole. There is a moment that whizzed right past us with no cassettes, discs, or Shazam queries through which to remember it. These are the Deleted Years, and we need to start honoring this period, right now, before we forget it forever. [Read the Full Story]( [Image] [Image]( The Perfectly Fitted, Workwear-Meets-Streetwear Pants It Took Me Years to Find Having grown up in Colorado, workwear has always been part of my life—whether it was something I wore as a durable layer while camping, or just whatever was the most cost-effective clothing in my broke college years. So, imagine my surprise when I moved to New York and found that workwear is actually a pretty integral part of very stylish streetwear. But while the barn coats and Carhartt classic tees I grew up with are easy additions to any wardrobe—they're affordable and look cool—I couldn't get the pants right. On my body, wide-leg pants were either too wide (giving me too much of a square shape) or, sizing down to get a Goldilocks-level "just right" leg, they were too small in the waist. Others that fit well but weren't particularly well-made would look right at first, but just not hold up—they'd pill and loose their shape within weeks. Then, after literal years of searching, I came across the Master Pant from Carhartt Work In Progress, the workwear pioneer's division that makes a younger, streetwear-adjacent product. Here's why they live up to their lofty name. [Read the Full Story](  [Image]( The 12 Best Horror Movies of 2019 Will Make You Feel Alive With Fear We're currently living in a new golden age of horror. As our real world becomes ever more terrifying, filmmakers have stepped up their game to use horror as a way to analyze the nightmare of our off-screen lives. That continues in 2019—from clever reboots of classic horror flicks, twisty genre-bending films, to a headier second swing at horror from Oscar winner Jordan Peele. This year is about feeling alive, and what better way to do that than getting the bejesus scared out of you? Skip that summer trip to Sweden and check out one of these films instead. [Read the Full Story]( [Image]( The Highwomen Are Launching a Country Music Revolution As far as introductions go, it's hard to imagine one better than the chorus that Brandi Carlile, Maren Morris, Amanda Shires, and Natalie Hemby—aka the Highwomen—deliver on their striking debut album. "We are the highwomen, we sing a story still untold," they declare on the set's opening track. "We carry the sons you can only hold." It's bone-rattling confidence, and the new country supergroup backs it up, both in person and on their album. "I feel like little girls will hear the Highwomen and be changed by it," Morris says on a sweltering late July afternoon in New York City. Highwomen is in town to perform on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and when it wraps, Morris will return to her massive, career-expanding solo album cycle and GIRL world tour. "It’s going to be the background music and the defining music of their youth." In many ways, it's as revolutionary as it sounds. [Read the Full Story](  [Image]( 10 Candles That Will Instantly Improve Your Home This Fall No home is complete without candles. They prove that you, an adult, have your shit together enough to be tuned in to what the subtle scent and soft glow of a burning wick can do. And trust us, it can do a lot. A candle makes you feel comforted. It makes you feel like a pine forest is outside the window, or a sagebrush desert and an open sky. It roots you in happy memories of happy places. And, quite honestly, it’s an impressive hosting flex to invite your guests in, strike a long-stemmed match or flick open a lighter, and light a good-smelling flame. So don’t pick a candle dud like anything brightly colored that smells like a pie, a Christmas tree, or a piña colada. Stick with these. [Read the Full Story]( [Image]( Rowing Blazers and Lands' End Have Created a Genuinely Exciting Collaboration Of late, no one has been doing collabs more excitingly than the coolest name in prep right now, Rowing Blazers. In the past year, the brand has put together some seriously envy-inspiring team-ups, including, but not limited to, a capsule collection with streetwear cult brand Noah, a sweater I still dream about in collaboration with Prep Mount Rushmore brand J.Press, perhaps the coolest damn bar merch I've ever seen, and a mind-changing execution of the sometimes polarizing Nantucket Red. Now, because you don't stop shooting when you're on a hot streak, Rowing Blazers is linking up with Lands' End for a small-but-mighty collaborative capsule. [Read the Full Story](  Follow Us       [Unsubscribe](  [Privacy Notice](  esquire.com ©2019 Hearst Communications Inc. All Rights Reserved. Hearst Email Privacy, 300 W 57th St., Fl. 19 (sta 1-1), New York, NY 10019   Â