What pop culture just screams 2001 to you?

Its creator is currently undergoing a prolonged period of public disgrace; its basic gimmick has been copied to hell and back; its lead can’t really hit the majority of notes she’s asked to sing. And yet, Buffy The Vampire Slayer’s “Once More With Feeling” maintains its stranglehold on my brain 20 years now and running. All it takes is one “Every single night, the same arrangement…” and I’m off to the races, buoyed along by a potent combination of post-teen melodrama, a thoroughly witty twisting of format, and a vibe of paired ambition and melancholy that perfectly nails the enthusiastic, semi-commercialized creativity of the era. [William Hughes]

William’s choice of the Buffy musical is a good one; for whatever reason, 2001 felt like a year in which most pop culture was incapable of doing something new without it being the echo of something old. Which is why I was initially going to go with Moulin Rouge!—an encapsulation of everything that was pop culture around the turn of the millennium—before I realized there was an even pithier representation of that time: The remake of “Lady Marmalade,” from Christina Aguilera, Mya, Lil’ Kim, and Pink. Not only was it the single from the Moulin Rouge! soundtrack, but it was a massive hit that testified to the recycled nature of so much mainstream entertainment. Sure, there was also great stuff that came out, but that shit tends to be timeless; if you wanted to distill that bizarre year into musical form, there’s no better synthesis than Aguilera delivering her endless melismas over a decades-old disco-soul track. [Alex McLevy]

Few things scream 2001 to me quite like Stifler (Sean William Scott) humping the cabin of a pickup truck as Sum 41's “Fat Lip” blares on the soundtrack of American Pie 2. More than the film, the soundtrack represented a moment in time when pop-punk ruled the airwaves and my life. Loaded with pop-punk hits, like New Found Glory’s “Hit Or Miss,” The Lemonheads’ cover of “Mrs. Robinson,” and Michelle Branch’s “Everywhere” (not pop-punk, but we must show respect), the movie culminates in the boys toasting a successful summer to the sweet sounds of Sum 41's “In Too Deep.” American Pie 2 might as well be the first movie based on a sideways trucker hat. [Matt Schimkowitz]

, my memories of 2001 are colored by teen angst, which means that the fonder ones mostly involve listening to music on my walkman while looking wistfully out of a bus window. While we’re lingering in that moment, let me introduce three notes that catapult me back there like a slingshot: James Mercer’s voice pushing out “I think—I” at the beginning of “Caring Is Creepy,” the opening song on The Shins’ 2001 debut, Oh, Inverted World!. A mini roller coaster that starts high, goes low, and whooshes back up again, the song juxtaposes lush music and hopeless lyrics—how deliciously ironic. [Katie Rife]

I’ll go with the obvious but correct answer: The Fast And The Furious. The one that started it all. It’s a veritable time capsule of 2001 pop culture, from the soundtrack—filled with early-2000s industry staples, like Ja Rule, Ashanti, and (ugh) Limp Bizkit—to the on-screen fashion (there’s no shortage of low-cut jeans and pooka shells in this movie). Even the plot, which follows Paul Walker as he investigates Vin Diesel for stealing DVD players, seems impossibly quaint today. [Baraka Kaseko]