46 Things That Happened In 2001 That Still Feel Like Yesterday

Cinema in 2001 was one of the most iconic things of that decade. The year opened quietly and then delivered Shrek in May, which immediately rewrote the rules of animated film and became a cultural institution. Two months later, Legally Blonde arrived and made the case that underestimating someone is always the most expensive mistake in the room.

The autumn schedule then did something extraordinary. Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone opened in November and rewired an entire generation's relationship with reading. The Fellowship of the Ring arrived in December and launched a trilogy that would dominate the next three years of cinema. Two franchises that would collectively generate tens of billions of dollars dropped within weeks of each other, and audiences showed up for both without hesitation.

In between all of that, Moulin Rouge! made everyone cry in sequins, Ocean's Eleven made a Vegas heist look easy, and Zoolander walked so that every joke about the fashion industry could run. Monsters, Inc., Bridget Jones's Diary, and Memento also came out the same year, which at this point feels almost implausible. 2001 did not know how to have a bad month at the cinema, and almost none of it gets mentioned because September tends to take up all the oxygen.

Music in 2001 was equally relentless, and it announced itself early in the year. Destiny's Child released "Survivor" in February and shut all of us up. Alicia Keys debuted with Songs in A Minor in June, and "Fallin'" was everywhere within weeks of release, making all of us think we could hit those notes. Then October arrived, and Britney Spears gave us the iconic performance at the VMAs with a live albino Burmese python draped across her shoulders.

Kylie Minogue released "Can't Get You Out of My Head" the same month, and it has not left anyone's head since. Grillaz burst onto the scene and Shaggy blessed us with "It Wasn't Me," and we all believed him. 2001 was a year that did not know how to release a forgettable record, and the playlist holds up. Good thing later that year we would get the greatest gift to music mankind has ever produced.

Technology in 2001 changed everything. Wikipedia launched in January and began its long project of becoming the first place anyone looks for anything. iTunes launched the same month, a little taste of what was to come. The Xbox launched in November, giving PlayStation 2 its first real competition and starting a console war that has not fully resolved. Windows XP launched in October and became so dominant that Microsoft spent years trying to convince people to stop using it.

Most significantly, Apple released the first iPod in October, a device that held 1,000 songs and cost $399 and felt like the future arriving slightly ahead of schedule. Steve Jobs described it as 1,000 songs in your pocket. He was not wrong, and nothing about music consumption has been the same since.

Television was laying the groundwork in 2001 that it would collect on for years. The Office premiered on BBC Two in July, with Ricky Gervais playing a boss so specifically awful that the format was eventually remade in twelve countries. All of our heart rates skyrocketed when “24” premiered in November with its real-time conceit and Kiefer Sutherland.

Scrubs brought us some much-needed laughs in October and spent nine seasons being way smarter than its premise suggested. Six Feet Under launched in June on HBO and immediately established itself as one of the most emotionally ambitious shows on television. Pop Idol launched in the UK in October and began the talent show era that would go on to produce Simon Cowell as a permanent cultural fixture, for better or worse.

Fashion in 2001 was making decisions that the decade would spend years defending. Low-rise jeans were ascending toward their peak, taking hemlines with them and creating a silhouette that demanded confidence. Butterfly clips were in every bathroom drawer and platform trainers were on every foot.

Cargo pants offered pockets which we did not need and velour tracksuits were beginning their rise to ubiquity, largely propelled by the early stirrings of celebrity street style as a documented genre. The early 2000s aesthetic has since been reclaimed by Gen Z, which feels like vindication but could also have been skipped if you ask us.

In sport, Tiger Woods won the Masters in April 2001, completing what became known as the Tiger Slam, holding all four major championships simultaneously across two calendar years, a feat that had never been achieved before and has not been replicated since. Lance Armstrong won his third consecutive Tour de France. This is all a little cringe in hindsight.

Michael Jordan came out of his second retirement to play for the Washington Wizards at the age of 38, because once was apparently not enough. And while Jordan was dishing up seconds, Tom Brady just started his career with the New England Patriots. The year produced enough sporting moments to fill its own highlight reel, which mostly went undiscussed because the sporting calendar came to a full stop in September along with everything else.

Beyond September, 2001 had already been eventful for George W. Bush, who was inaugurated in January, following one of the most contested elections in American history, with the Florida recount drama still fresh enough to feel unresolved. The UK was in the grip of a foot-and-mouth disease crisis that resulted in the culling of millions of animals and the closure of large parts of the countryside.

The Taliban destroyed the Buddhas of Bamiyan in Afghanistan in March, two ancient statues that had stood for over a millennium. The Enron scandal was beginning to unravel, on its way to becoming one of the largest corporate fraud cases in American history. The year arrived with its own full slate of headlines before it became defined by one day in September that changed all of them.

2001 feels close because so much of what it produced is still present. The iPod became the iPhone. The films are still being quoted, and the music never fully left the rotation. The TV shows are on streaming platforms, watched by people who were not born when they aired.

A quarter century has passed, and the cultural fingerprints of that year are still visible everywhere you look. The nostalgia is not just sentiment. It is recognition, the feeling of seeing where things came from and tracing the line from there to here. The math says 25 years, but we never believed in maths anyway.

What is your favorite memory from 2001? Share it with us in the comments.