For better or worse, we all lived through the MySpace era. And while it did have its share of cringe-worthy moments — from blinged out profiles to musicians awkwardly spelling out their urls on stage between songs — it was a massive forum for new music discovery and did provide the perfect gateway drug to today’s social media landscape we all engage in daily. There were also trucker hats and a lot of bathroom selfies. But hey, it was fun!
Now along comes a quick three-minute sizzle reel to transport us back to the 2000s, showing video highlights from MySpace’s marketing and programming efforts. The clip is from Josh Brooks, who, according to BuzzFeed, “ran programming and marketing for Myspace during its mid-2000s glory days”.
Brooks writes: “To be honest, I have read so much shit of about how MySpace is garbage or blah blah… but the truth is before there were music streaming premiers on Spotify — it was on MySpace. When a big movie studio wanted to do some ridiculous movie screening event — it was on MySpace. Town halls for politics — yup, on MySpace! When Al Gore wanted to spread the word about Global Warming with his film — we booked 30 theaters across the U.S. and an interview with Mos Def! Jack Johnson live show stream in Hawaii — YUP. LCD Sound System show at the TLA in Phili for their fans only — YUP. Lady Gaga came to the office in Bev. Hills to introduce herself… half the staff was like ‘who’s she?’ And I remember when Chris DeWolfe went on the Today with Taylor Swift, as the first break out county star from MySpace!'”
Well, he ain’t wrong.
There are a lot of music cameos in his video — Vampire Weekend, Jessica Simpson, Beastie Boys, and others — and we think we even spotted Be Your Own Pet in that magazine cover montage at the end.
And yeah, Dave Grohl is in it. Back then, he was just getting started.
Then again, we all were. Unless you were on Friendster.