top 50 "lost" US hits of the late '00s

"White Horse" kind of out of place here. Feel like I heard it on radio a million times.

had to vote pussycat dolls, great song.

some good ones here. “ice box” doesn’t feel forgotten but maybe that’s just because it firmly resides in that place my heart used to be

46. Baby Boy Da Prince ft. Lil Boosie - The Way I Live
47. 50 Cent ft. Mobb Deep - Outta Control (Remix)
48. Hurricane Chris - A Bay Bay

justice for these!!

Three 6 Mafia ft. Project Pat, Young D & Superpower - Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body)

my brain read this as Squarepusher and I was like oh damn gotta hear that

the ones that jumped out to me without further checking;

8. The Veronicas - Untouched
11. Kanye West - Love Lockdown (only Kanye song ever, see below)
21. Britney Spears - Piece Of Me (feels weird to call this one lost, but I’m aware for most of the universe Blackout was just a blip on the *radar*)
23. The Pussycat Dolls - I Hate This Part
28. Omarion - Ice Box
45. Danity Kane - Damaged

not coincidentally most of the above are directly linked to a very lovelorn period of my life

the irony of someone named McCartney singing a song called "How Do You Sleep?"

The ones I really like

11. Kanye West - Love Lockdown (his best song imo. not that i want to listen to him anymore)
21. Britney Spears - Piece Of Me (didn't realise this had got obscure)
22. Gwen Stefani - Wind It Up
42. The Black Eyed Peas - Don't Phunk With My Heart (in the handful of BEP songs I listen to)

I used to enjoy saying Love Lockdown is the 00s A Different Corner and it's not just the video

"Piece Of Me" all the way.

It took me a minute to get what was happening with #50. I heard "London Bridge" a few years ago and was surprised that it didn't suck.

I can't quite get my head around "A Bay Bay," "Love Lockdown" or "Beautiful Liar" as in any way lost/forgotten, but I guess it has been a minute since I heard those. "Love Lockdown" was the big-deal event single announcing the autotune album, right? Maybe "Heartless" kinda took the one recurrent-play slot for that project.

Most of the ones I remember from this list were, in my mind, pretty bad. Especially "If U Seek Amy" and "Crack a Bottle." "Crack a Bottle" is stupider but kinda nails the 'annoyingly earwormy Eminem hook' thing it was going for as a comeback single.

I really liked "London Bridge" at the time. Big, loud, stupid fun; good production by Polow da Don. There's something almost psychedelic (but probably more like just "drunk") about the way the chorus-opening "HOW" lands.

I also remember really hating "Runaway Love," but maybe it was just an overplay problem. It's well-intentioned, at least, and on paper I like the idea of Luda stretching himself into a different mood, plus a more narrative type of writing. I should give it another listen.

man, that Nick Lachey was on the radio for months, a chorus of dead cats raining on me.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"Love Like This" notable for having some of the worst sounding pitch quantization of all time

oh i forgot to vote on this

i think i'm going w/ "untouched"

18. Flo Rida ft. Wynter - Sugar

this one didn't stick around on the radio for long and i figured well of course a song built a sample of eiffel 65's novelty song will have zero shelf life but here we are in 2023 w/ yet another hit song sampling that blanketing the airwaves for goodness knows how long (guetta/bebe rexha)

21. Britney Spears - Piece Of Me

loved this and still do. it was a bit of-its-time in retrospect but sounded quite forward-thinking then. "if u seek amy" otoh is one of the worst singles of britney's career

31. Jibbs - Chain Hang Low

my friend's little brother loved this song. i said it was the dumbest thing i'd ever heard and his response was basically "yes, and?"

33. Fort Minor ft. Holly Brook & Jonah Matranga - Where'd You Go

i have to give it to holly brook/skylar grey, who may be an all-time contender for most songs that were listened to almost exclusively for their choruses

38. Boys Like Girls - Love Drunk

i despised this song but for w/e reason actually came to enjoy the objectively just-as-shitty followup, a cheesy cold-weather ballad called "two is better than one" w/ a probably literally phoned-in guest vocal from taylor swift. u came into my life and i thought HAY

41. Jordin Sparks - Battlefield

i was so sick of single-word-repetitious ryan tedder choruses by the time this came out

46. Baby Boy Da Prince ft. Lil Boosie - The Way I Live

justice for this indeed

Fergie - London Bridge

maybe my least favorite of the singles from that surprisingly strong album cycle but still fun. one of my top choices for radio edits that i prefer over the explicit version, "oh snap" being much punchier to my ears than "oh shit"

lol yes it's truly incredible xp

played my selection of contenders just now and narrowed it down to “Damaged”, “Untouched”, and “Piece Of Me”, with PCD’s “Beep” as a last-minute dark horse. I loved that one back then, but I had basically forgotten what it sounded like (a lost hit indeed!). holds up big time.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

surprise result! voted “Damaged” in the end because I thought no one else might and “Piece Of Me” would run with this anyway (plus I simply refuse to accept it as ‘lost’).
but “Untouched” is a great winner.

"untouched" is a total classic and i'm a little surprised it's anywhere near this list but as the author of these lists notes it's still regularly played here in australia. also had no idea that it took until 2009 to become a minor hit in america?

that song has had a very long tail indeed. I encountered it in late 2008 on the (Dutch) radio station I was listening to (about the only period in my adult life that I actually did so), but apparently it didn’t become an actual hit in NL until the second half of 2009 (when my radio days were already past).

btw, it reached #17 in the US, I wouldn’t call that a ‘minor’ hit!

the charts were very competitive in america at that time so getting that high (esp as a previously unknown act) was no small feat but it also wasn't a smash or anything. it certainly wasn't big enough to give them enough momentum for a second hit here

Untouched still gets airplay in mexico, I think it’s still well remembered for people born before 2005.

iow, a sizeable hit, we seem to be in agreement here

xp