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Welcome to the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show, I’m your host, Christopher Verdesi. Every week on Chartcrush, we do a deep dive into a year in Pop and count down the top ten songs according to our exclusive recap of the weekly charts published at the time in the music industry’s top trade mag, Billboard. This week on Chartcrush, we’re rewinding to 2003.

War—now that’s something that’s always rattled Pop’s cages, right? And ’03 was the invasion of Iraq. The buildup, already barreling ahead at the start of the year, experts saying that once convoys started rolling, soldiers would be facing sarin, mustard gas, anthrax, botulinum—maybe even nukes: all the horrible WMD nasties George W. Bush and his administration had been ticking off in ’02 to make what CIA chief George Tenet called its “slam-dunk” case for removing Iraqi Dictator Saddam Hussein. CNN, looping footage of soldiers in gas masks and MOPP suits clutching atropine injectors to drive home the point.

Then March 20: the “shock and awe” air strikes in Baghdad; April 9, down comes Saddam’s statue in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square; and May 1, “Mission Accomplished:” W on the aircraft carrier flight deck, declaring major combat operations over. After just six weeks! Or so we thought.

But the nail-biting rollercoaster of dread and triumph on the news pushed emotions to extremes, and that came through loud and clear on the charts. Hip-Hop/R&B on the one hand, the only genre in ’03 with the swagger and flex to reflect the bravado of the buildup and at the same time offer an escapist party bubble potent enough to meet the moment. And on the other, Rock: its angsty, brooding Emo bent post-Grunge, a pressure valve for the cynicism, paranoia and unease seeping into the cultural groundwater since the end of the Cold War, but especially after 9/11.

Both charted big in ’03, as we’ll be hearing this hour, but calming sounds from Adult radio formats also crossed over in ’03, just not as big: Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why,” Christina Aguilera’s “Beautiful,” Coldplay’s “Clocks,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Peacekeeper,” Erykah Badu’s “Love of My Life;” and from over on Country radio, sentimental, easy-on-the-ears crossovers like Dixie Chicks’ cover of “Landslide” (speaking of Fleetwood Mac), Darryl Worley’s “Have You Forgotten,” and Kid Rock’s surprise duet with Sheryl Crow on “Picture.”

Dixie Chicks, at their commercial peak in ’03, but after Natalie Maines dissed President Bush and the looming Iraq War from the stage in the U.K., Country Radio blacklisted them and “Landslide” dropped from #10 to #43 on Hot 100 in just one week; gone completely the next.

Radio, really the whole game on the charts in ’03, with sales of physical singles down a whopping 88% since 1998, when Billboard dropped its rule that only songs in stores as physical singles could chart on the Hot100. Stores to buy them in were disappearing too; Billboard estimated that 1,000 record stores closed in ’03.

Apple launched the online iTunes store in March, where fans could download mp3 songs for 99 cents apiece and load up their iPods legally. The iPod, launched in ’01: that, of course, was what ended up replacing the physical single. Just a couple months after the iTunes store appeared, digital tracks were outselling physical singles according to Billboard.

But they didn’t see fit to factor those paid downloads into the calculus for the Hot100 until ’05, and of course they never factored the exponentially larger trade in mp3s ripped by users from CDs and shared for free on peer-to-peer networks. Shutting down the original mp3 download site, Napster, in ’01 had done little to stem the tide of online music piracy.

#10 3 Doors Down – When I’m Gone

So it was all about radio spins on the charts in the early ’00s, and at #10 as we kick things off here on our 2003 edition of Chartcrush, a song that hit Rock radio at just the right time, and with just the right mood and message to ride the Iraq buildup to chart glory as soldiers geared up to deploy.

The Band from Escatawpa, Mississippi, scoring big a second time after their explosive debut “Kryptonite” in ’01. The lead single from their second album, it hit #1 on the Rock chart Thanksgiving ’02 and stayed for 17 straight weeks, ’til just before the ground invasion in March. On the Hot100 it only got as high as #4 but was in the top ten for ten weeks, straight through May. At #10, 3 Doors Down’s “When I’m Gone.”

“Love me when I’m gone,” the eternal wish of soldiers off to war, but also of guys in Rock Bands on tour, and 3 Doors Down wrote “When I’m Gone” while playing in Europe for the first time. You wouldn’t know that from the video, though, which has them performing it live on an aircraft carrier, interspersed with footage of troops saying goodbye to loved ones.

In ’03, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation held a design competition for the site of the World Trade Center destroyed in the terrorist attacks of 9/11/01. The winner from over 5,000 entries? Michael Arad and Peter Walker’s “Reflecting Absence.” Loss and longing, the base of the emotional stew as America’s War on Terror unfolded, served up raw and loud by Three Doors Down on “When I’m Gone,” #10 on our Chartcrush countdown of 2003’s top hits, and they’d double down later in the year with “Here Without You.” More on that one in our ’04 episode.

#9 Nelly, P. Diddy and Murphy Lee – Shake Ya Tailfeather

But now we’re gonna flip the dial for the first of the four Hip-Hop Bangers in our countdown: a slice of pure wartime swagger from the P. Diddy-produced Bad Boys II soundtrack. It’s even got a War Chant: the Florida State Seminoles boozy crowd call started in 1984 by Frat Boys in the stands in Tallahassee and later repurposed—complete with foam tomahawks—by baseball’s Atlanta Braves.

The Rapper, at his peak after back-to-back #1s in ’02, “Hot in Herre” and “Dilemma” with Destiny’s Childs’ Kelly Rowland. But he was between albums in ’03, so a soundtrack hit was just the thing to keep him on the charts. At #9 it’s Nelly, P. Diddy, and Murphy Lee from Nelly’s hometown St. Louis posse, the St. Lunatics, “Shake Ya Tailfeather.”

Michael Bay’s long-delayed sequel Bad Boys II grossed twice as much as the first one in ’95, but was panned by critics. “Two and a half hours of explosions and witless banter:” the consensus on review site Rotten Tomatoes and “Shake Ya Tailfeather” is five minutes of the same thing in a song. But both were exactly what audiences were looking for in the Summer of ’03.

Just months later though, Nelly and Diddy shared the stage at Superbowl 38, and didn’t do it. Nelly did “Hot in Herre” and Diddy did his verse from “Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems,” the Notorious B.I.G.’s second posthumous #1 from 1997. No “Tailfeather.” It even won the Grammy for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group a week after that halftime show, but has never been sampled in any charting Hip-Hop hit since: a true ’03 snapshot relic.

#8 Chingy – Right Thurr

As is our #8 song. No clever segue needed here! It’s another St. Louis Rapper, signed by Ludacris in the wake of Nelly’s success in ’01 and ’02. Ludacris, from Atlanta, and so-called “Dirty South” Hip-Hop, at its peak in ’03. Even the album by the aforementioned St. Lunatics (Nelly’s posse), went Platinum.

Our Rapper at #8 is standing with the Gateway Arch in the background on his album cover and his breakthrough hit’s got more St. Louis double-r pronunciations than you can shake a tailfeather at. It’s Chingy, with “Right Thurr.”

Chingy had all the makings of a one-hit wonder riding fellow St. Louisan Nelly’s coattails to score the #8 song in our Chartcrush 2003 countdown. But no! Once his album dropped the same week its advance lead single “Right Thurr” cracked the top ten, it spawned two more big hits in ’03: “Holidae In” with Ludacris and Snoop Dogg, and “One Call Away” featuring ’90s sitcom Actor turned Singer Jason Weaver as J-Weav on the chorus. And Chingy’s own TV appearances on Punk’d and The George Lopez Show among others helped keep him out front and charting in the top 20 through ’06.

#7 Sean Paul – Get Busy

Now I mentioned the iTunes launch in the intro; at #7, the first new #1 hit of the iTunes era—for three weeks in May. New tech, new sounds, and this sound was Dancehall—the fast, gritty, talk-heavy Reggae offshoot that revved up in Jamaica parallel to Hip-Hop in America.

Snow’s “Informer” and Ini Kamoze’s “Here Comes The Hotstepper”—two one-hit wonder Novelties that broke the ice in the ’90s, and then Shaggy’s gravelly Reggae-Dancehall Pop on “Boombastic,” “It Wasn’t Me” and “Angel” kept the island vibe going on the charts, but ’03 was the year that Dancehall entered the Pop mainstream more or less undiluted, with this hit. At #7, from Kingston, Jamaica, it’s Sean Paul with “Get Busy.”

Sean Paul, “Get Busy” at #7 here on our 2003 edition of the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show—17 weeks in the top ten, April to July.

The foundation of a Hip-Hop record, of course: the beat, created by a Producer or DJs, and then the MC raps over it. Well, same concept in Dancehall, except that a single backing track (or riddim—r-i-d-d-i-m) might wind up on dozens of records by different MCs, and that was the case with Jamaican Producer Steven “Lenky” Marsden’s Diwali Riddim, the basis of, not just “Get Busy,” but two other hits on the charts at the same time in ’03: Jamaican Wayne Wonder’s Ballad “No Letting Go” and Teen Spanish Harlemite Lumidee’s “Never Leave You,” which got all the way to #3 in August.

But “Get Busy,” with Paul’s trancelike toasting, hit pop culture like a tsunami. His album Dutty Rock sold two million by the end of ’03, he headlined or featured on six more top tens over the next few years, and Rihanna’s first hit in ’05, “Pon de Replay?” Not just Dancehall, but even based on that same Diwali riddim as “Get Busy.”

#6 R. Kelly – Ignition (Remix)

At #6, a comeback to (almost) the top of the charts by the top Male R&B Singer in a decade that had a lot of big-name Male R&B Singers, the ’90s. The song, kept out of the #1 spot all five of its weeks at #2 in the Spring by our #1 Banger of ’03 we’ll be hearing later, but its bouncy, beep-beep swagger was a bold flip-off to his prosecution in ’02 on child porn charges after a sex tape leaked to the Chicago Sun-Times.

And it came about because, just months after the scandal broke, the album he was getting set to release leaked on the internet and was scrapped. At #6, the advance lead single off the rejiggered album, R. Kelly’s completely reimagined remix of one of the leaked songs, “Ignition.”

“Ignition” took its sweet time climbing the charts—five months—to #2, but all told its 42 weeks on the chart and 15 in the top ten make it the #6 song in our Chartcrush countdown of 2003’s top ten hits. Billboard had it at #2 on its year-end Hot100 for ’03.

R. Kelly’s legal spiral, of course, was only getting started. It took six years and a sensational trial in ’08, but he was acquitted of the ’02 charges. In 2019, though, within a month of the Lifetime miniseries Surviving R. Kelly airing, his label dropped him, he was evicted from his recording studio, and looking at ten new federal counts—racketeering and sex trafficking. In 2021 he was convicted of nine of them and got 30 years in prison.

#5 Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz featuring Ying Yang Twins – Get Low

Up next at #5, another hit that peaked at #2 and took a good long time to get there: nearly six months, but unlike “Ignition” whose full chart run was in Billboard‘s ’03 chart year, December 7, ’02 to the last week in November ’03, this one still had three months to go at the cutoff, so Billboard has it at #11 for ’03 and #70 for ’04. But counting that full chart run puts it squarely in the top ten for ’03: #5 by our reckoning here on the Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show.

And like Sean Paul’s “Get Busy” with Dancehall, it was the breakthrough not just for the Artist but for the genre he became synonymous with, Crunk—Dirty South Atlanta’s booming high-energy brand of Hip-Hop, heavy on party vibes. Sean Paul wanted us to “Get Busy;” Lil Jon and The East Side Boyz with Ying Yang Twins’ message: “Get Low.”

The radio version of Lil Jon’s “Get Low:” not censored, but practically re-written and re-recorded. Nearly every line needed a tweak or two to pass muster on the airwaves.

In ’04, Lil Jon was tapped to craft a Club Banger as the lead single for Usher’s new album Confessions, and they came up with “Yeah!,” the #1 song of ’04, so Lil Jon’s impact was seismic in the mid ’00s. The raw aggression and escape of Crunk? A big part of how America shook off post-9/11 wartime anxieties.

#4 matchbox twenty – Unwell

But while Crunk was raging, as I said at the top of the show and when we heard 3 Doors Down’s “When I’m Gone” back at #10, Rock was wallowing in anxiety and vulnerability, and at #4, the song that proclaimed in ’03, “it’s OK not to be OK,” written by Lead Singer Rob Thomas for people who are “messed up and feel alone like that. We all feel a little messed up sometimes… you’re not alone,” he said.

And speaking of chart longevity, this one had 54 weeks; nothing else in ’03 came close. The second single from their third album, More Than You Think You Are, it’s matchbox twenty’s “Unwell.”

Writing in Psychology Today in 2024, therapist Jennifer Gerlach called “Unwell” “a window into early psychosis;” its lyrics about paranoia, hearing voices, trouble sleeping, seeing visions—basically a list of the classic symptoms.

Matchbox Twenty’s last big hit: #4 as we count down the top ten here on our ’03 edition of Chartcrush. They put the Band on ice mid-decade to work on solo projects and in ’06, Rob Thomas peaked at #6 with “Lonely No More,” but subsequent matchbox twenty reunion albums and tours from ’07 all the way into the 2020’s leaned on a loyal, graying fan base, not current chart juice.

#3 Beyoncé featuring Jay-Z – Crazy in Love

Not so our next Act though, whose solo breakthrough cracked the top ten the same week as “Unwell,” June 14, and four weeks later was #1. “Unwell” only got to #5. The first two singles off her debut album Dangerously in Love: both #1 hits, and they’re back-to-back at numbers 3 and 2. That’s right, it’s a top five twofer here on our ’03 Chartcrush countdown!

They were nearly back-to-back at #1 too in late Summer and Fall; just five weeks apart—and with those two hits she owned the top of the Hot100 for 17 weeks: most of the second half of the year. Featuring then-just-rumored beau Jay-Z on the intro and featured rap, the first of those #1’s, it’s Beyoncé’s “Crazy in Love.”

Beyoncé was already a force by the time “Crazy in Love” hit: the heartbeat of R&B Girl Group Destiny’s Child since ’97 when she was just 16, TLC’s heirs with sass to spare, championing independence and calling out cheaters, losers and users. By ‘03, she’d vamped in MTV’s Carmen: A Hip Hopera, strutted as groovy Spy Foxxy Cleopatra in ‘02’s big Summer blockbuster Austin Powers Goldmember, and featured on a #4 hit, Jay-Z’s “’03 Bonnie & Clyde” at the end of ’02.

But her funky soundtrack cut from Goldmember, “Work It Out,” didn’t chart and her Destiny’s Child cohort Kelly Rowland beat her to #1 paired with Nelly on “Dilemma,” ’02’s #2 song, all of which delayed Bey’s album release.

And when it finally did drop in June of ’03, she had New York Times critic Kelefa Sanneh infamously proclaiming that she was “no Ashanti.” Ashanti, the Murder, Inc. label Singer who’d just scored in ’02 singing the hooks on Ja Rule and Fat Joe’s ’02 Rap smashes, then her solo debut “Foolish,” our #3 song of ’02.

#2 Beyoncé featuring Sean Paul – Baby Boy

“Crazy in Love,” of course, slapped down the doubters, but then that second #1 right on its heels sealed the deal. It’s our #2 song of 2003, again, Beyoncé, this time featuring Sean Paul, whose we just heard at #7, “Baby Boy.”

Now 21, Beyoncé ditched Destiny’s Child’s flirty sass for a solo strut—sex, soul and vulnerability oozing from “Crazy in Love” and “Baby Boy,” our #2 in the ’03 Chartcrush countdown. Both songs, completed while the album was on hold reacting to Kelly Rowland’s coup with “Dilemma” and Ashanti’s reign, as that New York Times Critic put it, “telling gruff Rappers how much she loved them.” It was a fierce pivot that Beyoncé mined for years while still rocking Destiny’s no-nonsense grit.

By the way, the Raga feel and that sitar twang at the end of “Baby Boy?” A bold nod to Eastern vibes only months into the Iraq war. Iraq, not India of course, but a provocative Pop curveball post-9/11 and “shock and awe.”

Over the next 20 years, Beyoncé scored 17 more top10s as a Headliner or featured Singer, including six #1s.

#1 50 Cent – In da Club

And that gets us to our #1 song of 2003, which also snagged Billboard‘s top spot, and they crowed that “Hip-Hop has its first song of the year since 1995.” But hold up, that ’95 hit, Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise,” was only #50 on their own year-end Airplay chart. The Hot100, a hot mess from ’95 to ’98; check our late ’90s episodes for the scoop on that.

And then there’s ’02, when Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” was #1 for 12 weeks. But that run spilled over into ’03, so it ranked low on both year-end recaps when it was really the #1 song of 2002 (hear all about that in our ’02 episode).

So the headline should be: ’03, the second year in a row that a Hip-Hop record is the song of the year—a truer nod to Hip-Hop’s early ’00s explosion, don’t you think?

Anyway, no debate about what the #1 song of ’03 was. It was a New York Rapper who seemed hell-bent on dissing his way into an early grave, and he almost did—shot nine times and lived in 2000—until Eminem and Dr. Dre heard his ’02 mixtape Guess Who’s Back? and signed him. Hyped as the most-anticipated Rap debut in a decade, at #1, the lead single from his first studio album Get Rich or Die Tryin’, it’s 50 Cent’s “In da Club.”

Even exurban dads of kids watching Dragon Tales in ’03 were aware of “In da Club,” said one commenter on Stereogum’s “Number Ones” column. And NPR’s Franny Kelly credited it with helping start the ringtone craze: “Two years later,” she wrote in 2009, “it was a tongue-in-cheek…retro move to still have it vibrating the table when your mom called.”

“In da Club” didn’t just rule the charts in the Spring of ’03 (nine weeks at #1, March to May), it transformed clubs into escape pods as “shock and awe” dominated the headlines: 50 Cent’s bullet-scarred grit, swagger and supervillain charm wrapped in an over-the-top party vibe that cemented Hip-Hop’s bling era and reshaped Rap’s mainstream with scientific precision. The video even has Eminem and Dre in white coats in a remote lab constructing the ultimate Rapper. Mission accomplished!

Bonus

And there you have ’em: our top ten songs of 2003 here on our ’03 edition of Chartcrush. Billboard’s top ten mostly aligns. No epic “Lose Yourself”-style flub (our #1 song of ’02, split between their ’02 and ’03 recaps), but counting full chart runs the Chartcrush way, Beyoncé’s ‘Baby Boy,’ Lil Jon’s ‘Get Low,’ and Nelly’s ‘Shake Ya Tailfeather’ elbow into our top ten, nudging out Billboard’s #8, 9, and 10 songs. To be thorough, let’s have a look at those near-misses.

#17 Evanescence – Bring Me to Life

First up, a Nu Metal Lament by a classically-influenced Band from Arkansas that notched 12 weeks in the top ten mid-year and won the Grammy for Best Hard Rock song. Billboard‘s #10; it shakes out a #17 on our Chartcrush ranking. It’s Evanescence’s “Bring Me to Life.”

Evanescence Songwriter and Frontwoman Amy Lee didn’t want the Male vocal counterpoint (courtesy of 12 Stones Singer Paul McCoy) on “Bring Me to Life;” the label insisted. But it was her Band’s breakthrough: showing up first in the Ben Affleck superhero movie Daredevil and its soundtrack, then the lead single from the Band’s debut album.

#16 Kid Rock featuring Sheryl Crow – Picture

Next on our mini-countdown on the songs that made Billboard‘s year-end top ten for ’03 but not our Chartcrush Top Ten we counted down earlier in the show, Detroit’s Rap-Rock Rebel dials it down with a Duet that hit #4 blending whiskey drawl and Country twang—and Sheryl Crow sold the heartbreak. Billboard had it at #9; it’s #16 on our Chartcrush ’03 ranking: Kid Rock’s “Picture.”

That’s the album version of Kid Rock’s “Picture” featuring Sheryl Crow, who co-wrote it, but the intended radio version had Country Singer-Songwriter Allison Moorer, since Sheryl Crow’s label wouldn’t let Kid Rock’s label put out as a single. Most radio stations ignored that and played the Crow version anyway.

#13 Aaliyah – Miss You

And finally, Billboard‘s #8 song of ’03 that shakes out at #13 on our Chartcrush ranking we counted down the top ten from earlier: a posthumous gem cut before the Singer was killed in a plane crash in August of ’01 sending shock waves through the music world. Smooth R&B laced with loss, it’s Aaliyah’s “Miss You.”

Aaliyah’s posthumous hit “Miss You,” 13 weeks in the top ten February to April, lifted mid-run in March by Rapper Jay-Z’s tribute remix, after which it peaked at #3. Billboard doesn’t chart remix versions separately.

And that concludes our ’03 bonus trio, and our ’03 episode of The Chartcrush Top Ten Countdown Show. Hey, if you like what you heard and want more, visit our website, chartcrush.com for a written transcript of the show and a link to stream the podcast version online, plus ragin’ extras like our full top 100 chart and interactive line graph of the actual chart runs of the top ten songs. Which we do for every year, ’40s to the present, and it’s all on the website, again, chartcrush.com.

I’ve been your host, Christopher Verdesi. I want to thank you for listening, and be sure and tune in again next week, same station and time, for another year, and another edition of Chartcrush.

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