What was the first number one album of the 21st century?
Was the dawn of the 2000s supposed to be the end of good music? A lot of sceptics believed so.
There was something about the dawn of this new millennium that struck unwieldy fear into the heart of traditionalists who basically thought that a new era brought with it threatening modernity. The analogue format had already shifted to CD in recent years, and with the growing trend of electronic music building in the late ‘90s, it was billed as the digital apocalypse for some.
A futile worry, of course, for anyone who follows musical trends closely enough will know that nothing really dies a definitive death when it comes to music. And as countless musicians told us, rock and roll was one of those genres that simply refused to die.
The humble origins of rock and roll were perhaps never celebrated better than in the 2000s. On the Western side of the Atlantic, America’s favourite city, New York, sparked an indie renaissance that has been eulogised ever since. The Walkmen, LCD Soundsystem and The Strokes were but a few of these bands spearheading a new era of rock and roll, with the latter being the cream of the crop and laying down maybe the century’s very best record in Is This It.
The swell of culture eventually crashed on Britain’s shorelines, influencing the likes of Arctic Monkeys and The Libertines, who all took this lo-fi garage rock model and turned it into what has been endearingly coined as “indie sleaze”.
Studies of this era always seem to argue that all roads lead back to Manhattan and, more specifically, The Strokes. But with their record coming out in 2001, maybe we’ve missed a couple of steps and forgot to label one artist and a now seminal record as the figurehead of this new era, because after all, it was their album that roared into the century at number one.
So, what album was the first number one of the 21st century?
Answering this question all the way in 2026, it feels fitting that this record rang in the new millennium, as it has only really grown in popularity with each passing year.
Shania Twain’s ‘97 album Come On Over saw in the new millennium at UK number one, after spending five weeks there from December 5th, 1999. Considering the record came out two years earlier, it was a truly dominant album from Twain and eventually went 12x platinum.
While there were many tracks on the record that cemented her legacy, there was no looking past ‘Man! I Feel Like A Woman’ which did a lot of the record’s heavy lifting.
“If there’s any song that has ever affected culture, that I have written, it’s Man! I Feel Like A Woman!” Twain said.
“I worked with record producer Mutt Lange on the song. He had this guitar riff he had been playing all morning. Finally, he stopped the riff and I said… ‘Man I feel like a woman!’ When that statement came out of my mouth, it was so obvious that the song was going to be about liberation, independence and the human spirit.”
