David Browne had an interesting piece in the Sunday Times presenting some compelling arguments for why the summer of 1997 was the last great golden age—commercially, if not aesthetically—for pop music.

Pop’s winds of change were instantly apparent 10 summers ago. With grunge on the wane, music took an unexpected turn toward zesty cheer. The first major hit of the heat-soaked months of ‘97 was “MMMBop” by the under-age trio Hanson, followed by two smashes by the Spice Girls and the breakthrough single, “Quit Playing Games (With My Heart),” by a new group called the Backstreet Boys. The music—slick, fizzy, buoyant—was a perfect counterpart to the dot-com boom of the time.

With the instant success of those acts—and Britney Spears, ‘N Sync, Eminem and Christina Aguilera over the next two years—the music business entered what amounted to its own Roaring ’20s.

Casting back to the music of that summer, I’m inclined to agree with him. I spent the first part of the summer working at a summer camp, so I was blissfully shut off from MTV and the Internet. One weekend between sessions I bought Feelings by David Byrne, and the first Sneaker Pimps album. Both of these were terrific summer pop albums in their own right, though arguably smarter, more enduring, and less commerically salable than Sugar Ray or Smash Mouth. When I rejoined civilization that August, however, I wasted no time catching up with MTV, fell in love with “Mo Money, Mo Problems”, and while it was still too early to be downloading mp3s of all these ephemeral pop classics, I bought the CD singles and the NOW! compilations so I could effectively DJ sorority formals when I returned to school.

Browne’s piece also examines how 1997 began a two-year ramp-up toward the culmination and inveitable end of this supposed golden era, in the summer of 1999. I remember all too well the dominion that Britney and Christina and the Backstreet Boys and even, god help us, Limp Bizkit had over us all. And I distinctly remember, that summer, pontificating to all zero of my friends who were willing to listen to me expound about how we were in the midst of a great, if extremely temporary, resurgence of unabashedly saccharine pop tunes whose creators had no delusions of artistic integrity beyond providing us with indulgent music for our summer car rides. That, and selling millions and millions of records, so many that the industry would have to invent a new sales classification.

Hey, speaking of 1999, remember Len? Remember the New Radicals? I miss Bill Clinton.