I just remembered that “Sorry 2004” by Ruben Studdard exists

It’s a fine day.

April 13, 2018

This morning in Slack we had a discussion: what was the best year of the 2000s? While I'm not sure it would be my final answer, there is a pretty good case to be made for 2004, which somehow gave us College Dropout, Mean Girls, "Since You've Been Gone," and the Dawn of the Dead remake with Sarah Polley.

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Still, for me, maybe the best part of the discussion was when I remembered the existence of "Sorry 2004," a sappy slow jam by velvet-voiced American Idol victor Ruben Studdard. I recall first seeing the video on TRL, where it interrupted the reign of "Toxic" and ascended to the coveted No. 1 slot for one beautiful day in February. Ruben wears a cool hat in the clip, which also features WB star Reagan Gomez-Preston as his love interest. He sings the word "sorry" 42 times.

I'll always have a special fondness for art that's not overly concerned with being timeless; things like "E-mail My Heart" and "Kiss Me Thru The Phone" and Reality Bites come to mind. They're perfect little time capsules, or snapshots of the always-changing zeitgeist. "Sorry 2004" is like that, fated to exist forever in a perfectly preserved universe where it's always 2004 — a curse or a blessing, depending who you ask.

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I just remembered that “Sorry 2004” by Ruben Studdard exists