If this was music in late 2016, then those months are truly the darkest days of American pop culture. 66. Now That’s What I Call Music! 13 Turn Down for What” is Lil Jon’s revenge on the Now god after it somehow determined that both “Get Low” and “Yeah!” were not music. In response to these truly harsh, obviously misguided snubs, Lil Jon clearly sat down with the then-unknown DJ Snake to make a song that was so music it would eventually drive everyone mad. 9. Now That’s What I Call Music! 16

Now That’s What I Call Music!’ Album, Ranked Every ‘Now That’s What I Call Music!’ Album, Ranked

Twenty years ago, someone finally told Americans what music was. The release of Now That’s What I Call Music! on October 27, 1998, was a turning point, a moment when the chaos of the auditory world was silenced; when consensus was reached by the mere declaration that nay, this—a collection of 17 contemporary songs—was music. Since that day we have had help in determining what is and what is not music (now), in the form of triannual installments in the Now series. We have never learned the identity of the authoritarian figure who guides us—this so-called “I”—but no matter, he or she or they or it has been just and resolute and unfleeting. The things they have called music have never been not-music, and so the ecosystem has remained intact. In our universe, meanwhile, I’d expect “Shallow” by Lady Gaga and Bradley Cooper to land on, like, Now 69. Bradley Cooper is music. 14. Now That’s What I Call Music! 64 people would be a lot more willing to concede that “Panda” is a pretty good song. 12. Now That’s What I Call Music! 55 It also, for some reason, has Juvenile’s “Slow Motion,” marking one of the only times Now correctly classified rap as music. More on that below … 8. Now That’s What I Call Music! 49NOW That’s What I Call Music! 74 is the 74th mainline installment in the American compilation series “NOW That’s What I Call Music!” Toxic” by Britney Spears is the best song and video Britney Spears has ever released, please do not @ me. Fun fact: Frankie J has been called music more times than Drake. 31. Now That’s What I Call Music! 53

NOW That’s What I Call Music! 74 [US] - Genius NOW That’s What I Call Music! 74 [US] - Genius

To appropriately rank the Now albums, I devised a formula to take into account the commercial success, accolades, and feeling of essentialness of each song featured. Half a point was awarded for every week a song stayed on the Billboard Hot 100; five points were awarded for every Grammy nomination a song earned, while 10 points were awarded for a Grammy win; lastly, one point was awarded for every MTV Video Music Award nomination, while two points were awarded for every VMA win. Those numbers were then totaled and averaged. The Essential Score for each album was determined by rating each song’s essentialness on a scale of 1 to 10. How do you determine how essential a song is, you ask? I’ll answer that question with a series of questions: How efficiently does the song conjure a sense of time and place? How well does it capture where popular music was as a genre when it was included on Now? And lastly, how good is the song to this day? Taking those questions into account and assigning each song an Essential Score, I—again, I am the authority here, which is valid because as Now doctrine states, all people who started the sixth grade three or four years before or after the first Now are Now experts—averaged those numbers to arrive at an Essential Score. Each album’s Points Average was then multiplied by its Essential Score to give us a Now Score. Simply put, the higher the Now Score, the better the Now album. The Temper Trap’s “Sweet Disposition” is on Now 34, which can mean only one thing: (500) Days of Summer played a major role in dictating what was called music in 2010. 53. Now That’s What I Call Music! 40

Here are five reasons why I think “Somebody That I Used to Know” isn’t remembered so kindly, despite it not being that bad a song: Speaking of Karmin, remember when Karmin was on Saturday Night Live? That was, um, interesting. The performance has mostly been scrubbed from the internet (which makes sense), but you can still read this breakdown by Vulture of all the absurd gestures Karmin made during it, which is probably better than actually rewatching the thing. 54. Now That’s What I Call Music! 34