POPJUICE

Potential Breakup Song getting a resurgence. Taylor Swift re-recording Fearless. Pop-punk edging its way back into the mainstream. Some days it feels like the 2000s all over again. Once the heyday of acts like The Veronicas and Sean Kingston—many of whom faded into obscurity over the years—it seems like we could be getting a dose of the noughties this year as some of them gear up for a comeback.

Aly & AJ

The Michalka sisters have certainly been through some ups and downs: rebranding themselves as 78Violet in 2009 and releasing the (criminally underrated) Sanctuary EP in 2019. ‘A Touch of the Beat Gets You Up on Your Feet Gets You Out and Then Into the Sun’, their fourth album, arrives this week as their first studio effort in fourteen years. If there’s any justice in the pop world, Aly & AJ will see a resurgence the same way Potential Breakup Song had a second coming on TikTok in 2020. Read our review of the album here.

The Veronicas

Across the pond from Aly & AJ, another pair of sisters was steadily responsible for some of the 2000s’ most inescapable hits like ‘Untouched’ and ‘Hook Me Up’. After years of label disputes, they finally returned with their eponymous third studio album ‘The Veronicas’ in 2014. Fans of the pair can rejoice, because they’re releasing not just one, but two albums this year—’Godzilla’ in May and ‘Human’ in July. And judging by the former’s title track, they haven’t lost their spunk one bit.

Soulja Boy

Perhaps the greatest and strangest of all comeback stories, Soulja Boy was a big name in rap in the 2000s, with viral hits like ‘Crank Dat’ and ‘Kiss Me Thru The Phone’. When the 2010s came, however, he struggled to maintain that popularity—until now, that is. His latest release, ‘She Make It Clap’, is making the rounds on TikTok and introducing Soulja Boy to a whole new generation of fans; no surprise given that the rapper rose to fame with his bizarre and meme-worthy moves.

Jesse McCartney

America’s favourite boy next door, Jesse McCartney’s hits of the 2000s like ‘Beautiful Soul’ and ‘Leavin’ were surely mainstays on our iPods. Since those days, he’s released singles sporadically over the years and most recently competed on The Masked Singer as the Turtle, finishing in second place.

JoJo

Fans of JoJo would know that the singer was embroiled in one of the industry’s most high-profile label struggles for almost ten years. Since then, she’s released 2016’s ‘Mad Love’ and last year’s ‘Good To Know’, and re-recorded 2004’s ‘JoJo’ and 2006’s ‘The High Road’ after their original versions were removed from streaming services. Most recently, she released the folksy ‘American Mood’; featured on Parson James’ groovy ‘Dirty Laundry’ and also put together a live concert for the one-year anniversary of ‘Good To Know’.

Shontelle

Remember ‘T-Shirt’ and ‘Impossible’? Unlike the previous artists who steadily released music in the 2010s, Shontelle remained largely out of the spotlight after releasing her second studio album, ‘No Gravity’, in 2010. In 2020, however, the singer returned with ‘Remember Me’ and just last month released the Reggae-influenced ‘House Party’.

Sean Kingston

Best known for hits like ‘Beautiful Girls’ and ‘Eenie Meenie’, Sean Kingston hasn’t released a studio album since 2013’s ‘Back To Life’. His trademark vocals can be heard here on this track by Canadian singer TÖME, and Kingston also recently teased a new song ‘Darkest Times’, with an album titled ‘Deliverance’ set to follow.

Boys Like Girls

Fourteen years on, and it’s still impossible to listen to ‘Great Escape’ without head-banging or singing along when the chorus hits. Boys Like Girls have remained relatively under the radar since 2012’s ‘Crazy World’, which spawned the hit ‘Be Your Everything’. They did, however, join Instagram in 2020 to much fanfare, and have been posting a slew of throwback moments from their tours in the 2000s. We’d say there hasn’t been a better time for the band to make a comeback than now, so fingers crossed we get that soon.