It was the Beijing Opening!

Top 100 defining cultural moments of the noughties

From pop to opera, television to art, our award-winning team of critics have sifted through the past 10 years to find the moments that signalled a change in the cultural life of Britain and the rest of the world.

Two stories seeem to sit at the heart of it all. The first is technology: the explosion in self-expression that we have witnessed has only been made possible by the boom in ways of transmitting thoughts, images, feelings, ideas - the cornerstones of culture. Computer software and the internet have democratised creatively: everyone's an artist now.
But, more than that, everyone's a critic. This was the decade of the whirlwind recommendation, when a song or an image, a film clip or a piece of writing could be shared instantly and praised or attacked by anyone - right here, right now.


Brian Eno - interview with the producer of U2's No Line On The Horizon
At the opposite end of the scale from this intangible digital world sit the other dominant figures of the decade: buildings. The rise of the big culture shrine has been as remarkable as the numbers who have turned up to look inside.
Let us not forget Kylie Minogue's bottom, however. Or the first tweet sent by Stephen Fry. For at the same time as the serious play has flourished in the West End, this has also been a decade of froth and celebrity, one in which, at times, the whole world seemed to go pop.
2000
January
Opening ceremony of the Dome: New Labour’s grand folly sounds the death knell for Cool Britannia.

Zadie Smith’s 'White Teeth’ published: Young, black and very gifted Cambridge student publishes first novel.
Naomi Klein’s 'No Logo’ published: Critique of branding culture becomes the antiglobalisation movement’s key text.
April
Metallica sue music file-sharing service Napster: Napster settle but the free online music genie is already out of the bottle.
May
Tate Modern open: When the Queen opened Tate Modern on May 11, London acquired its most important new museum since Edward VII opened the Tate Gallery at Millbank more than 100 years before. In transforming Sir Giles Gilbert Scott’s Bankside Power Station into a pristine space for contemporary art, Swiss architects Herzog and de Meuron lit a match that kindled a British love affair with modern art. The love affair turned obsessional and 10 years later, every single major museum in London had devoted at least one show to contemporary art.
June
Kylie Minogue steps out in her hot pants: Flaunted in the video for Spinning Around, the Aussie’s perfect buttocks become the pop symbol of the new millennium, in what already seems like a more innocent era.

July
'Big Brother’ airs for the first time on Channel: When it arrived, with a former nun among its contestants and a winner who gave away his prize money, Big Brother was an interesting study in group living. But by the time Jade Goody became its most famous participant in 2004, it had become a symbol of our obsession with instant fame.
October
V.S Naipaul wins the Nobel Prize for Literature: Curmudgeonly genius rewarded for unsparing analysis of postcolonial world.
2001
March
Destruction of the Buddhas of Bamyan: Historic Afghan cliff carvings are blown up after the Taliban deems them idolatrous.

July
'The Office’ debuts on BBC Two: Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant’s meticulously observed mockumentary instantly broke the mould for British sitcoms with its barbed understatement and made a household archetype of Gervais’s lovably loathsome boss-man David Brent. The aftershock of its novelty continues to be felt around the world; it has now aired in more than 80 countries. Gervais soon came to embody a new breed of comedy superstar whose live appearances harnessed the emerging power of the internet to become fast-selling phenomena in their own right.
July
'Brass Eye’ paedophilia special stokes controversy
Chris Morris’s satire on modern day witch-hunts ensnares politicians.
September
Attack on the World Trade Center: The cultural response to the outrage began badly, with Stockhausen’s remark that the destruction of the Twin Towers was “the greatest work of art ever”. More sane responses came later in John Updike’s Terrorist, work by Asian novelists such as Mohsin Hamid, and John Adams’s On the Transmigration of Souls.
Anthony d’Offay Gallery closes: After decades of mounting blue-chip shows of contemporary artists such as Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons and Gilbert and George, the art dealer calls it a day.
Sky Plus launches: RIP VHS – viewers now choose what they watch when at the touch of a button.
October
Release of the iPod: Apple’s elegant gadget changed the way we listen to music. Beautifully constructed, superbly functional and weirdly addictive, its little white ear buds became the most ubiquitous musical status symbol of the decade. In nine years, more than 220 million iPods have been sold worldwide. It’s like carrying your record collection in your pocket. And, with the random “shuffle” function, the iPod itself chooses what song we are going to hear at any given moment, throwing up all kinds of personally fascinating juxtapositions from the soundtrack to our own lives.

2002
January
Guantánamo inspires a wave of cultural responses: From gallery installations to television dramas, art finds a potent symbol of oppression in the American detention camp.
February
Will Young wins 'Pop Idol’: Politics graduate Will Young snatches the crown from Gareth Gates and begins the era of the TV talent contest.
June
'The Wire’ premieres on HBO
The Baltimore crime epic would come to symbolise a golden age for “high-end” American television dramas.
July
David Bowie performs 'Low’ at the Royal Festival Hall: Bowie begins a nostalgic trend in artist album live sets, of which Brian Wilson’s Smile – performed in 2004 – becomes the best known.
September
Simon Rattle’s debut with Berlin Philharmonic: The British conductor brings a controversial modernist hue to this venerable orchestra.
October
Robbie Williams signs £80m deal with EMI: Former Take That star lands the biggest recording contract ever offered to a Briton.
New English edition of Proust: Sensitive Frenchman reflects on his wasted life. In modern English.
2003
February
Sacha Baron Cohen hits America: Ali G runs amok in “da USA” and Hollywood pounces on his creator’s PC-subverting antics. Ali G begat Borat begat Brüno making the north London prankster a global superstar.
Sacha Baron Cohen's funniest lines

March
Michael Moore hijacks the Oscars: Picking up his Bowling for Columbine gong, Moore puts the knife into Bush’s “fictitious” presidency, splitting his audience between boos and applause.
April
Nicholas Hytner brings theatre to the masses: After taking over at the National, Hytner introduces £10 tickets and Sunday opening. The theatre plays to over 90 per cent of capacity year after year.
Spencer Tunick installation opens the Saatchi Gallery: 160 volunteers pose naked together on the gallery’s terrace for the American artist’s latest eye-catching work.
July
'The Da Vinci Code’ published: Dan Brown begins worldwide domination with monks-and-conspiracy thriller.
Beyoncé and Jay-Z release 'Crazy in Love’: The single of the year signals the arrival of a new king and queen of the pop firmament, and the union of hip hop and r&b that will become the dominant sound of the decade.
September
'Little Britain’ airs on BBC3: The comedy that makes stars of Matt Lucas and David Walliams also gives a welter of catchphrases, like Vicky Pollard’s “yeah-but-no-but”.
October
Banksy smuggles one of his own works into Tate Britain: The nation’s favourite graffiti artist nabs himself a place in the art establishment.
Olafur Eliasson’s 'Weather Project’ at Tate Modern: Who would have guessed that an art work entitled The Weather Project and installed in Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall by a then-obscure Icelandic artist would turn out to be the most memorable contemporary art show of the decade? But Eliasson’s dazzling disc of orange light, seen through a veil of vapour and reflected in scores of ceiling mirrors, mesmerised tens of thousands of visitors.

'Belle de Jour’ takes blogging into the mainstream: Offering everything from the musings of a literate lady of the night to the minutiae of the latest outlandishly named musical movement, blogs become the publishing medium that matters.
December
'Broken Fall’ opens at the Royal Opera House: Sylvie Guillem dances Russell Maliphant’s Broken Fall with the Ballet Boyz, bringing a blast of modernity to the Royal Ballet. Wayne McGregor, who had a work on the same bill, would become in 2006 the first contemporary choreographer to be appointed resident choreographer for the company.
Building work on the Gherkin is completed: Foster and Shuttleworth’s distinctively shaped office building instantly becomes a London landmark.
2004
January
The Richard & Judy Book Club starts on Channel 4: New gods of the publishing world anoint some and disappoint others.
Renovation of London Coliseum completed: English National Opera moves back into its magnificently restored home, amid a financial and administrative meltdown that threatens the company’s existence. Under Loretta Tomasi’s tough management, it now looks secure again.
Virtual studio - Garageband released
The software that makes it possible for anyone, anywhere to write and record music.
May
Russell Brand captivates television audiences: His Wildean, waggish improvisations on Big Brother’s Big Mouth seal the deal for the lascivious Essex motormouth, who hereafter becomes inescapable.
'Strictly Come Dancing’ launches on BBC1: The BBC’s revival of ballroom dancing provides it with sequins, scandals and audience ratings – and reflects the boom in all forms of dance.

Momart warehouse fire, East London: Celebrated art work by the Young British Artists is destroyed in an inferno: a tragic loss or a bonfire of the vanities?
September
'Stuff Happens’ opens: North London’s Tricycle Theatre blazed the way with its pioneering inquiry dramas. But when David Hare put the causes of the Iraq war on stage at the National, it was clear that documentary theatre had become the most important theatrical trend of the decade.
'Cloaca’ launches Kevin Spacey’s first season at the Old Vic Theatre in London: The double Oscar-winner kicks off his tenure as artistic director with a stinker, but goes on to attract big stars and full houses with a string of cast-iron hits.
Publication of 'Oxford Dictionary of National Biography’: After 12 years of work, the most comprehensive history of a nation’s people, comprising 60 volumes and 57,000 biographies, hits the shelves.
October
Alistair Spalding appointed chief executive and artistic director of Sadler’s Wells: Under Alistair Spalding’s leadership, the renowned London dance venue shifts into a new creative gear, generating an astonishing run of world-class work devised by many of the greatest choreographers alive today.
'Saw’ released: Characterised by scenes of ingenious sadism, James Wan’s film spawns an ever-more gruesome franchise. Along with films such as Hostel, the Saw films are dubbed “torture porn”.
December
Google announces its plan to convert 15 million books into digital format: A fully searchable, universally accessible library available on your computer. Brilliant but scary.
Sage Gateshead opens
The £70 million “shining slug” concert hall designed by Norman Foster brings the wow factor to the North East of England.
2005
January
The BBC screens 'Jerry Springer: the Opera’: Television broadcast of the hit stage show, featuring a nappy-wearing Jesus, elicits 63,000 complaints.
February
YouTube created: When it began, this video-sharing website, founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, was loathed by multinational entertainment corporations as a copyright-infringing parasite. Since then it has been bought by Google, attracts more than a billion hits a day and its user-generated content makes it a major player in the Web 2.0 economy. Many of the companies who tried to sue it now distribute and promote their products through it.
March
'Doctor Who’ returns to BBC: The revival of a classic made essential teatime viewing for a new generation.
'Billy Elliot: The Musical’ opens: The first huge hit British musical since Phantom of the Opera goes on to conquer Broadway and sweep the board at the Tony awards.
June
Beethoven Experience dominates the airwaves: Radio 3 broadcasts every note of Beethoven, and the symphony downloads break all classical records.
July
Live 8: Twenty years after Live Aid, the global musical charity event returned bigger, though not necessarily better. The feelgood factor was dissipated by a sense of confusion about what was achieved. Two years later, Live Earth was so botched it felt like the whole format had become outdated and ineffective.
August
Hurricane Katrina destroys New Orleans: Kanye West and Spike Lee lead the black community’s protest at government indifference.
October
Arctic Monkeys release 'I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor’: With their second single, the Sheffield band sneak up from the web margins to take over the nation’s youth.
November
'Guitar Hero’ debuts on PlayStation 2: The release of the interactive game begins a process that will end with the Beatles as computer avatars.
December
Harold Pinter wins Nobel Prize for literature: Already weakened by the cancer that would kill him three years later, the dramatist is unable to attend the awards ceremony in Stockholm, but sends a videotaped acceptance speech that attacks American foreign policy, suggesting the US had supported “and in many cases engendered” every right-wing military dictatorship in the past 50 years.
2006
March
'Planet Earth’ starts on BBC One: The most expensive wildlife documentary ever commissioned by the BBC makes its debut, packed with extraordinary high-definition scenes from nature never before seen on television. Elephant-hunting lions, cannibal chimps and a bloody encounter between a monkey and a tiger – all vie for attention with the inimitable tones of David Attenborough.
April
RSC Complete Works festival: The RSC’s reputation soars with a year-long Shakespeare fest – followed, in 2007, by The Histories.
May
'An Inconvenient Truth’ premieres in the US: Al Gore’s filmed lecture about global warming becomes an international hit and wins two Oscars.

June
Klimt’s portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer sells for £73m: Cosmetics heir Ronald Lauder’s record-breaking purchase propels art prices to a stratospheric peak.
July
'Top of the Pops’ shown for the very last time: The show that occupied the central point in British pop music for four decades goes out with a whimper, killed off by the BBC because of lack of interest.
August
'Black Watch’ opens: The new National Theatre of Scotland gets off to a flying start with this gutsy, “total theatre” portrayal of the combat experiences of the legendary Scottish regiment.
September
Richard Dawkins’s 'The God Delusion’ published: Atheist polemic sets off heated debate about God, the universe and everything.

Sony Reader launched: A new way to read books – on an eye-friendly hand-held screen. Goodbye paper?
October
Premiere of Punchdrunk Theatre Company’s 'Faust’: Greatest of the site-specific productions that were such an adventurous feature of the decade.
December
Met Opera in New York begins HD broadcasts to cinemas worldwide: Crystal-clear sound, perfect picture and informality take the stuffing out of the opera house experience.
Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature
Pamuk’s work illuminates a country torn between a resurgent Islam and the West.
2007
January
Canongate publishes Barack Obama’s 'Dreams from My Father’: Small Edinburgh publisher picks up little-known American senator’s memoir. Two years later…
February
'Citizens and Kings’ opens at the Royal Academy of Arts: For two decades we saw countless blockbusters at the Royal Academy. This survey of portraiture in the age of enlightenment was one of the most ambitious – but would be one of the last. Throughout the decade the cost of such shows mounted, the danger to the objects increased and sponsorship became harder to find. A year later the markets crashed, taking with them the culture of the blockbuster.
March
Paul McCartney signs record deal with Starbucks: Anyone can be a record company now – even a coffee shop chain.
May
Rupert Goold’s 'Macbeth’ at Chichester Theatre Festival: This dazzling Stalinist take on Shakespeare makes Goold a director to watch.
June
Darcey Bussell retires from ballet: At the height of her powers, a great British ballerina gracefully bows out.
'Monkey: Journey to the West’ premieres at first Manchester Festival: Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett’s enchanting Chinese opera inaugurates the Manchester International Festival.
July
'Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows’ published: JK Rowling sends children (and adults) into a frenzy of speed-reading.
August
Simón Bolivar Youth Orchestra makes its British debut: The public face of a nationwide campaign to rescue Venezuelan street kids through music education, this orchestra electrifies audiences across the world. Gustavo Dudamel, its conductor, becomes a superstar.
Prince takes up residence at the O2 Arena in London: The Minneapolis Wonder’s 21 nights at the O2 Arena reconfirmed his superstar status as the most abundantly gifted musician of the modern pop age. Singing, playing and gyrating through a constantly shifting set of 130 songs, the jazz-soul-funk-rock-machine treated 420,000 ticket holders to some of the greatest shows on earth. He also cannily demonstrated the new music-business priorities by giving away his album Earth Songs with the Mail on Sunday.
September
Pavarotti dies: The world mourns the Italian tenor who had become the popular face of opera.
October
Radiohead release 'free’ album: Britain’s most influential band ask fans to name their price for In Rainbows.
'War Horse’ premieres at the National Theatre: Captivating equine puppets are the stars of the hugely acclaimed production.
Digital TV switchover: By 2012, all television will be digital. The revolution starts in the Lake District.
December
Karlheinz Stockhausen dies: The great guru of new music combined a mystical megalomania, a showman’s theatrical canniness, an inventor’s practical brilliance and true musical genius.
Led Zeppelin re-form for one night only: At a charity concert in the O2 Arena, the gods of Seventies rock unite. With veterans (from Neil Diamond to Leonard Cohen) at the top of the charts and the inevitable reformation of almost every ex-group with at least one member still breathing, nostalgia proves a potent commercial force.
2008
February
Polaroid announces that it is ceasing production of instant film: Henceforth, memories will be bright, digital and amnesiac rather than faded and ghostly.
'Yes We Can’ released: Rapper Will.I.Am from the Black Eyed Peas turns a Barack Obama speech into an uplifting hip-hop anthem, with a little help from celebrity friends including Scarlett Johansson.
June
The Public, West Bromwich, opens after a catalogue of delays: The much-derided £54m digital arts centre marks a low point for architecture.
July
'Mamma Mia!’ is released: Not so much a musical as a cinematic karaoke session, Mamma Mia! goes on to become the most successful British movie of all time.
August
Olympics Opening Ceremony, Beijing
Perhaps the spectacular audio-visual cavalcade dreamed up and choreographed by film director Zhang Yimou was little more than propaganda for a repressive regime. But it was hard not to marvel at how brilliantly he marshalled a 15,000-strong cast to tumble and move through Herzog and de Meuron’s extraordinary Bird’s Nest Stadium, and how dexterously he juggled drum platoons, LED paper scrolls, lip-synching singers and CGI fireworks in a militantly euphoric and made-for-television spectacle that felt like a national “coming out” to the world and an attempt to fashion a new sense of Chinese selfhood.

September
David Foster Wallace commits suicide: Most original writer of his generation dies. An extraordinary loss.
Damien Hirst’s 'Beautiful Inside My Head Forever’ auction at Sotheby’s, London: On September 15 and 16 2008, Damien Hirst sold by auction at Sotheby’s in London 223 lots of new work for an estimated total gross of £111.5 million. The supreme irony was that the sale happened on the very day that Lehman Brothers fell and Merrill Lynch went under. It was the end of the frenzied era when art became about worth – and worth alone. Hirst had already made the point a year earlier when he showed a human skull encrusted with £50 million worth of flawless diamonds – and he made it again at Sotheby’s with pieces entitled False Idol and The Golden Calf. And anyone who went to sneer, came away seduced, dazzled, entertained and impressed by much of the work’s breathtaking, heartbreaking beauty.
October
Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand controversy: Victims of bash-the-Beeb media hype, or overpaid, morally coarse perpetrators of a shockingly tasteless prank on the revered Andrew Sachs?
November
Dizzee Rascal interviewed by Paxman on 'Newsnight’: The crown prince of urban music bests the king of television interviewers.
December
Alfred Brendel’s farewell concert, Vienna: The musical world says farewell to a living symbol of the golden age of classical pianism, leading all the way back to Czerny and Beethoven.
2009
January
Titian’s 'Diana and Actaeon’ saved for nation: The National Galleries of Scotland and England raise £50 million to keep a masterpiece.
February
'Slumdog Millionaire’ wins eight Oscars: Danny Boyle’s Mumbai-based fairy tale, from a script that nearly didn’t get made, becomes the most feted British film since The English Patient.
Stephen Fry tweets while stuck in a lift: Fry’s 140-character SOS messages, read by thousands, make the news headlines – and turn Twitter into a household name.
May
Carol Ann Duffy appointed Poet Laureate: Tradition tumbles when, for the first time in the position’s history, a woman becomes “royal bard”.
June
Michael Jackson dies: Just weeks ahead of his 50‑date residency at London’s O2 Arena, the one‑time King of Pop collapses and dies. In a process of Elvis-like deification, Michael Jackson’s reputation is transformed by tragedy.
July
Antony Gormley’s 'One & Other’ begins on the fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square: One by one, for an hour each, 2,400 Britons become living artworks.
December
James Cameron’s 'Avatar’ released: The megahyped sci-fi epic will pave (or block) the way forward for digital 3D.

Contributors: Ally Carnwath, Dominic Cavendish, Rupert Christiansen, Sarah Crompton, Gervase De Wilde, Richard Dorment, Paul Gent, Ivan Hewett, Tom Horan, Neil McCormick, Neil Midgley, Mark Monahan, Andrew Pettie, Sameer Rahim, Gillian Reynolds, Tim Robey, Sukhdev Sandhu, Benjamin Secher, Charles Spencer