#MTV

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Celebrities 1998–2001 peak

98 Degrees

The boy band that built itself—assembled independently by four guys chasing the dream in Los Angeles, without a Lou Pearlman or corporate svengali telling them who to be. They cracked the charts with 1997's "Invisible Man," then spent 1998–2000 as Motown Records' R&B-leaning answer to the Backstreet Boys and NSYNC, delivering a handful of genuine hits including one number-one collaboration with Mariah Carey, then watched their moment fade when Nick Lachey married Jessica Simpson in 2002 and reality TV captured his afterlife.

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Music 1997

Backstreet Boys — "As Long as You Love Me"

The sweeping mid-tempo ballad that showcased the softer side of the BSB formula—all yearning strings and harmonies, shipped to radio without a physical single. Ineligible for the Hot 100 under 1990s chart rules, it still became a top-three hit across the world, and that folding-chair choreography in the music video became instantly iconic.

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Celebrities 1996–2001 peak

Backstreet Boys

Orlando's harmonizing five-piece formed the template for late-90s teen-pop dominance. The Backstreet Boys' matching choreography and Lou Pearlman's boy-band machinery made them a TRL staple, an arena-tour juggernaut, and the answer to every teen magazine's "Who's your favorite Backstreet Boy?" quiz.

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Movies 1996

Beavis and Butt-Head Do America

MTV's cackling couch potatoes trade their couch for a cross-country road trip when their TV gets stolen. It's chaotic, it's vulgar, and it opened #1 with the biggest December weekend any film had ever managed at the time. Mike Judge's feature debut turned a controversial TV phenomenon into a theatrical event that felt impossibly big.

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Celebrities 1997–2005 peak

Blink-182

Pop-punk pioneers who mixed juvenile toilet humor with real melodic craft and suburban-teen honesty. From scrappy San Diego garage band to first punk album atop the Billboard 200. Their untitled third album was the moodier reinvention; the hiatus in 2005 felt less like goodbye and more like a pause in a story everyone knew would resume.

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Celebrities 1998–2004 peak

Britney Spears

A former Mickey Mouse Club kid whose debut single '...Baby One More Time' (September 1998) and January 1999 album catapulted her to megastardom as the defining pop voice of the millennium. TRL countdown staple, Rolling Stone covers, Pepsi deals, and cultural omnipresence through the early 2000s with 'Oops!... I Did It Again' (2000) and 'Toxic' (2003–04).

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Celebrities 1996–2008 peak

Carmen Electra

The Prince protégée who became the late-90s everywhere-woman: Playboy covers, Baywatch's Lani McKenzie, MTV's Singled Out, and a Las Vegas wedding to Dennis Rodman that hit annulment papers nine days later. Then the 2000s spoof-movie wave made her its favorite good sport.

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TV 1998–2007

Celebrity Deathmatch

MTV's gleefully violent claymation series, in which caricatures of real celebrities beat each other to a pulp in a wrestling ring. Premiering on May 14, 1998, it staged absurd stop-motion grudge matches — pop stars, actors, and politicians torn limb from clay limb — narrated by ringside commentators Nick Diamond and Johnny Gomez. Gory, silly, and weirdly beloved, it signed off each fight with the same line: "Good fight, good night."

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Celebrities 1989–1998 peak

Cindy Crawford

The mole, the mane, the Pepsi. Cindy Crawford was the supermodel era's all-American face — MTV's House of Style host, Super Bowl commercial legend, and the reason a generation's living rooms had a workout VHS parked in the VCR.

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Celebrities 1993–2004 peak

Counting Crows

Adam Duritz's dreadlocked, wordy, openly wounded alt-rock band — one of the definitive sounds of 90s radio. Their 1993 debut sold over seven million copies, and Duritz spent years dismantling the very song that made them famous, recanting "Mr. Jones" and its hunger for stardom after getting exactly what he wished for.

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TV 1997–2002

Daria

Daria Morgendorffer—deadpan, sardonic, and thoroughly unimpressed—became the patron saint of 1990s teen-girl outsiderdom. Spun off from Beavis and Butt-Head, this MTV series followed Daria through the town of Lawndale alongside her artsy best friend Jane Lane, her popularity-obsessed sister Quinn, and her perpetually frustrated parents. Created by Glenn Eichler and Susie Lewis Lynn, Daria captured the 90s teen experience with sharp-edged humor and surprising emotional depth. Two final TV movies, 'Is It Fall Yet?' and 'Is It College Yet?', capped off a beloved five-season run.

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Music 1994–1995

Green Day — Dookie

Green Day's major-label debut smashed punk into the mainstream with three-minute anthems of suburban ennui. Released February 1, 1994, "Longview," "Basket Case," and "When I Come Around" dragged pop-punk from a Bay Area garage to every suburban bedroom in America.

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Music 1997–1998

Backstreet Boys — "Everybody (Backstreet's Back)"

The song that announced the arrival with attitude—released July 1997, it became the MTV template for boy-band spectacle when director Joseph Kahn shot the legendary haunted-mansion video where each member transformed into a classic horror monster. The production cost a reported million dollars, the choreography was airtight, and the "Am I original? Yeah!" call-and-response became instantly quotable.

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Music 1999

Backstreet Boys — "I Want It That Way"

The boy-band anthem that became iconic despite its infamously nonsensical lyrics, which even Kevin Richardson admitted "really doesn't make much sense." Peaked at number six on the Hot 100 due to chart technicalities, but hit number one in over twenty-five countries and spent ten weeks atop the US Adult Contemporary chart—Rolling Stone later ranked it among the 500 greatest songs of all time.

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Music 2000

NSYNC — "It's Gonna Be Me"

NSYNC's only Billboard Hot 100 number one—a fact that still surprises people because "Bye Bye Bye" felt bigger. Released May 2000 as the second single from No Strings Attached, it rode the Cheiron formula to the top for two weeks that summer, then spawned one of the most baffling memes of the 2010s when "It's Gonna Be May" took over the internet every April 30.

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TV 2000–2002

Jackass

MTV's notorious stunt-and-prank show, in which a crew of grown men hurt themselves for your entertainment. Premiering on October 1, 2000, it strung together shopping-cart crashes, ill-advised dares, and gross-out gags performed by Johnny Knoxville, Bam Margera, Steve-O, and the rest of the gang. Wrapped in stern on-screen warnings not to try any of it at home, it was appointment viewing for a generation of teenagers — and the launchpad for a movie franchise that's still going.

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Celebrities 1993–1999 peak

Jenny McCarthy

The Playmate who snort-laughed at the glamour game. As MTV's Singled Out co-host she buried the pin-up script under googly faces and gross-out physical comedy — and proved a bombshell could be the funniest person in the room.

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Celebrities 1999–2006 peak

Jessica Simpson

The third lane of the late-90s teen-pop trinity—Britney, Christina, and Jessica Simpson, marketed above all on that big Texas church-choir voice. Her debut album was a platinum hit, but her real dominance came via a reality TV show that turned her marriage into ratings gold and a Chicken of the Sea moment into the decade's defining soundbite.

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Music 1997–1998

Faith (Limp Bizkit cover)

George Michael's 1987 hit "Faith" was a four-week No. 1 and a defining pop moment of the '80s. Limp Bizkit took it and weaponized it: quiet verse, explosive down-tuned chorus, turntable scratches. The cover became the radio hit that broke the band to the mainstream.

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Celebrities 1997–2003 peak

Limp Bizkit

The Jacksonville metal band that defined nu-metal's MTV dominance. Fred Durst's backwards red Yankees cap and Wes Borland's shock-value body paint made them impossible to ignore. They broke through with a cover of George Michael's "Faith" reimagined as down-tuned metal. They became the sound of late-90s TRL, then evaporated just as fast.

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Celebrities 1990–2000 peak

Mariah Carey

The voice: a five-octave range and that signature whistle register that became the sound of 1990s radio dominance. Columbia executive Tommy Mottola heard her demo tape at a party in December 1988, signed her, and launched a decade-long reign that would see her become the first artist whose first five singles all reached number one, and close the 1990s with fourteen #1 hits and Billboard's Artist of the Decade award.

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Music 1995–1997

Smashing Pumpkins — Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness

Billy Corgan's double-album magnum opus: 28 tracks, two discs, infinite sadness. Mellon Collie debuted at #1 on the Billboard 200 (their only chart-topper), spawned multiple MTV staples, and won a Grammy for 'Bullet with Butterfly Wings'—the song that distilled 90s ennui into one howled line: 'Despite all my rage, I am still just a rat in a cage.'

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Music 1993–1994

Counting Crows — "Mr. Jones"

The breakthrough single that launched Counting Crows from small-club acoustics into MTV ubiquity — two struggling musicians daydreaming that being rock stars would make everything easier. Its central confession, "when everybody loves me, I will never be lonely," became the 90s' great be-careful-what-you-wish-for lyric: Duritz got the fame and spent years walking the song back.

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TV 2000–2023

MTV Cribs

The MTV show that walked you through celebrities' mansions, one "welcome to my crib" at a time. Premiering on September 12, 2000, it turned the house tour into appointment television: the car collections, the home theaters, the walk-in closets, and the wall-to-wall excess. It also became infamous for stars who padded their episodes with rented mansions and borrowed cars, which only made it more fun to watch.

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Celebrities 1991–1994 peak

Nirvana

Kurt Cobain, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl didn't invent grunge—but their 1991 album Nevermind accidentally blew it up worldwide, displacing Michael Jackson from #1 and making flannel shirts and angst the uniform of the decade.

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Celebrities 1998–2002 peak

NSYNC

'Bye Bye Bye' and its jerky-dancing video were inescapable on TRL, announcing that five boys from Orlando could rival the Backstreet Boys. NSYNC was teen pop's other empire during the late 90s, built by the same producer and fueled by a rivalry that defined a generation.

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TV 2004–2007

Pimp My Ride

Xzibit takes your hopeless beater to the shop and it comes back with a fish tank, seven screens, and flames. MTV's most gloriously absurd makeover show — and the birthplace of "yo dawg, I heard you like…"

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TV 2003–2007

Punk'd

Ashton Kutcher's hidden-camera prank show, and one of MTV's signature 2000s hits. Premiering on March 17, 2003, it ambushed celebrities with elaborate staged disasters — fake arrests, fake tax seizures, fake catastrophes — and filmed them melting down before the big reveal. The Justin Timberlake episode, in which he was led to believe the government was seizing his home over unpaid taxes, became one of the most famous pranks in reality-TV history.

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TV 1998–present

Real World/Road Rules Challenge

The competition show that threw The Real World and Road Rules casts into the same arena and let them fight it out for cash. Premiering on MTV on April 20, 1998, it evolved through several names — from Road Rules: All Stars to Real World/Road Rules Challenge to, eventually, just The Challenge — and became a physical, strategic, elimination-driven staple of MTV's 2000s lineup. Improbably, the spin-off outlived both of the shows that created it.

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TV 1995–2007

Road Rules

The Real World's road-trip sibling, and one of MTV's defining 90s reality shows. Premiering on July 19, 1995, it stripped five or six strangers aged 18 to 24 of their money and packed them into an RV, sending them from place to place to complete missions and chase clues. The Winnebago, the cramped quarters, and the scavenger-hunt format made it its own thing — and it spun off the long-running competition series that would eventually outlast both of its parents.

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TV 1995–1998

Singled Out

MTV's gloriously unfiltered dating game: a 50-person dating pool eliminated in real time by one picker who couldn't even see them. Chris Hardwick steered the chaos while Jenny McCarthy — and later Carmen Electra — egged everyone on. It was peak mid-90s MTV: loud, hormonal, zero filter.

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Celebrities 1995–1998 peak

Sublime

The Long Beach ska-punk legends who put out their early records on Skunk Records, their own DIY imprint, and whose sun-drenched sound against a backdrop of tragedy became the whole story. They broke nationally in 1995 with "Date Rape" on LA's KROQ, but the songs everyone remembers—"What I Got," "Santeria," "Wrong Way"—arrived after Bradley Nowell's heroin overdose in May 1996, two months before the album that contained them.

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Celebrities 1997–2001 peak

Sugar Ray

The funk-metal band that flipped into sunshine pop overnight with "Fly" in 1997—a reggae-tinged groove with bleak lyrics about death wrapped in an impossibly breezy hook, with Mark McGrath's frosted tips becoming the era's defining haircut. They owned the radio from 1997 to 2001—"Every Morning," "Someday," "When It's Over"—then eased into the fade, with McGrath resurfacing as a celebrity-news host on Extra.

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TV 2002–2005

The Osbournes

The reality show that turned a heavy-metal legend into a beloved, bumbling TV dad. Premiering on MTV on March 5, 2002, it followed Ozzy Osbourne and his family — wife Sharon, son Jack, and daughter Kelly — through the chaos of daily life in their Beverly Hills mansion. Ozzy shuffling around cursing at the remote control became one of the decade's defining TV images, and the show's runaway success helped invent the celebrity-family reality genre.

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TV 1992–2019

The Real World

The MTV series widely credited with launching the modern reality-TV genre. Premiering on May 21, 1992, it dropped seven young strangers into one shared residence and filmed them around the clock, opening each season with the now-legendary narration about what happens "when people stop being polite and start getting real." Part documentary, part soap opera, it turned ordinary twenty-somethings into a cultural phenomenon and gave television the template — the roommates, the confessional, the manufactured drama — that nearly every reality show since has borrowed.

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Celebrities 1999–2002 peak

Tom Green

A Canadian comedian and prankster whose MTV show turned everyday chaos into absurdist performance art. Tom Green built a cult following by harassing his own parents on camera, hitting No. 1 on TRL with a song about putting his bum on things, and turning a testicular cancer diagnosis into a shockingly honest TV special. He was unhinged before unhinged was a brand.

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Celebrities 1984–1999 peak

"Weird Al" Yankovic

The king of musical parody, Alfred Matthew Yankovic turned accordion jokes and lyrical hijinks into a decade-long MTV empire. He made fun of the songs everyone loved—and everyone watched him do it.

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Music 1999

Blink-182 — What's My Age Again?

The lead single that announced blink-182 had arrived, with a melody so immediate it felt like it already existed. A five-minute kitchen-floor composition that would define the band and give them their first MTV staple. The line "nobody likes you when you're 23" became the most quotable moment in pop-punk, even though Mark Hoppus was 26 when he wrote it.

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Celebrities 1991–2000 peak

The Smashing Pumpkins

Billy Corgan's Chicago four-piece: shaved head, a black ZERO shirt, and a voice that could go from a whisper to a howl inside one bar. Between Gish and Machina they were a defining act of 90s alternative rock — a #1 double album, two Grammys, and seven VMAs in a single night — and then they ended it themselves, on stage at the same Chicago club where they'd started.