2002

Album: Speak Your Mind (2018)
Charted: 3
Play Video

Songfacts®:

  • Anne-Marie harks back to the summer of 2002 on this slice of upbeat pop. She sings about falling in love during adolescence and all the emotions that evokes. The nostalgic track is anchored around a chorus that finds her referencing some of the era's biggest hits.

    Oops, I got 99 Problems singing bye bye bye

    Hold up, if you wanna go and take a ride with me

    Better hit me baby, one more time
  • Anne-Marie co-wrote the song with Ed Sheeran, whom she supported on a lengthy tour.

    "We've been friends for nearly 10 years now, so we've always wanted to work with each other, and obviously he's always out of the country and I'm always out of the country," Anne-Marie told NME. So one time we were both in London and we just got in the studio and we did this song."
  • Sheeran's upbeat, nostalgic track is a positive love song in stark contrast to Anne-Marie's cheating partner kiss-offs such as "Alarm" and "Ciao Adios." She told the BBC:

    "I feel like I didn't write a lot of songs about the good feelings of love, I always write about bad experiences, it's very different for me but I've always wanted to have a song like that and Ed was the perfect person to do that with."
  • The song's carefree lyrics naturally appealed to Anne-Marie, who suffers from anxiety issues. "It's just remembering when you didn't have many cares," she told The Guardian. "That's always a really nice memory to have, when you didn't have to pay bills or think about car insurance. I love listening to music from back then, 'cause it always takes me back to when I was running down the park with my mum and dad. I think that's probably why they really make you feel good – I never really thought about it before."
  • The song's music video matches its lyrics by referencing the school outfits in "...Baby One More Time" while the marionette scenes draw obvious comparisons to the "Bye Bye Bye" visual.
  • Anne-Marie recalls in the first verse her excitement at winning two gold medals in the 2002 Funakoshi Shotokan Karate Association World Championship. She was just 11 years old at the time.

    No, it's never been better
    Than the summer of 2002 (ooh)
    Uh, we were only eleven
    But acting like grown-ups


    Anne-Marie recalled to Genius: "That was a really big year for me because I'd been training in karate for I think three years. I was doing my first World Championships and it was in Las Vegas and I was like raw and I was trying to walk through the casinos and everyone was like 'Get out!' But yeah, I won two golds that year, so it's like a year that I remember as being amazing."

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