Party Likes It's 1999. Pop Culture and World Events That Shaped The Year Utility Was Born.

2024 marks 25 years of Utility, but what else was happening in the world on the year we opened our first store in Liverpool. 

Millennium fever gripped the world. Hope was in the air as we headed for the year 2000. Though originally intended to be temporary, both the London Eye and Millennium Dome altered the skyline of London forever. Manchester United celebrated an unprecedented treble and across the Atlantic, Time Magazine named Albert Einstein the Person Of The Century and the New York Yankees won a third World Series Of Baseball in four years. An air of trepidation hung over some, with many fearing the Y2K bug that threatened to derail computers as the clock struck midnight at the end of the year.

1999 was a great year in the world of entertainment. Classic movies such as Fight Club, American Pie and 10 Things I Hate About You were all released, while The Blair Witch Project came out of nowhere to become the highest grossing independent film of all time. Steven Spielberg won an Oscar for Saving Private Ryan, at the same ceremony where Gwyneth Paltrow gave her infamous acceptance speech which went viral before viral was really a thing.

The pop music charts introduced us to Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera, while Ricky Martin’s Livin’ La Vida Loca was an ubiquitous presence on radio stations across the land for much of that summer. Cliff Richard had been the favourite for the final number 1 record of the 20th century with the aptly titled Millennium Prayer. Unfortunately for Cliff, Westlife, the biggest boyband in the world in 1999, pipped him to the post with their rendition of ABBA’s Season In The Sun. REM headlined Glastonbury, while the infamous Woodstock ’99 made headlines in the US.

1999 was the breakthrough year for one of the biggest video games of all time; Nintendo’s Pokemon. It became the first video game to be featured on the cover of Time magazine that November, and you couldn’t move without seeing the colourful creatures on television screens across the world that year. There are even shades of "Gotta Catch ‘Em All" ethos of Pokemon in some of Utility’s favourite products today, like Jellycat, where collectability forms a major part of their appeal. Incidentally Jellycat were also “born” in 1999, with the British company forming in London that year.

Speaking of television screens, this same year brought us the first episodes of Spongebob Squarepants and Family Guy, both of which are still on air to this day, while The Sopranos, which is largely considered to be the best tv series of all time made its debut that November. Technology was rapidly improving on the small screens front too, with the groundbreaking Blackberry smartphone introduced by Canadian technology company RIM in 1999, while the Nokia 7110, affectionately known as “the Matrix phone”, instantly became one of the most iconic devices of the year following its appearance that summer in the popular Keanu Reeves film. 

Sabrina Carpenter, Lil Nas X and Lando Norris were all born in the same year that Utility first took up residence on the high street, and are some of the biggest names in their respective fields today. Will they leave as much of a mark as the icons of 1999? Only time will tell.

What are your favourite memories of 1999? Do you remember our first store opening?