Entertainment

This 'TRL' Moment Is Too Beautiful To Forget

by Kristie Rohwedder

Over the course of its 10-year run, MTV’s iconic music video request series Total Request Live gave us so many unforgettable moments: There was the time when Mariah Carey and an ice cream cart surprised everyone. There was the time when the Backstreet Boys brought Times Square to a screeching halt. There was the time when Destiny's Child basically announced that they'd disbanded. Might there be one TRL moment that I treasure above the rest? I suppose there is... I suppose there is. Let us wind the calendar back to the year 2003 when the live countdown show asked then-couple Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson to take part in the TRL Diaper Dash (which you can watch over on MTV.com).

“We all know that first comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the pitter-pat of little feet,” host Carson Daly explained to the viewers at home as the Newlyweds: Nick and Jessica stars manned their respective changing tables. “We thought we’d catch a little glimpse into the future to see what it would be like as these people here changed some diapers.”

The object of the game was simple: whoever switched out their doll's diap the fastest was declared the TRL Diaper Dash winner. No Doubt’s “Hey Baby” blared over the studio’s sound system, Daly provided the color commentary, the audience wailed, and Lachey and Simpson frantically diapered their assigned baby dolls. It was live television at its finest.

Much like the diapers on those dolls, the world has changed since this segment aired on MTV: TRL closed up shop once and for all in 2008; Simpson and Lachey divorced in 2006 and have since married other people; and Daly now hosts a singing competition show alongside one of the other princesses of early ’00s pop.

But do you know what has not changed one iota? The amount of unbridled joy the TRL Diaper Dash brings me.

Images: MTV (2)