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The 100 Best Singles of the Aughts

The decade that began with the commercial single seemingly gasping its last dying breath ended with it being the dominating format.

The 100 Best Singles of the Aughts
Photo: Atlantic Records

It’s more than a little bit ironic that the decade that began with the commercial single seemingly gasping its last dying breath would end with it being the dominating format. Tellingly, Billboard placed the invention of the iPod—the King of iPop, if you will—above the death of Michael Jackson on its list of the Top 50 Moments of the Decade: The ever-evolving gadget revolutionized the way we consume and listen to music. Some of us still cling to the album as an art form, and next week we’ll unveil our list of 100 reasons why the long-player is still vital, but the single is as relevant today as it was when Billboard used to track jukeboxes. Mariah Carey’s “We Belong Together”—which, according to the industry Bible, was the decade’s biggest single—is a testament to the enduring power of the radio hit: “Come-back, come-back” went the prophetic background hook. The decade saw its share of one-hit wonders (Daniel Powter, Soulja Boy Tell ‘Em, Blu Cantrell), novelty hits (Baha Men’s “Who Let the Dogs Out?”), and novelty hits by one-hit wonders (again, Baha Men), and Jay-Z gave Kanye West a run for his money when it came to guest-rapper ubiquity. In fact, Jay’s number of appearances on this list is second only to Missy Elliott, who is, impressively, the main artist on all five of her singles here. Put simply: hip-hop dominated. And everyone secretly fancied themselves a disco star. Sal Cinquemani

Editor’s Note: Head on over to The House Next Door to see # 101 – 250.


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100. M.I.A., “Sunshowers”

I first heard M.I.A.’s “Sunshowers” at, of all places, a Matthew Williamson fashion show. A runway is not the venue you expect to hear about gun culture, the Iraq War, the PLO, snipers, racial profiling, and sweatshops, but those are just some of the topics that M.I.A. managed to squeeze into the three-minute sophomore single from her debut album Arular. That and a sunshiny pop hook lifted from Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band’s oft-sampled disco hit “Sunshower” Cinquemani


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99. Arcade Fire, “Keep the Car Running”

If his spill at the Super Bowl halftime show and the entirety of Working on a Dream suggest that it might be time to put Bruce Springsteen out to pasture, “Keep the Car Running” suggests that he may have unlikely successors in the kids of Arcade Fire. With its slowly escalating backbeat and its singular mandolin riff, combined with a naked desire to escape from unspecified traps and its on-the-verge narrative, the single is one of the decade’s finest examples of Americana without the self-seriousness or monotony that tag implies. Jonathan Keefe


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98. Ciara, “Like a Boy”

With synthesized strings lifted from Vivaldi and a chorus that glides as slickly as a boy sneaking under his girlfriend’s bedcovers at dawn, Ciara’s role-reversing “Like a Boy” might be the sexiest revenge fantasy ever. Though her voice is pitched down like a serial killer in a horror film (“What, you mad? Can’t handle that?”), she ultimately plays a superhero—only she dons a pair of boy jeans instead of a cape. Cinquemani

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97. The Ting Tings, “That’s Not My Name”

It makes a certain kind of warped sense that the decade’s most unlikely, slowest-burning hit (it cracked the U.S. Top 40 more than a year after it entered the U.K. singles chart) would be a swinging, shouty, danceable, shoegazy feminist anthem, the illegitimate daughter of Toni Basil and My Bloody Valentine. Why not? In a decade when music could hopscotch across the Internet, bypassing actual markets and traditional taste arbiters, musicians could chart a path to chart success through blogs and word of mouth and a prayer, and this song’s type of strange novelty became even more of a strength. Really, the surprise is that no one has licensed it to become a cheer routine on Glee or a commercial for hairspray yet. Dave Hughes


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96. Gorillaz, “Eastwood”

Within the brief window when the Gorillaz’s cartoon faux-anonymity didn’t seem like a silly gimmick, also came their most lasting contribution, a delirious meeting between Damon Albarn’s plaintive yarl and Del the Funky Homosapien’s chunky verses, which butt up against each other atop a tangled landscape of thick-sliced bass and minor-chord piano. Jesse Cataldo


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95. Ludacris, “Rollout (My Business)”

When Ludacris crossed over by making mock of those asking him, “Who’s your housekeeper? What you keep in that house?,” I hadn’t laughed so hard since Destiny’s Child’s cover of Samantha Sang’s “Emotion” A novelty song disguised as a diss track, or vice-versa, “Rollout (My Business)” is an aural circus, in which Timbaland’s lumbering calypso riffs match perfectly with Luda’s pitch-vague slant rhymes. It takes a true cracked genius to pair “diamonds in it” with “windows tinted” And I know I’m not the only one who spent most of the decade trying to figure out what he got in that case. Eric Henderson


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94. Bat for Lashes, “Daniel”

Bat for Lashes a.k.a. Natasha Khan’s love-torn “Daniel,” from her impressive sophomore effort Two Suns, features all of the singer-songwriter’s dramatic charm to which we had grown accustomed, but it’s delivered in a decidedly sleeker, more accessible, and simultaneously modern and retro new-new wave package that would be as equally at home blasting from a boombox in the mid-’80s as it would playing over the “marble movie skies” of some late 21st-century film’s ending credits. Cinquemani

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93. Coldplay, “Clocks”

Name your children Apple and Moses and you cop to having Miranda Julyism. This is not unlike Coldplay’s distinctly English and unquestionably vanilla music, so unthreatening but intriguingly teasing at times—asking for trouble without ever really causing it. On “Clocks,” the band’s finest song, Chris Martin’s grandiose sincerity of feeling gives the grade-school lyrics a haunting import, an impression amplified by the unforgettably heart-racing piano riff of the song’s sterling soundscape. Like swimming in a dream you’d never have, but a dream worth swimming in nonetheless. Ed Gonzalez


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92. The Streets, “Weak Become Heroes”

This tune probably reminds a lot of people of their first E. At once a pitch-perfect evocation of rave nostalgia (that looping piano, those warm ascending pads, the stuttering vocal sample) and an unsentimental acknowledgment that the communal joy of a rave, and of raving as a lifestyle, is both beautiful and fleeting, it’s a sort of joyous hangover. Mike Skinner’s sober, steady, insightful reflection is in itself a kind of rejoinder to the sorts of laws he fingers in his conclusion’s still bracingly abrupt return to conscious reality. Hughes


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91. Cut Copy, “Hearts on Fire”

Some of the most talented remixers of the late aughties took aim at this song. Calvin Harris stripped out the disco and upped the amperage, juicing the riffs onto the world’s more angular dance floors. Holy Ghost! took things the other way, easing the beat and sprawling across it languorous saxophone and hypnotic piano. Aeroplane excelled just by setting all their phasers on “drama” and pressing play. But while there were many worthy challengers, there could be only one—and ultimately, to Cut Copy’s credit, no one managed to surpass their original’s unlikely collision of windswept post-punk drama and ass-shaking freestyle sass. Hughes


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90. Arctic Monkeys, “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor”

The great thing about the Arctic Monkeys is how effectively they get away with being gigantic dorks. Their riffs are huge and they keep everything so speedy and detailed and frenetic that it can take your average listener quite a few spins to notice Alex Turner’s relentlessly articulate lyrics. This song drove the Monkeys’s first LP to become the fastest-selling debut in British history, and on the one hand, it’s easy to understand why it was so popular: It was brand new and it already sounded like classic rock. On the other hand, in an age of grunting, it’s encouraging that a song containing the Costello-esque lines “Your shoulders are frozen/Cold as a nun/But you’re an explosion/You’re dynamite” appealed so broadly. Hughes

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89. Panda Bear, “Bros”

With its cavalcade of overlapping, largely random sound effects, this 12-minute doodle conjures an outlandish mood: Consider the one, of only four, lyrics repeated endlessly throughout (“Try and give me the space I need”), and you have a man taking a bit of a breather, hanging out by the side of a snowy country road with his bro, peering at roller coasters and shooting stars, the sounds of a woman laughing, or giving birth, in the distance. The song’s beautiful sadness derives from its contemplation of life as something you either partake in or allow to pass you by. Gonzalez


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88. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Zero”

They’re hardly the first band to look to the disco era for inspiration after backing themselves into a corner, but Yeah Yeah Yeahs were arguably the only band to do anything substantive with that inspiration. The way Karen O sneers and vamps her way through the hook on “Zero” puts to rest any lingering doubts that she’s the finest frontwoman since Chrissie Hynde, but it’s the song’s explosive middle eight that transforms the single: Divide by zero and you approach infinity, and that’s exactly what the song does. Keefe


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87. Jamie Lidell, “Multiply”

Soul had a paltry presence during the last decade, mostly relegated to affected touches on other songs, inspiration for Justin Timberlake, American Idol performances, or the occasional pop hook. You know things have changed in the genre when one of the best entries of the decade, maybe the most lasting after D’Angelo’s “Untitled (How Does It Feel),” came from a slight, bespectacled Englishman, whose dapper sense of style and knowledge of what makes a good soul song made “Multiply” effective while pushing across a different brand of innate cool. Cataldo


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86. Kanye West, “Diamonds from Sierra Leone”

Too-obvious samples are one of Kanye West’s biggest weaknesses, but he makes a wise choice by borrowing from what’s probably the best James Bond theme for “Diamonds from Sierra Leone” And though his handling of political themes is invariably clumsy, his mastery at transposing first-world guilt into the personal sphere, an offensively clumsy move which forces brutally procured diamonds to occupy the same remorse-ridden sphere as all of his other vices, makes this a great track in spite of itself, one of his most lasting, remarkably flawed experiments. Cataldo

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85. The Pipettes, “Pull Shapes”

In the ’90s, for a while, it was fashionable to believe that history had ended—that the game of ideopolitical musical chairs had ended, with democratic capitalism in the winner’s chair. Though the 21st century soon disabused people of this notion, in some ways this stealth mashup validates the hypothesis. Here we have a post-feminist-yet-still-Svengali’d girl group leading pretty boys into a dizzily exuberant Motown stomp. “I like to disco,” they sing as strings ascend. “I like to rock ‘n’ roll,” and a riff skronks in. “I like to hip-hop,” and a turntablist cuts. In a post-everything jumble of a decade, when we danced to nearly everything, this was one of the best dances. Hughes


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84. The Knife, “Silent Shout”

Pac-Man and his red-bowed honey’s wedding song? The metronomic production—minimalist but intense beats chasing each other as if in and out of love, or nightmares—is perfectly and surreally married to the equally disquieting lyrics, which recount a flashpoint in a person’s life when their sense of complacency is shattered by a dream of falling teeth. Is that love or death on their horizon? Like much of the Knife and Fever Ray’s music, or a Luis Buñuel film, the song seduces as it frightens. Gonzalez


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83. Queens of the Stone Age, “No One Knows”

Queens of the Stone Age may sometimes come off like just another rock group that spends most of their free time tuning their guitars to their Y chromosomes, but make no mistake, their punchy hit “No One Knows” is the pom-pom pumping “My Sharona” of the 2000s. Buttressed by some callisthenic drum-set spasms courtesy of Dave Grohl and a surly, nine-foot-high wall of guitar riffs, ginger thug Josh Homme spins his best guess at a sonnet, but it comes out more like a roaring “Best of My Love” The results: oddly touching. Henderson


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82. Missy Elliott f/ Eve, “4 My People”

Any of Miss E…So Addictive’s succulent uppers could have made this list (namely, the retro disco boogie of “Old School Joint” and the Cybotron-meets-He-Man angst of “Whatcha Gon’ Do”), but “4 My People” is still my favorite trip. The way Missy’s rhythmic vocal rides Timbaland’s stringy trance (which recalls the signature bassline from DJ Garth and E.T.I.’s “20 Minutes of Disco Glory”) stirs up a hallucination of the singer actually riding Timbaland through the club, whipping her Ecstasy People as they throw space dust over her (and Eve’s) head. Gonzalez

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81. R. Kelly, “Ignition (Remix)”

Less a remix than a repair job, R. Kelly’s “Ignition (Remix)” keeps the uneasy shuffle beat of the original but changes everything else, turning a one-note sex metaphor into something far better, a slyly perverse after-club romp, one of the only songs in memory where the announcement that this is a remix is the catchiest part of the hook. This is Kelly at his creepy best: unapologetic, drenched in sleazy innuendo, with little-to-no idea of how odd it all seems. Cataldo


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80. Radiohead, “There There”

Sleepy and mysterious, “There There” floats along dreamily for about three minutes, its slowly mounting drums a sign of things to come, before getting significantly weirder. This slow burn leads to a roaring burst of noise, matching the band’s biggest riff in years with a bellowing, animalistic snarl, before building even further in speed and volume. It’s as if their internal struggles, Thom Yorke’s somber reserve versus his rhythm sections’ desire to bust out, were depicted in one five-minute piece. Cataldo


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79. Jimmy Eat World, “The Middle”

The finest single from those halcyon days before “emo” went all Hot Topic, “The Middle,” along with Fountains of Wayne’s “Stacy’s Mom,” gave a glimmer of hope that its brand of perfectly constructed power-pop might finally make the mainstream inroads it longed deserved. As Jimmy Eat World exclaim in the hook, that kind of success and satisfaction just takes some time. More’s the pity that time didn’t last for more than a few months before the guyliner and Strokes-hair took it out at the knees. Keefe

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78. Lady Gaga, “Poker Face”

Love is a gamble. And “Poker Face” is a surprisingly sophisticated account of the love game, sandwiched in between songs on The Fame that were otherwise largely concerned with convincing us that Gaga is a vapid poser. When it was spoofed by such disparate cultural critics as Christopher Walken and Eric Cartman, it became clear that “Poker Face” had transcended the trappings of your average novelty hit. Of course, Gaga has since proven she’s more than a one-hit wonder, but this song had (and still has) exceptionally long legs. And muffins. And glue guns. And a damn catchy hook. Cinquemani


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77. Lindstrøm, “I Feel Space”

If you’re a young producer of disco music, it’s pretty goddamn cheeky to title your single “I Feel [Blank]”; beggaring comparison to the track that this very site named the best dance song of all time, Donna Summer and Giorgio Moroder’s “I Feel Love,” is a pretty risky maneuver. But Lindstrøm’s evident confidence paid off: This track, with its motorik pulse (the main thing it has in common with its namesake), skywalking synths, and saucy bongo break, probably did more to turn people on to the decade’s incredibly fertile space disco scene than did any other. Hughes


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76. Ladytron, “Destroy Everything You Touch”

In the mid-aughties, a trio of skinny, well-coiffed, and fairly judgmental New York fashion plates decided to band together to plot world domination, much like supervillains might. Dressed all in black, armed with synth-pop and the ability to grant dance-club entrance to minors, flanked on one side by photographers and on the other by drug dealers, they became DJs. They were the MisShapes, and if they had a television show, this icy, gothic, disco ball Death Star would have been its theme song. Hughes


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75. Robyn, “Be Mine!”

When rain disguising one’s tears is a cause for celebration, you know things are pretty dire. But despite its heart-tugging subject matter (the song builds to the devastating admission, “No, you never were and you never will be mine!”—and that’s the hook), Robyn’s “Be Mine!” is, thanks to cello stabs that fall like sheets of rain, a spritely melody, and bouncy beat, a sad song that somehow manages to leave you less sad when it’s over. Cinquemani

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74. Lil Wayne, “A Milli”

The most impeccably, maddeningly written song on our list, “A Milli” is a frank confessional that testifies to Lil Wayne’s peerless lyrical brinkmanship. Its flashes of poignancy, humor, naïveté, bravado, eroticism, and misogyny hit you separately before fusing together to reveal a stunning, totemic portrait of an artist as a young man, a ghetto Joyce who, not unlike the Reinaldo Arenas of Singing from the Well, has a rare gift for seductively and movingly laying his soul bare with lucid stream of consciousness. Gonzalez


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73. Animal Collective, “My Girls”

Next to the Radiohead we know today, Animal Collective was the most overpraised indie act of the decade, but Merriweather Post Pavilion was something very close to a masterpiece, and “My Girls” was the jewel in its exquisite crown. The catchy production suggests a psychedelic skinny dip in a great beyond, but the lyrics are grounded in something recognizably real: a father and husband’s need—no, struggle—to simply provide (the song’s lyrical highlight, blessedly sung by Mr. Bear: “I just want four walls and adobe slats for my girls”). With “My Girls,” these hipsters started thinking outside their typically blinkered aesthetic and thematic sphere, getting universal and keeping their groove but also finding their soul. Gonzalez


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72. Ciara f/ Ludacris, “Oh”

Thighs were made to roll to this. A slow-motion steel trap of a single, Ciara’s half-crunked slow jam is as stately and as sexy as S.O.S. Band’s “Just Be Good to Me.” “Oh” is so dogmatically Dirty South even Ludacris’s typically caffeinated Frank Tashlin delivery can’t break the spell. Not with Ciara herself standing center, transfixed by the bottom-heavy groove and the never-to-be-resolved tension between the song’s alternating minor chords. As it turns out, her subsequent sauna ballad “Promise” was actually the fulfillment of this one, her true promise. Henderson


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71. Three 6 Mafia, “Stay Fly”

Let’s take a moment to admire the endless inventiveness of the American people. We’re responsible for the light bulb, the telephone, and the Internet. Also, we created an entire musical genre based on the experience of the effects of off-label over-consumption of cough syrup! “Stay Fly” is actually a pretty mild example of the strange, wonderful sounds that emerged from the screwed n’ chopped thing, but it’s also (relatedly) one of the most commercially successful. Further, it proves that if you stick a Philly soul string section on anything, even a cartoonishly hedonistic rap song about always being high, it will sound really beautiful and classy. Hughes

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70. Daft punk, “Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger”

In a sense, it’s odd that “Harder Better Faster Stronger” would boast the longest legs of any Daft Punk song, given no other track of theirs leans quite as hard on a preexisting sample—in this case, Edwin Birdsong’s fuzzy-fizzy “Cola Bottle Baby,” the intro of which is lifted wholesale by Homem-Christo and Bangalter before their flashcard transcription of “Heigh-Ho” is rattled off by a funky vocoder. But legs don’t count when, as it turns out, mathematical hands did all the walking to ensure Daft Punk their berth in the viral hall of fame. Henderson


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69. The White Stripes, “My Doorbell”

Because “I’ve been thinking about letting you check my oil” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, now does it? But Jack White can bang out a metaphor just fine anyway, and what “My Doorbell” demonstrates is that he can bang out some killer church piano power chords just fine too. As for Meg, bless her heart, she still bangs her drums like an enthusiastic fourth grader. It’s a good thing that the sloppiness of the rhythm track on “My Doorbell” plays perfectly into the song’s petulance. Keefe


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68. Jay-Z f/ UGK, “Big Pimpin’”

A clear-cut celebration of excess, “Big Pimpin’” classifies a vanished period, where wealth was not only in high abundance but still relatively new to the rapper. The song therefore captures Jay-Z at his most flagrant peak, rising to the top of the genre but not quite there yet. And though his promises to “be forever mackin’” haven’t come true, the song remains an intriguing time capsule, even as UGK’s great guest verses threaten to steal the song out from under him. Cataldo


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67. Portishead, “Machine Gun”

Toward the tail-end of what could be called the War Decade, Portishead reemerged from their 11-year slumber with an album filled with the sounds of helicopters and the rifle bullets of a machine gun. Lead single, “Machine Gun,” pairs its rapid-fire percussion with sleek synth pads straight out of an early-’80s John Carpenter film and Beth Gibbons’s plaintive, self-reflective vocal. It’s fitting, perhaps, that the first machine gun was designed by Leonardo Da Vinci; Portishead’s song is as marvelous and frightening an invention as the weapon itself. Cinquemani

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66. Kanye West, “Jesus Walks”

The brilliant chain-gang sample joined up with a martial drumbeat and the questioning narrative highlights Kanye West at his most creative, as both a producer and a rapper, typifying one of those rare moments where self-doubt blooms into brilliantly unfettered expression. Besides skits, religious songs usually make for the weakest tracks on hip-hop albums, wherein the artist, hung over from a CD’s worth of bad behavior, stumbles in for a sort of half-genuine confessional worship, but here the entire process is suffused with something far more visceral, typifying West’s continuing ability to communicate feelings while dealing with them tactlessly. Cataldo


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65. Björk, “Pagan Poetry”

At a certain point, Björk stopped focusing her attention on human behavior and instead tapped into something far more primal. Vespertine was advertised by its creator as a good album to cook spaghetti to on a gloomy Sunday afternoon, but no amount of oregano can mask the odor of frosted pheromones wafting throughout “Cocoon,” “Hidden Place,” and the album’s black-pearl centerpiece “Pagan Poetry” At the song’s climax, Björk is in ecstasy, tangled S&M-style within the lashes of harps in full bloom. But it’s the denouement, in which she confesses “I love him” against a sonically black background, that marks the song’s emotionally naked peak. Henderson


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64. Missy Elliott, “Pass That Dutch”

Missy Elliott’s boogie-feverish “Pass That Dutch” may begin with a chilling P.A. warning about an “unknown virus that’s attacking all clubs,” but it’s just a fake-out. “Dutch” is stripped of inhibition, of hang-ups, of valence items of clothing. “Freak him, freak her, whatever your choice” Welcome to Missy’s pansexual utopia, in which constricting gender codes take a holiday, along with melody and harmony. In their stead, a propulsive double-dutch beat snaps merrily along. “Dutch” may be Tim and Missy’s most Moroder-Bellotte-Summer moment ever. Henderson


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63. Rihanna, “SOS”

Deftly co-opting Soft Cell’s 1982 hit “Tainted Love”—itself a revision of Diana Ross and the Supremes’s “Where Did Our Love Go”—by transforming the original’s synthesizer bleeps into a maritime radio-style distress signal and adding a full-bodied bottom to the tinny mod-rock track, the frenetic and breathless “SOS” helped Rihanna resuscitate dance music on Top 40 radio when, in the middle of the decade, it seemed like it was drowning in a sea of mediocre hip-hop and rock. Cinquemani

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62. Christina Aguilera f/ Redman, “Dirrty”

One of a series of image-reboots by former Mouseketeers-turned-teen-pop-stars released almost simultaneously in 2002 (along with Justin’s “Like I Love You” and Britney’s “I’m a Slave 4 U”), “Dirrty” was the indisputable champ—an arrival song in every sense of the term. Featuring an over-the-top performance built on a durable high-energy hip-pop track, “Dirrty” was more of a statement than an actual song—a rejection of the seemingly squeaky-clean but reticently and cynically sexualized commodification of young females in the industry that, sadly, Aguilera’s career has never quite been able to live up to. Cinquemani


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61. Gwen Stefani, “What You Waiting For?”

In a sexist industry, Gwen Stefani’s larger-than-life image often eclipsed her famously disgruntled No Doubters, and it was the insecurity borne from those years that fueled her solo debut. A mélange of various psychological fears and disparate genre-splices, “What You Waiting For?” was a fitting opener to a solo stint that celebrated the consumerist pop culture of Tokyo’s Harajuku district like the ’80s era its star emulates. The song’s impish “tick-tock” pre-chorus, driving club beat, and mesh of hook-buttressing guitar licks helped make it one of the hottest arrival songs of the decade. Cinquemani


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60. Aaliyah, “Try Again”

Timbaland’s production is ace, as usual, but focus instead on how Aaliyah’s performance on “Try Again” influenced hip-hop, dance, and pop over the nine years that followed. After “Try Again,” much of the decade’s rhythmic music rested on the shoulders of thin-voiced, icily detached singers like Rihanna, Alison Goldfrapp, Ciara, and Annie, none of whom have been able to match the presence or the lived-in soulfulness Aaliyah conveyed with her ethereal wisp of a voice. That’s why Timbaland’s minimalism suited her so well: Both could do so much with so little. Keefe

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59. Janet Jackson, “Feedback”

Technology was the subject and thrust of the music—swaths of tension, really—that electronic pioneers Kraftwerk orchestrated during their heyday in the late 1970s, but imagine them going where Miss Janet, nasty as all hell, went with the infectiously bizarre single “Feedback” With it, Janet Jackson got her 4/4 back, spinning a mad association, at once playful and scorching, between her stereo and her vagina. Gonzalez


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58. LCD Soundsystem, “Someone Great”

LCD Soundsystem relishes in the memory of a bygone love affair, at once fondly and regrettably remembered: Every beat—whether it stomps, slides, leaps, or quivers—cannily evokes a gesture of love or anger, from a kiss to a slap. In every note there is joy but also regret, and with metronomic sonic flourishes that would be easy to call Knife-ian if they weren’t so lighthearted, the song becomes a stunning tapestry of swollen peaks and cavernous valleys, hypnotizing you into tremulously ecstatic world before leaving you with a heavy heart. Gonzalez


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57. MGMT, “Time to Pretend”

A spectacularly cynical single, “Time to Pretend” draws an apt analogy between the posturing that characterizes contemporary hipster relationships and the predatory mating dance of the praying mantis, and even reflects the peculiar rhythms of that dance in its backing track. They may mock their primary demo’s lack of self-awareness, but the meta-structure of “Time to Pretend” proves that MGMT certainly don’t share that problem. Moreover, it provides an anthem for the hipster-culture backlash that, quite deservedly, had been brewing over the course of the entire decade. Keefe


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56. Usher, “Yeah!”

Usher’s monster hit may have been opportunistic crunk-lite, but it also wields the most affirmative lyrics of all time. Yeah! Maybe the nation, having had a few years to reckon with its own powerlessness in the face of political recidivism, was simply clamoring to just trust again. Yeah! Enter Usher, Lil Jon, Ludacris, and an entire club of fly guys ready to teach the world to step. Yeah, yeah! And, considering the Grammys awarded Record of the Year trophies to Green Day and the Dixie Chicks’s regime change-minded anthems the two years after “Yeah!” came up short in the same category, I guess you could also call it ahead of its time. Henderson

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55. Missy Elliott f/ Ciara and Fatman, “Lose Control”

Missy Elliott’s sci-fi funk has always been otherworldly, but it wasn’t until she sampled Cybotron’s dark electro epic “Clear” that she pushed the tempo to the point where you presumed she could spin the earth backward through time. Why? ‘Cause Misdemeanor said so. Not to put too fine a point on music that just wants to be your own personal spazz stimulator, but if the aughties go down in history as the decade rock stole away the crown for dance music revivalism, “Lose Control” is one of the most terrifying tactical counterstrikes on R&B’s behalf. Henderson


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54. The Hives, “Hate to Say I Told You So”

It wasn’t a long period of time (it really had to have taken place while Julian Casablancas was vomiting or doing his taxes or something), but there was probably a moment in 2000 or 2001 when the Hives were the coolest band in the world. Understanding how this could have occurred takes some triangulating. Impeccably styled, with an air of mystery surrounding their claims to having been called into being by an unseen manager/songwriter, with a frontman well-practiced in Jagger-esque poses, they had a lot going for them. But certainly this diamond-hard bit of riffage didn’t hurt. Also, that’s one crazy bass solo. Hughes


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53. The Avalanches, “Since I Left You”

As any world traveler will tell you, vacations to tropical locales can be very expensive. Luckily, Australian turntablist collective the Avalanches devised a perfect method for traveling through time and space to the balmy, pacific coast of your psychic ocean—and all you have to do is press play! Whatever time it is where you are, when this song comes on it is Piña Colada o’clock. It must be very relaxing to be the Avalanches. Maybe that’s why they’ve never released another album. Hughes


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52. Daft Punk, “Digital Love”

If you’re the type of person who makes mixtapes, you probably recognize a certain class of song as sacred. These are the songs that don’t make it onto just any mix. The sad songs reserved for the most tragic of circumstances, the sappy songs reserved for the people to which you reveal humiliations. “Digital Love” is one of those songs—an unrelenting blast of neon joy so exalted that it effectively conjures the rush of infatuation (or of dance-floor love, fleeting but everything). Maybe this is why Daft Punk didn’t include it in their setlist for their celebrated tour; perhaps even robots are selective about how they share emotions this grand. Hughes


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51. Lil Jon & the East Side Boyz, “Get Low”

Prince’s “Erotic City” showed us what it sounds like when doves caress. Lil Jon and his backup skeeters’ “Get Low” impressed upon pliant eardrums what it sounds like when Tasmanian devils jizz. Nestled unassumingly between “I Don’t Give a Fuck” and “Damn!” in Jonathan’s singles chronology, this skeetsterpiece’s chalice overfloweth with riotous partytude and viscous crunch, making it a sonic bookend, if you will, with Khia’s poontastic “Lick It (My Neck, My Back)” The only thing that could improve “Get Low” and its playful, Crunky Brewster vibe would require manufacturing by Whammo. Henderson


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50. !!!, “Me and Giuliani Down by the Schoolyard”

“New York City is where freaks go to be freaks,” promised !!!’s Nic Offer, and despite the best efforts of a rogue’s gallery ranging from Rudy to Mr. Bloomberg, from the boom to the bust, it still pretty much is. Pitched as both an explicit and implicit protest of the city’s shockingly-still-on-the-books cabaret law, this nine-minute, multiple-movement disco inferno proves its own points. Just try sitting through it without shaking your groove thing. Or listening to it as a freak stranded somewhere in America and not wondering what this New York thing is all about. Hughes


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49. LCD Soundsystem, “Losing My Edge”

James Murphy may have reached the innermost hipster sanctum with the release of Sound of Silver in 2007, but first he had to pass through the purgatory of this song, a paranoid howl of latter-thirtysomething anguish that’s, yes, way too easy but still no less maddening for it. In it, Murphy’s narrator plays a self-sabotaging game of dirty dozens with younger, prettier, better audiophiles. (Does your generation still use that word: audiophiles?) It quickly becomes a whirlpool into which all pazz and jop are protectively flushed away like a private stash, never to be seen again. And the “actually really, really nice” ants go dubstepping on. Henderson

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48. The Killers, “Mr. Brightside”

The lessons of “Mr. Brightside”: 1) Brandon Flowers was less detectably a tool before he hit it big, even if he was already writing messianic songs about his own success, 2) although we live in the era of “A Shot at Love,” as it was for Elvis and the Rolling Stones, romantic paranoia remains a fruitful topic for the rock anthem, and 3) if your band used synthesizers in your hit record in the mid-2000s, people would compare you to Duran Duran even if your song actually sounded like all the best things about U2 and Blink-182 combined. Hughes


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47. TV on the Radio, “Wolf Like Me”

For a band that spends most of its time lumbering through moody, noise-inflected backdrops, the surging beat of “Wolf Like Me,” from 2006’s Return to Cookie Mountain, is like watching a bear come charging at you, the song’s resolute heaviness belying a propellant sense of speed. As a single, it set a tone for the album, showcasing both its best track and expressing the band’s newfound mastery over their craft, creating catchy hits without sacrificing any of their smarts. Cataldo


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46. Kelis, “Milkshake”

So, everyone has a friend who has scarred themselves in freak accidents while practicing stripteases to this song, right? Oh? No, that’s just me? Well, I still say he’s missing out on a good class-action lawsuit. Everything about this song screams, “Take off your clothes in a sexually methodical manner while rhythmically grinding your pelvis against the air and/or a stripper pole” It’s basically the most aesthetically avant-garde, lyrically cracked strip-club anthem in history. Well done, Neptunes! Those buzzing synths trace the trajectory of a shaking booty with precision. And well done, Kelis! That is one hell of a coitus metaphor. Hughes

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45. The Rapture, “House of Jealous Lovers”

Before Daft Punk was playing at Franz Ferdinand’s house, they lost their cowbell in the folds of the Rapture’s couch. Luckily for them and rock music in general, LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy (here serving as the band’s co-producer/engineer) went dumpster diving beyond the upholstery and pulled back an entire decade’s worth of backbeat. “House of Jealous Lovers,” the pulsating wound in rock’s forehead from which sprang piss-stained neo-no wave, is the song that taught a new generation of skinny-hipped, floppy-locked white boys to dance like they owned it. Henderson


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44. Robyn, “With Every Heartbeat”

Electronic music at its most sensitive, Robyn’s “With Every Heartbeat” understands the ups and downs of a particularly devastating breakup in a way few other songs have: the pain of feeling torn apart, the regret, the confusing sense of empowerment. The bewitching production does not evoke a heartbeat so much as a heart attack, the ardor of walking away from something that is at once joyous and entrapping. Even though she says she does not, Robyn continues to look back, and it’s that hesitancy in her voice, her contemplating a second go at something that isn’t working and probably never will, that gives this great pop song its striking candor. Gonzalez


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43. Vitalic, “My Friend Dario”

Beep beep, who’ve got the keys to the super mega car? Vrooom! Vitalic’s hard-drinking, harder-driving friend Dario, who revs his engine just because it puts the joy-joy down in his pants, won’t curry favor with the Department of Transportation or MADD, but he’ll sure help you bust up any logjams on the dance floor. As evidenced in its accompanying video clip, “My Friend Dario” deigns to be the “Walk This Way” of electroclash, but luckily for the rest of us, it simply lapses into irresponsible, irresistible electrotrash. Reckless posturing knows no speed limit. Henderson


https://youtube.com/watch?v=AWtn4Kt05_Y

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42. Radiohead, “Idioteque”

The centerpiece of Radiohead’s Kid A, “Idioteque” feels as though it was conceived as global warming spokesmodel Al Gore’s would-be inaugural anthem. Underpinned by a subzero organ riff that literally boasts a wind chill factor, Thom Yorke’s imitation of a voice sounds even more frayed than usual as he warns, “We’re not scaremongering, this is really happening…ice age coming, ice age coming” Everything may be fastidiously in its right place musically, but the anaphylactic effect of this brittle anti-dance anthem insists on facing up to the wrong. Henderson


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41. The White Stripes, “Fell In Love with a Girl”

Accomplishing more in a minute and 50 seconds than most other rock acts accomplished in the entire decade, “Fell In Love with a Girl” finds the White Stripes at their furious best, balancing their traditional blues formalism with a point of view that is decidedly modern and, in doing so, laying the foundation and establishing the aesthetic framework for all of their subsequent efforts. The breakneck tempo is perfectly suited to the song’s narrative of how quickly blue-balled lust transforms into something more, shouting down any rational objections and justifying bad behaviors that bear repeating. Keefe


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40. D’Angelo, “Untitled (How Does It Feel)”

The most rhetorical question in R&B since “What’s Going On” (which likewise tellingly left out the question mark), D’Angelo’s exclusively subtitled return from the residue of brown sugar babe is an intimidatingly focused rendition of the age-old assurance, “You know you want this” No pressure though. You’ve got seven luxurious minutes to make up your mind. Meantime, you don’t mind if he whispers to you a few words about your thighs, do you? Maybe a pitch-perfect transliteration of Prince’s “Do Me, Baby” might seal the deal? How does it feel? As Halle Berry insisted in Monster’s Ball, it make me feels goooood. Henderson


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39. Hot Chip, “Over and Over”

The main thing to understand about “Over and Over” is that it is not a criticism of repetition. Now, in context, placed against some of the decade’s most delightfully leftfield disco, all walking bass and strutting organ and Speak & Spell, the lyric “Over and over and over and over, like a monkey with a miniature cymbal, the joy of repetition really is in you,” delivered by Alexis Taylor’s dulcet deadpan, really does sound like it’s mocking routine. We’re conditioned to expect cool singers in indie bands to mock routine. But this is a dance song about dancing, and as anyone who has attended a Hot Chip concert will tell you, the joy of repetition is real. Yes. Yes. Yes. Hughes

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38. The Streets, “Let’s Push Things Forward”

There was a period during the last decade when nothing sounded more futuristic than London street music. British rappers filtered familiar sounds and rhythms through a foreign experience of race, class, and urban life, and hip-hop sounded alien in their strange English. The jolt of the new defibrillated the form. if Dizzee Rascal was the Pied Piper of this all-too-brief and bygone era, Mike Skinner was its Bard, and this song Skinner’s personal glossary. When he rhymed “’Round here we say birds, not bitches,” over a beat that mashed rave bassline anxiety onto a one-drop organ pulse, it sounded like “Ghost Town” updated for boom times, and it was a revelation. Hughes


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37. LCD Soundsystem, “All My Friends”

Imagine you had a party and everyone came. Not just everyone you know now, but all the people from your past lives too. All the Christophers, Michaels, Juans, and Davids. All the Ashleys, Sarahs, Katies, and Elizabeths. Eli, Jillian, Daniel, Danielle, Jabari, Joseph, Josh, Ryan, Adrianne, Ariel. The friends you played foursquare with, the friends you broke up with, and the friends you have. You would be with all of them and you would be dancing. Nostalgia is a powerful thing. “I wouldn’t trade one stupid decision,” James Murphy sings over a piano riff so chaotic it creates its own order, “for another five years of life” Me neither. Hughes


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36. Madonna, “Hung Up”

“Hung Up” employs a ticking clock to represent fear of wasted time, but Madonna isn’t singing about aging or saving the world—she’s talking about love. It had been years since Madge sounded this vapid. With its pitched-upward vocals, infectious arpeggio sample from ABBA’s “Gimme Gimme Gimme (A Man After Midnight),” and the bridge’s unironic, archetypical key change, the track decidedly points to the past, and it proved that, 20 years into her career, Madonna was still the one and only Dancing Queen. Cinquemani


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35. Spoon, “The Way We Get By”

The coolest thing Spoon ever did, delving into juvenile delinquency with an eye for the absurd, elevating acts of mischief into the stuff of Rat Pack movies. Its status as the theme song for The OC played as too obvious, but on its own, the song remains as good as it ever was, thriving off the subtle build of the piano, suffused with little jokes and lyrical feints. The lyrical slant, which might play as silly were Britt Daniel not so devoted to play it straight, ultimately makes the song, imbuing its unruffled posture with a slightly incongruous bent. Cataldo

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34. Kanye West f/ Jamie Foxx, “Gold Digger”

“Gold Digger” proved that Kanye West can drop the bloated sense of self-importance and make a hip-hop record that’s fun simply for the sake of being fun, and it accomplished that at the precise moment when he needed people to be willing to get back on his bandwagon. Even with the egregious cameo from an attention-whoring Jamie Foxx in full Ray Charles costume, it’s funny and good-natured, and it remembers that any song that instructs someone to “go ‘head, get down” had better actually make them want to. Keefe


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33. Madonna, “Don’t Tell Me”

Madonna’s Y2K-era dalliances with electronica could oftentimes verge on the theoretical, so it’s a tad ironic that the one hit from her Orbit-Mirwais daze that still packs fully loaded pistols is also the most engrossed in chemistry-set beat science. “Don’t Tell Me” is first and foremost a concoction: two parts corn pone, one part glitch, with reliable disco strings to serve as the catalyst. What seals the deal, though, is that lyrically Madonna’s on board too. Tell the peanut butter of acoustic guitars to stay away from the chocolate of digital bass drones, but don’t tell Madonna she can’t eat both and spit back manna. Henderson


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32. The Chemical Brothers, “Star Guitar”

Let me check my notes. According to Slant’s list of the 100 Greatest Dance Songs, “Star Guitar” is the Chems’s “most well balanced blend of their LSD-tipped psychodelic hallucinations and frenzied, bass-popping big beat…[it’s] all about the duo’s careful layering of sonic elements around a monolithic squelch-synth line, distorted into dazzling Technicolor with an epic amount of reverb” Sounds good to me, though certainly not as good as the song’s piston-firing phaser beats, surging acid synths, and yelping crescendos. “Star Guitar” is “Hey Boy Hey Girl,” “Asleep from Day,” and “The Private Psychedelic Reel” all distilled into one lethal dose. Henderson

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31. Eminem, “Lose Yourself”

On the heels of The Eminem Show, which revealed an artist who was becoming astutely aware of the state of hip-hop and politics and his place in both, “Lose Yourself” was the beginning (and the beginning of the end) of Eminem the mature rapper. While Slim Shady and Marshall Mathers were cartoonish and violent exaggerations of Eminem’s persona, respectively, it was the fictional 8 Mile character Jimmy “Rabbit” Smith Jr., which was based on the artist’s life and who provides the perspective here, that seemed the most authentic. A testament to the power of art to lift even the most hopeless of souls out of despair, the unlikely inspirational anthem won Eminem the respect of critics who had dismissed him as a menace to society. Cinquemani


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30. The Avalanches, “Frontier Psychiatrist”

A masterpiece of overdriven pastiche, “Frontier Psychiatrist” is the most impressive technical feat from Since I Left You, crafting an entire chorus from castoff phrases, thundering with booming horns, and closing out with what’s undoubtedly the greatest thing ever done with a parrot squawk. There’s also some hint of narrative, but that, like the mysterious sources of the obscure samples that dot the song, takes a back seat to the product as a whole, which twitches with the individual energy of all its buzzing pieces. Cataldo


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29. Missy Elliott, “Work It”

Missy Elliot’s lyrics have always been suggestive, but never this interestingly so. Like her beats, she lays her pussy on you aggressively, but the naughtiest bits of business are masked—by an elephant’s trumpet no less—and sometimes reversed. With the song, her most successful to date and a testament to her lyrical and sexual flow, she doesn’t so much preach as she brags about knowing how to work a dick while also turning an awesome phrase. Pairing Elliot’s enlightened sexual prowess with Timbaland’s old school beats makes for a song of bizarre and brazenly discordant power. Gonzalez


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28. Sigur Rós, “Svefn-g-englar”

Like drowning in a sea of bulbous musical textures, “Svefn-G-Enblar” is 10 minutes of pure bliss—a majestic, intoxicating totem of a song that crashes over you like a wave. Part of its mesmeric allure is how its rich ambiance suggests a trip into a strange, cosmic netherworld that’s foreign, scary, and tempting to resist, but one made welcoming by the comforting effect of the ambiguously tongued Jónsi’s only recognizably English line (“It’s you”), which guides one through the song’s reverie as if toward rapture. Gonzalez

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27. Modest Mouse, “Float On”

Pushing Isaac Brock’s yelpy wail briefly into the limelight (there was even a Kidz Bop version!), “Float On” was the strange moment where the band’s jagged sound clicked with the masses, riding along a by-the-numbers bassline that clashes nicely with the horror-movie guitar tricks hovering above. Likely the most accessible song from their most accessible album, the song feigns sunniness, hiding behind its spryly upbeat guitar and some begrudgingly accepting lyrics, while still remaining as progressively dark as most of the band’s other material. Cataldo


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26. Annie, “Chewing Gum”

Bubblegum pop, literally, and a highlight of Annie’s stellar debut, Anniemal, this delectable stick of electro-pop finds in the snappy production by Richard X the perfect corollary to the singer’s infectious coyness. Annie’s friend thinks she has a new boy stuck to her shoe, and just as you’re ready to begrudge the singer for what seems like highly egregious, very unnecessary metaphor-play, the sassy chorus, in which Annie declares herself a sort of fulltime man-chewer, playfully flips the whole song on its head. Annie’s the hot girl at the skating rink who knocks you off your feet when you’re least expecting it. Gonzalez


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25. Madonna, “Music”

From its generic title to Madonna’s anonymous vocal performance, “Music” is a blank slate of a song. To wit, the song has had almost as many makeovers as Madonna herself. Okay, so not quite that many, but each of the performer’s tours during the last decade has featured a new incarnation of the song: Kraftwerk-inspired electronica, ’70s disco, and most recently, ’80s hip-hop (the next logical embodiment would be ’90s house). If music truly is a universal language, then “Music”—in all of its meta reinventions and retro dialects—might be the best piece of evidence we have that music really does make the people come together. Cinquemani


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24. Justin Timberlake f/ T.I., “My Love”

After getting more or less Louisette Bertholle’d from Missy Elliott’s Mastering the Art of Hot Shit, producer Timbaland (already on his second or third career renaissance in the aughts, but who’s counting?) set his sights on little JT’s continuing dog and pony show. “SexyBack” was the mutant novelty hit, wherein Tim’s King Kong beats all but crushed Justin’s Faye Wray vocals. But the butter and the meat came together in salaciously un-kosher fashion with the dead-sexy “My Love,” a tip-top, hot-blooded vehicle for Timberlake’s true calling as the 21st century’s skanky Ben Vereen. Listen closely. You can hear everyone’s mouth watering. Henderson

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23. Daft Punk, “One More Time”

And on the seventh day, two robot gods did not rest but instead brought the filtered disco craze of the late ’90s to its star-spangled apex. Body-glittered pink cherubs brought to their neon lips a chorus of trumpets, the chosen people congregated at the foot of a luminescent temple, and the world was either baptized or skull-fucked by a most tumescent bass kick. No room for little fluffy clouds this high up in the stratosphere. So it was written, so it has been done: “It’s Christmas in Disco Heaven, every single day” Henderson


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22. OutKast, “Hey Ya!”

Splitting Big Boi’s gruff insouciance from André 3000’s wild energy on Speakerboxxx/The Love Below may not have been the best decision, but it yielded at least one piece of undeniable perfection. Leagues above his counterpart’s “I Like the Way You Move,” leagues above most things released that year, “Hey Ya!” rides a flawless vocal line, isolated moments (the “All right” repetition) that work through sheer verve and a bouncing-ball synth to a stylistic peak that withstood even half a decade’s worth of oversaturation. Cataldo


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21. Aaliyah f/ Timbaland, “We Need a Resolution”

Told almost entirely as a series of bitter-tongued questions, “We Need a Resolution” finds Aaliyah hurt and exasperated. It’s a breakup song of unconventional structure and startling complexity because it offers no easy answers, though by the time Timbaland chimes in you realize the lovers he and Aaliyah play don’t resent each other so much as they resent their going through the motions. My favorite musical choice of the decade: How Timbaland rhymes one of his typically sick sci-fi flourishes to Aaliyah’s “Where were you last night?,” amazingly conveying the mocking line in the sand lovers almost always regret drawing during a spat. Gonzalez


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20. The Knife, “Heartbeats”

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly when this song, a holdover from the Knife’s weaker, more obscure second album, became popular, but its insistent ubiquity in the latter part of the decade didn’t hurt its luster, its sense of icy overall obliqueness wrapped around a crowd-pleasingly catchy beat. Silent Shout, which perfected the formula, is full of these types of songs, which manage to be oppressively dark while still completely listenable, but none of them do it as perfectly as “Heartbeats” Cataldo

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19. M.I.A., “Galang”

“Galang” is absolutely primal, and it distills “pop” to its essence. Linear storytelling, it turns out, isn’t necessary, and nonsense syllables will suffice in lieu of meaningful words. Melody doesn’t have to amount to much at all; the simple rise and fall of a rapper’s cadence will do just fine. So long as the hooks sink in deep and the beat can club her prey into submission, her pop song doubles as a weapon, and “Galang” ends, appropriately enough, with M.I.A. shouting a simple, “Ya, ya, Hey!” like a war cry. Keefe


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18. The White Stripes, “Seven Nation Army”

Having already defined their aesthetic of blues-rock formalism with a rigidity that even the Dogme 95 directors would have found restrictive, Jack and Meg exploded beyond their self-imposed confines on “Seven Nation Army” and announced the White Stripes as perhaps the most important American band of the decade. With a sound as massive and menacing as a line of approaching tanks, even Jack’s yelp of “I’m going to Wichita!” comes off as a threat, but it’s that iconic guitar riff that turned the single into a modern standard. Keefe


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17. Britney Spears, “Toxic”

The critical highpoint of the first decade of a career more dominated by depressing extracurricular antics than actual music, “Toxic,” dripping with pointless lyrics and an overbearing sense of latent stupidity, is elevated to art by its screeching violin, one of the most magnificent isolated pop music moments of the last 10 years. It’s easy to forget that the rest of the song’s production is so strong, packed with weird flourishes, a squelchy breakdown, and a self-consciously lifted James Bond guitar riff—smaller, load-bearing touches that help to cement the song’s greatness. Cataldo


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16. Hercules and Love Affair, “Blind”

DJ and once-Butt magazine model Andrew Butler’s Hercules and Love Affair outfit paid poignant homage to the queer man’s feelings of yearning, wish fulfillment, and survival on their sensual, vaporous, and bittersweet self-titled debut album. A fabulous experiment at looking at the present from some kind of beyond, their splendiferous “Blind” was like a post-mortem address by “Queen of Disco” Sylvester, reminiscing on libertine days gone by through the gender-bending voice of Antony Hegarty. A groovilicious, undulating foot-stomper that continues to stir the soul. Gonzalez

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15. Clipse, “Grindin’”

Has anything so malevolent ever been made of so few ingredients? The aural equivalent of a Molotov cocktail, the Neptunes’s beat cruises along on unnervingly explosive boom-bap, kicks that sound like a gun cocking, and a barely-there melody out of John Carpenter’s nightmares. And even though Malice and Pusha T both sound like they’d rather be pushing weight, each brings their own particular brand of murder. “And if I wasn’t able/There was always ‘caine” is the best coke rap line ever, and coke rap didn’t even really exist yet. Hughes


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14. OutKast, “Ms. Jackson”

Did any song from the last decade, of any genre, even begin to capture as many facets of the modern American experience of family? Did any even try? OutKast throws a lot of pasta at the ceiling here—puppy love, divorce, custody battles, abuse, protective in-laws, the idea of forever—and every single strand sticks. The beat is equally hodgepodge, built on a loping, shaky rhythm and accented with many plonky little parts that add up to something strange and massive and true—like any American family. Hughes


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13. Kelly Clarkson, “Since U Been Gone”

Who knew aping Pat Benetar could score you a hit and the respect of the indie crowd? It was reportedly Kelly Clarkson herself who convinced teen-pop producer Max Martin to dirty up “Since U Been Gone” with more squelchy guitar licks, and it was a move that helped distinguish the singer from the squeaky-clean reality show that made her a star. With a power-hook that stretches for miles, “Since U Been Gone” helped Clarkson further prove both her muscle as a vocalist and her versatility as an artist. Cinquemani


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12. Yeah Yeah Yeahs, “Maps”

A spot of relative calm among the snarling briar patch that is Fever to Tell, “Maps” comes out of nowhere, the intimacy of Karen O’s voice, the careful, resolute shimmer of the guitar line, the measured, looping drums all seemingly at odds with the album’s overall stridence. This oasis status, the perfect collusion of its elements, and the way everything is so carefully repeated help make up for the banality of the lyrics, which might have sputtered under lesser circumstances. Cataldo

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11. Franz Ferdinand, “Take Me Out”

Oh, that tempo change, the moment when Franz Ferdinand turned into precisely what post-garage rock needed: its own Blondie. But even Blondie didn’t manage to record “Atomic” right out of the gate, and that’s what makes “Take Me Out” all the more unexpected and satisfying. There’s true genius in the way the song marries the guitar hook of the Waitresses’s “I Know What Boys Like” to the beat and melody of Justin Timberlake’s “Rock Your Body” and real accomplishment in making an entire generation of image-conscious hipster kids dance for four glorious minutes. Keefe


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10. Dizzee Rascal, “I Luv U”

Set over a pounding, industrial backbeat, Dizzee Rascal’s “I Luv U” subverts all expectations established by its simple text-speak title. No slick pop trifle, “I Luv U” and its venomous he-said/she-said barbs offer a stark and disturbing assessment of gender politics in the face of the apocalypse: Everyone is equally culpable, and no one gets away unscathed. What lingers long after its final beat drops is the suggestion that this rift, caused by a fundamental inability to communicate the differences between wants and needs, is irreparable. Keefe


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9. Justin Timberlake, “Cry Me a River”

Years before a giggling piggy helped land Justin Timberlake his second #1 single with “My Love,” a sniveling, snot-nosed ogre made a similar cameo on the singer’s hit “Cry Me a River” That eccentric vocal embellishment, dreamt up in Timbaland’s lab, was just one element (along with Justin’s beatboxing, countertenor yelps, and “Dirty Diana”-style screams) that helped make the Britney kiss-off a smash and Justin the new Prince of Pop. “River” might be the closest a pop song has gotten to capturing the melodrama and opulence of opera since, well, maybe ever. Cinquemani


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8. Gnarls Barkley, “Crazy”

It’s the unlikeliest of pop songs, driven by its sensitivity for the emotion of a pained soul. Its beauty comes from its plaintive reminiscence, its poignant questioning, and unlikely chorus, the generous old-meets-new production by Danger Mouse, so unpretentiously but catchily lush with beats that are alternately hesitant and urgent, which match the exposed nerves of Cee-Lo’s richly impulsive vocal, which is playful, sarcastic, lost, vulnerable, sometimes all at once. Once it gets inside your head, you’re glad it refuses to leave. Gonzalez

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7. Missy Elliott, “Get Ur Freak On”

It’s a bit hard to capture now, years after it conquered the world, but once upon a time this song was really fucking weird. Of course, there’s the totally twisted sample, hitching a ride to Bollywood in Knight Rider’s car. Then there’s the ADHD-cum-dancehall, chaos-theory stance it takes toward verse-chorus structure, punctuated with sound effects (Missy hocking a loogie!). Not to mention the drum-’n-bass outro and Missy’s ragga toasting vocal stylings. Okay, so this song is still really fucking weird. Hughes


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6. Beyoncé f/ Jay-z, “Crazy In Love”

A chunk of retro-stylized ’70s funkadelia that includes a show-stopping guest spot by then-DL boyfriend Jay-Z, a horn-y Chi-Lites sample, some go-go-influenced breakbeats, a proud, bottom-heavy, hip-pop posterior, and a hook so scorching that it permanently branded “diva” to the singer’s résumé, Beyoncé’s “Crazy In Love” positioned the buxom bottle blonde as the Tina Turner of the iTunes generation. The big-piped singer’s omnipresent caterwaul was, for once, justified by the mania propagated by her main squeeze. Temporary insanity never sounded so good. Cinquemani


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5. Rihanna f/ Jay-z, “Umbrella”

Rihanna’s characteristically dispassionate delivery and syllabic lollygagging both linger at the end of the tongue, and the coattails of this monster hit’s reign poured like nothing else this side of “My Humps” Even if none of its descendents managed to harness enough energy to power so much as the original’s high-hat, the dozens of acoustic, pop, rock, country, punk, geek, and twee covers that sprang up in its wake can attest, “Um-buh-rella” was the decade’s foremost throwback to the notion of pop standards. Which, you have to admit, iTunes needed then more than ever. Henderson


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4. OutKast, “B.O.B”

Has any song ever moved this fast, with such insistent dexterity? Probably not, and “B.O.B.,” beyond its timeliness and the unnecessarily great hook, brims over with such booming life that even an overlong, extraneous outro can’t drag down its energy. The long ending does serve as a moment of reflection after the three-minute blur that preceded it, the mix scampering from left to right, quirky flourishes sprouting up only to be tossed off in an instant, standing as one of the most concentrated hurricanes in the history of rap. Cataldo


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3. Kylie Minogue, “Can’t Get You Out of My Head”

Names can be destinies; titles can be too. So it goes with Kylie’s most global hit, an iridescent earworm remarkably effective at its explicit mission of reprogramming your brain. Kraftwerk with an armful of million-dollar hooks and an international-scale marketing budget, its robotic after-hours pulse signaled the arrival of a minimal era in dance music. It still sounds like a future where everyone’s coked up, wearing slinky dresses, driving sleek cars too fast on the autobahn en route to the coolest party in the world—and it still lives up to its title’s promise. Hughes


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2. M.I.A., “Paper Planes”

A song about immigration whose sound drew a provocative link between violence and capitalism, “Paper Planes” was the bomb way before that conundrum known as M.I.A. licensed it to Sony and Fox and Billboard and Grammy dutifully responded. One of the more ubiquitous anthems of the decade, “Paper Planes” was also among M.I.A.’s least murky provocations, an ironic address of terrorism as a matter of moral and political judgment, but you should still feel no guilt for stomping along to its driving beats, as they’ve always been M.I.A.’s way of pulling up the people to her cause. Gonzalez


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1. Jay-Z, “99 Problems”

The sound of the magnanimity of reformed megalomania reaching its limit, Jay-Z’s octane-fueled masterpiece is Where I’m Coming From by way of Björk’s “5 Years” Chained up by Rick Rubin’s swaggering guitar riffs and Billy Squier’s soul-penetrating breakbeats, Hova swats the kickstand and instantly tears pavement. One mere mile above the speed limit, he learns the tough way that money still ain’t a thang, and his justified rage sees him through possibly the most cleansing act of exorcism in hip-hop history. To be honest, we’re all still a little bit scorched. Like Björk said, “You say that you want, and then can’t handle” Henderson

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