This is where it starts to get really interesting (hence I've started to put in their descriptions too)
50-2150. Basement Jaxx
"Romeo"A criticism you sometimes hear about Basement Jaxx tracks is that they're too busy. Not unfair-- except that leaves out how hyperactivity can inflate a fine song into something fantastic. Imagine a version of "Romeo" played totally straight-- a post-Winehouse retro-soul belter. It wouldn't be too bad, but it wouldn't be on this list. "Romeo" needs its touches of mixing desk dementia: The way the stomped emphases at the end of Kele Le Roc's lines set off pinball-combo beats all around your earspace; the way the middle eight dissolves into swoon and flutter; the husky work-gang chants. And so when Le Roc cuts loose it doesn't sound stagey-- more a wholly understandable reaction to all the craziness and tension the Jaxx are pumping in. Frustration has rarely sounded so gleeful. --Tom Ewing
49. Sufjan Stevens
"Chicago"The genius of Illinois was the way Sufjan made grand, epic-scale orch-pop out of local-color minutia: Historical footnotes, backwater towns, serial killer biography. But "Chicago" is the moment where all that goes out the window, where eyes turn skyward. "Chicago" is Sufjan's "Clocks", his "Such Great Heights"-- the song that sounds custom-built to end up in the trailers for indie romantic comedies forevermore. The dizzying melody is all longing, and Stevens builds it up perfectly, piling on the horns and strings and choral voices before letting it repeat about 50 times because he knows we aren't getting sick of it anytime soon. It's not an indie pop song. It's a pop song, pure and simple, and a great one. --Tom Breihan
48. Panda Bear
"Bro's"
Animal Collective's sprawling catalog has often been defined by the group's restless spirit and urge to reach new ground. But there is a more meditative and tranquil pace to Person Pitch, the third solo album from AC's Panda Bear (Noah Lennox), and nowhere is this more evident than on the album's beatific 12-minute epic "Bro's". Constructed of voice and intricately layered samples, "Bro's" can feel like a single, prolonged exhalation, as Lennox cycles through the song's simple looped patterns with a light but deliberate touch. Though it makes use of repetition, the track's landscape is anything but static: Snatches of instruments, sound effects, and voices arrive then disappear, while Lennox's lyrics gently ruminate on brotherhood and friendship. Above all, "Bro's" displays an exquisite sense of patience, with Lennox constantly turning up new surprises as he lets his various loops echo back onto themselves, as though determined to leave no possible corner of this song unbrightened. --Matthew Murphy
47. Burial
"Archangel"Burial works like an alchemist on "Archangel", converting scuffed, accidental rumble into a lithe, swinging 2-step pattern; an instantly nostalgic crackle suggests a worn stylus carving golden filigree out of a favorite record's ground-down grooves. All that might have resulted in sullen murk were it not for the magic Burial works upon his vocal samples. Detuning a set of R&B a cappellas into weird, warbly chirps, Burial appropriates other singers' words ("Loving you... holding you... kissing you") to fit to his own tune. All the warping and collaging turns the song's sentimentalism almost desperate, as though whatever the artist had to express were too much for a "real" voice to bear. The masked pathos of the gesture only helped confirm the myth around the then-anonymous Burial, but his coming out hasn't robbed anything from this gorgeous, unforgettable song, which keeps its secrets hidden in cryptic rhythms and molten glissandi. --Philip Sherburne
46. Robyn [ft. Kleerup]
"With Every Heartbeat"Like Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot success, Robyn's triumph of personal artistic vision over major-label shortsightedness is one of the great David vs. Goliath music-industry stories of the decade. And it's poetic justice that "With Every Heartbeat", the singer's futuristic electro-pop collaboration with producer and fellow Swede Andreas Kleerup, would become her most successful song to date, eventually reaching #1 on the UK singles chart in 2007. It's easy to see why people took to it. "With Every Heartbeat" is the best kind of pop hit-- one with perspective-broadening ability but catchy enough for anyone to enjoy. And for a song ostensibly about pain and heartbreak, the thing's downright triumphant in the end. Credit Kleerup's throbbing arrangement-- that synth build!-- which pulsates beneath Robyn's melancholic coos before intensifying into its hair-raising climax. Robyn may be talking breakups here, but she isn't moping, and that's partly because the song's too vigorous to allow for it. --Joe Colly
45. Hot Chip
"Over and Over""Over and Over" is Hot Chip's best "fuck you." Vocalist Alexis Taylor has a soft tenor that, on singles like "Ready for the Floor" and "Boy From School", sounds tender at best; at worst, he sounds like a pushover. Not here. "Over and Over", and its indispensable, brilliant video, plays like a series of dares: "You want laid back? I'll give you laid back. You want special effects? Here's the sloppiest green screen job ever." Over the song's wobbly two-step and busted guitars, Taylor and co-vocalist's Joe Goddard sing it mild, yes, but with a dry wit. By the time Hot Chip get to the song's spell-along countdown, you crave the guitar hook, then the synth organ hook, then the chorus again, though they cruelly withhold the latter, daring you to play it over and over. --Jessica Suarez
44. Franz Ferdinand
"Take Me Out"Thanks to incessant cheerleading on the part of the established rock press, retro garage-punk emerged as the predominant strain of post-millennial rock music in 2001. But partway through the decade, aspiring buzz bands realized that, down on the disco floor, they could really make their profits-- and that paradigm shift can be scientifically pinpointed to the 55-second mark of Franz Ferdinand's 2004 breakthrough single. After a tense build-up-- wherein Alex Kapranos' lays out the song's desire-as-death theme-- "Take Me Out" sounds ready to blast off; instead, Franz pull an aesthetic 180 and slow it down into a militaristic, libidinous funk stomp-- and even after five years of perpetual play at student discos around the world, that change-up still startles. Franz Ferdinand famously formed to create "music for girls to dance to," but the Scottish band's most successful U.S. single to date can be attributed to the fact that their definition of dance music was still heavy enough to lure in those girls' jock boyfriends. --Stuart Berman
43. UGK [ft. Outkast]
"Int'l Players Anthem (I Choose You)"Plenty of other rappers have availed themselves of Willie Hutch's "I Choose You" before UGK and OutKast. 50 Cent, for instance, and Project Pat. Even Cam'ron had a go. But none of those matter now. From the second André 3000 cues up the heavenly choir of Hutch's original with a pregnant "So...," Project Pat's "I Choose You" becomes about as relevant as Black Moon's "Stay Real", which has the misfortune of sharing its sample source with Jay-Z's "P.S.A." André's nervous-groom routine on the opening verse-- "spaceships don't come equipped with rearview mirrors," he tells himself, and his giddy butterflies are practically audible-- was one of rap's most winning moments this decade, and that's before Pimp C stomps all over the track and Big Boi offers his indelible chopped-and-screwed "ask, ask Paul McCartney." Other rappers relied on the majesty of Hutch's plush soul choir to elevate their shit-talk: UGK and OutKast, in their last moment together before the death of Pimp C, actually make Willie sound more heavenly. --Jayson Greene
42. Battles
"Atlas"
I've heard "Atlas" softly criticized as being more muscle than heart. Beyond the fact that the heart is a muscle, well, that's a completely reasonable position to hold. When Tyondai Braxton's cracked whinny rises at an impossible angle over what could initially be confused for any number of shuffle-based beats ("The Beautiful People", "Rock and Roll Part 2") it's like a clarion call to exhibit the sort of physical domination few of us ever get to experience in our cubicle-bound lives.
"Atlas" is not a song you put on a mixtape. It's a song you use when you're coming to bat in the 9th inning against a fire-throwing closer, to soundtrack an intensely focused 5 a.m. weightlifting session (guilty), to train an army as powerful and precise as John Stanier's drumming. So yes, "Atlas" doesn't appeal to one's emotions so much as it appeals to ideals. Upon hearing it for the first time, Battles' astonishing technical proficiency set them apart from most other bands. Two years later, you don't wonder why Battles are better than those guys, but why those other guys aren't trying to do more to catch up. --Ian Cohen
41. TV on the Radio
"Staring at the Sun"George Carlin said fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity. In the summer of 2003, both were happening. The U.S. had invaded Iraq, TVOTR's home city was covered in National Guard, and temperatures hit a record high. Helplessness was a kind of fever, or maybe a real fever, or SARS, or another form of loneliness, but TVOTR understood sex could purify as well as distract: "Beat the skins and let the loose lips kiss you clean," they commanded. Sonically, it was a primer on what was to come from them: grinding basslines, Tunde Adebimpe and Kyp Malone's unearthly harmonies, rhythm as pared-down and vital as a heartbeat. By the time the song reappeared on their 2004 LP, it could have soundtracked the war or served as a protest song. The birth rate went up, at least. "I was a lover before this war," Adebimpe reminded us later on Return to Cookie Mountain. We remember. --Jessica Suarez
40. The Avalanches
"Since I Left You"When I found out "U Can't Touch This" was really "Superfreak", I was bummed. Similarly, I was disappointed about discovering the opening track from the Avalanches' sample-based magnum opus was actually called "Since I Left You". I could've sworn that female vocalist was singing "since I met you." I cheered up after I realized "Since I Left You" refers not to a breakup, but to an escape. This music is a travelogue to an imaginary, idyllic realm reachable only through forgotten 1960s AM pop, Latin-tinged guitars, and easy-listening schlock. While plenty of people have continued to explore the use of samples, that bacchanalian locale has been the song's most significant legacy, particularly in the work of artists from chilly Sweden: Jens Lekman, the Tough Alliance, Air France, Studio, and jj. By the way: She really was singing "since I met you.". --Marc Hogan
39. Modest Mouse
"Float On"Platinum sales. A #1 album. Magazine covers. Top 40 radio play. Kidz Bop. Why Modest Mouse? Why not a thousand other bands from backwater towns who also spent a decade schlepping across the country in beat-up vans? Only the gods of capitalism and pop know for sure, but, hell, if Pavement had written anything as straightforwardly uplifting as "Float On", maybe they would have ended up on "American Idol", too. For three and a half minutes, eternally vexed frontman Isaac Brock breaks through the rainclouds to pay tribute to the audacity of hope. The rhythm section marches forward like the irrepressible human spirit, the out of tune yet utterly undeniable pinprick guitar line seesaws like a rickety carousel, and the shout-along, clap-along, fist-pump-along chorus hits like a ticker-tape parade. Cars crash, money is stolen, jobs are lost-- whatevs, man. We'll all float on, OK. --Amy Phillips
38. T.I.
"What You Know"It may not be possible to sound bigger than T.I. on "What You Know". Ask T.I.; no one knows better. He spent a few years straining fruitlessly to match it and came up with ESPN-Zone theme songs ("Big Shit Poppin'") and "Numa Numa"-sampling self-help anthems ("Live Your Life"). He seems finally to have figured it out, scaling back down to the lean, hungry street cuts he made his name with. Good call. A thousand mixtape rappers have crashed on the rocks of DJ Toomp's roiling sea of a beat, but T.I. rides that wave of glorious noise with the grinning aplomb and justified self-regard of a rapper who knows he has Made the Leap, that he has stumbled upon "the moment where the rapper becomes the moment," as Chris Ryan once pithily put it. "You know about me, dog," he crows, letting loose with an insinuating "yeeaaaaaahhhh" that stretches out so far it starts to feel like an act of public lewdness. Rarely has a rapper's victory lap felt quite this exhilarating. --Jayson Greene
37. Kylie Minogue
"Can't Get You Out of My Head"How did Kylie make one of the decade's finest dance-pop anthems? By offering less: less singing, less melody, less feeling. What's left is a buzzy, insatiable desire, an itch you can't scratch but maybe can dance out. Kylie is a diva more than singer, understanding intuitively how each coy purr, each insouciant whisper can speak to and for the lust of her audience. The point is not to want her, but to want what she wants: In the right environment, dancing to "Can't Get You Out of My Head" traces a shared history of hopeful flirtations, irresistible seductions, inevitable disappointments, and the helpless compulsion to repeat the cycle again. If its sleek, synthetic surfaces feel hollow, it's because fantasy is hollow, a shell for impossible expectation. "Just to be there in your arms..." Kylie imagines, then falls silent while the beat goes on. --Tim Finney
36. Sigur Rós
"Svefn-G-Englar"Despite the fruitful decade that followed for Iceland's Sigur Rós, there's still no better introduction to the band's majesty than "Svefn-G-Englar", their first single (released in 1999 in their home country) and the lead track of its worldwide entrance, Ágætis Byrjun. The bowed guitar and billowing voice of Jonsi Birgisson create waves of sound in which steady keyboard and drum lines simply drift like tiny buoys at the mercy of a gentle ocean. But Sigur Rós soon moved on to bigger climaxes, stickier melodies, and richer textures. Listening now, "Svefn-G-Englar" feels mostly like a template. The questions it raised about its makers catalyzed our intrigue and inquiry are, to an extent, the same ones people continue to ask: Is that a girl singing? And is it singing, "It's you," over and over? What language is this, anyway, and how are those nautical noises made? Can all future music be this beautiful? --Grayson Currin
35. Animal Collective
"Fireworks"On Strawberry Jam, "Fireworks" fades in from the previous track on a stuttering drum machine, giving the impression that it really has no beginning. Hearing it live, Animal Collective give the impression that it might never end. What truly stands out about "Fireworks", other than its endless and endlessly involving melody, is how starkly it lays out its emotions in such an honest, easily parsed manner. Far removed from the sort of primitivist, childlike affectations often ascribed to Animal Collective, Avey Tare is an adult here, emotionally nude and fearfully alone. Tare greets passersby and is struck by the thought that "I think that I'm only one I see sometimes," frightened at the possibility that after all these years of fanciful naturism, this is the result of him being honest with himself. --Ian Cohen
34. M.I.A.
"Galang"Forget the Grammys-- what M.I.A. really deserves recognition for is her unwavering dedication to the onomatopoeic and the staccato; the hard consonant and the long vowel; the simple pleasure-giving properties of words. "Galang" may be patois for "go on," but the word's real currency, she suggests, is in its stackability, the way it piles on top of itself to galang-a-lang-a-lang.
A similar feeling-over-meaning instinct informed many of her future artistic choices, including those related to the complicated and not easily untangled circumstances of the Sri Lankan civil war. Despite its artist-conferred status as protest music, the video for "Galang" features M.I.A. dancing in a stylized wonderland of neon-bright graffitied iconography (bombs, tigers, machine guns) that wears insurgency and inequality like fashion. To a continent that's often guilty of doing exactly that, "Galang" rang to some as troublesome, a criticism that M.I.A. forcefully rejected without ever convincingly explaining away. This willful conflation of style and substance-- and a stubborn refusal to separate one from the other-- has become a constant in her career. It's what makes her relevant and worthy of thought and discussion, and it began here. --Mark Pytlik
33. Spoon
"The Way We Get By"Spoon were late bloomers. The first seven years of the band's career yielded many great songs, but in retrospect, Britt Daniel and Jim Eno spent all of that time gradually refining the elements of their style into a striking aesthetic all their own. "The Way We Get By" is their breakthrough, and it still stands as the track that best defines the Spoon sound: rhythm and melody pared down to the barest essentials; extremely dry piano mingling with tight-pocket percussion; Daniel's sexy rasp hitting a perfect balance of cool aloofness and genuine emotional investment. The lyrics may namecheck some Iggy Pop classics, but the melodic sensibility is more like an alternate universe version of Billy Joel raised on the minimal punk of Wire. For longtime fans, this mastery of style and form was well worth the wait, but for just about everyone else, it was a revelation. --Matthew Perpetua
32. Amerie
"1 Thing""1 Thing" is a song without a center, without a floor or ceiling; it seems to hover in midair for four minutes. It comes out of nowhere, with producer Rich Harrison's flipped-and-splintered drum break from the Meters' "Oh, Calcutta!" exploding right in your face, and then it's nothing but breakdown, i.e., the good part. There's basically no harmonic grounding-- no bass, no synths until it's halfway through, only a few pitch-shifted shards of Leo Nocentelli's jazz-chord guitar and Amerie's voice. Her singing refuses to anchor the song, either: the "no-no-no-no-no-oh" that serves as its first hook sounds like it's flown in from an ad-lib. Even during the verses and choruses, phrases and gasps and wordless flashes of harmony pop up all over the stereo field. There's no individual Amerie singing it, just momentary impressions of a hundred Ameries, all scraping the roof of emotional response. All of which is to say that it's a precise evocation of being overwhelmed and swept away by passion. --Douglas Wolk
31. Jay-Z [ft. UGK]
"Big Pimpin'"
The decade starts here-- damn near literally, since the album this song appears on dropped three days before 2000 began. But more than that, "Big Pimpin'" represents the aughts' increased legitimization of the South as a region that could get shine from NYC, both lyrically and production-wise. UGK's show-stealing guest spot ensures the former; it was a well-deserved breakthrough for the Texas icons and features the duo at their sharpest, whether it's Bun B turning a classic rhyme-scheme switch by toying with the pronunciation of "scenario" or Pimp C drawling out eight tracks' worth of potential hooks in his verse. And Timbaland's creatively lucrative infatuation with Eastern sounds hits its first jackpot here, with its trilling bellydance melodies refitted into a super-widescreen ass-propulsion motivator. The only thing that hasn't maintained its freshness: Hova's declaration that he'll never give his heart to a woman-- though his staccato-yet-sleek time-shifting flow makes it easy to forget he reneged on that by "Crazy in Love". --Nate Patrin
30. The White Stripes
"Seven Nation Army"The Detroit duo withstood the "Return of Rock" brouhaha to make a niche for themselves as arena-rocking, side-project-glutted, guitar-god-torch-carrying icons that we've mostly forgotten the fake-sister mythmaking that set tongues wagging in the beginning. And "Seven Nation Army" is the garage-rock revivalists' anthem. (Need proof? It's still in heavy rotation in sporting arenas and strip clubs.) People, right down to those School of Rock tots, have argued about Meg's proficiency as a drummer, but "Seven Nation Army" wouldn't have half of its menace were it not for the simplicity of her thumping, insistent floor tom. In the end, though, it is Jack's guitar-- from its descending bass-y riff to its nimble, trebly solo-- that whips the song into a furious squall from its rumbling intro. --Rebecca Raber
29. Hot Chip
"Boy From School""We tried but we didn't have long/ We tried but we don't belong." With those lines, Hot Chip showed they were more than a bunch of synth-fetishizing goofballs. "Boy From School" wraps itself up in poignant nostalgia-- the kind you can't escape from after spotting a high school acquaintance 10 years after the caps were tossed. It's about the undeniable desire to go backward and make things right: do that work, behave that way, see that girl. "I got lost/ You said this was the way back," it concludes, as if stuck in a looping dream.
Which would all be a bit bedwetter if not for a thump jacked in from some sort of disco eternity. Hot Chip don't wallow in their past, no matter how bittersweet. The physicality of the beat and the clarity of the emotions fuse into a twinkling rumble that crystallizes teenage alienation without dwelling upon it. These Brits are bringing clubs into headphones and head space onto the floor; they're trying, succeeding. --Ryan Dombal
28. Antony and the Johnsons
"Hope There's Someone"It's hard to think of a human experience untouched by song. With patience, you could piece together a playlist that chronologically represents everything that's ever happened to you-- birthdays and funerals, weddings and break-ups, workdays and trips abroad, all of it. Or you could simply cut to the chase and put on "Hope There's Someone", where we experience the fullness of a lifespan in a few overpowering minutes. At first, it's small and delicate, like something taking its first tentative steps out of a cracked egg. Gradually, it learns to walk, grows, spreads its wings, soars, and is transfigured into a piano storm that seems very much like death. Antony Hegarty prays for safe passage for as long as he can, then gives in to the immense pressures he's cultivating, and just howls. Metamorphosis is his leitmotif, glinting in portions through his songs, but he nailed down the entire wriggling shape of it here. --Brian Howe
27. Clipse
"Grindin'"It's one of the great triumphs of counterintuitive pop thinking that the 21st century's definitive hip-hop yayo-chic anthem sounds so sparse. It could be because Pusha T and Malice put themselves on the supply end of the chain rather than the blown-out, hubris-loaded demand that fuels traditional coked-out musical excess. Besides, they're more concerned with milking charisma out of a profession whose afterthought clients, for all we know, could be anyone from day traders to destitute single mothers. It's all strictly business anyhow, fodder for some ingeniously cold wordplay ("I move 'caine like a cripple") and visions of Benz wagons and Gucci Chuck Taylors. That the Neptunes set it to a beat that sounds like car-door slams rearranged into a minimalist, clap-accented drumline only makes it easier to feel complicit in their trade, and if it wasn't so damned nod-provoking one might start asking some troubling questions about why we're bobbing our heads to coke rap in the first place. --Nate Patrin
26. Justin Timberlake [ft. T.I.]
"My Love"No one wants to admit it now, but the majority of pop critics had written off Timbaland by 2006. He'd spent almost 10 years rewriting the sonic guidelines for Top 40 hits, expanding both the melodic and rhythmic palette of pop, a pretty respectable run for any producer. But when a few years went by and Billboard's resident genius slipped into the nether region below the Top 40, pastiching himself to middling effect, plenty of people were ready to call him a spent force.
Then: "My Love". A two-for-one reaffirmation that both Timbaland and the man with his name on the label, then-recently legitimatized boy-band refugee Justin Timberlake, had another round in them. The duo had already drawn attention with the grinding eroto-disco of "SexyBack", but "My Love" was a full-on leap into the world of slo-mo techno. J.T.'s lyrics are of a piece with a career built on guileless mash notes, but the charm of his double-time choruses dovetails perfectly with Tim's spiraling club synths. Rarely has a song fulfilled an album title's aesthetic manifesto so succinctly. --Jess Harvell
25. Rihanna [ft. Jay-Z]
"Umbrella"In pop's armory of emotions, fidelity is among the trickiest to get right. Too easily its expression tips into the reassuring sentimentality of "That's What Friends Are For". This only makes "Umbrella" more startling and precious: In this particular field the song is possibly without peer. The secret was to capture fidelity's difficulty, its challenge, and Rihanna's method is pleasingly literal, pitting her pledge of devotion against nature itself: synthesizer chords like a rainstorm and breakbeats like thunder claps or trees crashing to the ground. In the midst of it all, Rihanna herself sounds hard and defiant, abandoning her former girlish sweetness for a steely determination; hence the near-violence of her "um-be-rella-ella-ella," as impacting and stirring as a war cry. It's not sensual, but, "Said I'll always be your friend/ Took an oath, I'm a stick it out till the end," remains one of modern pop's most romantic and affecting promises. --Tim Finney
24. Radiohead
"Everything in Its Right Place"As we near decade's end, let's take a moment to pity the poor, patient believers who-- when the 00s were but 10 months old-- plunked down a dozen or so dollars for Radiohead's fourth album, Kid A, hit play, and waited for their favorite band to rock out. Sure, Thom Yorke had struggled with fandom and fame touring behind the monumental OK Computer, but what was this shit? If everything was really in its right place, where were the fucking guitars, which they had vowed anyone could play (except themselves, suddenly)? And whose crackling old keyboards were those? And why did rock's razor-sharp voice suddenly sound as if it'd been broken into bits by a centrifuge? Luckily, every band didn't followed this song's lead, but "Everything in Its Right Place"-- a sharp-tongued kiss-off that stood on the shoulders of different giants, like krautrock, Stockhausen, and Squarepusher-- poured new possibilities into several previously hermetic circles. And it was too hypnotic to dare apologize. --Grayson Currin
23. Daft Punk
"Digital Love"Only Daft Punk could've gotten away with a song this innocent, this oblivious to cool, this unafraid of coming right out and saying what it means. In interviews about "Digital Love", Daft Punk have mentioned Supertramp as an inspiration, but the first time I heard it I thought immediately of the theme to "The Greatest American Hero", one of the squarest TV themes of the early 1980s. I suspect the references will be different for everyone comes into contact with the song, which says something about "Digital Love"'s uncanny knack for tapping into pop's collective unconscious. You hear it and you're 10 years old again, standing in the vicinity of a radio and thinking about a person you've got a crush on, who looms somewhere just out of reach. It's a love song to the power of music itself, accentuated by the broadcast-style filtering in its first half and the explosive guitar solo in its second. And let's face it: when you're young and lonely and by the radio, your feeling for the music and the yearning it inspires counts as much as anything. --Mark Richardson
22. LCD Soundsystem
"Someone Great"For a guy who habitually neglected to write lyrics before recording, James Murphy turned into a pretty smart songwriter on LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver. On "Someone Great", he chooses his words carefully and studiously avoids mawkishness or easy sentiment, fully aware that heady introversion can make a song like this all the more affecting. The synthy whir and clockwork drum pattern, not to mention the glockenspiel that shadows his stoic lyrics, suggest the steady passing of minutes, hours, and days marked by intractable absence, and that main scribbly motif strained subtly on its final high note, giving "Someone Great" its warmest approximation of human despair. If most songs about death-- either of a loved one or of a relationship-- strive to be all heart, Murphy still processes emotions through his head and feet. --Stephen M. Deusner
21. Kelly Clarkson
"Since U Been Gone"Songs about wresting your self-respect back from a bad lover have an unfortunate tendency to turn into shrill, one-sided attacks. All-American belter Kelly Clarkson, however, had a much less petty take on self-empowerment: "Your loss, sucker. I'm still gonna live my life. And better than ever before."
So, sure, "Since U Been Gone" gave us one of the most blunt rallying cries of the last ten years, a perfectly realized sing-along chorus that will be a karaoke staple for years. But it's fair to say that no one, even her early post-TV partisans, figured on an "American Idol" winner turning out such a great rock song, let alone a 21st-century indie rock pastiche given a world-conquering pop glaze by Swedish impresario Max Martin. But homage to certain new millennium New York bands isn't why the song transcends. It's Clarkson's go-for-broke performance, those reality show-honed pipes finally put to expressing the unfiltered joy of newfound freedom. --Jess Harvell
