We don't know whether it's due to the holy triptych of mp3, file-sharing, and Steve Jobs' little iPod, or to hip-hop sending both pop radio back to the drawing board and Celine Dion-esque adult contemporary pop to the dustbin, or to the overall genius of producers like Timbaland, the DFA, and the Neptunes, or hell, to the entire indie rock community seemingly rediscovering that EPs are a pretty damn good way to enter the public consciousness, but the 2000s have been an abnormally healthy time for singles.
This week, Pitchfork celebrates this era by selecting our 100 favorite singles of the past five years-- a group that includes everyone from a pair of French robot rockers and at least three former TV stars to about three dozen Southern hip-hop MCs and nearly four dozen groups of New Yorkers with guitars, all communicating unimpeachable wisdom: It's getting hot in here so take off all your clothes, shake it like a polaroid picture, move your feet and feel united, I'm like so what I'm drunk, fire in the disco, harder better faster stronger, the subway is a porno, fo sheezy my neezy, galang-a-lang-a-lang, ga-donk-a-donk-donk, uh oh uh oh uh oh oh-no-no, the sonics the sonics the sonics the sonics... What a time to be alive.
Check out the songs on our Spotify playlist.
100: Fischerspooner
"Emerge"
[International Deejay Gigolo; 2003]
Electroclash seemed like a great idea in late 2001; there was a reason for this, and that reason was "Emerge". Before we found out that Fischerspooner looked like Cirque du Soleil rejects in greasepaint and silver bodysuits-- when all we heard was that decadent, shiny bump-- Casey Spooner's mantra of "Feels good/ Looks good/ Sounds good, too/ Feels good, too" made perfect sense. "Emerge" announces its presence with a low drum boom and a gleaming, oscillating two-note synth riff. It builds and builds: tick-tock drum machines, ethereal synth flourishes, howling house divas. Spooner's eerily placid, arch, bitchy Euro-glam monotone floats above the track. The music holds back, not really kicking in until the song is nearly finished, slowly swirling up and up until that berserk climax when the computer shrieks and eats itself and the drums roil like jackhammers. If more electroclash had sounded like this, electroclash might still exist. --Tom Breihan
099: T.I.
"Rubber Band Man"
[Atlantic; 2004]
Ladies and gentleman, here he is: Nine in his right, 45 in his other hand, children's choir with the Master P "na na na"s on lock in his back pocket, and a hooptie calliope kicking off steam like a smoke machine-- all courtesy of David Banner. Even when he's talking about some heavy shit-- "My cousin used to tell me/ Take this shit a day at a time/ And told me Friday, died Sunday/ We a day in the ground"-- T.I. sells it to listeners the same way P.T. Barnum sold rubes on the mystery and wonder of the egress.
In fact, T.I.'s going that extra mile to make "Rubber Band Man" the Greatest Show On Earth, with multiple versions of himself stumbling over each other like clowns deliriously tumbling out of a Beetle. And, of course, there's no better way to win over a crowd than with Southern charm. T.I. effortlessly slides over syllables like a boy trying to barehand a greased pig, and everything out of his mouth-- be it shout-outs to homies all over or professing he's got the "soul of an old man"-- drips with an "aw, shucks" charm that's tough to resist. Come one, come all. --David Raposa
098: Fabolous
"Breathe"
[Desert Storm/Atlantic; 2004]
On Fabolous' "Breathe", knob-twiddling whiz Just Blaze gives Supertramp a post- Magnolia makeover, nipping and tucking "Crime of the Century" into appealingly harried falsetto exaltations. But x-out the onomatopoetic piano ripples/asthmatic gasps and Fabolous' asphyxiated a capella becomes a lung-drunk slow jam. The bland libretto is a gangsta's checklist of un-slick metaphors, but somewhere after the midway point the laidback Brooklyn emcee spits "I see 'em on the block when I passes/ Lookin' like they need oxygen mask-es" and that extra syllable feels so exceedingly Ogden Nash deft for its winded interlocution, casting a backward glance on the bazillion wheezy details before it. --Brandon Stosuy
097: White Stripes
"Seven Nation Army"
[XL; 2003]
This one's a uniter not a divider, agreed upon by both my redneck cousin (who is "proud to be an ugly American") and by my local guerilla gardener (converted from his skinhead ways upon hearing Oasis). Females reportedly dig this track despite its blustery man-drama about some stoic, cloudy, lone-hero quest. Just as Wilco's "Jesus, Etc." preemptively echoed elements of 9/11, this song presciently soundtracked Decision 04: the "seven nations" might as well be our coalition in Iraq, the people "taking their time right behind my back" could be how U.S. soldiers see the Halliburton contractors, and the line about the Queen of England and the hounds of hell = self explanatory. "I'm going to Wichita", presages Thomas Frank's incisive book about Kansas voting. (Though some exegesists believe it's a hundred-years-later comment on the political satire in The Wizard of Oz , as if the whole song were penned by a labor-movement-oriented Black Sabbath.) The end verse about "bleeding before the Lord" obviously anticipated the political impact of Mel Gibson's messiah-snuff flick. Oh well, whatever, nevermind, because THAT DUMB RIFF PERFECTLY OUTFORBODES THE DARTH VADER THEME MUSIC. If the Stripes can cross over with their punk brio intact, then Scout Niblett is probably the next Kylie Minogue. --William Bowers
096: Eminem
"The Real Slim Shady"
[Interscope; 2000]
Before "The Real Slim Shady", Eminem was just another successful (albeit white) rapper. He'd sold a lot of records, but he was a world away from the cover of Time or the Oscar acceptance podium. But when he said, "There's a million of us just like me/ Who cuss like me/ Who just don't give a fuck like me" over Dr. Dre's ADD cartoon bounce, all of a sudden it became truth-- which of course led to him being The Voice of a Generation and making a boring movie and churning out dark, ponderous, self-involved music. And so "The Real Slim Shady" would be one of our last glimpses at the Eminem who loved making music, who used his lightspeed nasal bleat to hammer sounds until he'd hit every last possible rhyming variation, whose gleefully dumb, goofy jokes were like presents to anyone listening to the radio. He may be a cultural institution now, but he still sounds like a rapper when this track plays. --Tom Breihan
095: Johnny Boy
"You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve"
[Vertigo; 2004]
It kicks off with a twinkling version of the "Be My Baby" drum break, the launching pad for a compact extravaganza that old gun-totin' Phil would have messed himself with pride over. "And I just can't help believin'/ Though believin' sees me cursed" they sing to start the buildup to the title refrain. On the way, there's a ghostly "woooooooo!" in the background and the drums kick it up a notch and we're off into some kind of stratosphere that sounds like every Christmas carol ever recorded all at once, only better. The glockenspiels are glockenspieling with glee, this dude is walloping his drums like they stole money from his mama, the melody spirals and climbs and you can't really tell what she's saying but who cares because-- Biff! Bang! Pow!-- we're flying even higher, borne on the trumpets of revolting angels into the ionosphere and saying "hello" to the satellites before coming back down into the last verse, replete with whooshing rocket noises and heavenly fanfare. The feeling by that point is hard to describe, so I'll just quote the final lyrics: "Yeah yeah! Yeah yeah! Yeah yeah! Yeah yeah!" --Joe Tangari
094: Basement Jaxx
"Where's Your Head At?"
[XL; 2001]
I don't know if it's those man-faced monkeys eating vinyl in the video, or that descending three-note synth line, but there's something about this track that's just beautifully evil and devious. The way the titular question is barked-- "WHERE'S! YOUR! HEAD! AT! AT! AT! AT!"-- is unnerving, and the mix of whiplash synth whines and round robin growling doesn't do much to settle me down.
Wes Craven (a filmmaker known for giving folks a bit of a fright, intentionally and otherwise) has said a film is scariest when the filmmaker has no scruples as to what they will and will not show on screen. The Jaxx are equally unscrupulous, as dayglo kitchen-sink works like Rooty can attest-- any and all genres are just dollops of color on a pallette to be applied liberally and shamelessly in ways that make Kindergarten finger painting look like works by Mark Rothko.
So, yeah, it's on Astralwerks, and it has a good beat, but it's infused and informed by so many other things that classifying "Where's Your Head At?" simply as "house" does the Jaxx a grave disservice. And this glorious piece of music-- a crowning achievement for most acts-- is just the Jaxx getting warmed up. Now that's scary. --David Raposa
093: Usher [ft. Ludacris and Lil Jon]
"Yeah"
[LaFace; 2004]
I gave in. After three years of cellphone ownership and scoffing at what I perceived to be a contemptible tributary of our culture's frivolous spending habits, I bought a ring tone, and this track was it. The telltale flute perk that rolls into the chorus made an irresistible MIDI rendering, and Lil' Jon's whizzing synth line sealed the deal. On an album full of great singles, "Yeah" was the catalyst. It's how Usher salvaged himself and gave a superfluous push to a man who was going places regardless. Like "Cry Me a River" before it, "Yeah" reprimanded us for our instinctual skepticism of teen idols. Now that we're a safe distance from the first-wave of late 90s boy bands and puerile sensations, I almost wish more artists would trigger incredulous responses of, "This... from him?" But that would only take the spotlight off Usher's talents. --Sam Ubl
092: Clipse
"Grindin'"
[Arista; 2002]
The Neptunes quietly blew the roof off with this one, a stripped-down stomp of syncopation-and-fingersnaps marching into a signature low-gravity melody that sounded like a popcorn maker on Mars. "The world is about to feel something they never felt before," Pharrell announced, followed by a chorus of silky "uh-ah"s and "woofs," making "Grindin'" possibly the most sensual track about drug-dealing ever produced. Like Pusha T said, "I'm the neighborhood pusha/ Call me subwoofer/ 'Cause I push 'base' like that, jack."
This was Clipse's first hit, with Pusha T and Malice justifying the dirt-life corner-hustle because, when you come from nothing, why quit a job that keeps you in Gucci Chuck Taylors? It glides along, tunnel-visioned, as though in the throes of a cocaine dream, from Pusha's intro verse to Malice's tantalizing picture of wealth: "Cocky, something that I just can't help/ 'Specially when them 20s is spinning like windmills/ And the ice 32 below minus the wind chill." Finally, Pusha clears away the dazzle and cuts to the grit: "Kids call me Mr. Sniffles/ Other hand on my nickel-plated whistle/ One eye closed, I'll hit you." There's no 'caine hustle without the streets; and when you're steady on the grind, the glitter gets ugly-- quick. --Julianne Shepherd
091: Cam'ron [ft. Juelz Santana]
"Hey Ma"
[Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam; 2003]
After two albums that garnered street buzz but didn't exactly put the Diplomats' Cam'ron over the top like Sly Stallone, he appeared in 2002 wielding a fresh contract with Roc-a-Fella and the ill-mannered "courtship" single "Hey Ma". Over a loping piano sampled from the Commodores' "Easy Like Sunday Morning", his Dipset cronie, Mr. Congeniality Juelz Santana, opens with a pick-up line to a club-going Mrs. Robinson. And though it's Cam's track, Santana steals the song with his inimitably charming/condescending game: "I'm 18 and live a crazy life/ Plus I tell you what the 80s like." In other words: "come home with me...even though you old."
Backhanded non-compliments are a Dipset crew forte, but because this is a fantasy of the boys' own composition, even Cam's skeptical ex-girlfriend lets him "hit, plus dome." It's amazing anyone in the Diplomats can get a date after this song-- but its ridorkulously simplistic chorus ("Hey ma." "What's up?" "Let's slide." "All right." "All right." "We gon' get it on tonight.") sounded terrific over summertime airwaves. To further prove Cam would most definitely go there with his impressively syntactical but jugheaded lyricism, the song following this one on Come Home With Me is a pained public service announcement on the perils of STDs. Cam'ron tracks are a lot like watching "Jackass"-- they're absurd and endlessly fascinating, especially if you could never try this at home. And "Hey Ma" set the stage for the purple street-worship Cam currently enjoys. --Julianne Shepherd
090: Black Dice
"Cone Toaster" / "Endless Happiness"
[DFA; 2003]
With the fragmented art-thump of "Cone Toaster", Black Dice descended upon the nation's discotheques like a small swarm of bewildered locusts, forging their wary truce with the dancepunk minions. For the first few minutes of this epic track, the group is content to dodge about the outskirts of the throbbing beat with pixilated snatches of cymbal and guitar hammering out sparks upon microscopic anvils. As negotiations progress, live drums and dangerous splinters of guitar are allowed past the velvet ropes, and soon Black Dice are permitted to hit the clubs with free agent swagger before riding triumphantly out of town on a galloping crest of tom-toms.
On the flip, Boredoms' Yamatsuka Eye squeezes the panoramic seascapes of Beaches & Canyons ' "Endless Happiness" down to their pearly essence, filling the perfumed air with trade-wind echoes and ocean-sized drums. As per their usual, Black Dice abandoned these templates before the wax had dried, leaving this single behind as yet another fascinating pair of outgrown, discarded wings. --Matthew Murphy
089: Kanye West
"Through the Wire"
[Roc-A-Fella; 2003]
The song that announced Kanye's promotion from the liner notes to the marquee sounds endearingly homemade now that he's become a superstar, the product of bedridden rehab boredom and West's desperation to prove his MC talents. Obviously, Kanye spent the majority of his car accident recovery thinking up one-liners to describe the experience, as "Through the Wire" has more jokes and pop culture references than a standup routine-- mirth exacerbated by his unintentional Don Corleone impression. But like his converted poetry slam "All Falls Down", it'd all just be a list of clever phrases were it not for the music, as good a time-capsule entry as any for the sped-up soul sample craze West rode to the top. Here it's Chaka Khan put through the munchkinizer, and with a slight modification on the original song's words, she ends up offering rapturous commentary on the best party jam ever written about reconstructive facial surgery. --Rob Mitchum
088: TV on the Radio
"Staring at the Sun"
[Touch & Go; 2003]
TV on the Radio's rogue Young Liars EP made nary a misstep, but the song that rightly drew the most attention was "Staring at the Sun". Tunde Adebimpe's woolly, meditative cooing set the mood, foreboding something huge: a massive, industrial synth line, which-- like God, or a skyline-- humbled and inspired anyone who came near it. After "Staring at the Sun", Brooklyn was no longer avoidable. What had been just another estate in the Kingdom of Hip was suddenly a bastion of musical intrepidness. The song's hotwiring of Adebimpe's barbershop-lectern croon and a swollen synth pulse blew open the doors to the massive talent mining the post-9/11 boroughs for inspiration, where TV on the Radio are still at the helm, a year and a Shortlist Prize later. --Sam Ubl
087: Freelance Hellraiser
"A Stroke of Genius"
[White; 2001]
I can just imagine the reaction of folks getting sucker-punched by a non-Julian voice emerging from the Strokes' "Hard to Explain": "Oh my god! You got teenpop in my indie rock! How could you?" Well, you know, this thing we call technology is a wonderful negotiator. In a world where the regular means of musical consumption (radio, video, retail) strove to keep 'em segregated, the Internet casually broke down barriers with just a click of a button.
And in a world where the meticulous pop music essayed by Christina Aguilera was portrayed by a few cranks as The Enemy-- something that prevented hard-working, reputable, song-writing, instrument-playing Good Guys like the Strokes from realizing the fame and riches that is rightfully theirs-- it's nice to know someone was able to call "bullshit" on this tepid trumped-up war, and set it to music. No, the combination of the Strokes' music with Xtina's vocals from "Genie in a Bottle" isn't totally seamless-- the chorus doesn't gel so well with its accompaniment-- but that's OK. This isn't about two individual parts subsuming their individuality for the sake of conformity. This is about unity. This is about Freelance Hellraiser taking two great mutually exclusive tastes, and showing that they taste great together. This is about a brave handful of producers and musicians telling the 21st century, "No, walk this way." "A Stroke of Genie-us" didn't end the war by any means, but if there's a peace to be had in the future, this is where the olive branches took root. --David Raposa
086: Clinic
"Distortions"
[Domino; 2001]
Never has Clinic's VU influence been clearer than on this "Pale Blue Eyes" for an information century. The boys behind the masks pour a can of soul all over a clicky, programmed drum beat, Ade Blackburn's distinctive bleat sighing images yearning and disturbing through clenched teeth. "I want to know my body/ I want this out not in me" he pleads as a single note on a keyboard rises in support. "I've pictured you in coffins/ My baby in a coffin/ But I love it when you blink your eyes" says he in the most sweetly deranged way; it's gently melodic but there is a hint of malice in there somewhere.
The band is masterfully minimal-- an organ mirrored by a bass and that little clicking drum machine give the song all the backdrop it needs-- and the way the pace quickens at the end and the squealing clarinet spills across it like oil from Pollack's brush makes the pulse race like love. Clinic are best known for giving you a piece of their warped minds; here they offer a piece of their hearts. --Joe Tangari
085: The Arcade Fire
"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)"
[Merge; 2004]
A) The ideal attention-deficit tutorial for indie-rock's last twelve (ascendant) years, featuring equal dollops of piano, emo, retro, reverb, propulsiveness, epic panic, and stark murk. B) A magnet for haters afraid of music that inflates the moment, as if one's youth would be better spent in a hairshirt appreciating This Heat demos. C) The single that'd make Ken Jennings say to Alex Trebek, "What would happen if the Walkmen and Bright Eyes and Neutral Milk Hotel co-performed over an atmosphere-duel in the next room between Peter Buck and The Edge?" D) The most deserving recipient of Disney's oxymoron "instant classic" since the 8-track-shaped iPod case. E) A gourmet execution of a crucial dirge-boogie recipe: one scoop nostalgia, one scoop adolescence, one scoop melancholy, one scoop of cheeseless romance, and a pinch of grandiosity, hyperventilated for five minutes. F) The first song you heard by the most energizingly divisive, and biggest group (in terms of members and ripples) since Belle & Sebastian. G) Inspiration for hoping against hope that the band name refers to a burnt offering not of video game hubs but of arcades as they were known in the early twentieth century (the glass-and-steel, shop-speckled structures that led to modern malls); we don't need no water, and we're only pretending to miss our parents/virginity/neighborhood. --William Bowers
084: Dr. Dre
"Forgot About Dre"
[Interscope; 2000]
A summary, for those of y'all coming to the game late: Dre said, "fuck rap, you can have it back". Of course, the insult master also said, "if y'all don't like me, blow me," which is a pretty disappointing come back from the man who once said "fuck da police". Don't mind him, though-- he's been working his ass off to get out from under Death Row's shadow while simultaneously getting his own label (Aftermath) off the ground. And, to be honest, he's feeling a little slighted that everyone seems to have already forgotten about The Chronic and Snoop and NWA and, you know, the West Coast colossus known as G-funk.
Getting irked over that is justified. As far as Dre pitching a fit because folks are claiming he "turned pop"-- whatever. For one, it'd be easier to take an anti-pop stand on a track that doesn't feature Eminem Slim-Shadying like the rubbed-out love muffin of Bobcat Goldthwait and Police Academy 's Michael Winslow. For another, getting all defensive over a smoothed-out set of synth strings and a plink-plank-plunk faux guitar isn't the best way to puff out your chest and show your dominance. It is, however, a great way to get attention. The best way for Dre to prove critics wrong is to do what he's been doing since the days of Compton and MC Ren-- change the game so folks don't know rap from pop, drop effortless beats like this every so often, team up with some folks that know how to spit, and just wait for the rest of the world to catch up. Despite what some of Dre's peers have said on record, it is possible to blow up, go pop, and still stay true to the streets-- it's hard to argue when cars have your tunes blasting out the back. You can fuck rap if you want, Dre, but you'll only screw yourself. -- David Raposa
083: Jay-Z [ft. UGK]
"Big Pimpin'"
[Mercury: 2000]
In 2005, the genius Jay-Z's ho-hustle persona/new-money flagrancy seems but a distant memory, now shadowed by his not-yet-cashed-in 401k and one savvy swoop up into Def Jam's boardroom. But at the turn of the century, "Big Pimpin'"-- with a "forever mackin'" Jay expressing his penchant for big chips and "throwaway" chicks, in a flow that flipped and smacked like a deck of playing cards-- was thee baller's anthem, the pinnacle of the egregious bling track, and a tres appropro introduction to the first four years of the G.W. Bush Administration.
It's snaked through by Timbaland's sly, smirking whistle-melody, and has radio-stock-upping guest verses from UGK's Bun B and Pimp C, on which they sounded careless and carefree-- like they had their feet up on the couch. After all, the rich man's lifestyle is the one without stress-- or at least, that's how it plays out on the yacht featured in the video. (You thought the chorus "Ri-i-i-i-ide" was about a car?!) ÔCourse, it was such a strong, swaggering track that Jay got tagged with the "big pimpin'" moniker for years afterwards, imbuing a complex dude with a mono-dimensional persona...but the media's pretty much over that now. --Julianne Shepherd
082: The Postal Service
"Such Great Heights"
[Sub Pop; 2003]
Love is wide-eyed, unaffectedly unironic, and comes with bitchin' retro-synth bleeps. That's a lesson Pitchfork was initially reluctant to learn, tripping over the hearts-in-your-eyes lyrics about matching freckles and perfectly aligned kisses that lay claim to Ben Gibbard's painstakingly beautiful melody. In hindsight, the progression from the perfectly cheesy yet beloved pop songs like the Lightning Seeds' early-90s "Pure" to the Postal Service's "Such Great Heights" is so obvious, and the latest iteration is no less exuberant.
In a year in which Gibbard released a pair of well-received albums, "Such Great Heights" was his finest track-- thanks in part to collaborator and Dntel mastermind Jimmy Tamborello. If "(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan" introduced their indietronic mind meld, "Such Great Heights" distills it into its pop essence. --Marc Hogan
081: Kanye West
"Jesus Walks"
[Roc-A-Fella: 2004]
Religion and hip-hop get down like Flav and Brigette Nielsen. The two feuding lovers feign fisticuffs and trade high fives but despite any shortcomings, you'll find the church and the emcee curled up, spooning by the fireplace. When African-American churches abandoned the Gospels' social relevance for the mantle of political power, hip-hop picked up the reigns, birthing a generation of Adidas-tongued street activists. But then the jiggyism of the 90s made like Galactus, swallowing worlds of integrity and everything else.
But post- Blueprint anno domini, the Kanyefluenza hit and gave the Windy City Mighty Mouse an unprecedented cache. Behind the weight of "Through the Wire", "Slow Jamz", and "All Falls Down", The College Dropout moved crazy units, and "Jesus Walks" struck the FM dial. With earnest lines like "Lord, show me the way cuz the devil's trying to break me down" and a beat like a Shawshank two-step, "Jesus Walks" embodied the conflicted emcee caught between the Cross and Cavalli. So is it a true altar call or an advertisement for Jacob's studded Blue Ice Savior? That said, Ma$e and Kon should work out their internal conflicts before they pick up their pastor's robes from the dry cleaners. --Jamin Warren
080: Liars
Fins to Make Us More Fish-Like EP
[Mute; 2002]
By the time their first album reached us, Liars had established themselves as unfiltered, incendiary, furious, cacophonous, barely-containable dance-punkers. But above all that, they wanted to subvert expectations. Liars are natural pranksters, and the Fins EP was-- along with the 30-minute track that closed their debut-- proof that the band was comfortable defying expectations. "Pillars Were Hollo and Filled With Candy So We Tore Them Down" foreshadows the creepy noise-chants (and the Halloween-esque themes) of We Were Wrong, So They Drowned while retaining bits of their former ESG funk and frantic delivery. The lurching "Everyday Is a Child With Teeth" borders on atonal. Their one concession to dancepunk is a cleaner recording of "Grown Men Don't Fall in the River, Just Like That," a snapshot of the band's former dynamics. With this single, Liars' plan of attack was explicitly laid out, meaning it was inscrutable. --Jason Crock
079: Gorillaz
"Clint Eastwood"
[Parlophone; 2001]
The most perverse thing about "Clint Eastwood" is that it doesn't quite need its whaa-whaa-whaa spaghetti-western sample (nor, consequently, the title "Clint Eastwood", since the sample provides the only tenuous connection between the song and the erstwhile mayor of Carmel, Calif.). God knows there's enough going on otherwise, even before Del the Funky Homosapien takes over with his vague oration: "The essence the basics/ Without it you make it/ Allow me to make this/ Childlike in nature." The story is simple to a fault: someone (Damon Albarn) had come across one of those elemental hooks ("Tom's Diner", the "Jaws" theme etc.) that appear to exist somewhere in nature, like ore, to be found rather than composed, and the rest of the gang did nothing to screw it up. It's hardly worth discussing the Gorillaz themselves-- a weak concept that would have made sense only if the members had the nerve to stay anonymous; suffice it to say that "Clint Eastwood" appears poised, and perhaps carefully positioned, to outlive the whole deal. --Michael Idov
078: Alan Braxe & Fred Falke
"Rubicon"
[Virgin; 2004]
While Paris' Alan Braxe and Fred Falke normally concern themselves with straight-up French house, the bloodline of one of their most popular tracks is a little more up for debate. Based around a swirl of insistent synths that squeal like car tires, "Rubicon" eschews the functional 4/4 glide of regular house for a more agitated, coked-up rhythm. Sounding like Jan Hammer by way of The Rex Club, it invokes the gaudy, glorious confidence of 80s cop show themes and comes out sounding positively triumphant. A definitive break from the normally gushy, effervescent timbres of French house, "Rubicon" is very much its own thing-- a surefooted ode to 80s American excess as refracted through a distinctly French sensibility. --Mark Pytlik
077: Talib Kweli
"Get By"
[Rawkus; 2003]
When Nina Simone passed on April 21, 2003, she left more than a half-century of spit and soul. Her wandering spirit still skips poles with ease and class. A month before her death in France, Simone embarked on another musical divergence, only this departure would transplant the sonorous vox behind the holy incantations of "Sinnerman" onto Kanye's galloping snare and John Legend's collapsing piano.
"Get By" is wrapped in the power of desperation. Already well-versed in the griot's exhortations, Brooklynite Talib Kweli revisits the storyteller ethic to weave a tale of real pain stripped of New York Post fanaticism. Painting vivid soliloquies that range from his grandmother's trials as a single mother to the tragedy of gangsterism, Kweli mated his socially responsible former self with his commercially viable necessity. The resulting irony was delicious. "Get By" had kids in the club screaming Nina Simone between sips of Grey Goose while teens at the prom high-stepped to the epilogues of the welfare state. Now that's some crazy shit. --Jamin Warren
076: Interpol
"Obstacle 1"
[Matador; 2003]
Despite harboring the infamous "Her stories are boring and stuff/ She's always calling my bluff" couplet (see also frenzied bellows of: "It's in the things that she puts in my hair!"), Interpol's "Obstacle 1" is a strange, thoughtful meditation on love and time, anchored by throbbing post-punk guitar and Paul Banks' deep, tottering vocals. Banks' slippery lyrics rub up against anxious, aggressive guitar bits (themselves engaged in prickly interplay, all ups and downs, highs and lows), creating a song as bewildering as it is engaging. In 2002, Interpol had to endure an entirely absurd amount of comparisons to Joy Division, but "Obstacle 1" proved that they were standing on their very own suit-clad legs: "Obstacle 1" is a dynamic, unpredictable, and wholly distinct triumph. --Amanda Petrusich
075: Radiohead
"There There"
[EMI; 2003]
Such is our love for Radiohead that "Creep", instead of haunting the band well into their sine-wave phase, has been-- in a rare show of fanboy magnanimity-- quietly dismissed as juvenilia. That's too bad, actually, because it contains more than a germ of the Radiohead to come. The song's biggest hook, for instance, was not the Explosive Chorus (a sad cliche by 1993) but the two terrifying string slaps that preceded it: A device so simple it had every guitarist in the world surprised how in the hell hadn't they thought of it first. On "There There", Radiohead manage to top themselves in the same department: the nervous center of the song is, unbelievably, a drum fill. You know which one: it ends the tune. Composed of two robotic, Dave Grohl-style snare rolls, three 16th-notes each, it sounds almost exactly like Greenwood's "Creep" figure; the rest of the song is so accomplished it's a yawn to describe-- a gorgeous vocal singing about a siren singing you to shipwreck (!), terrifically twisty changes, complicated yet totally lucid mix-- but it's this weird little self-salute reaching from 2003 to 1993 that makes it, well, perfect. --Michael Idov
074: Destiny's Child
"Say My Name"
[Sony; 2000]
The fact (1) that every man, woman, and child in America can sing the vocal hook from this song despite the fact (2) that the beat and bassline sequence underneath that hook is so deeply tricked out and bizarre (we're talking deliriously fast doubletime offset snare runs on top of wah guitar, Martian sleighbells, lite classical string stabs and acoustic fingerpicking, y'all) could be called a testament to the ideological triumph of Ms. Knowles and company's yummy vocal delivery over the icily brilliant formalism of Rodney Jerkins' programming, were it not for the fact (3) that both the singing and the programming are shot through with the exact same precision-tooled logic of control-freak paranoia. Which is why this is such a distinctly American anthem. Facts are facts. --Drew Daniel
073: Belle and Sebastian
I'm Waking Up to Us EP
[Jeepster; 2001]
On "I'm Waking Up to Us", Belle and Sebastian make manifest their long-latent adoration of Love's Forever Changes as Stuart Murdoch expertly channels Arthur Lee's sleepy-lidded romanticism. With the help of Mike Hurst (producer of such pop landmarks as Petula Clark's "Downtown"), the group slices a sliver of perfection from a lush confection of oboe, flute, and bassoon. And there's more homage paid on "I Love My Car", whereon Murdoch sings "I love my Carl/ I love my Brian, my Dennis, and my Al/ I could even find it in my head to love Mike Love" as the song's playful horns eventually join into a full-fledged Dixieland promenade. The closing "Marx and Engels" is the type of effortless piano-driven trifle that probably falls out of Murdoch's pockets when he's boarding the Metro, but packed alongside these companions it reflects a handsome glow. --Matthew Murphy
072: Luomo
"Tessio"
[Force Tracks; 2003]
Sneak preview time: Vocalcity unfortunately just missed our album list, but "Tessio" is a worthy avatar-- and one of the most debilitating tracks I have ever heard. Finnish tech-house producer Vladislav Delay initiated the Luomo project to examine his own bouts with love; he's very thorough, and his heart is quite deep. Over cold, fleshy clicks-- winter hands without gloves-- at one point a man and a woman sing in duet: "I'm trying to be all yours/ Although I ain't answering your calls/ Don't say, it's false/ I'm only following my thoughts." A bit feta-cheesy on their own, the lines teethe as "Tessio" grows longer, less fragmented, more cocksure in its purge. That's where the devastation lies: A lovesick purge is never 100%, and the only thing we can get over is that we will never get over. --Nick Sylvester
071: White Stripes
"Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground"
[XL; 2002]
"Dead Leaves and the Dirty Ground" opened the White Stripes' breakthrough White Blood Cells with the same whiff of amp feedback and lunkheaded distorted riffing that launched a thousand Estrus Crust Club singles, and for those first few seconds it certainly didn't appear that anything noteworthy was about to transpire. That impression changed permanently, however, the moment Jack and Meg casually wrapped their meat hooks around this song's burly chords and methodically ground them into powder. Despite all the ink that's been spilled on the White Stripes, Jack remains a drastically underrated lyricist, and this track contains his most subtle and evocative portrait of the lonesome disillusionment that accompanies a fading relationship. "Any man with a microphone can tell you what he loves the most," he cries, but these two barely needed a microphone for you to hear this powerhouse of a song coming down the hall. --Matthew Murphy
070: M83
"Run Into Flowers"
[Mute; 2004]
"Run Into Flowers" wrenches so much beauty from artificial sources it makes me want to cry. Not because of how that beauty affects me directly but because the song makes it obvious that we're headed inexorably for a technological future where robots will be our masters and all of our jobs will be outsourced to microprocessors in Peru. What a bright, brilliant, beautiful future, though-- it turns out the robots actually like us and lavish us with libations and improved vibrating back massage technology. The song builds up from a base of rhythmically nattering electronic insects-- they live amongst the flowers one supposes-- and rises with big, oceanic swooshes of cymbal, and the vocals wait two minutes to finally arrive, delicately so as not to outshine the texture of the thing. The texture builds and builds, hissing devices mating with fluttering synth butterflies and melodic things bursting into full bloom in big, primary color swirls of ecstatic sound. Listening to it too loudly is like staring at the sun-- it overwhelms the senses and knocks you out with its density and brilliance. I recommend trying it. --Joe Tangari
069: The Darkness
"I Believe In a Thing Called Love"
[Atlantic; 2003]
Why was the Darkness' fourth UK single their first in the U.S.? Because, like some kind of magical zeitgeist-spackle, "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" filled an ugly hole in the states' Fall 2003 musical ceiling. Americans were ready to feel ambiguously excited about 1970s glam rock, 80s hair metal, and 90s hard-rock ballads again. Americans were ready to remember that crazy foreigners (such as Queen, AC/DC, and Def Leppard) were responsible for those genres' roots and peaks. Americans were ready to wonder if unironic fun was possible after so much self-conscious self-consciousness had permeated the national (self-) consciousness.
But mostly, Americans were ready for wonderfully brainless operatic pop (come on, this song's closest cousin is Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance With Somebody") sprinkled with Slash-caliber axework, and maybe a Clash shuffle-strum during a one-drum-breakdown to guarantee a positive vibe. Stadium-melting six-strings have never been so amenable to dance remixes and crunk mash-ups (for further evidence of this tune's reach, consult Lemar's somewhat desexualized soul cover, complete with Marvin-Gaye-homaging stop-the-violence shout-outs). Just as the comedian Eddie Izzard wouldn't be half as funny if he weren't British, no band from the world's last remaining superpower could have pulled this song off. --William Bowers
068: Coldplay
"Clocks"
[Capitol; 2003]
When people talk shit on Coldplay, they call the band "lite rock" or "music for people who don't give a shit about music." But the thing that makes "Clocks" nearly perfect is its lightness: It's helium, lighter than air, floating upwards and hovering, disappearing into the atmosphere. The arrangement implies house music, swirling and climbing without ever locking into a 4/4 beat. It's not tied to anything on this earth: that tumbling, glistening piano, those surging otherworldly background synth chimes, that voice. Especially that voice. Chris Martin's elegantly, gorgeously meaningless angelic falsetto says more than his lyrics do ("Confusion never stops/ Closing walls and ticking clocks", whatever); it's sad and tired and hopeful and perfectly empty. It works like a comfort blanket; it may not solve any real problems, but it wraps you up and keeps you warm and tells you that everything's OK. --Tom Breihan
067: Panjabi MC [ft. Jay-Z]
"Mundian to Bach Ké (Beware of the Boys)"
[Sequence; 2003]
It's the centuries-old Indian folk music bhangra and David Hasselhoff's talking-car TV show Knight Rider-- together at last! Yeah, you might be laughing, but that's because you haven't heard the damn thing. The original version of this track (released five years before Jay-Z, and most of America, came around) hit it big on an international scale-- indeed, Mr. Carter caught wind of this track while clubbing in Switzlerland. The combination of that space-age Trans Am bass line and the dhol-- the double-barreled drum that makes bhangra bang-- is hard to resist, especially in conjunction with the impassioned hollering of the non-Hov vocals. The Indian lyrics expound on the song's title-- "Keep your head down and cover your face with a scarf/ Don't just give your love to anybody." So, of course, Jay's verse posits the man as the "black Brad Pitt," the P.I.M.P. Punjabi MC's trying to warn the ladies about. It's just another case of this song mixing oil and water to create pools full of beautiful vibrant colors. Forget R. Kelly-- this is the best of both worlds. --David Raposa
066: Sean Paul
"Like Glue"
[Atlantic; 2003]
When Sean Paul first broke through to U.S. listeners on the singles "Gimme the Light" and "Get Busy", his voice was a fiery robotic lockstep. The tracks were grim, stentorian dancefloor bangers, and his flow was just one element in the mix rather than the force at its center. But he's a revelation on "Like Glue", growling bleary-eyed hungover hangdog charm over warm, burbling electro soul. The track is simply gorgeous; the skidding organ riffs and walking bassline and humming synths gel perfectly into a wistful morning glow. Sean Paul may just be singing about how much he loves to fuck, but with that grinning baritone growl, he could be talking about chopping up old ladies and it would still sound like the prettiest little love song you ever heard. --Tom Breihan
065: Missy Elliott [ft. Ludacris]
"One Minute Man"
[Elektra; 2001]
"Get Ur Freak On" was the aesthetic manifesto, the statement of warped intent, the dizzy alien futuristic banger, the invitation to another universe. The first time you heard it, you knew the world was a completely different place. "One Minute Man" has a different purpose. It doesn't carry the burden of changing music; it's just a murder-hot club jam about dudes who blow it, and so it's free to be light and playful and frisky in ways that "Get Ur Freak On" couldn't be. Timbaland's science fiction sunburst lope leaves room Missy to layer creepy, sexy hooks on top of each other, harmonizing with herself with robotic, multitracked panache. And Ludacris stops by with possibly the best guest appearance of his entire career, clamping down on every syllable like a rabid pitbull, just bursting with horny joy: "Enough of tips and advice and thangs/ I'm big dog, having women seeing stripes and thangs/ They go to bed, start snoring, counting sheep and shit / They so wet that they body started leakin' shit!" Just nasty. --Tom Breihan
064: New Pornographers
"The Laws Have Changed"
[Matador; 2003]
When I hear this song, I picture a video that finds the group participating in some Frankie and Annette beach blanket bongo party with the radiant Neko Case in the oh-so-crucial Ann-Margaret role: Everyone's young and shiny, doing the mashed potato and the other 9,999 dances in demure bikinis and flattering swim trunks (with A.C. Newman, of course, wearing peroxide on his schnozz), kicking back with some dogs and pop, having a grand old time in the sun as the song's perpetual motion machine chugs along. Of course, the actual video for this song does have the dance moves down, and features a fair amount of sand, but-- in true rockin' indie fashion-- it's a dour "thoughtful" affair and doesn't actually bother featuring any of the band members on screen (excepting part-time Pornographer/fulltime Destroyer Dan Bejar as a mute bartender).
And, of course, a quick scan of the lyrics while listening to a report on the goings-on in the U.S. government can give one a bit of topical whiplash: "Pharaoh, all your methods have taught me is to/ Separate my blood from bone". But maybe it's not a song about de-evolution, but about revolution: "Alone in the chain, it remains to be seen how/ How well you can play when the pawn takes a queen now". Or maybe it's just about Neko Case putting her foot up the ass of a combustible pop song and kicking it into the stratosphere where it becomes the sun and Earth becomes its loving satellite until the next Big Bang. For the record, escape velocity is achieved at the point where Neko starts forming a line and the rest of the band turn into her doo-dooing Pips. Would any of you wallflowers care to join in? --David Raposa
063: Roots [ft. Cody Chestnutt]
"The Seed 2.0"
[MCA; 2002]
Under Statute 402.3 of the Critic's Code, we're required to mention in every piece about The Roots how they perform their own music and play their own instruments, so that everyone knows just how much more "authentic" they are than all those other hip-hop groups. "The Seed 2.0" might be the first time that's really been a relevant point, as it's their only single to really sound like it was made by a traditional band, a slinky remake of Chestnutt's ode to pollination. The Roots' take is more than just a fidelity upgrade; Black Thought's verses smooth out Chestnutt's unfortunate views on sexual relations, while ?uestlove whips up a tidy beat to keep that drunken guitar riff upright. All told, "The Seed" ends up being a photo-negative take on the rap-rock that scourged the century's early years, with hip-hop's house band showing the mongrel genre can be full of sensual swagger instead of Neanderthal catharsis. --Rob Mitchum
062: Spoon
"The Way We Get By"
[Merge; 2003]
Girls Can Tell catapulted Spoon from being an American Supergrass in the bad way (meaning: they were also-rans) to being an American Supergrass in the good way (meaning: they reliably delivered intense grit-pop). This one song from Kill the Moonlight would earn them such mainstream love-debris as a cellphone ringtone and a spot on a soundtrack to something called "The O.C." Unapologetic and unjudgmental, this brief bit of skeletal rock rubs Billy Joel piano-pop up against classic streetlife confessions by the Misfits, Cramps, Make-Up, and, yah, Supergrass. Even straight edge theologians are susceptible to humming along with this tune's drug-dropping and vague convictions. Like religion, though, the song uses simple repetition to achieve sneaky cognitive effects. When indie goes Broadway, expect this track to be featured in the revue, prior to intermission, as an enticement to stick around. --William Bowers
061: Justin Timberlake
"Like I Love You"
[Jive; 2002]
JT's first solo single didn't waste much time in setting up his career as a superstar. Of course, he had a lot of help: The Neptunes' track is one of their best and most distinctive, with muscle-bound funk drums, matador guitar and strategically placed synth blips. Timberlake, for his part, recognized that the world had been without a listenable Michael Jackson song for too long. You know, I really don't want to undersell him, but can you imagine what kind of mega-smash this song would have been had it actually been recorded by Jackson? Anyway, good for JT, good for the legacy of the boy bands, good for pop radio, good for the Neptunes, good for us. With any luck, Timberlake plays his cards this well in the second half of the decade. --Dominique Leone
060: Electric Six
"Danger! High Voltage!"
[XL; 2003]
Oh god, how can I possibly sum up this song? Here, the dancing-about-architecture divide between music and words seems most unbridgeable, and the task of trying to convey all the silly fun, the unabashed disco-ness, the shameless sax solo, the way singer Dick Valentine punctuates a line with an exclamation of "lover!" seems daunting for a stuffy rock critic like myself...or maybe it's the bottle of wine I just drank while dancing around the room and asking the wife, "Don't you wanna know how I keep starting fires?!" This is the song that made me order a burrito from Taco Bell. Thankfully, Valentine and Jack "no recording equipment before 1963" White didn't make fun of disco-- they had fun with disco and proved that you could party anywhere...on the shores of the River Styx, at the Taco Bell, at the mall. --Stephen M. Deusner
059: The Flaming Lips
"Do You Realize??"
[Warner Bros.; 2002]
My inner cynic sure had fun with the first single from Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. I found myself sitting in a graduate school class listening to a daily newspaper rock crit explicate the song's barely earned key changes as an adjunct professor compared the opening acoustic guitar to early Plastic Ono Band. Quoth my cynic: If Wilco was "dad rock," what did that make this once-cacophonous Oklahoma ensemble? What's lamer than appearing in an AOL commercial? Why was I here? Fortunately, I'd first heard the song during a dreamlike drive to a river near California's Sierra Nevada, and I could never again hear its joyful overproduction without visualizing that region's vivid, almost hyper-real hues. "Do You Realize??" offers childlike lyrics ("Do you realize/ Happiness makes you cry"), congregation-moving arrangements, and bold, Sharpie-on-a-tie-dye-shirt melodies. But unlike other tunes of its ilk, "Do You Realize??" can bring even the most hardened Wicker Park hipsters to tears. (Alas, I was only cool enough to live in Evanston.) Sure, its theme is shopworn, but so are love songs. Then again, this track is something of a love song to the here and now-- executed masterfully enough to send my inner cynic to an early hereafter. --Marc Hogan
058: Eminem
"Stan"
[Interscope; 2001]
Same old same old-- lightweight misanthropic potty-mouthed hip-hop artist known for controversially goofing on pop culture, social mores, and himself releases single that deals with a serious topic in an intelligent, harrowing fashion. Of course, that's all reductive garbage-- there's plenty of evidence prior to "Stan" of Slim Shady's wit and wisdom, and it's not as if this track is free of the button-pushing that poisons his more notorious work. That is, unless you don't consider the way Em disposes of Stan and his wife-to-be anything less than sensational. And let's not forget subverting Dido's tra-la-la chirp for some manipulative ironic counterpointing.
Also, Em isn't discovering the new world with this track-- there are plenty of examples of hip-hop shucking its jive for a more serious countenance (cf. um, almost all of it). So what separates "Stan" from other attempts is what separates Eminem, at his best, from the rest of the pack-- it's the flow of the narrative and, more importantly, it's Eminem's flow. It's Eminem detailed portrait of this desperate character whose obsession with a pop star leads to his death, and it's Eminem inhabiting this character's skin as if it's his own. Stan grows more angry and frantic with each passing moment that Em doesn't respond to his letters, and Em nails his pathetic, powerless desperation. It's a performance that turned out to be a grimly prophetic glimpse into what Eminem would become millions of records later-- a man forever trying to live up to, or leave behind, the pictures and songs of a man he adores and hates. --David Raposa
057: Le Tigre
"Deceptacon (DFA Remix)"
[DFA; 2002]
Eric Carr panned the poopflakes out of this song in 2002: "It puts the disco before the discussion...the DFA's remix of 'Deceptacon' sucks out all of the original's Joy Division-ish bassy goodness in favor of a simplistic funk pattern looped ad nauseam." Woof. Where to begin? That simplistic funk pattern-- the one with eight kinds of handclaps and dense synths and that sparse sub-bass thwok on the ones-- that "pattern" gave punkies a chance to actually dance, not that bullshit half-skank side-stepping they'd been doing for 20-plus to Wanna Buy A Bridge? Equally sympathetic to dance and punk, the DFA had found its signature remix sound here, and everyone from Junior Senior to Britney wanted a piece. Oh, and fuck all does the groove depoliticize the rhyme. Quite the opposite: Hannah's rant is still here, but with the bigger beat, she's less bratty, more compelling-- and hardly nauseous. --Nick Sylvester
056: The Hives
"Hate to Say I Told You So"
[Gearhead; 2002]
Whether or not the Hives are the best band in the world-- as they readily claim-- is unimportant; what's crucial is the fact that they play like they are. Riding the crest of the garage-rock wave behind the Strokes and the Vines (remember them?), the Hives set themselves apart from so many trend-jumping upstarts with this calling card, the deadliest WMD in their nuclear arsenal known as Vini Vidi Vicious . Nicholaus Arson's chugging guitar riff provides a perfect soundtrack for webslinging, and Howlin' Pelle Almqvist delivers a screaming stump speech full of campaign promises: "Gonna get through your head what the mystery man said...Gonna call all the shots, all the no's and the not's..." Not because he has to, but "because I wanna!" Ultimately, "Hate to Say I Told You So" not only lives up to the band's notorious self-proclamations (they titled a singles collection Your New Favorite Band), but spanks you for not believing them in the first place. --Stephen M. Deusner
055: Jürgen Paape
"So Weit Wie Noch Nie"
[Kompakt; 2002]
I've never been able to figure out what the hell is happening here. Scratchy vocal samples from what sounds like an ancient German cabaret record combined with a fiber-optic tech-house beat to make something that sounds neo-New Romantic. But then, maybe the latter quality is my own baggage. With the vaguely Nena-esque cast to the voice, the wordless vocal on the bridge (an almost unbearable heart-rending cry that deserves to echo forever inside some empty ballroom) evokes the soaring break on "99 Luftballons". At least, to these Yankee ears it does. Beyond the mysterious vocals and the weird threads stretching through several eras of pop, this song also has a surface beauty: Too slow to dance to, the icy music of "So Weit Wie Noch Nie" is designed to be admired from the outside, like an elegant and precise fetish object. --Mark Richardson
054: Animal Collective
"Who Could Win A Rabbit?"
[Fat Cat; 2004]
Put any kid of a certain age in the vicinity of a drum and he's going to start pounding on it with all his might: "Must...make...noise!" This innate biological reflex happens at a pre-conscious level and is thus not to be punished; if we're lucky, we hold on to some of that spirit and learn how to channel it at appropriate times, like when a club filled with people has paid money to watch you. When people describe Animal Collective as existing in relationship to childhood, this is what they're talking about: combining Boredoms' Joy of Noise with Langley Schools' Joy of Song. "Who Could Win a Rabbit" is the catchiest melody they've written but the real key to its appeal is that it ends so soon, dropping out just as it reaches it's peak. At that point all you can do is repeat. --Mark Richardson
053: Eminem
"Lose Yourself"
[Interscope; 2002]
Rewind: "Menime..."-- Barbra Streisand's eyebrows return to their natural level-- "...ot seog Racso eht dna"-- past the two full years of clutching trinkets on various podia, past the morning-zoo parodies, past the stilted, hagiographic 8 Mile itself-- did the same guy really direct Wonder Boys ?-- and stop. There it is: less a rap song than a talking rocker, with its weirdly indie guitar figure, its dumbass fake-choir backup ("Opportunity!"), its Vegas piano. An odd, gangly composition, "Lose Yourself" towers over 2002 for one reason and one reason only: It contains Eminem's best rhyme scheme ever. Something in my throat still clenches up when the first verse kicks off in earnest: "Snap/ Back to reality." The barrage that follows-- 12 lines with each accented syllable rhyming throughout-- is the finest recorded demonstration of Em's method, one he had admittedly bit from Big Daddy Kane but which has been used, among others, by Ogden Nash and Joseph Brodsky. In the final verse, Eminem rhymes "next cypher" with "pied piper" with "amplified by the" with "my nine to" (five) with "right type of" (life) and finally "Mekhi Phifer" (the punchline doubling as a retroactive explanation for the entire scheme). Theoretically designed to uplift, the song instead leaves the listener winded, depleted, beat-- listening to it is the closest equivalent of losing a rap battle. --Michael Idov
052: New Pornographers
"Letter From an Occupant"
[Matador; 2000]
Perhaps the only song in my lifetime that could have appeared in Help!, "Letter From an Occupant" is an endlessly turning kaleidoscope, the same handful of chords falling together in progressively prettier combinations. The Lennon-MacCartney moment arrives when a seemingly unstoppable chorus is immediately, effortlessly one-upped by an even catchier whoo-ee-oo section. Neko Case's voice radiates such sheer delectation with each phoneme that it took me a week of shouting along to realize I wasn't singing any real words. Whatever the lyrics may have been, a tumble cycle in Neko's larynx turns them to sparkling doggerel: one dutiful online transcriber hears "Where the hell'd I send these you bought me" where another divines "Where the hell have the 70s brought me?" One line everyone seems to agree on: "This tune you'll be humming forever." --Michael Idov
051: OutKast
"So Fresh, So Clean"
[LaFace; 2001]
Eff a Southern drawl and a Teddy Pendergrass-- that stuff has built-in sex appeal. Try rounding first base with patty melts and Anne Frank, and then you got something to send to Penthouse. Then again, on top of this slip-dippin', disco-stringin' beat even wood-paneled sex-ed films could turn blue and run hot, so why not make things challenging? This dynamic duo's not so clean that they squeak, and their freshness is more like the stuff that gets mothers to reach out and touch someone with wooden spoons.
Indeed, Big Boi gets a bit rambunctious ("Might lick you like a lizard when I'm slizzard or sober"), and Andre lets all you fine ladies know that "the boy next door" (the one that loves who you are and who you ain't) "is a freak". However, when Dre dubs OutKast "the coolest motherfunkers on the planet," you have to recognize. After all, this is a duo that made leprechaun green overalls into haute couture, turned "stank" into a sweet-smelling verb, and sold the world on poot-tootin' Polaroid-shakin' indie pop a million times over. In light of those achievements, pitching some scatological afro-futuristic woo is like taking a nap. --David Raposa
050: Avalanches
"Frontier Psychiatrist"
[XL; 2001]
Swept up in the unrelenting flow of Since I Left You, the track is more pastiche than song: various, unrelated vocal samples are festooned over a sturdy beat and a mishmash of bucking bronco horns and found melodies. Somehow the samples, strung together, tell the story of a cathected young boy's struggle with authority on the American Frontier. But you're not paying attention because the beat is so urgent and the samples so weird and abundant. Soon the music wanders off someplace-- its focus is stolen by a bouncier, bongo-popping beat-- where it's joined by a jolly ukulele line. Only seconds removed from its original incarnation, "Frontier Psychiatrist" feels like a puzzling memory from a maybe-dream. Over repeat listens, the details don't become any clearer, but they're every bit as mesmerizing. --Sam Ubl
049: Boards of Canada
In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country EP
[Warp; 2000]
Sandwiched between the uneasy lucidity of 1998's Music Has the Right To Children and 2002's Geogaddi, 2001's In a Beautiful Place Out In the Country affords Boards Of Canada an opportunity to stretch its limbs, breathe deeply and zone out for a bit. Standing in stark contrast to BoC's usual output, there's an even-tempered, weightless vibe at work; at first, everything sounds a little too composed, Xanexed into sweet oblivion, but with repeated listens, this EP reveals itself to be every bit as insidious as the duo's full-length material. With three of its four songs clocking in at more than six minutes, In a Beautiful Place registers as significantly trackier than anything else they've done, but its not wanting for the duo's attention to detail. The end result-- a quartet of songs rich in detail and long on grooves-- comprises the duo's most endlessly playable work to date. --Mark Pytlik
048: Sugababes
"Freak Like Me"
[Island; 2002]
Once that ding signals the start of the ride, brace yourself-- you are about to enter a robo-sexy world where the world's canniest efficiency expert presents to you Adina Howard's self-explanatory "Freak Like Me" melded with the exploding silicon inevitable of Gary Numan's " Are Friends Electric?" as essayed by three British post-teen pop stars. Let's ignore the scandalous ramifications of these winsome lasses belting out lines like "I need a roughneck brother that can satisfy me just for me" or "it's all about the dog in me" and focus on the matter at hand-- this is a remarkable piece of engineering.
While the bits cobbled together here seem like strange bedfellows, Howard's booty call plugs-and-plays nicely with Numan's binary quandary. As for the Sugababes...well, it's no surprise that The Best Group to Not Go Pop In the United States owns this track-- at the very least, they bring a bit of class and restraint to this little shindig, playing just enough hard-to-get to make the fight seem fair. This isn't to say the state of the art experienced a coup d'etat when this track dropped-- sure, it helped legitimized the bootlegging "fad" (which is still going strong, by the way), and it gave producer Richard X some well-deserved exposure, but giving R&B a case of the bleeps, sweeps, and creeps was (and is) the MO for many a producer. In this light, consider "Freak Like Me" a refinement, not an innovation. The Sugababes don't make new-wave hip-pop; they make new-wave hip-pop better. --David Raposa
047: Dizzee Rascal
"Fix Up Look Sharp"
[XL; 2003]
Don't say Dizzee didn't warn you-- he lets out a rather loud "Oi!" before those Billy Squier drums drop out of the sky like airplane engines. It's not like Captain Rascal's going to scurry off, though. Indeed, he sets his feet and meets this big beat head on, answering the piledrivers by spitting percussive syllables that sound less like words and more like jabs and uppercuts. Bob and weave, stick and move, never in one spot for too long, always moving, always talking. Dizzee's even got Muhammad Ali's sly sense of humor to go with the dexterity and speed-- "I fight old school, bring your bike and your chopper/ And a first aid kit, and some antiseptic, this could get hectic."
It doesn't matter where this came from, doesn't matter what scene birthed it-- all that matters is those three minutes between round bells. This whole track is punishing percussion, just one unstoppable mass of bass and drum and power that rumbles through your area like a Bugs Bunny snowball. And, just like in the cartoons, this thing will sweep you up whether you want it to or not. A friendly word of advice-- don't fight it. --David Raposa
046: Twista [ft. Kanye West and Jamie Foxx]
"Slow Jamz"
[Atlantic; 2004]
Pharrell set the standard for neck vein-popping, can't-quite-hit-that-high-note crooning in mainstream hip-hop, but Twista and Kanye West raised the bar, stuffing 2004's most popular "love ballad" with enough vocal pole vaults to keep its chart position airborne all the way through the Athens games. "Slow Jamz" proved hip-hop wrong in so many ways, fearlessly taking Jamie Foxx under its velour smoking jacket and sitting back as Twista kicked out the most beloved machine-gun verses since "The Crossroads". If "Jesus Walks" and "New Workout Plan" earned Kanye a rep for simmering, gospel-tinged jamborees, "Slow Jamz" proved him jack of all trades-not-yet-invented. The track's success lied in its wedding of opposites: Seldom before has the line between goofball humor and seduction been whittled so thin. With enough charm to secure a lifetime's worth of dates-- and make Luther Vandross okay for a generation of scoffing young'uns-- "Slow Jamz" sent us laughing all the way to the bedroom. --Sam Ubl
045: !!!
"Me and Giuliani Down By the Schoolyard"
[Touch & Go; 2003]
Sometimes the greatness of a song is measured by the disbelief with which it is greeted. By that yardstick, we must regard "Me and Giuliani" as an unmitigated triumph. When !!! dropped this locomotive H-bomb in summer 2003, it prompted a virtual nationwide spit-take, with stupefied listeners shaking their heads in incredulity as they wove their way to the dancefloor. Sure, the band's self-titled 2000 debut had mildly hinted at big things, but nobody really had any rational reason to expect this dancepunk masterstroke. Clocking in at nearly 10 minutes, "Giuliani" glides fluidly between mini-episodes of cowbell-riding funk among shimmering urban skylines, forcing us all the while to move muscles we had forgotten we had. And though Nic Offer and crew have yet to prove themselves capable of sustaining this single's headlong momentum, all that's needed to relive that initial rush of astonishment is to cue it up yet again. --Matthew Murphy
044: Sigur Rós
"Svefn-G-Englar"
[Fat Cat; 2000]
The first Sigur Rós song anyone noticed isn't drug music, exactly; it's more like an addictive drug in itself. Every subsequent listen to "Svefn-G-Englar" is an attempt to recapture the spine-tingling awe that came with first hearing Jon Thor Birgisson's androgynous falsetto-- too pure and angelic for this debased world-- as it emerged from the musical fog. There just wasn't anything like it before. The song's spell is broken temporarily during one angsty turn, when Birgisson unleashes a screech that suggests a disturbing familiarity with Billy Corgan, but he slowly rides the final half into the horizon on the silken pillow of his unfathomable upper range. Here is a song that had to be 10 minutes long; when you're in the mood for it, the extended time seems like a generous gift. And though you may never return to that first moment of wonder, you'll want to keep trying. --Mark Richardson
043: The Streets
"Weak Become Heroes"
[Vice/Atlantic; 2002]
Pop songs with a strong narrative thrust go back forever, but lyrics that knock you flat with the power of their storytelling are rare. Mike Skinner's "Weak Become Heroes" is wordy but never wasteful as it gazes at E-ed up club culture immersion from several angles. The snapshot of the initial excitement is spot on, sketching just enough small details to make the familiar scene come alive, and "Me and you are same/ I known you all my life/ I don't know your name" captures everything great and tragic about ecstasy in 16 words. The cinematic dissolve to the present day and the weary crowd that refuses to move on is equally well rendered. Beneath it all, the same piano that loops ovah and ovah is neutral enough to reinforce each side of the story. and the chorus hook kills. This ranks with "Tangled Up in Blue" as an epoch-defining impressionist narrative. --Mark Richardson
042: Annie
"Chewing Gum"
[679; 2004]
First you have Annie's painstakingly exhaustive exploration of chewing gum's metaphorical possibilities. Boys are twisted in Annie's fingers-- just another bubble to blow, really-- fated to be spit onto the sidewalk once their flavor has gone. At which point they're likely to stick to another gal's clogs and the cycle begins anew. Once Annie tours the States she'll throw in something about slapping a guy underneath a table in Hardee's. For now there's "You think you're chocolate but you're chewing gum," the best pop diss since Sukpatch's "You think you're platforms and tanks but you're wool socks." Half of Annie's day-glo synths lunge cartoonishly, half stomp out the rhythm with a surprising crunch, and pop singles don't get much catchier. --Mark Richardson
041: The Shins
"New Slang"
[Sub Pop; 2001]
Slang is nuanced, elliptical. The token black guy on an 80s sitcom might explain: Sometimes bad means good, sometimes bad means bad, and sometimes bad means really, really fucking good. "New Slang" is like the last of these, and it's also like its namesake. One of the subtlest breakup songs ever to make its way onto furtive mixtapes for summer-camp crushes, James Mercer's organic, mesa-top masterpiece also features the most striking studio fade-in since U2 stepped up the bombast for "Where the Streets Have No Name". Meanwhile, McDonald's may have noticed the stripes, but "the dirt in your fries" somehow slipped through. For this, the Shins were called sell-outs even as they simply adapted to the reality that commercials are one of the last remaining forums for undiscovered pop to reach a mass audience. Hell, "New Slang" might have been this generation's "The Sound of Silence" if Garden State hadn't been balls. --Marc Hogan
040: Belle and Sebastian
Books EP
[Rough Trade; 2004]
Few bands have taken our new century as a mandate for change more than Belle and Sebastian. All the bottles of Twee-Be-Gone in the world couldn't break up their fey, literary core (and we're grateful for that), but if you had told me five years ago that they'd release a funky, swaggering suite like "Your Cover's Blown", I'd have told you to buy a new set of tarot cards. But on that track the guitars scritch and scratch like they know Nile Rodgers personally and Stuart Murdoch's svelte melody drags his schoolboy voice on a sweaty nightclub crawl over bumping bass and lockstep drums.
If that's not enough, they time warp to the 60s with whistling Farfisa and Murdoch gets all Ray Davies on your ass, moreso than usual. The middle of the EP is stuff you can trace more logically back to the band's loping chamber pop origins-- "Wrapped Up in Books" and "Your Secrets" have that simultaneous gentleness and drive that made records like If You're Feeling Sinister and Tigermilk such pleasing enigmas-- and great backing harmonies to boot. And we come full circle as Stuart goes to the disco on "Cover (Version)", a swirling electro-dub reprise of the lead track that whizzes and bings like a 1984 arcade. The title may be a tease for old fans hoping for a return to their old sound, but this blows their cover and reveals them as the accomplished swingers they are. --Joe Tangari
039: Mu
"Chair Girl" / "Let's Get Sick"
[Tigersushi; 2003]
I first heard this gem on the DFA mix CD for Parisian record store Colette, and promptly ripped the file, burnt a CDR, and started DJing with the excerpt. It's just that good. When other people use live drums on top of sequencers they end up stranded in the National Geographic Deep (Shit) Forest of ethnotribal house muzak, but Maurice Fulton fakes left, cuts right, and hits a disco jackpot of drumline chugga-chugga left untouched since the extended mix of Boney M's "Nightflight to Venus". Meanwhile, Matsumi Kanamori effortlessly clears all levels and racks up bonus rounds of Garbo-cool, slinking in and out of the spotlight with a haughty "Leave me alone." Look up the word "sprezzatura" and there they are, the mutant disco Captain & Tennille, manic and fabulous. --Drew Daniel
038: Jay-Z
"Izzo (H.O.V.A.)"
[Roc-A-Fella; 2001]
You know, just another effortlessly great single from Jay-Z, easily surmounting its use of the increasingly dated-- izzle slang and the umpteenth hip-hop Jackson 5 sample. So confident is his flow that Jay triggers a chorus whenever he damn feels like it, conjuring up a great hook with just a little syncopation and some spelling over Kanye West's four-bar pocket-Motown. The first two verses might deal with his standard Blueprint-era obsessions of legal Houdinism and industry dominance, but the third verse towers above, a vivid still life flashback of drug-dealing life with a young (and scared!) Shawn Carter merely cast as a bit character. Rap is no stranger to literary moments, but rarely are narratives this nuanced snuck into the middle of celebratory singalong club bangas. --Rob Mitchum
037: Aaliyah
"Try Again"
[Virgin; 2000]
Aaliyah's first great single of the new millennium, "Try Again" is a cornerstone of the producerly renaissance that revived popular R&B in the early noughties. It's that much more astonishing when considered in the context of the abundance of incredible music that Timbaland would go on to create from here. A lesser producer might attempt to parlay one of its many ideas into another track altogether, but Timbaland never suffered from lack of inspiration. From its squelching 303 bassline and backwards synth loops to its syncopated rhythms and plosive background sounds, "Try Again" served the perfect background to Aaliyah's cooly detached vocal delivery, and helped re-position her as R&B's resident futurist. --Mark Pytlik
036: Daft Punk
"Harder Better Faster Stronger"
[Virgin; 2001]
I met my third wife Arcadia because of this song. Each of us was doing the robot dance on twelve-foot pillars of ice, on opposing sides of the room. I noted her movements were more fluid than mine, which is to say, I was the better dancer but maybe that's just the bitter divorce talking. Our once-friendly competition suddenly grew fierce. Arcadia launched into a malfunction sequence-- deft and pink, like a stamp-- to which I responded with a Jetsons-style cake-from-stomach move I had seen on MTV's "Amp". Our pillars melted, and we kissed. At that very moment I understood a fundamental truth about dance music: it's good when it's silly, better when it makes us do silly things, best when the silly things it makes us do include imitating robots, pirates, apes with laser beams instead of eyes, and combinations thereof. Another thing I realized: never marry a Gemini. --Nick Sylvester
035: Dntel
"(This Is) The Dream of Evan and Chan"
[Plug Research; 2002]
I'm not going to state the obvious here. Yes I am: The whole of the Postal Service's album combined pales to the graceful glitch-pop of Dntel's initial collaboration with Ben Gibbard, "(This Is) Dream of Evan and Chan". Both artists brought their A-game to this track, as Dntel (a.k.a. Jimmy Tamborello) builds melodrama with tasteful beats and swooning moogs that rise and fall like mercury. Gibbard carries the melody and delivers some of his most evocative lyrics, before ending with his nostalgic, gender-confused vision of bliss. Gibbard's voice was made to sing fey, charming melodies like this, and Tamborello's gift is turning ones and zeros into romance. You won't hear it on a soundtrack or at your local USPS branch, but it remains a gorgeous example of melancholy pop. --Jason Crock
034: Nelly
"Hot In Herre"
[Universal; 2002]
This is by far the most logical song I've ever heard: It's getting hot in here, so take off all your clothes. Why did it take us until 2002 to figure this one out? --Nick Sylvester
033: The Walkmen
"The Rat"
[Record Collection; 2004]
"The Rat" proved the Walkmen could rock, but they didn't shake the elements that make them distinctive: more shouting and mumbling than singing, more drifting structure than verse-chours-verse. For some bands, those might be weaknesses; to the Walkmen, they're strengths. All pounding drums, sweeping organ, and relentless strumming, the song's grandeur seems nearly unstoppable until singer Hamilton Leithauser, still casting himself as a tempermental drunk, becomes introspective during the song's well-earned lull. But even at his most vulnerable moments, Leithauser is full of snarling menace. As the band matches his mix of emotion and aplomb, Leithauser bobs and weaves through this song like a boxer while the band plays both the coach and the roaring crowd. --Jason Crock
032: Interpol
Interpol EP
[Matador; 2002]
My favorite moment in any Interpol song is the bit near the end of "PDA" where the guitars latch onto the beat-- no distortion, just airy strumming-- and you figure the song will just fade out, but instead this distant voice comes in high and lonesome. Up to that point, the song sounds like it could be played by very talented punk robots but, man, that voice just ices it, puts the emotion through the roof. For "PDA" to be the first Interpol song most people ever heard is basically a perfect arrangement-- it's a powerful song, even with odd lyrics about "200 couches where you can sleep tonight."
Of course, for the emotional meat of Interpol's first widely distributed release, you have to go to the majestic ballad "NYC", which is the sonic equivalent of the red-and-black austerity of the Turn on the Bright Lights album cover-- spacious and dark but sumptuously layered with mournful guitars and, of course, Paul Banks' suavely dejected vocal, which starts out contemplative and becomes soul-scouring by the song's beatific climax. --Joe Tangari
031: Modest Mouse
"Float On"
[Epic; 2004]
My favorite Internet radio station played "Float On" somewhere between 9:02 and 9:13 CST every morning for about a month before Good News for People Who Love Bad News hit the local Virgin Megastore. I usually slipped into the office somewhere between 9:08 and 9:16. The Moon & Antarctica changed my college years, but "Float On" held my workday aloft and drove it to the hoop like a showboating point guard in that league no one watches anymore. If I caught a snippet of Isaac Brock's gloriously weird vocals as I waded through my morning blogs, my day would be all sunshine and lollipops. If that strangely uplifting "Come on Eileen" coda somehow missed me like that damn Red Line train pulling out at Belmont, no amount of doppio espressos could ease my withdrawal. It's the kind of song that demands to be shared with all humanity, whether via workplace-shared drives, illicit file-sharing networks, or ESPN montages. "Float On" may not be as otherworldly as some of the M.M. tunes that preceded it, but it's a strangled celebration of all it means to be alive: losing the job you always thought you didn't want, bruised purple by Murphy's Law and its corollaries, but still inexplicably eager to face another miserable day, when if nothing else the sun'll come out and turn your pit-staining sweat to vapor, floating on, all right. --Marc Hogan
030: Ted Leo/Pharmacists
"Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?"
[Lookout!; 2003]
Don't get me wrong: I love the Specials. But this paean to checkered Chuck Taylor foppishness could be clamoring for the deification of Skid Row's Sebastian Bach and it would still be a tremendous song. "Where Have All the Rude Boys Gone?" is one of the most unlikely indie triumphs of the aught decade's waxing half: a howling, hard-driven shuffle and incidental homage to ska from a blue-collar shredder whose music has been compared to Thin Lizzy. Any song putting together great riffs, a "Telephone Hour"-style chorus, and a deft set of sing-along-inducing vocal corybantics would, on formulaic principle, induce repeat plays. But Ted Leo took a gambit, upping the quirk factor with absurd subject matter, piling on the beautiful dueling-gender vox until threatening an avalanche, and singing like he was born blue in the face. And look what happened! It still leaves me inexplicably in tears-- something not even the Specials could accomplish. --Sam Ubl
029: Junior Senior
"Move Your Feet"
[Atlantic; 2003]
Was this a novelty? Will we ever hear from Junior Senior again? Does it matter in the slightest? Like its relatively ancient kin "Love Shack", "Move Your Feet" sacrifices its hip credibility for unfettered joy, safe in the knowledge that people will forever be too busy dancing and waving their splashy glasses into each other to notice they're making fools of themselves. I haven't heard this on the radio for a while, which makes me wonder if the powers that be were too anxious to recover from the kaleidoscopic pop-mix that was 2003. Never mind the radio: This will live on in mp3 playlists and wedding DJ sets. In fact, you want to listen to it right now, don't you? --Dominique Leone
028: Avalanches
"Since I Left You"
[XL; 2001]
"Since I Left You" is the soundtrack to some great unimaginable bacchanal on a distant, unreachable (to mortals) island surrounded by waters bluer than human eyes can perceive. Easy flowing yet insistent and insidiously catchy, it's stuffed with the detritus of a thousand crates of used vinyl refashioned into a billowing paradise party. And you're magically invited. "Get a drink/ Have a good time now/ Welcome to Paradise," says the man. "Doo doo doo do do dit doo doo doo," say the backing vocalists calling in from Neptune, and this diva piped in over the top keeps sticking it to this poor guy she's decided she's better off without, over and over, looping like maybe she's trying to make herself believe it. Even better is the slick, shuffling beat, the bouncy glockenspiel and flute samples, the way the Latin American guitar runs set the mood so perfectly at the very beginning, and the track's overall dynamism and natural sound. For sounds stacked together from a vast array of disparate sources, it sounds almost too logical to be true, but thank God that it is. --Joe Tangari
027: Daft Punk
"One More Time"
[Virgin; 2000]
Every time an indie kid busts an awkward move on a crowded dance floor, the firm of de Homem-Christo & Bangalter gets a ten-cent royalty check. For some reason, four years after its release, "One More Time" remains the ultimate house anthem for the world's Panics and Mousetraps, slipped between 80s Britannia and 00s Brooklyn as a slam-dunk crowd stimulant. Daft Punk plays the audience like a spaceship dashboard, ramping up the energy with that glorious drive-up-to-the-club fade in, before gushing vocoder bliss over Brita-filtered disco and eardrum thumps. Then, just as the song is about to crest, they pull out the rug, and everyone has to figure out what to do without a beat for a seemingly endless 90 seconds. Just when you've caught your breath, and Romanthony has worked through his entire scat playbook, the song reels off its grand finale. Finally, there's a wedding reception playlist replacement for tired old "Shout". --Rob Mitchum
026: The Strokes
The Modern Age EP
[Rough Trade; 2001]
The onslaught of hype that accompanied The Modern Age EP was unsurprising. The formula was there from the beginning: the swinging 50s rhythms, the crooning into a distorted microphone, captivating melodies and chugging guitars that are reminiscent of that "V" band ("The Modern Age" may be one of the few tracks to merit the comparison)-- all recorded with a raw, rough-demo production. "Barely Legal" closes with a different guitar solo, and both that song and "Last Nite" sound more like the work of a band (and are arguably better) than their album-track counterparts. Ever since this release, every band that expertly mixes melody and undiluted guitar chords is inevitably called "the next Strokes." And none of those bands are worthy of the tag. --Jason Crock
025: Franz Ferdinand
"Take Me Out"
[Domino; 2004]
Franz Ferdinand open "Take Me Out" with perfectly serviceable post-punk strumming and drumming. One would expect, the way Paul Thompson rides the hi-hat, and Nick McCarthy and Alex Kapranos' guitars are just biding time, that the band will step it up a notch and bring the rock. But then they slow the damn thing down-- to go disco. However, unlike other better-known disco tracks reputed for their delicious misdirection (Donna Summer's "Last Dance", Gloria Gaynor's "I Will Survive"), "Take Me Out" doesn't open up into flaxen fields of orchestral glory-- it tightens the screws and starts to work the chain gang. Thompson goes down on the one like a jackhammer and drags the rest of the group in line. And it always comes back to the one-- a little guitar figure filigree here, some chirpy chorus action there, and no matter how far the rest of the group meanders, they just snap right back to that sexy beat. It's fitting that there's a little sex bubbling underneath this drive-by take-me-home-tonight tale, as that's where the group separate themselves from their more obvious predecessors. Praise the Gang of Four until the votive candles smoulder, but even the most ardent zealot has to realize that the Go4 were a sexless group of funk-loving fun-haters. Thankfully, Franz Ferdinand is willing to go all the way. Hallelujah. --David Raposa
024: Basement Jaxx
"Romeo"
[Astralwerks; 2001]
Felix Buxton and Simon Ratcliffe's least disjointed, most traditionally structured single is arguably their best. Nothing hinders its follow-the-bouncing-ball groove because nothing touches the ground long enough. Kele Le Roc's vocals are sassily soulful, kept aloft by the "oh-oh-oh-ay-ohs" in the background, and the Jaxx's concentrated beats yo-yo so energetically, their production is so mind-bogglingly layered, and the whole thing coheres so delightfully that you can't help but hit the repeat button. The result is a dance-pop track that's organic and infectious and communicates all the contradictions that pop music is supposed to convey. In this case, it's not just Le Roc's emotional resilience in the face of a failed relationship, but her excitement in learning she possesses enough romantic fortitude to dump the chump and move on. --Stephen M. Deusner
023: Dizzee Rascal
"I Luv U"
[XL; 2003]
"Sproing. Pop, pop!": the sound of grime blowing up. Like a Playstation breaking, the beat on "I Luv U"-- Dizzee Rascal's kindersurprise of an unplanned parenthood track-- had every corner of the internet and UK pirate radio afire in the spring of '03. The 17-year-old, anomic MC known to his mother as Dylan Mills spat grit and consonants in a bendy, South-London-twanged accents; on "I Luv U", he mugs hard as an affront to a girl who may or may not be carrying his seed. It's a sad tale of battle-amour, the thin line between love and hate between a young buck and his maybe-baby's mom.
The chorus was a he-said/she-said shell game to a new girl-- the kind that playas play to sidestep their web of booty calls-- buried beneath a pregnancy scare and splattered out in a loveless, detached interplay between Dizzee and a teenaged lover from the block: "That girl's some bitch you know/ She don't leave me alone.../ She keep ringing me at home/ These days I don't answer my phone." "I Luv U" wasn't really hip-hop (though the bwoy wonder himself told me in an interview he wrote the beat to mirror the one on Memphis Bleek's "Is That Yo Chick"), but it came out right around the time the UK was balls-deep in the same kinds of social ills that, perhaps coincidentally, also paralleled the U.S.' best era of rap to date. With the interdependent problems of poverty, crack, and gang violence rising in London, here was a man from the projects untangling it all for the sake of his own sanity. And, because "I Luv U" is a clear dare to take up arms in the gender war, young grime MC Shystie jacked the beat and played the Roxanne Shante to Dizzee's UTFO in her own version of the track: "That boy's some prat you know... I buy clothes from his dough... Does he get sex? No." --Julianne Shepherd
022: Jay-Z
"99 Problems"
[Roc-A-Fella; 2004]
This track melts rap and rock (the secret ingredient is cowbell) into two tons of testosterone, one dropped right after the other to the massive beat. Over that Rick Rubin beat, our hero takes the opportunity to teach critics how to use their home stereos, impersonates a stuttering lawman, and waxes pious for anyone else who gets in his way. Jay-Z also dismisses any haters within earshot while confronting police prejudice (albeit with tongue-in-cheek), all without losing an ounce of smirking humor or bravado. Detractors should take notes on how to blend rap and rock without sacrificing the best elements of either-- maybe then Hova will keep you in his prayers. --Jason Crock
021: Kelis
"Milkshake"
[Virgin; 2003]
Is it the hook? The synth line? The "la-la, la la la"? Kelis makes due with less than anyone to the right of Missy Elliott, dishing out only the barest of melodies, sitting atop the barest of Neptunes tracks, and somehow this song still seems bursting with detail. It's efficient-- using the simple parts to their best advantages-- but it's also big and bright and catchy in the only way that's worth talking about. I not only remember everything about this song-- from the way the synth line changes ever so slightly at the bridge to the way my shoulders move when I hear it in the car-- but I want to hear more when it's over. "They're like: 'It's better than yours.'" Damn right. --Dominique Leone
020: M.I.A.
"Galang"
[XL; 2004]
Her country sinking, Sri Lanka-to-London garage-hop/mix-tape It girl Maya Arulpragasam (aka M.I.A.) and her exuberant Slits-on-Missy octave-flip accrue a revolutionary dare-to-dance poignancy on Piracy Funds Terrorism, Vol. 1 and her official debut, the forthcoming Arular .
It already has a lot of competition, but "Galang" (and its accompanying graffiti-tron video) is her most instantly infectious moment, a pack of distorto soul-stir wrapped in steel-drum-cum-keyboard reggae rattle. And hey, instead of diffusing that joy by locking "Galang" (and the rest of her oeuvre) in the simplified human-interest carnival of the tsunami tragedy, try absorbing M.I.A.'s jubilant blaze-a-laze on its own terms. Yes, music-for-music's-sake is incredibly naive, but besides the obvious beats, wrapped inside the syllables of "Galang"'s tossed off doggerel, there's some truly soothing balm. --Brandon Stosuy
019: LCD Soundsystem
"Yeah (Crass Version)"
[DFA; 2004]
What will I tell my grandkids about LCD Soundsystem? "Well, it was this group, or this one guy, and he made these great pop songs. Or no, they were dance songs. And they weren't actually all that popular, but they were great, and he would have these really stupid lyrics. Well, they weren't stupid, they were funny. But they were pretty stupid, too, and he would say them over and over again, and the music would get louder and crazier, and he was doing this thing like Mark E. Smith with his vocals. Mark E. Smith? Oh, nevermind. But they-- I mean he-- had this one song where it was really long, and did all that stuff I just talked about, and it was great. It was like acid house but kind of post-punk and... acid house and post-punk? Nevermind. You should really just listen to it, it's great. I mean, it might not compare to your Aural Recursive Consciousness exercises, but it made us happy back then." --Dominique Leone
018: Outkast
"Ms. Jackson"
[Arista; 2001]
Unless you're in the habit of digging up b-list Gerald Levert albums, the sentiment "Ms. Jackson" expresses is rare within any genre of music. Even now, Outkast's courageous and tender worldwide apology from single dads to "baby's mommas and baby's momma's momma's" sounds like a revelation. Tempered by a cascading piano line and a pained, heartfelt timbre, Andre 3000 explains to Ms. Jackson the pitfalls of puppy love and pregnancy, with an arresting chorus: "I'm sorry, Ms. Jackson/ But I am for real/ Never meant to make ya daughter cry/ I apologize a trillion times."
Meanwhile, Big Boi's oft-ignored verses detail an anguished attempt at dialogue: the plight of the single dad who's trying hard to be involved with his child's life, but getting shut out by his child's grandmother. It is the jam, quirky-funk soul-salve with a goofy wedding bell sample, but it also feels much bigger-- a brave attempt to make up for the myriad songs in rock, hip-hop, blues, etc., about thuggin' 'em, fuckin' em, and cutting out before the due date. Softly, with the kind of clarity that's borne of tumult, Dre laments, "You can plan a pretty picnic, but you can't predict the weather." How could we not forgive him? --Julianne Shepherd
017: 50 Cent
"In Da Club"
[Interscope; 2003]
I once took a class generously dubbed Expanding the Canon of Poetry, where we examined the lyrics to modern pop stalwarts like "In Da Club". A student patiently explained to our supercilious prof the differences between traditional love and so-called thug love: Like when you're "into having sex," but "ain't into making love." Of course, no one gave a shit, because "In Da Club" was blowing up, along with about a half-dozen other cuts from Get Rich or Die Tryin'. Today, it's the most enduring of that album's singles, and with any luck, it'll be how we remember 50 Cent-- and probably the rest of G-Unit, too-- when these singles are the stuff of oldies radio. The track's success lies in the details: How the handclaps slur a fragment ahead of the beat, how the beeline shaker somehow gives the song a discreet shuffle, and how the galvanized strings manage to match 50's deep self-assuredness. It's what Four Tet's Kieran Hebden called "super heavy wicked production," and it's downright epochal. --Sam Ubl
016: Daft Punk
"Digital Love"
[Virgin; 2001]
Since the overwhelming majority of commercially inclined dance acts would do well to write something on par with an average Daft Punk tune, an above-average Daft Punk tune is a special thing indeed. "Digital Love" is better than an above-average Daft Punk tune-- it's their best-- and as such, is probably a serious contender for the most perfect five minutes in the history of bubblegum pop. A brain-melting synthesis of wet keyboard riffs, sweep filters, and vocoders, this without doubt is the first track I would reach for if someone asked me to play the sound of pure, unmitigated joy. From the liquid keyboard sample at its heart to the baroque electronic guitar solo at its conclusion, "Digital Love" is one of the few songs from the last five years that still feels like it has genuine magic coursing through its veins. --Mark Pytlik
015: Radiohead
"Pyramid Song"
[Capitol/EMI; 2001]
True confession time: I've never heard a complete Radiohead album in my life. Seriously. I just don't seek that shit out. It's just really not my thing, so I don't bother, except... A few years ago, there I was, reclining in the Brinks-like tomb of Fort Snob, lecturing a select crowd of stuffed animals about the proper maintenance of my Borbetomagus collection, safe in the knowledge that I was the undisputed lord of a Radiohead-free zone (and for a while, such spaces were all too rare), when-- ninja-like, with a stealthy flutter of jazz piano chords and tumbling snares-- in crept That Voice singing a melody so goddamn gorgeous that Fort Snob kinda caved in and went all mushy inside. I jumped into the river, and black-eyed angels swam me to an obsidian necropolis where The One Great Radiohead Song lies dead but dreaming. It was a painful episode and I'd rather not talk about it; here at the Yorke-Greenwood Institute for Recovering Music Snobs we're told to take it one day at a time. --Drew Daniel
014: White Stripes
"Fell in Love With a Girl"
[XL; 2002]
Forget the candy-cane costumes and the in-quotes "garage rock" labels. Disregard that Lego music video in all its look-at-me genius. Piss on your copy of Elephant and your roommate's short-lived in-quotes "blues band." Whether "Fell in Love With a Girl" is the dusty depot where blind bluesmen named Willie hopped the last freight train to Indie Rock or merely Jack White's snotty rejoinder to the Buzzcocks' "Ever Fallen in Love?", its self-consciously sloppy pop racket is instantly mammoth. The first time a friend played it for me, as we stuffed envelopes for an online record store, the stupid-smart power chords hit us like expired Jolt cola spiked with that new Red-Bull-and-lighter-fluid shot drink all the club kids swear by. A few Ohio State Theta Kappa Epsilons expecting the new O.A.R. record were probably mystified at first by the 1000 Hz voodoo pumping from their Pathfinders. "I was going to send it back," read one cryptic e-mail to customer service, "but track four helped me bench a buck ninety." No refunds were requested. --Marc Hogan
013: Britney Spears
"Toxic"
[Jive; 2004]
Somehow, Britney Spears keeps going. Like her would-be idol Madonna, she's managed to adapt to changes in pop production and image. (Perhaps tomorrow's pop historians will look upon the handful of artists who survived the late 90s through the first half of the 00s intact as a race of superpeople.) Avant and Bloodshy's track referenced the Middle East just subtly enough that you didn't think of it is just another one of those Middle Eastern-sounding songs, and its fingernails-on-blackboard string hook lodged in our heads. "Toxic" is bouncy, concise. and even clever-- one of these days, I'm going to have to remember not to dismiss her. --Dominique Leone
012: R. Kelly
"Ignition (Remix)"
[Jive; 2003]
It's one of the great miracles of modern pop music that a figure as colossally fucked up and patently ridiculous as Robert Kelly should also happen to be one of its finest songwriters. To that end, the fucked-up, ridiculous, and fine "Ignition (Remix)" is his greatest moment, a sticky bit of loverboy bombast so infectious and so absurd that it momentarily transcends any questions of depravity. Kelly sort of sing-raps here, and has more fun with the English language over three minutes than a lot of rappers do for entire albums. He toasts for a line, makes some train noises, rhymes "fro" with "radio," and beats crunk to the joy of "unk" by a solid six months. It takes a special kind of man to write a vagina-as-car-part metaphor, and it takes a whole other kind of special man to wear a Muppet pelt in public-- R. Kelly is the only one special enough to do both, and this is his most special song. --Mark Pytlik
011: Justin Timberlake
"Cry Me a River"
[Jive; 2002]
Justin Timberlake was one of the first contemporary teen-pop stars to be acknowledged and back-patted by erstwhile rock critics (even the impossibly stodgy New Yorker begrudgingly anointed "Cry Me a River" a "perfect pop song") long accustomed to disdainfully snorting at any artist, save the Beatles, whose primary demographic consists of pre-teen girls. Timberlake's solo debut, the wincingly titled Justified, may have included a few too many snotty shouts of "Oh!," but second-single "Cry Me a River" solidified his importance as a songwriter (or, okay, collaborator) capable of more than just hyper-choreographed dance moves and/or sheepish grins.
"Cry" opens with raindrops and faux-opera caterwauls devolving into a honking kazoo melody and squirrely beat-noise; later, a one-million-voiced Justin yawns his puppy-dog laments over seagull-caws and synthesized strings, as each of the song's countless squawking bits coalesces into a seamless whole. Theoretically, "Cry Me a River" falls in the uncomfortable gap between "club banger" and "jam for sobbing into your pillow," but the awkwardness of what to do with your feet is more than compensated for by Timbaland's genius staccato beats and Timberlake's bananas vocal harmonies: "Cry Me a River" is dark and oddly pretty, sinister and sexy, and impossibly compelling. --Amanda Petrusich
010: Yeah Yeah Yeahs
"Maps"
[Polydor; 2003]
"Maps" is a song of contrasts: Nick Zinner's towering guitar lines against Karen O's soft vocals, the song's romantic gentleness against the album's frictive buzz, its openhearted emotions against the band's reputation for over-the-top posturing. Singing "Wait... they don't love you like I love you," Karen O transforms from stage goddess into insecure lover, without letting her vulnerability sound like weakness or whining. Heard on the radio, playlisted between Hoobastank and 3 Doors Down, "Maps" becomes a hipster delegate to the masses, proving that the line between "mainstream" and "underground" is perhaps more porous than many people thought. Heard within the context of Fever to Tell, it kicks off a near-perfect three-song set that closes the album and proves the Yeah Yeah Yeahs deserved all that backlash-baiting hype. --Stephen M. Deusner
009: The Rapture
"House of Jealous Lovers"
[DFA; 2002]
I'm surprised that indie rock dudes went from blasting this song on repeat 700 days in a row to vilifying it like the band had committed some horrible sex crime. I'm also surprised how all-kinds-of-music dudes went from vilifying indie kids for not dancing to blasting them even more for thinking dance-punk was "real" dance music. You're all assholes, frankly: "House of Jealous Lovers" is still an incredible song, wirey and stuffed with hooks from its bassline to Luke Jenner's man-perm. What made "HOJL" the token punk song for house DJs and the token house track for punks though was the DFA's respectable middle ground: Tim and James kept the original drum sounds intact but sliced and reordered them; they doubled the snare with handclaps and ten-volted guitars with electro accents; they put so much cowbell in the mix, Will Ferrell had to quit SNL. Christ, guys, this song is so not the enemy. --Nick Sylvester
008: Missy Elliott
"Work It"
[Elektra; 2002]
In "Work It", Missy Elliott hops up as a sexually and culturally empowered super-force, encouraging staid, glaring men everywhere to "go downtown"-- and then, when they're finished, to go old school, stop fearing the moonwalk ("Everybody had a zipper jacket, and half of these thugs had a glove to match it!"), and just "have fun." Missy's is deceptively simple advice, given the staggering innovation of "Work It", which ultimately functions as a whole lot more than just an excuse to moan, giggle, and dance.
Timbaland's space signals and raucous scratches are almost as squiggly and backwards as Missy's twisted vocals and homegrown dialect (unsurprisingly, ass as "ga-donk-a-donk-donk" didn't take terribly long to slip into the vernacular), creating loads of heady artist/producer synergy. Spastic and addictive, "Work It" somehow eschews pop's typically self-perpetuating habits and introduces a brand new aesthetic, a paradigm so weird and uncompromising that it just can't be reproduced-- making "Work It" one of the most mind-blowingly bizarre pop songs to ever top the Billboard charts. --Amanda Petrusich
007: Beyoncé [ft. Jay-Z]
"Crazy in Love"
[Columbia; 2003]
All she really had to do was show up, right? She had the beat, the guest-rap, the chorus, the fucking pre-chorus; Beyoncé's melody was as smooth as it was minimal as it was hard to actually mimic. She has better flow than Jay-Z here, and when she accuses her man of making a fool of her, it's as desperate a declaration of love as it is hard to believe. The track itself is a throwback, not to the disco anthems of Donna Summer but to the soul-symphonettes of Ike & Tina Turner and the Supremes, with more than a pinch of Aretha Franklin's fingerwagging-- not to mention her voice. Beyoncé sings like everything is hopeless, but sounds on edge. "Uh oh, uh oh, uh oh, oh no-no," goes her mantra, and so goes the this song, spiraling down a drain where, at the bottom, sits love and lust and sweat, and yes, it's getting hot in here, and yes, we play this when things are getting really good after they were already incredible. A classic. --Mark Pytlik
006: Annie
"Heartbeat"
[679; 2004]
It still feels like a shocking upset that Annie ended up at the top of our '04 singles pocket playlist, somewhat akin to Valparaiso cutting down the nets at the NCAA Tournament. The cultural significance of that Cinderella story was already nicely put by our staff's Chief Ambassador of Pop-Indie Relations, but now, just a few short months later, we can just ramble about what a frickin' awesome song it is. Packed with shimmery keyboards and euphoric harmonies that shoot out light rays like a sunrise, Annie provides just the right amount of breathless innocence in her vocals-- dig how her voice can't handle that high-note "truuuuly!"-- to put it in the Hall of Fame of blissful dance songs about blissful dancing. And in the smartest move of all, the stingy track only gives you a mere pair of those glorious choruses before ending abruptly. Which means there's nothing you can do but play it again, and again, and okay, how about one more time. --Rob Mitchum
005: Kylie Minogue
"Can't Get You Out of My Head"
[Parlophone; 2001]
On April 1, 2002-- in accordance with an announcement that it had been sold to a major media conglomerate-- Pitchfork published an April Fool's issue that contained glowing reviews of Alanis Morissette's Under Rug Swept , Jars of Clay's The Eleventh Hour and-- wait for it-- Kylie's Fever.* "Now back to our regular programming. We hope we didn't freak you guys out too much!"
Around the same time, I remember reading a handful of apologetic pieces from local music critics bashfully declaring their love for "Can't Get You Out of My Head". I like to think that kind of coming-out would seem almost anachronistic now, but in the days before mashups and bootlegs and blogs and the golden age of the American pop producer, some hand-wringing was certainly required before you could publicly like the song you secretly loved.
"Can't Get You Out of My Head" is 231 seconds long, which is not a very long time in which to change someone's mind. The reason I voted for it as my favorite single of the decade so far is because I feel that, more than any single from the last four years, it represents an important change in the way that we thought about and selected our music. Whether that's because of something fundamental about the song itself or because it was written and released at the right time or because someone wrote an entire book about the history of pop music with these 231 seconds as its basis, I'm not really sure. What I do know is that my #2** was a very, very distant second. --Mark Pytlik
- (7.6, in case you were wondering-- a little low, but time heals all.)
** (Jars of Clay: "I Need You")
004: Missy Elliott
"Get Ur Freak On"
[Elektra; 2001]
A Short Didactic Play
(Scene: Hip hop Mount Olympus, high above the Virginia plain. A Japanese herald announces the dramatis personae)
Missy: "Headbanger, gimme some new shit".
Timbaland (acting nonchalant, but he knows he's at his best here): "Behold, I have reached down from the clouds and rolled up the entirety of the musical heritage of the Indian subcontinent into a bouncing rubber ball, and all this I have bound with a bassline of woozy buzzes scavenged from a dodgy rave. It's yours."
(She takes it from him, and begins to flow on top of it, and as she flows it is as if for that three-and-a-half minutes the entire world must stop whatever it was just doing and instead attend wholeheartedly to getting its collective freak on.)
Missy (speaking to the grizzled hag Radio): "Listen to me now, I'm lastin' 20 rounds."
Radio (shaking like Missy's got a gun, but secretly plotting to neutralize her through overexposure): "I cave in to your demands; we're going to play this one to death." (evil laughter)
Missy (hocking a loogie): "Silence when I spit it out!"
Troll Chorus of Music Critics (in tears): "Hail Missy, Queen of Heaven, we grant thee the laurels."
Missy (bitterly): "Don't copy me. Y'all do it sloppily".
Goblin Chorus of Bootleggers and Mash-Up Arrivistes: "Copy Thee"
Programmer Wraiths: "Ditto"
Missy (triumphant): "I'm the best around, with this crazy style"
(The song travels the earth, and then re-ascends to paradise, impervious and hardy despite the plots of Radio. Much Rejoicing. The end.) --Drew Daniel
003: LCD Soundsystem
"Losing My Edge" / "Beat Connection"
[DFA; 2002]
Great singles are commonly described as perfectly encapsulating their era, quickly summing up a time period's musical fashion or taking a snapshot of current events. More often than not, this synopsis effect is accidental, but not so for James Murphy-- his debut single with LCD Soundsystem set out to make a clinical diagnosis of everything going on/wrong in indie music circa 2002, and it may go down as one of the most on-the-mark song statements ever. In fact, it's a bit ironic that Pitchfork has slotted "Losing My Edge" / "Beat Connection" so high on this list, as our humble little site could easily have been considered part of the uber-serious tapestry towards which Murphy took his sardonic aim.
The A-side's self-mocking orgy of Zelig-style name-dropping is like a 'Fork writer's wet dream, and the B-side's indictment of rock club complacency completely hit home for anyone guilty of post-rock shoe-staring. But Murphy's desire to convince as well as castigate is what made the criticism go down easy, hypnotizing listeners with that relentless one-note bassline on "Losing My Edge", and walking potential acolytes through a step-by-step process for building a dance-rock anthem on "Beat Connection". By the end, LCD Soundsystem had performed Lasik surgery on a whole generation's worth of indie myopia. --Rob Mitchum
002: Outkast
"Hey Ya!"
[Arista; 2003]
001: Outkast
"B.O.B."
[LaFace; 2000]
Dear Outkast,
Hope this finds you well.
I am writing because you brought hopeful energy to two bastardized forms of entertainment. Like many a child who received a Coleco Vision system on that fateful Christmas before Coleco went out of business, I resent video games. Like many a young adult who listened to a mainstream station between the descent of Kurt Cobain and the advent of you, I resent commercial radio. Thank you for your blipping, banging, plastically soulful, boldly digital hits.
I know someone with attention deficit disorder who claims to be comforted by the spastically shifting tones and concerns of your songs. Like how "Hey Ya" is actually a poignant and mature song about relationshippery for a while, and then forgets itself to become a call-and-response battle of the sexists.
I know someone who claims that hip-hop is a conspiracy to keep "the black man" from "changing the world" with an acoustic guitar, "as he is meant to do." Yet the acoustic guitar driving "Hey Ya" is half of its spacey perfection.
Outkast, how did you salvage the most overused gestures in the last 50 years of music: the informal greeting ("hey") and the bouyant affirmation ("ya")? I watched the backlash to this song's overexposure crest and recede in a span of one minute: a kid left in a minivan by his mom at the laundromat started spinning the radio tuner when he heard the opening "1, 2, 3..." and then he flipped through the entire dial. When he came back around to the one playing "Hey Ya", he smiled as if greeting a playmate he'd moodily and mistakenly rejected.
Speaking of moodiness and mistakes, is any other contemporary song as manic and misinterpreted as "B.O.B."? I'm not even covering all of its turf when I list that it contains: the reverbed drums of first-wave hip-hop (played at the tempo of booty hip-hop), organs suggesting "The House of the Rising Sun", futro blips, George Clinton freakouts, choral gospel, rave-up drum-n-bass, Prince funk-metal, speed-scratching, and an extended roller-rink outro. I tell curious people who have never heard it to imagine that Public Enemy handed Side 2 of Fear of a Black Planet over to Southerners.
I know someone who claims that her cat likes "B.O.B.", demonstrating as much by lying on its back and wagging its tail whenever the song is played.
And guys, the random-phrase lyrics make less sense than the music: A backhanded allusion to Bob Dylan's most famous line here. Tons of product placement (Cadillac, Pampers, Arm & Hammer, Taco Bell) there. And precious Outkast, I assume you are aware of how few party jams namecheck cancer and AIDS, as this one does.
Which brings us to the loaded refrain. "Bombs Over Baghdad" is sung like a jingle or a taunt, and you couldn't have known that it would later go down as absurdist prophecy. I assume that you chose the line, "Don't even bang unless you plan to hit something" for its metaphorical multivalence, comparing smart bombs to penises and rap skills.
You couldn't help that tennis star Jennifer Capriati would play the song before a few matches to "support our troops." You couldn't help that a fraternity at the University of Texas tackily threw a "Bombs Over Baghdad" party. You can't help that many of the students that I teach misspell "outcast" with a "k," even when describing Shakespeare and Kafka characters.
You just wanted to make something immortal out of ephemera, long before Operation Freedomshock McBraveheart. You just wanted to kickstart an "electric revival," as the song says, into maximum overdrive. You just wanted to make a track that would create in the listener a sense of being on a possessed treadmill. Right? --William Bowers
P.S. Big Boi: To answer your question: Yes, despite my Christian upbringing and lack of street gumption, I did think it possible that a pimp rock a microphone.
