The Top 100 Singles of 2000-04, Part Two
Mon: 01-31-05

The Top 100 Singles of 2000-04, Part Two

Staff List by Pitchfork Staff

[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

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

 

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[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

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

 

<!--pagebreak-->

[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

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

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[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

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

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[Singles: 100-051]
[Singles: 050-001]
[Albums: 100-051]
[Albums: 050-001]

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.