51. "Yeah!"
Usher [2004]
The crunk-soul floor-filler nobody could escape last year.

Usher got top billing on the party-infidelity anthem of 2004. But the real stars of "Yeah!" were his fellow Atlanta residents Lil Jon and Ludacris-Jon furnished the hooting, minimalist production, and eggs on Usher's gloating confession with throat-shredding bellows, while Luda growls a lascivious verse. Following some record-company jockeying over who would get to sing the hook, "Yeah!" became the National Anthem of Crunk-it was No. 1 on the pop charts for 12 weeks.
Available on: Confessions (La Face)

52. "Wonderwall"
Oasis [1995]
The Gallaghers stop feuding long enough to pledge their love.

For a moment in the mid-'90s, it looked as if battling brothers Liam and Noel Gallagher were going to conquer the world, and "Wonderwall" was a good part of the reason. Named after George Harrison's 1968 instrumental solo album, it's a convincing if cryptic declaration of adoration, and still their biggest hit. In Noel's typically blunt words: "You can't get bored of 15,000 people shouting for 'Wonderwall' … You get a hard-on when you hear that."
Available on: (What's the Story) Morning Glory? (Epic)

53. "Beat It"
Michael Jackson [1982]
The crossover piledriver even metalheads could love.

Before he became a punch line, Michael Jackson was a magnificent, daring soul singer. An R&B; record with a palpable sense of coppery menace and a shredding metal-guitar solo (Eddie Van Halen volunteered his services gratis) was a freaky idea in 1982, but Jackson pounces on every syllable of "Beat It" as if being "funky and strong" is enough to win the battle he's describing, and the elaborately choreographed video became a nascent MTV's West Side Story.
Available on: Thriller (Epic)

54. "Middle of the Road"
Pretenders [1983]
Chrissie Hynde's furious farewell to youth.

At the end of 1983, the Pretenders had barely regrouped from the recent drug-overdose deaths of their original lead guitarist and bassist, and leader Chrissie Hynde was angry about the state of the world-and having a midlife crisis. But singing "I'm not the kind I used to be/I got a kid, I'm 33," she slid into her harmonica solo with a tigerish snarl-and presented her complaint as blistering garage-rock.
Available on: Learning to Crawl (Warner Bros.)

55. "The Scientist"
Coldplay [2002]
It's all downhill from here, says Chris Martin.

Singer Chris Martin calls "The Scientist" "perhaps the most beautiful song we will have ever written," and initially threatened not to make another Coldplay record because he didn't think he could top it. A Radiohead-esque love-and-apology song with piano and strings, "The Scientist" has a couple of aces up its sleeve in Martin's arcing, wordless cries and the buzzing waves of guitar from Jonny Buckland at its climax. The backwards-car-crash video is hard to forget too.
Available on: A Rush of Blood to the Head (Capitol)

56. "Poison"
Bell Biv Devoe [1990]
One-hit wonder's swaggering hip-hop/R&B; hybrid.

When the three least-known members of New Edition split off to form their own group in 1990, their first single became this million-selling paragon of new jack swing, an admonition to "never trust a big butt and a smile." Sadly, BBD's career was short-lived, possibly because people couldn't remember their slogan-"mentally hip-hop smoothed out on the R&B; tip with a pop feel appeal to it"-and kept trying to add "on a sesame-seed bun."
Available on: Poison (MCA)

57. "West End Girls"
Pet Shop Boys [1986]
Disafffected new wavers rap their way to fame.

Bored-sounding, weedy-voiced British music journalist Neil Tennant was a really unlikely MC, but inspired by Grandmaster Flash's "The Message," he wrote a rap about class tension ("East End boys" are poor, "West End girls" are rich). With American disco producer Bobby O, Tennant and Chris Lowe devised an arrangement involving what Tennant calls "Barry White chords" and a drum part lifted from Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean"; soon after, a re-recorded version went to No. 1 in America.
Available on: Please (Capitol)


58. "Karma Police"
Radiohead [1997]
Rock's most serious band make with the funny.

As lugubriously as Thom Yorke sings it, "Karma Police" is one of the rare flashes of goofiness in the grimly technological landscape of OK Computer-the title originated as a band in-joke, and the lyrics actually include the word "phew." The ornate, lumbering arrangement of what Yorke describes as "a song against bosses" paraphrases the Beatles' "Sexy Sadie"; the squealing cone of noise it eventually dissolves into is a loop of a few notes from O'Brien's guitar.
Available on: OK Computer (Capitol) 59. "The Humpty Dance"
Digital Underground [1990]
The goofiest MC on the West Coast stumbles into the spotlight.

Gregory Jacobs, a.k.a. Digital Underground leader Shock-G, created the nasal Humpty Hump character as a joke for the Californian hip-hop crew's "Doowutchalike," but when Jacobs found a Groucho Marx prop nose and glasses during the video shoot, Humpty became the group's star. Introducing himself over a foundation-rattling bass loop and a chorus lifted from Parliament's "Let's Play House," he explains his fondness for spastic dancing, lumpy oatmeal and words that "don't mean nothin', like 'loopid.'"
Available on: Sex Packets (Tommy Boy)

60. "Missing You"
John Waite [1984]
A deep-soul scorcher in new wave drag.

British singer Waite scored a No. 1 single with "Missing You" during his first stint as a solo artist-between fronting blue-eyed powerpop outfit the Babys in the late '70s and corporate hacks Bad English at the end of the '80s. The song came to him very quickly-"pure word association … like sleepwalking," he said. It's the apotheosis of the mid-'80s prom slow dance: half ragged soul ballad (cf. Tina Turner's cover), half gangly synth-pop groove.
Available on: Falling Backwards (Capitol)

61. "Ignition" (remix)
R. Kelly [2003]
R. sticks his key in, spends the weekend freakin'.

How many levels of genius are there here? A remix-previewed in the original version-that announces that it's the remix in the chorus, then ditches almost all of "Ignition" itself; a singer with major image problems declaring, snappishly, that he's kicking back and boozing it up for the weekend; vocals that evoke everything from purring seduction to dancehall reggae harshness in a matter of seconds; and the most lusciously summery porn-flick wah-wah in Kelly's entire repertoire.
Available on: Chocolate Factory (Jive)

62 "Just Can't Get Enough"
Depeche Mode [1981}
The original British synth-pop band exercise their index fingers.

Depeche Mode didn't start out as a synthesizer band, but by the time the Basildon boys had played a few gigs, founding member Andrew Fletcher has explained, they realized that cheap synths were "perfect for one-fingered keyboard playing-which was about all we could do then." Original songwriter Vince Clarke (later of Erasure) bowed out after their third single, "Just Can't Get Enough," an impossibly perky love song built around a bunch of tootling, hunt-and-peck keyboard parts.
Available on: Speak & Spell (Warner Bros.)

63. "Beautiful Day"
U2 [2000]
How wanking off in the studio sometimes leads to global hits.

During a jam on another song, "Always," Bono yelled "it's a beautiful day," and producer Daniel Lanois convinced him to turn it into a chorus. The new song came together around that line: a vision of abandoning material things and finding grace in the world itself. Lanois described "Beautiful Day" as "one of those little gifts where you think, my god, we've got it!" The single went on to top the charts around the globe and won three Grammys.
Available on: All That You Can't Leave Behind (Interscope)

64. "Say My Name"
Destiny's Child [1999]
State-of-the-art technology, and Beyoncé's deepest performance.

By the time "Say My Name" began its three weeks at No. 1, it was obvious that Destiny's Child was Beyoncé Knowles and Some Other Gals-between its recording and video shoot, LaTavia Roberson and LaToya Luckett were replaced by Michelle Williams and Farrah Franklin, and few listeners noticed. But the song's real star is its writer-producer, then-22-year-old Rodney Jerkins, whose arrangement closes in like suspicion on Knowles's voice, gliding from acoustic simplicity to stuttering orchestral funk.
Available on: Writing's on the Wall (Columbia)

65. "Enter Sandman"
Metallica [1991]
The kings of darkness pound their stake into the radio.

Before "Enter Sandman," Metallica were a spiky, radio-unfriendly, ultra-hard-rock alternative to frothy hair-metal. With the release of 1991's eponymous "black album," and especially their first actual radio hit, they crushed the competition altogether. Originally about crib death until James Hetfield altered a particularly creepy lyric, "Sandman" applied Metallica's pulverizing, swinging attack to pop hooks for the first time, and made them the world's biggest metal band.
Available on: Metallica (Elektra)

66. "Doo Wop (That Thing)"
Lauryn Hill [1998]
Ex-Fugee's take on the battle of the sexes.

Hill was the rookie of the year in '98-everyone knew from the Fugees she could sing and MC, but the Grammy-winning "Doo Wop" was her first solo album's high-kick, an even-handed lecture on gender relations with phenomenal verbal acrobatics in the rapped verses (every line rhymes) and vocal fireworks in the sung chorus. And the production, a hip-hop update of the warm, horn-punctuated sound of '60s soul? L-Boogie did it herself.
Available on: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (Columbia)

67. "The Boys of Summer"
Don Henley [1984]
A driving song with the '70s receding in its rear-view mirror.

Written around an instrumental demo by guitarist Mike Campbell, this epitaph for the Californian hippie dream "came just screamin' out of me," Henley says. "I was jumping up and down in the car 'cause I knew I had something there." Its synth-pop pulse looked away from Henley's Eagles career and toward the future; the Ataris (in the U.S.) and DJ Sammy (in Europe) both had hits with covers of the song in 2003.
Available on: Building the Perfect Beast (Geffen) 68. "That's the Joint"
Funky 4 + 1 [1981]
Sha Rock + 4 rock the house like it'd never been rocked before.

Sharon Jackson, a.k.a. Sha Rock, was one of the first women to rap at Bronx parties, and by 1979 she'd joined the Funky Four. (When they got a fourth male MC, she became the +1.) On the first rap performed on national TV (a 1981 Saturday Night Live appearance), the 4+1 toss party rhymes around like a team of jugglers for 10 minutes; Doug Wimbish of the Sugar Hill house band provides the acrobatic funk bass part.
Available on: The Best of Sugar Hill Records (Rhino)

69. "You're Still the One"
Shania Twain [1997]
A.k.a. "Theme for Holding Hands With Your Snookums".

Written by Twain and her husband/producer Mutt Lange about their marriage, the least ironic song of the entire '90s was inescapable on the radio for what seemed like centuries, and it's still reportedly the most frequent request for slow dances at weddings. So be it: Twain's years as a country singer taught her how to make anything sound unbearably poignant, Lange's arrangement is creamier than a bridal gown's satin and goddamn it, it is romantic.
Available on: Come on Over (Mercury Nashville) 70 "Summer of '69"
Bryan Adams [1984]
A summer single about looking back on summers past.

In the summer of 1969, Bryan Adams was nine years old, and not likely to have been in a band with somebody who quit to get married-he's described this song as "more [songwriting partner Jim Vallance's] time frame than mine." (A dirty mind suspects the title shouldn't have an apostrophe in it.) But the raspy Canadian rocker's reminiscence managed to make people who hadn't yet had either a first love or a first band nostalgic for the experience.
Available on: Reckless (A&M;)

71 "Criminal"
Fiona Apple [1996]
Hot teen singer-songwriter has been a bad, bad girl.

Apple claims that "Criminal" is about "feeling bad for getting something so easily by using your sexuality," and that Mark Romanek's video for it (showing the singer/pianist writhing under amateur-porn lights) was supposed to be tongue-in-cheek. But viewers heard "I've been a bad, bad girl," saw a skinny 19-year-old in her underwear, and, well … stardom came rather easily, for reasons that didn't have much to do with the subtle, rolling song or Apple's stormy performance.
Available on: Tidal (Epic)

72. "How Soon Is Now?"
The Smiths [1985]
Their greatest hit started out as a B-side.

Part of Morrissey and Johnny Marr's original plan for the Smiths was that every single they wrote would start with an instantly recognizable guitar introduction, and none of them are more striking than the wobbling tremolo riff that opens "How Soon Is Now." Originally a bonus track on the "William, It Was Really Nothing" single, "Soon" was their first American success, and became an alt-rock dance standard-ironically, for a song about leaving a club alone and miserable.
Available on: Meat Is Murder (Warner Bros.)

73. "Losing My Edge"
LCD Soundsystem [2002]
If you get the joke, the joke is on you.

The debut single by producer James Murphy's solo project put his post-post-punk production team the DFA on the map with a stripped-to-the-bone robot-dance record that morphs into savage guitar rock and back again. Over the top, Murphy's rant skewers aging hipsters, indie know-it-alls, electronic arrivistes, rock & roll atavists, obsessive record collectors and anybody who recognizes more than three of the dozens of way-too-cool bands he namechecks at the end, i.e. music geeks just like him and his fans.
Available on: LCD Soundsystem (Capitol)

74. "Take Me Out"
Franz Ferdinand [2004]
Scottish quartet's murderous funk-rock split personality.

Two, two, two songs in one! The first minute of "Take Me Out" is lithe, pulsing rock that out-strokes the Strokes. Then it slows down, bulks up, and turns into a hot, brittle guitar-funk stomp for three more minutes-"music for girls to dance to," in the words of singer Alex Kapranos. It's debatable, though, whether most of the people dancing to it have noticed that it's about snipers aiming at each other.
Available on: Franz Ferdinand (Epic)

75. "Head Like a Hole"
Nine Inch Nails [1989]
Synth-pop dons industrial battle armor.

Trent Reznor's greatest hit took a long time to catch on, but by 1992, the debut album it anchored had gone gold, and it's currently triple platinum-and out of print, thanks to tussles with his former label. But its twin choruses-one a synth-funk revenge threat, the other a scaldingly noisy declaration of defiance-till bring new wave fashionistas and industrial shockheads together on the dance floor, and its sneaky Latin freestyle beat keeps them there.
Available on: Pretty Hate Machine (TVT)

76. "You Dropped a Bomb on Me"
The Gap Band [1982]
Black cowboys drop the big one on the dance floor.

Cowboy-suited brothers Charlie, Ronnie and Robert Wilson were the only great funk band ever to come out of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Their whompingest party anthem concerns the joys of anticipating World War III by getting thoroughly wasted and laid. (Hey, it was 1982.) "Bomb" sounds like P-Funk trapped inside a Space Invaders console, and its monstrous, rubbery bassline inspired the bounce of West Coast hip-hop-Charlie Wilson was most recently heard singing on Snoop Dogg's "Signs."
Available on: Ultimate Collection (Hip-O)

77. "Girls, Girls, Girls"
Mötley Crüe [1987]
Party monsters' tribute to the titty bars they loved best.

Hard-touring bands know that if you name-check a bunch of cities in your song, it's more likely to get played on the radio. On their fourth album's raunchy title track-sometime between inhaling inch-thick rails of coke and (in bassist Nikki Sixx's case) briefly flatlining-the Crüe did something even smarter. They name-checked their favorite strip clubs, and so insured that wherever bottle-blondes with implants peel off bikinis, it'll always be 1987, and hair-metal will always reign supreme.
Available on: Girls, Girls, Girls (Hip-O)

78. "A Stroke of Genius"
Freelance Hairdresser [2001]
The mashup that made everybody else want to try them.

It wasn't the first mashup, but when Roy Kerr had the inspiration of synching up the a cappella track of Christina Aguilera's "Genie in a Bottle" with a collage of the instrumental parts of the Strokes' "Hard to Explain," he kicked off the "bastard pop" craze. Never legitimately released, "A Stroke of Genius" nonetheless turned up on every self-respecting geek's iPod (it was even covered by Scottish band Speedway), and Kerr later remixed Christina's single "Fighter."
Available on: online only

79. "Losing My Religion"
R.E.M. [1991]
Mandolin, mumbling and misgivings make magic.

Guitarist Peter Buck claims that "Losing My Religion" "really became a hit by fluke"-it's an inscrutable ramble with a mandolin as its lead instrument, recorded at a time when R.E.M. were trying to get away from their Big Rock reputation, and it somehow turned them into a stadium band. That's true-but it's also one of Michael Stipe's richest performances, it seeps and suffuses instead of rocking and its emotional (if not literal) sense is unmistakable.
Available on: Out of Time (Warner Bros.)

80. "Hot in Herre"
Nelly [2002]
The favorite jam at crunk clubs with busted air conditioners.

The king of the St. Lunatics says that he and his producers the Neptunes "were trying to create that perfect party … [with] a hook that everybody can really reach out to." It seems to have worked: The wave of semi-nudity that swept American clubs in the summer of 2002 is generally credited to Nelly's call-and-response with hypnotized-sounding backup singer Dani Stevenson ("I am … gettin' … so hot …"), which played on the radio every five minutes.
Available on: Nellyville (Universal) 81. "Galang" M.I.A. [2004]
Sri Lankan femme fatale mounts a thundering, robotic dance attack.

You'd be hard pressed to find a better example of global mash-up cool than this club hit by British rapper Maya Arulpragasam. The Sri Lankan-born MC, whose father reportedly spent time in the violent terror organization the Tamil Tigers, speaks the slang of London's raw reggae and grime music, but her global sloganeering about restless poverty and arty uprising puts her in a new category of radical chic. Over a clackety-clack track punctuated by Nintendo blips, she unleashes lyrical fragments that blur the line between gunfire and blazing up some purple haze.
Available on: Arular (XL)

82. "Come As You Are"
Nirvana [1991]
Kurt follows up an infectious howl with one creepy moan.

The second single from Nirvana's 1991 blockbuster Nevermind followed up "Smells Like Teen Spirit"'s exploding ennui with a somber, singalong despair that was way scarier. Over Krist Novoselic's loping bass line, which dredged up Seattle sludge for emotional bottom-feeders everywhere, Kurt Cobain slurred out a backhanded invitation to a shadowy friend, someone who is either a memory or an enemy. On the coda, Kurt swore he didn't have a gun, but everyone figured he probably did.
Available on: Nevermind

83 "To Hell With Poverty"
Gang of Four [1981]
British art punks get funky on your capitalist ass.

These Leeds art students could be called "inimitable" if bands like Bloc Party and the Rapture hadn't imitated their minimalist funk-punk so often. With few words, this herky-jerky nugget hints that any war on poverty can easily become a war on the poor. Then we all get to whip-dance and shout the totally reasonable solution, "Let's get drunk on cheap wine!" Bonus: the Gang's situationist hissy-fits, connecting global oppression to the entertainment industrial complex in the Reagan/Thatcher era, translate pretty well to the Bush/Blair era too.
Available on: Brief History of the 20th Century (Warner Bros.)

84. "Borderline"
Madonna [1983]
Ms. Ciccone goes crazy in love.

Already famous in her own mind, a willful young Madonna fired her swanky producer and remixed one of his best tunes to her satisfaction with her lover-pal Jellybean Benitez. The chimey, Latin-inflected track made a perfect backdrop for the rooftop video that followed the bleach-blond imp as she graffiti-bombed tenement walls, posed in her torn thrift-store finery for a smitten paparazzo and canoodled with a swarthy himbo over the gritty Manhattan skyline.
Available on: Madonna (Sire)

85. "Drop It Like It's Hot"
Snoop Dogg [2004]
Snizzle Dizzle comes back with an anti-crunk chunk of perfection.

Late last year, something strange happened to pop radio: Every hour or so, it got real quiet. On Snoop's first No. 1 single in years, producer Pharrell Williams whipped up a futuristic club banger-cum-lullaby, a sticky, swinging beat made out of little more than electronic hiss and clucking tongues. Like the Doggfather himself, who rhymes here as if he's exhaling one long wisp of smoke, the track's all the more menacing for its hush. Snoop's killer taunt, "AK-47, now, nigga stop that," had something to do with it too.
Available on: R&G;: Rhythm & Gangsta: The Masterpiece (Geffen)

86. "Work It"
Missy Elliott [2002]
Missy Elliott stays on the scene like an (overworked) sex machine.

With this squelchy club track, rapper Missy Elliot put the script down, flipped it and reversed it. Backwards and forwards, she made a dance hit while reminding us that sex can be hard labor. Lyrics like "If you got a big ugh, lemme search it/Gotta know how hard I gotta work it" sound like a sex worker filing an OSHA claim, while Timbaland's beats skip and stutter like a john's heart pumping towards a high-priced orgasm.
Available on: Under Construction (Elektra)

87. "That's Entertainment"
The Jam [1980]
Dapper postpunk band lament weak TV shows, fascism.

Jam leader Paul Weller was too young to live through the original mod boom, but he could still wear the suits and effect the gloom in a late-'70s England short on jobs and rife with fascist creeps. Anxiety about "a smash of glass and a rumble of boots" and "opening the windows and breathing in petrol" underpins this hard-strummed acoustic chunk of flat-block ennui, which Weller supposedly scribbled in 10 minutes while drunk, and Oasis later covered (also while drunk).
Available on: Sound Affects (Polydor)

88. "Pull Up to the Bumper"
Grace Jones [1981]
Bumper sticker: "I'd rather be bumper sticking."

With a statuesque physique, a severe flattop and cheekbones sharp as ninja stars, androgynous Jamaican singer-model Grace Jones ruled New York's raunchy late-'70s nightclub circuit. After disco died, she switched to reggae-inflected new wave funk, working in Nassau with producers Sly & Robbie to record this dark, dubby exhortation. Over echoed steely guitar jangle, squish percussion and car horn blares, our no-nonsense dominatrix plays high-priced valet, calling for someone with a "long black limousine" to "drive it in-between."
Available on: Nightclubbing (Island)

89. "Rockin' in the Free World"
Neil Young [1989]
Neil Young gets his Zack de la Rocha on, millions miss the point.

America, fuck yeah! No, wait-America, fuck no! Just like Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA," this distorted guitar rant smuggled Neil Young's blistering critique of the consumerist powers that be onto mainstream radio via a hooky, urgently whined chorus. Trouble was, the patriotic doofuses shouting along as if it was their team's fight song never quite took its meaning, which is why you still hear this barnburner at stadiums while Coke ads flash on the Jumbotron.
Available on: Freedom (Reprise)

90. "Into the Groove"
Madonna [1984]
Dance, dammit, dance!

So, okay, Madonna is not just asking you to dance. She is commanding you to dance-"get into the groove"-to prove your love. Luckily, she's given you her most danceable song for the audition. Sounding totally at home amid woodblock percussion and sunset synths, young Madge's voice bursts with the optimism of early evening. Released as a single, the song made the soundtrack of Desperately Seeking Susan, in which Madonna played a pushy, charming babe-not much of a stretch, really.
Available on: Like a Virgin (Sire)

91. "Feel Good Hit of the Summer"
Queens of the Stone Age [2000]
Detailed toxicology report from Desert-based stoner auteurs.

Aaarrgh! With all these pounding tom-toms and this chugging, distorted guitar, we can hardly even remember our grocery list. Oh okay, here it is: "Nicotine, valium, vicodin, marijuana, ecstasy and alcohol … c-c-c-cocaine." Josh Homme frattily spits an A-Z of intoxicants, interspersed with shouted "No"s (to baffle little headbanging druggies?). It's a lot of drugs for just one man, so Homme gets some help on this garage-metal litany from Judas Priest's Rob Halford.
Available on: R (Interscope)

92. "Heartbeat"
Taana Gardner [1981]
Slo-mo disco groove revs up the Paradise Garage.

This song's throbbing slo-mo beat might be the closest disco ever got to Houston's Chopped and Screwed sound. Taana Gardner, an accidental diva who scored her first hit, "Work That Body," as a last-minute studio substitute, was producer Kenton Nix's cooing, exclamatory muse. Her vocal sounds like a combination of Diana Ross and the sexiest girl from the block doing karaoke. Ini Kamoze's "Hotstepper" samples the track, and we hear Kanye's been messing with it too.
Available on: West End Story (West End)

93. "Cut Your Hair"
Pavement [1994]
Indie-rock snobs admit they care a lot about the drummer's hair.

Written by brainy pretty boy Stephen Malkmus, whom Courtney Love once called "the Grace Kelly of indie rock," this collection of lyrics turns interior monologue fragments into sneering reflections on fame, coolness, style, career-anxiety and hip haircuts. A cathartic, singalong "hoo-hoo-hoo" chorus mocks the poppiness that this arch-hipster band would go on to ignore as it slouched further and further away from the mainstream.
Available on: Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (Matador)

94 "Set Adrift on Memory Bliss"
P.M. Dawn [1991]
Jersey rap softies sample Spandau Ballet's New Wave torch song.

Even in the daisy-sniffing hip-hop world of 1993, you had to have blossoms of steel to rap over the schmaltzy strings and heartbroken sighs of Spandau Ballet's '80s lament "True." But despite once getting shoved off a stage by macho bully KRS-One, kaftan-clad Prince Be sent radio listeners into wistful reverie with his soft-spoken tale of unrequited love. This song also built a bridge to neo-soul, not to mention the trend of much tougher guys like Puffy Combs and Eminem rapping over wimpy tunes by the likes of Sting and Dido.
Available on: Of the Heart, of the Soul and of the Cross: The Utopian Experience (Gee Street)

95. "Unsatisfied"
The Replacements [1984]
Midwestern punk-poet howls from inside a snow fort of the soul.

Punk foursome the Replacements' Minneapolis was a dead-end hamlet only made bearable by whiskey and crude jokes. That kind of frostbit isolation provided this petulant anthem of despair from 1984's classic Let It Be, full of echoing guitar that sounds as if it was recorded in a rusty grain elevator. The best part: Westerberg is so helpless he can't even claim his own unhappiness, croaking at no one in particular, "Look me in the eye and tell me/that I'm satisfied."
Available on: Let It Be (Twin Tone)

96. "True Faith"
New Order [1987]
A Manchester band with a tragic history get on down!

After Joy Division singer Ian Curtis snuffed it in 1980, his bandmates could have been a great goth band. They chose instead to make slightly ominous synthesized dance music and spent the '80s getting popular with darksiders plagued by intermittent good moods. After the song's opening industrial thwack, the bouncy bass pulse and keyboard swirl get bodies swaying too blissfully to wonder how Bernard Sumner can sing "I feel so extraordinary" if, in fact, "our valued destiny comes to nothing." It became the band's first U.S. hit.
Available on: Substance (Reprise)

97. "Since U Been Gone"
Kelly Clarkson [2004]
A heat-seeking missile aimed at bad ex-boyfriends everywhere.

It's always better to rock out than to fade away. Snatching fame from the jaws of obscurity, American Idol cutie Kelly Clarkson ditched the bland teenpop of her first outing for, well, a more rocking version of teenpop. Swedish hitmaker Max Martin wrote her a declaration of independence that steadily builds to a huge guitar blast-off chorus. The shout of a thousand multi-tracked Kellys announcing "I can breath for the first time" makes breaking up sound like being born.
Available on: Breakaway (RCA)

98. "When You Were Mine"
Prince [1980]
Pervy funk upstart loves too much.

Before the Dirty South, there was the Dirty North. Years before Tipper Gore flipped out about "Darling Nikki" masturbating with a magazine, Prince's breakthrough album Dirty Mind described a rocking uptown where kinky people loved to go downtown. In this tune, over a slapping backbeat and perky synth, our New Romantic imp hornily stalks an ex-lover, even though this person took all his money, wore all his clothes, forced him into threesomes with her new crush and didn't even have the decency to change the sheets.
Available on: Dirty Mind (Warner Bros.)

99. "All Apologies"
Nirvana [1994]
Kurt Cobain says he's sorry, then splits.

Toward the end of his life, Kurt Cobain was pretty explicit about his plans to snuff it and head for that big Nirvana in the sky. But the melody of this telling dirge went down as easy as a nursery rhyme, and everyone sang along to suicide-note lyrics like, "What else can I write? I don't have the right." Even if we wanted to think Kurt's breakdown shout ("Married! … Buried!") was just a cheeky henpecked lament, his rasping MTV Unplugged rendition on a stage full of white lilies made the whole thing scarily literal: Five months later he was dead.
Available on: Nirvana Unplugged (DGC)

100. "Bring the Noise"
Public Enemy [1988]
Noisy rap classic wakes up the comatose.

"Bass!" rumble-voiced rapper Chuck D bellowed, "How low can you go?" But this bombastic anthem relies for its menace on chaotic high-end debris, not a fat bottom. Over trebly trap kit breaks, looping siren squeals, spastic scratches and backwards horns, Chuck shoved Farrakhan into the face of the nation and blasted the "corrupt as a senator" status quo. (Unfortunately, when he exhorted, "Beat is for Sonny Bono/Beat is for Yoko Ono," Fred Durst thought it was for him, too, and went on to neuter "Noise" with a limpbizkit cover.)
Available on: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back (Def Jam)