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The Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s: 20-1

The Top 500 Tracks of the 2000s: 20-1

by Pitchfork, posted August 21, 2009
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Remember when everyone was partying like it was 1999 because it was, in fact, 1999? That was 10 years ago. Yes, the first decade of the 21st century-- "The Aughts"-- is coming to a close, and for music fanatics such as ourselves, that means it's a good time to make some lists. We round up our favorite albums, tracks, and videos at the end of every year, of course, but once in a while we go all-out and tackle an entire decade-- The 200 Greatest Songs of the 1960s, the Top 100 Albums of the 1990s, and so on. Since Pitchfork has been around for all of the 2000s, we're taking the opportunity to put together a detailed and wide-ranging story-- as told in four lists, four essays, and a timeline of events-- of what happened in music in the last 10 years. About what you'd get from a print magazine, but it's free and you won't throw it out the next time you move.

Lala has put together playlists with many of these songs-- details and tunes are here. (For a primer on what Lala is and how to use it, check here.)

We hope our list was as fun to read (and listen to) as it was to put together. We had a ball with this thing, and there's much more to come. Our Decade in Music page lays out the schedule for the rest of our 2000s coverage, and in early 2010, we'll add an addendum to this list with a few of our favorite songs from the next few months. Album and track reviews will return on Monday.

So, here we go: the final 20...

[#500-201]
[#200-101]
[#100-051]
[#050-021]

20. The Walkmen
"The Rat"
[Record Collection; 2004]

Somebody is pissed, somebody else is reeling from remorse, and everybody's going full throttle on what has become the signature Walkmen hyperjam. Hamilton Leithauser, unhinged even on a good day, just flies right off the handle and the rest of the band doesn't slack for a second. Forget secret weapons; everything's out in the open here and all the more dangerous for it. And Bows & Arrows ain't the half of it: This is a St. Valentine's Day Massacre of relentless drums, bass, and guitar. It all comes together with the whiz-bang aplomb of a Scorsese picture-- of course remorse is all that's left when it's over. Even so, "The Rat" doesn't need a context or backstory or string of descriptive metaphors to completely knock you over. It's a headrush of a song that succeeds entirely on its own merits, like the ultimate emo anthem for an alternate dimension where girls don't exist (sorry, ladies), music is a form of violence, and emo actually means raw, unbridled emotion and nothing more. --Matthew Solarski

19. R. Kelly
"Ignition (Remix)"
[Jive/BMG; 2002]

You have to work very hard indeed to sound this casual. "Ignition (Remix)" is a lazy, buzzed collage of a night on the town put together with a craftsman's eye. The same trick-- making meticulous detail sound almost improvised-- is what made "Trapped in the Closet" so shockingly successful and replayable. Here R. Kelly isn't telling a story so much as throwing out images, but the template is similar: a chassis of easy-rolling steppers' music that can respond to the slightest change in the singer's mood.

Not a phrase is wasted: When the Mountain Goats' John Darnielle started a message board thread on 100 reasons for this song's greatness, every single fraction of "Ignition (Remix)" got its own nomination (and the list went well beyond 100). Personal favorites-- the cork-and-glasses onomatopoeia of "Cris-tal poppin'"; the five table-rapping beats that summon the chorus; and, inevitably, "bounce bounce bounce bounce bounce." Every decade brings us songs whose purpose is simply to bottle the feeling of the best night out it's possible to enjoy. Call it a service to history: if, as seems likely, future generations judge the 00s as an era of bubble-fuelled idiocy, we will at least be able to point to "Ignition (Remix)" and say, "Yes, but just hear how great it felt." --Tom Ewing

18. Hercules and Love Affair
"Blind"
[DFA/Mute; 2008]

It goes without saying that "Blind" captivates any dancefloor. The real story is that Hercules and Love Affair's Andrew Butler should be applauded for anticipating just how brilliant a disco diva Antony could be, and how physically tactile his quavering voice might sound in a club setting. "As a child I knew that the stars could only get brighter," he sighs, and rarely before has innocence lost seemed so tragic. "Blind" doesn't mourn the loss of childhood, but childhood's dreams of a future in which lasting and meaningful connections might be forged. You dance in response because there is nothing else worth doing, and no other way to understand others that will work any better. A bleak vision, and yet it feels of a piece with all of dance music's finest expressions of hopeless, unrequited devotion. "Blind" pays homage to this legacy of disco and primitive house, but also offers its own tremulous rejoinder, "What if I don't just feel alone tonight, but every night?" In doing so, it doesn't introduce existential angst to the dancefloor so much as reveal how its creeping fear was always already there.. --Tim Finney

17. Annie
"Heartbeat"
[679; 2004]

A few great records were made this decade about the memory of dancing: In this one the dance is a stand-in for everything joyful and special about a lost moment. With its urgent builds, "Heartbeat" wills that dance to start again; with her serene delivery, Annie knows that it can't really. An Internet sensation before that meant much actual success, for most of the 00s Annie made ginger attempts to step from being "our" pop star to being everyone's. The subsequent success of Robyn and M.I.A. suggests this was no pipe-dream, but since most of Annie's best songs from "Chewing Gum" to "Anthonio" are exercises in beguiling diffidence it's not wholly surprising she never managed it.

And it hardly matters: hit-laden or not, very few catalogues contain anything as bewitching as "Heartbeat", a piece of disco handicraft as intimate as it is giddy. Annie's final verse, taken quiet and half-spoken as the song peaks, is like eavesdropping on a secret wish. As soon as she finishes it the song blows out like a birthday candle. "I won't forget." Stardom be damned, neither will we. --Tom Ewing

16. The Rapture
"House of Jealous Lovers"
[DFA; 2002]

For a lot of people, "House of Jealous Lovers" was so inextricable from a time (2002) and a place (New York City) that by the time it saw an official album release, it was seen as a hell of a wake for the dance-punk movement that came and went with a speed that was pretty impressive even for indie sub-genres. Me, I didn't know about any of that shit. In October 2003, I was in a Georgia college town while struggling with an iffy Internet connection-- I bought Echoes on a recommendation and played Track 6 on a damn near continuous loop and had to find out who the hell these guys were. I can't be the only one.

However emblematic it is of its DFA-led scene or whatever, sweet Jesus, what a song. All those lame bandwagon acts, the failure of this scene to catch on commercially-- the Rapture don't need to answer for any of that. You need no investment in its importance to find infinite pleasure in that bassline and Luke Jenner's fearlessly off-key hooks. Even the cowbell hasn't gotten old. Point being, I can't imagine ever hearing "House of Jealous Lovers" without wondering if we maybe should give this dance-punk thing another shot, like, right now. --Ian Cohen

15. The Knife
"Heartbeats"
[Rabid/Mute; 2002]

No matter which iteration of "Heartbeats" you may prefer -- the original recording from Deep Cuts, the dance remix by Rex the Dog, the achingly sentimental arrangement from the Silent Shout live disc, or even the cover versions by José González and the Scala choir-- the essence of the song is always the same. The tune is strangely immutable, as if no interpretation, however radical, could possibly upset its precise balance of desire and nostalgia. As malleable as "Heartbeats" may be, it is best heard sung by Karin Dreijer Andersson, who invests her cryptic lyrics about a brief, intense love affair with a passion and vulnerability seemingly at odds with her metallic, otherworldly tone. Andersson's words suggest as much pleasure as pain, but her voice lingers in between, where lust and terror overlap in a moment of profound intimacy.

Though the chorus suggests a deep sense of loss and regret, the emphasis is placed on the fleeting connection, which is presented as a sort of magical inevitability. Indeed, there is magic in every note of the song, manifesting itself just as much in the melody as in specific details, such as the subtle decay in the neon-hued synth tones of the original, or the cavernous spaces separating the arpeggiated notes of the live arrangement. Whether performed plaintively or joyously, each version of "Heartbeats" is a miracle in its own right, highlighting a different aspect of the same incredible, life-affirming experience. --Matthew Perpetua

14. Jay-Z
"99 Problems"
[Roc-A-Fella; 2003]

With respect to "Hard Knock Life" or "I.Z.Z.O.", this was Jay-Z's complete crossover moment, the single that catapulted him out of hip-hop superstardom into everyone's vernacular. In retrospect, it sounds very much like he knows it; listen to the way his hushed lines at the beginning build into something more sure-footed over time. By the outro, he's beaming in the direction of producer Rick Rubin, as if the song's hugeness is now a foregone conclusion. To be fair, Jay-Z pretty much always sounds like he's attending his own coronation, but in the context of "99 Problems"'s stadium-huge guitar inhalations and exhalations, that exuberance feels especially infectious.

And don't forget the context. Before Jay-Z and Beyoncé were officially a thing, they spent months playing coy with the media. Speculation reached boiling point with the serendipitously-aligned releases of a blatant affirmation in the form of "Crazy in Love" and a blatant denial in the form of "99 Problems". Of course, everyone knew the story by then, but the fact that this played out the way it did (i.e. with two monstrous singles, the other of which he featured on, playing call and response at the top of the charts) is as much a testament to Jigga's PR savviness as anything else; you don't reach this level on music alone. --Mark Pytlik

13. LCD Soundsystem
"Losing My Edge"
[DFA; 2002]

If the songs on this list were chosen solely by how they captured the zeitgeist in independent music, "Losing My Edge" would be an easy #1. The most audacious debut single of the 00s, "Losing My Edge" captured the anxiety of trying to use your taste in music as a badge of cool in the era when all music is available to anyone who can afford a broadband connection. Over a beat borrowed from Killing Joke's "Change", James Murphy alternates a lament about being eclipsed by "The kids coming up from behind" with tall tales of early encounters with Can, Suicide, Captain Beefheart, and other icons of hipster scum. The worst thing about this new generation of interlopers? "They're actually really nice," Murphy says, which makes them even more difficult to hate.

But while he laid out the essential facts of music fandom in our age and also articulated the central absurdity of forming a band in a time of such excess (What do you do when everything has been done?), Murphy then managed to transcend it all. Yep, we're fucked: there's nothing new under the sun, and unlike the kids, we don't have the advantage of not knowing. So what next, then? You go for it, make music anyway, and do it so well that no one cares what you actually know and whom you're borrowing from. Which is what he did the rest of the decade. --Mark Richardson

12. OutKast
"Hey Ya!"
[LaFace/Arista; 2003]

What's cooler than being cool? How about ebullient songs about life-cracking misery? Those are pretty cool. How about lyrics so sharp that nearly every line in them becomes a catchphrase? And hard funk grooves in weird power-pop time signatures? And presentations of black male sexuality that basically come down to being really clever and funny? Those are cool also. Actually, you know what was really cool? You remember the moment in the fall of 2003 when "Hey Ya!" came out and it sounded like André 3000 had cracked the code and made a record that sounded like everything on the radio and nothing anyone had heard before, and it seemed like the walls between rock and R&B and hip-hop were about to topple and from then on there would just be this enormous pool of popular music that everyone could swim around in? And then there was the equally brilliant paradigm-smashing video for it, and then after that somebody did that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" cut-up video that's still funny more than five years later? And we all thought that OutKast had come into their true power and had a million more amazing hits in front of them, and didn't notice that they'd basically already broken up even though to this day they keep insisting that they're a going concern despite the fact that they don't tour together and barely appear on each other's records? God, that was cool. Ice cold. --Douglas Wolk

11. Gnarls Barkley
"Crazy"
[Downtown/Warner; 2005]

Any successful artistic collaboration is going to rely to some degree on serendipity, but Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy" seems an especially uncanny intersection of timing and talent. Though the partnership between producer Danger Mouse-- fresh off the success of The Grey Album, his Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up-- and Goodie Mob rapper/soulman Cee-Lo Green seemed like an intriguing match-up from the start, it hardly seemed like a recipe for an instantaneous worldwide smash hit. Yet from the time it first appeared on the group's website, "Crazy" became the virtual definition of a viral hit single, eventually becoming the first song to reach #1 on the UK charts solely through download sales.

Perhaps the song's immediate commercial success is a reflection of the spontaneity with which it was recorded. In a 2006 interview, Danger Mouse told Pitchfork that Cee-Lo's entire vocal for the song had been recorded on the first take, a claim that might seem outlandish if "Crazy" didn't sound quite so vibrant and alive. Based on a sample from a vintage spaghetti western soundtrack, Danger Mouse's production is spare and compact, giving Green all the space he needs to fully inhabit the song. And it remains a joy to hear the way Green seizes the moment, his spirited vocal managing to sound both exuberant and wistful, and it quickly becomes clear that other artists might spend a career in the studio and never capture a similar moment of such casual magic. --Matthew Murphy

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