The canon starts here: Top hard rock singles of the 00s so far -> list thread with discussion

Angular post-punk guitar comes into the new century with a drum machine. I love the wash of guitar in the verse, that all-enveloping chugga-chugga-chugga. Kind of shoegazer. Kind of Television. Mostly awesome. And the chorus is just so damn anthemic, you can't help but sing along.

TWO-hit wonders!

'Seven Nation Army' is the best song on this list so far by a million miles (QOTSA second)

See above, but factor in the song sucking, and the rap bit being done by MC Miker Gee.

The only thing I've heard that was harder and tougher this year were other tracks on the same album: "Sex, Drugs, Rap and Roll," "Dragon," "U Know I Love U."

Billy, he's just lovable, really. He may not like come across as liking fun, and he may be a little gloomy, but he still makes good rock music. You can keep your Dizzee Rascal's and your Audio Bully's and your LCD Soundsystems and your Justin's, I'll take Zwan. Okay? This is probably, my favourite song of 2003, not quite sure what it's all about, something regarding crusades, dogs barking and faith. But, you can sing along, and if you can't sing along, a song is not a song.

I've thought of a couple of tracks but I can't remmeber titles but if i do etc etc.

and i can't help but think jel's Zwan comment was directed straight at me! ;)

Ironic, that you called the rap memorable, considering I had to listen to the song on the radio, on the bus ride to work for every day like 4 months, and for the life of me can't remember one word of the rap. I do remember, however, the uber-whiney, generic scream/whisper then rap format, and the highly overproduced, riffless, shlocky guitar-shit.

4) Sum 41 - "In Too Deep": I was typing out one of the most painful emails of my life, on the verge of tears, when this came on in the Copy Centre and made everything that much brighter and lighter. The whole thing practically quivers with joy and energy - how can you not keep from going under when this exists? Undeniably handclappable. And the guitar solo is so gleeful in its geometry. Like spitting at the world and loving it.
-- sundar subramanian (sundar_subramanian200...), July 21st, 2003.

Here's a song that wishes so bad it was catchy. It tries, and tries, almost saying aloud "Please, get me stuck in your head, c'mon." It's not of course. It's like pop-punk minus anything that makes pop-punk enjoyable. It lacks the super fast crunchy guitar chords; the vocals lack any attitude whatsoever, be it fake or otherwise, and also, the video was terrible. Every place that Fat Lip succeeded, In Too Deep failed.

6) Evanescence - "Bring Me to Life": see 2) but done all gothy with a female voice. Her loud can't-sing wail just soars over the ice fields and twisting climbs of the track's so-bright-it-hurts production.
-- sundar subramanian (sundar_subramanian200...), July 21st, 2003.

Basically Linkin Park sung by any karaoke-dive ever. So yeah, they somehow managed to be shittier then Linkin Park. Also, when their "Special guest" who no-one's ever heard of, starts going, "Wake me up! I can't get up! Savvveee meee" it's positively hilarious. I do give them credit for beating Weird Al to the punch on the nu-metal parody.

8) Christina Aguilera - "Fighter": The boldest, strongest voice on the contemporary radio landscape wastes no time here, digging her claws in right away and not releasing until she's shaken you good. Riveting on SNL.
-- sundar subramanian (sundar_subramanian200...), July 21st, 2003.

I'm so tired of hearing about Christina having the strongest voice. The only reason anybody thinks that is because her songs are 3 minutes of vocal masturbation, where she over-sings terribly, going up and dow up and down, (as her hand follows in unison), ruining just about any song she's been given. I'm sure we'd think Ms. Spears had the most powerful voice, if she decided to totally demolish the hook to every single one of her songs with stupid showboating in the same manner as Christina. The SNL performance was shite, to boot.

11) White Stripes - "Seven Nation Army": Hey, even underproduced virtue-of-simplicity nonsense can come together with a great riff once in a while. God knows I wouldn't sit through a whole album by these buffoons but this is really flawless, minimizing dumbass quirkiness and sonic thinness for 3 minutes of a snaky tune and *that riff*. He might not be Ian Gillan but at least he can come up with better than a Stephen Malkmus retard yelp. Matching outfits, la-di-fucking-da. Call me when you figure out shampoo.
-- sundar subramanian (sundar_subramanian200...), July 21st, 2003.

How is this at all under-produced? In fact, on almost every single White Stripes track, it's odd, guitars sounds like... guitars. And drums sound like... well drums. It's all relative. The Stripes only get considered under-produced, because they don't bother to over-produce. Also, remember how you included this entry for the soul purpose of insulting them? I do.

I totally disagree that Aguilera over-sings the song or ruins the hook. Everything she does vocally in that song seems to me to make perfect sense in terms of emphasizing words or melodic bits or emotional moments and in terms of building anticipation towards the chorus. It's not subtle but neither is rock music. Britney Spears did not have as powerful a voice, whatever she did melodically, but I have come to appreciate the robotic timbre of its production.

You honestly don't remember "One thing/I don't know why/It doesn't even matter how hard you try"? And "Fat Lip" over "In Too Deep"? Mental.

Sundar is super-OTM about "In The End." Depeche Mode + Alice Cooper + Vanilla Ice = classic, classic, classic. Plus it's the only whiny song in pop today that claims to be the last one you'll ever hear from them. GOD BLESS.

Maybe it's the video that gives it this context, but part of what I love about the Alien Ant Farm version is that it's not about a smooth criminal at all! It's a celebration of the giddy pop absurdity that is Michael Jackson! It's a subtler version of "Do You Remember Rock And Roll Radio?"!

34) The Locust - At 16 minutes, these 20 'songs' come shorter than some EPs so I'm counting it. You won't remember individual tracks but it's a shrill buzzing mass of rocksound that pummels, jerks, and collapses with velocity and precision.

this is a real tear-jerker. i saw it on mtv at home one night, and i liked it a lot. but when i heard it while drunk, it took on a whole new dimension. especially the part in the video where his girlfriend breaks up with him, and tosses him the sweater as a goodbye gesture. i go all misty-eyed whenever i see that. cliched, but i cannot help but be moved.

great tune, too. ash look silly when they write songs like this these days because, hey, you're not 18 any more fellas! the AAR lead singer has a fantastic set of cheekbones too: how can they possibly fail?

And you don't really say anything about why I should be excited about "guitars that sound like guitars" and "drums that sound like drums". Or why one particular way of treating and distorting the electrically amplified guitar timbre is more inherently natural or valuable. What about this old-school tube amp crunch is more interesting than Sum 41's cut-up chorusing or Avril's panned layered organ-like hook-bits? And how is this sound, which seems designed to emulate 30-year-old 'classics', less 'generic' than Linkin Park's?

BTW every criticism you make of Sum 41 amounts to that they are doing something different from very narrow pop-punk cliches (fast super-crunchy power chords, vocal 'attitude' - no matter how fake!).

(You're on, Anthony, so long as this stretch doesn't scare you off.)

39) Rocket's Red Glare - Die!Venom 7" : Some nicely twisting and winding intricate dissonance, some righteous screaming. Part of me still holds on to emo and occasionally I find something to justify it.

46) Robert Plant - "Song to the Siren": So this isn't remotely hard, and not as great as "Skip's Song", but it's still pretty fine and his is the voice on the records that started all this so I wouldn't be dismissing it so fast. People often comment on how Dionysian or primal he was, or how macho or how effeminate or how showboaty, overblown, or ridiculous. But rarely on how unmistakeably British his voice sounds - this has as much as anything to do with how bizarre Zeppelin's blues translations come off and I suspect Anglophilia plays no small part in the fascination they retain for us on this side of the Atlantic - with certain conventional associations of regal, or at least princely gentility and romance -> it's no small part of why all that medieval prog stuff made sense, as much as it could, for this band. They really did sound more reserved in a way than so many of their contemporaries. Here, he lets it whisper and rasp towards the sea - it's like he doesn't expect the siren to even come to answer his desperate pleas but he's somehow satisfied anyway. Like maybe a prince could be.

Tool and Rush are scary but hey, my picks probably are too.

48)The Used "Taste Of Ink" The most intense Dawson's Creek teen-love shit ever. I like that he promises to take you there if you're alive and care. That person you're pledging eternal devotion to should at least have to acknowlege your existence. This song (which first suckerpunched me at a mall record store) is the blueprint for those professionals who will rip off the Saddle Creek aesthetic just as (in the words of Charles Aaron) "scrunge" artitsts looted Sub Pop for a modicum of zeitgeist.

I agree that Christina normally ruins her songs by 'over-singing' (which appears to be a more polite way of saying that she bellows her lyrics out with the subtlety of a hippopotamus), but on 'Fighter' (and for that matter 'Dirrty') it actually works perfectly
, because the song itself - from the melodramatic subject matter to the concept video to the instrumentation - is so ridiculously OTT.

Damn, someone's done tATu... Bonnie and Bonnie '03, genius. So.

51) Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Date With The Night

It's the song where the YYYs stopped being an amusing, if kick-ass, garage rock novelty and turned into a genuinely stupendous band. The riff is ferocious and pummelling, the voice is possessed by all the spirits of a great night out, and the 'I'll set it off' bit is the aural equivalent of sexual chemistry with complete strangers.

A relentless tour de force of ingenuity and sheer brute force, with many a melodic trick up its sleeve, inclusing but not limited to the bass-and-glockenspiel break and the thunderous chorus. Bonus points for the rapid-fire surreal lyrics, if you can make them out ("his head was a faucet leaking love, laughter and lies / all his secret wishes, all his world famous sighs").

Thank you Anthony! I wanted to do that one, but couldn't come up with a sufficiently persuasive defense.

Wonderful thread indeed!

So, resErection. Home drunk after pub quiz. Telly on, promise of FtW video playing pretty soon, due to SMS votes. Hell, I even register a couple to be sure. On it comes. Classy stringy thingies, no overdoing anything. Sceptical until first chorus, as Fuck the World may be a phrase somewhat desperate-punk-by numbers (one appreciates the nod to "Bad Mongo", though) -- until Hank sings, full of back-to-life life-woman-and-man-love: "Hey now, hold on: I want to fuck he world / Tonight I'm feeling sexy, I want to fuck the world!" It's it.

54) Linkin Park - "Crawling" (remix): The most avant thing I've heard on modern rock radio.

STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! GZCZCCZGGZZGG STOMP! STOMP! STOMP! GZCZCCZGGZZGG

haha it was fun being an asshole. I love Pavement now!

"Roxanne" remixed by Josh Homme, who could totally do something other than find out how puny sounds can be while remaining badass. He just doesn't want to.

a 2nd runner up for me would be the flaming lips cover of 7 nation army with the lyrics to 'moving to florida' lyrics in it. totally fuckin right!

Because HTTT wasn't a quarter as sexy as Thom Yorke probably wanted it to be.

58/59. My Chemical Romance - "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)" / "Helena"

Because high school is only really over if you accept that it is.

John Cassavettes wishes he could weave a plotline like this.