72 STORIES · TAGGED
JAY-Z · 2003
NEW JERSEY TURNPIKE, USA
The most quoted punchline in Jay-Z's catalogue is not about a woman at all, and the verse underneath it is such a precise account of a roads…
JANET JACKSON · 2001
Beneath its glittering disco shimmer, "All for You" is the sound of Janet Jackson stepping out of a painful divorce and into her own pleasur…
GREEN DAY · 2004
OAKLAND, CALIFORNIA, USA
"American Idiot" is not an attack on America — it's an attack on television. Billie Joe Armstrong reportedly wrote it in a flash of irritati…
LADY GAGA · 2009
A glittering, gothic dance-pop manifesto disguised as a love song, "Bad Romance" arrived at the end of the 2000s as both the culmination of …
U2 · 2000
DUBLIN, IRELAND
The most euphoric U2 song of the century is sung by a man who has lost everything — the joy is not in spite of the wreckage but because of i…
THE DANDY WARHOLS · 2000
PORTLAND, OREGON, USA
It sounds like a love song about two cool people finding each other, but "Bohemian Like You" is a deadpan joke at the expense of both of the…
GREEN DAY · 2004
A mid-tempo dirge that became the unofficial soundtrack to post-9/11 American adolescence, Green Day's "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" turned p…
KYLIE MINOGUE · 2001
Beneath the white hooded jumpsuit and the hypnotic la-la-la hook, "Can't Get You Out of My Head" is a song about obsession as a kind of beau…
SYSTEM OF A DOWN · 2001
Behind the frantic riffs and the takeaway-menu title is a song originally called "Suicide", a meditation on how we judge the way people die …
COLDPLAY · 2002
LIVERPOOL, UK
"Clocks" is not a love song about running out of time so much as a panic attack set to a piano arpeggio, written in roughly a quarter of an …
LINKIN PARK · 2000
The song the internet turned into its loudest joke about teenage angst is actually Chester Bennington's clear-eyed account of addiction and …
GNARLS BARKLEY · 2006
"Crazy" sounds like a breezy soul strut, but it is really a song about the moment you realise that the "sane" world might be the one that ha…
BEYONCÉ · 2003
The most confident-sounding record of the decade began as a throwaway remark about a bad outfit and worse hair, and it is not a seduction an…
JAY-Z FT. ALICIA KEYS · 2009
NEW YORK CITY, USA
The ultimate New York anthem was born out of homesickness in London, built on a beat by a British producer, and it is as much a warning abou…
JAY-Z FT. ALICIA KEYS · 2009
NEW YORK CITY, USA
The definitive New York anthem of the twenty-first century was not written in New York. It was written by two homesick Brooklyn songwriters …
THE WHITE STRIPES · 2001
It sounds like pure sugar-rush infatuation, but "Fell in Love with a Girl" is really a one-minute-fifty confession of wanting someone who al…
COLDPLAY · 2005
A slow-building hymn for the moment after collapse, "Fix You" arrived in 2005 as the emotional centerpiece of Coldplay's third album, writte…
MODEST MOUSE · 2004
OXFORD, MISSISSIPPI, USA
The most optimistic indie-rock hit of the 2000s was written by a man who did not feel optimistic at all. Isaac Brock has described "Float On…
BEYONCÉ · 2008
"Halo" is not really a love song about being adored — it is a song about surrendering, written by two men for somebody else entirely, and re…
THE STROKES · 2001
NEW YORK CITY, USA
The song that made The Strokes famous is about the humiliation of not being able to say what you mean, and it was built to sound like a drum…
PLAIN WHITE T'S · 2006
NEW YORK CITY, USA
It is a real love letter to a real woman the singer barely knew — a track-and-field runner named Delilah DiCrescenzo — written about a long-…
OUTKAST · 2003
"Hey Ya!" sounds like the happiest party song of the century, but at its heart it is a blunt, almost bleak look at a relationship held toget…
SHAKIRA FT. WYCLEF JEAN · 2006
BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA
Behind the party-anthem shine, "Hips Don't Lie" is a song about honesty: the idea that the body tells the truth when words fail. It is also …
SHAKIRA · 2006
BARRANQUILLA, COLOMBIA
The biggest global smash of Shakira's career was a song she reportedly did not want to record at all — a recycled instrumental, a borrowed s…
NICKELBACK · 2001
The biggest rock radio hit of the early 2000s isn't a love song at all. It's a brutally honest confession from Chad Kroeger, written after a…
THE KILLERS · 2008
A glittering, synth-soaked existential crisis disguised as a stadium anthem, "Human" asks one of pop music's most ridiculed and most endurin…
JOHNNY CASH · 2002
A 69-year-old Johnny Cash, his body failing and his wife of 35 years months from death, recorded a cover of a Nine Inch Nails industrial dir…
ARCTIC MONKEYS · 2005
SHEFFIELD, UK
The song that made Arctic Monkeys the biggest band in Britain is built on a chat-up line so bad it's almost unusable — and that's the joke. …
ARCTIC MONKEYS · 2005
SHEFFIELD, UK
It sounds like a lust-struck dance anthem, but it is really a nervous, funny, self-mocking portrait of a teenage lad who can't take his eyes…
KATY PERRY · 2008
"I Kissed a Girl" is less a coming-out anthem than a pastor's daughter staging her own escape from a sheltered upbringing, a calculated, pla…
50 CENT · 2003
The most famous birthday song of the 21st century was never meant for 50 Cent at all, and the man singing it had been declared commercially …
LINKIN PARK · 2001
The song the world now plays at graduations, in gyms and over sporting montages is, read closely, a song about futility — about pouring ever…
BEYONCÉ · 2006
A breakup anthem disguised as a logistical instruction manual, "Irreplaceable" turned the choreography of removing an unfaithful partner fro…
BON JOVI · 2000
A defibrillator paddle pressed against the chest of a band the world had nearly written off, "It's My Life" was Bon Jovi's brazen leap from …
LADY GAGA · 2008
The most relentlessly joyful pop single of its decade is actually a first-person account of being too drunk to stand up, written in roughly …
SHAKIRA FT. ALEJANDRO SANZ · 2005
Behind the sweaty, hip-swinging groove, "La Tortura" is a break-up argument set to a dance beat: a man begs forgiveness for betrayal, and a …
THE STROKES · 2001
NEW YORK CITY, USA
The song that relaunched guitar rock in the 2000s is built on a groove the band cheerfully admitted lifting from Tom Petty, and its lyric is…
DOLLY PARTON · 2001
It sounds like a 200-year-old mountain ballad carried over from Britain and Ireland, but Dolly Parton wrote it herself — a deliberate act of…
EMINEM · 2002
DETROIT, USA
The most-used motivational anthem in sport is actually a song about panic — a minute-by-minute anatomy of stage fright and the fear of going…
TAYLOR SWIFT · 2008
A teenage country singer rewrites Shakespeare with a happy ending, accidentally inventing the template for modern pop crossover in the proce…
THE KILLERS · 2003
LAS VEGAS, USA
Britain's longest-charting song of all time is a real-time panic attack about catching a girlfriend with another man in a British-themed pub…
OUTKAST · 2000
"Ms. Jackson" is not a breakup song aimed at an ex. It is an apology addressed to her mother, written by André 3000 after his split from Ery…
QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE · 2002
VAN NUYS, LOS ANGELES, USA
The biggest radio hit of Queens of the Stone Age's career sits inside an album built to mock radio, and its title is not a riddle to be solv…
LINKIN PARK · 2003
NORTH HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, USA
The world files "Numb" as the ultimate teenager-versus-parent anthem, but it was written by six men in their twenties being crushed by the e…
DAFT PUNK · 2000
PARIS, FRANCE
The happiest-sounding dance record of the century is secretly a song about endings — a plea shouted at a DJ as the lights come up — and the …
BRITNEY SPEARS · 2000
A red latex catsuit, a Mars expedition, and a recovered necklace from the bottom of the ocean: in the spring of 2000, Britney Spears release…
LADY GAGA · 2008
A synth-pop juggernaut disguised as a casino anthem, "Poker Face" launched Stefani Germanotta into global stardom by smuggling queer bisexua…
ARCADE FIRE · 2004
MONTREAL, CANADA
The biggest singalong on an album called Funeral is not a political protest song at all. It starts with the smallest lie in the world, the o…
THE STROKES · 2003
NEW YORK CITY, USA
"Reptilia" sounds like a swaggering rock song about a doomed relationship, but it reads much more convincingly as a cold-eyed confrontation …
THE WHITE STRIPES · 2003
The riff sung in stadiums from Milan to Glastonbury started as a soundcheck doodle and a misheard childhood phrase, and the song itself is a…
THE WHITE STRIPES · 2003
LONDON, UK
The most-chanted riff in world football is not a bass line, was not written for stadiums, and was reportedly being saved for a James Bond th…
BEYONCÉ · 2008
A clipped, hand-clap-driven anthem that arrived disguised as a wedding-reception novelty and turned out to be one of the defining pop record…
THE KILLERS · 2004
LAS VEGAS, USA
A neon-lit declaration of identity confusion delivered with dance-punk urgency, "Somebody Told Me" became the Killers' breakout single and a…
LINKIN PARK · 2003
The song that millions of teenagers heard as a cry about not fitting in was, by Mike Shinoda's own account, born from something far more mun…
EMINEM · 2000
"Stan" is a four-letter correspondence in which a fan writes himself into a murder-suicide and his hero writes back too late — and it is sec…
OASIS · 2002
A weary, almost hymnal ballad released into a world still dazed by the events of the previous September, "Stop Crying Your Heart Out" found …
FRANZ FERDINAND · 2004
"Take Me Out" sounds like a dancefloor anthem about a night on the town, but it is really a tense little standoff between two people who bot…
EMINEM · 2000
The most notorious novelty-sounding hit of the year 2000 was actually a late, label-ordered patch job — and underneath the jokes it argues s…
COLDPLAY · 2002
LIVERPOOL, UK
Coldplay's most famous apology was found, not written: Chris Martin stumbled on an out-of-tune upright piano in a Liverpool studio and had t…
BRITNEY SPEARS · 2003
A three-and-a-half-minute spy-movie fever dream built around a surf-guitar sample from Bollywood, "Toxic" arrived in early 2004 as the secon…
SYSTEM OF A DOWN · 2001
"Toxicity" is not a song about drugs or a bad relationship. It is a portrait of a city, and of modern life generally, so crowded, wired and …
KINGS OF LEON · 2008
"Use Somebody" sounds like a stadium love song, but it started as a lonely man staring out of a tour bus window at strangers' lit-up lives, …
U2 · 2004
The biggest rock riff of U2's late career started life as a protest song about an imprisoned Native American activist, and ended up as a swe…
COLDPLAY · 2008
BARCELONA, SPAIN
The most euphoric-sounding song of 2008 is actually a confession from a toppled king on the morning after his fall, and its title was lifted…
GREEN DAY · 2004
It is not an anti-war song and it has nothing to do with 11 September — the title is reportedly a sentence a grieving ten-year-old said thro…
ARCADE FIRE · 2004
MONTREAL, CANADA
The biggest communal singalong of the 2000s is not a celebration at all — it is a warning written by a young man surrounded by funerals, tel…
LINKIN PARK · 2007
It sounds like a stadium anthem about regret, but "What I've Done" is really the sound of a band firing its own formula: no rapping, no nu-m…
THE KILLERS · 2006
LAS VEGAS, USA
It sounds like the most triumphant song of 2006, but it is actually a quiet horror story about settling — a woman looking at the man she has…
EMINEM · 2002
The biggest comeback single of the 2000s is not really a boast about being the best rapper alive — it is an argument that popular culture ne…
EVERCLEAR · 2000
Behind its bright, chiming guitars and singalong chorus, "Wonderful" is a child's furious, frightened protest against his parents' divorce, …
COLDPLAY · 2000
A four-piece band of unassuming London students stumbled into the new millennium with a song that sounded like sunrise filtered through a be…
MICHAEL JACKSON · 2001
After a decade of songs about scheming women, tabloid persecution and the weight of being the most famous man alive, Michael Jackson's final…