Best Song of the 2000s

The 2000s were the last decade with a monoculture and the first decade that broke one. Napster gutted the album, the iPod rebuilt the single, and TRL told everybody what to care about at half past three in the afternoon.

What came out of that mess was a chart where nothing matched. Garage rock revivalists shared space with crunk, a handful of Swedish producers quietly wrote the pop half, and a song in 11/4 became a wedding standard because almost nobody noticed the time signature. For a couple of years, ringtone sales outearned some of the songs they were cut from. It was a decade that could not decide whether music was a product or a file, and the confusion turned out to be good for it.

The bracket runs to fifty-two songs qualified. The rule is the song, not the artist and not the album it came from — a one-hit act with a perfect three minutes beats a great band's third-best single, and in a format like this that happens constantly. Picking is harder than remembering. Almost everyone can name a favourite song from the decade. Very few can defend it against the second one they hear.