20 songs we can’t believe turn 20 in 2024

Yeah, sure, Mr Brightside is the hit from The Killers debut album, Hot Fuss. It might even be the hit of the 21st century. But most bands would kill to have a song half as catchy as its follow-up single Somebody Told Me. “It’s not confidential / I’ve got potential” sang frontman Brandon Flowers — but few would have anticipated his meteoric ascension to the pantheon of rock and roll elites.

Gwen Stefani was always the stand-out star of ska rock band No Doubt — something the band’s video for megahit song Don’t Speak alludes to. It was a fated inevitability that Stefani would eventually go solo then, but that her debut singer would become an all-time pop banger, with new-wave hooks and Harajuku style, should have been no surprise, either.

The main riff may be the very definition of an ear-worm, but Franz Ferdinand’s Take Me Out feels like three separate songs mashed together, from its pensive opening to indie-disco-filling guitar line to the deeply grooving chorus. That it all hangs together so neatly is what makes it so special.

You want a hit record? You go to Swedish song-writing extraordinaire Karl Martin Sandberg, aka Max Martin. Only Paul McCartney sits above him as having had more number one songs on the Billboard Hot 100, with Martin listing Taylor Swift, the Backstreet Boys and Britney Spears hits among his oeuvres. Leaning into Clarkson’s rock attitude, Since U Been Gone went on to be the American Idol singer’s most enduring hit, letting her flex her impressive vocal range.

Often mistaken for a President Bush takedown, Helicopter actually sees Bloc Party’s Kele Okereke beating himself up. A shame for him, but great for us, as Helicopter’s breakneck riffage sounds like the beating heart of the garage rock revolution that’d dominate the alternative music scene of the early noughties. Random rock trivia alert: the killer riff here is actually a play on The Jam’s Set The House Ablaze — it’s so close to the ‘Modfathers’ track that Bloc Party should have maybe called it Vespa rather than Helicopter.

The mask of Mike Skinner’s cocksure UK garage braggadocio as The Streets slips in this heartfelt cut from A Grand Don’t Come for Free. About as real as a break-up song gets, Skinner painstakingly notes every sorry frown, long–distance stare and desperate plea of a relationship's last moments. We’ve all been there, and Skinner doesn’t leave a dry eye in the house.

Shaggy barnets and bushy beards, when Kings of Leon first hit the scene with 2003’s Youth and Young Manhood, it was easy to write them off as bandwagon chancers chasing the garage rock boom. But by the time album two, Aha Shake Heartbreak, turns up in 2004 with The Bucket as its delicate lead single, it became clear that young manhood had been shaken off in favour of a growing sophistication and sincerity that’d eventually make them global stars.

As if Motley Crue had been magicked into existence by Edgar Allan Poe, My Chemical Romance became the flag bearers for emo with the release of their second album Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge. Lead single I’m Not Okay (I Promise) was the anthem of depressed teens the world over — but with a why-so-serious self-aware, self-deprecating, self-help message that showed MCR had a glint in their eye that their sorry naval gazing peers couldn’t match.

Introducing a whole generation of skinny-jeaned, mascara-wearing, floppy-fringed scene kids to the delights of Kate Bush, The Futureheads’ round-singing vocal interplay and spikey guitars found a new sense of urgency and vulnerability in Bush’s not-quite-a-love song.

It felt painfully on the nose in the George Bush presidential era, but heck, we were really hoping we wouldn’t still be needing Green Day’s political call to arms 20 years later ahead of another tight American election. A take-no-prisoners machine-gun-speed dose of modern punk, it summoned the spittle of ‘77 with the stadium-filling polish of the noughties. Here’s hoping Americans remember its message when they go to the polls later this month.

Take Pharell Williams at the height of his Neptunes-era producing power, and Snoop Dogg when he was hungry for musical fame as much as the Just Eat dollar, and you get Drop It Like It’s Hot. Minimalist beat, tight vocal rhythm and icy-cool instrumentation, and you’ve got Snoop’s biggest solo hit to date.

It takes some song to make its way into the eternal halls of the ‘Wedding Playlist All-Timers’ but the Scissor Sisters’ Take Your Mama is a classic cut of camp sing-a-long that’s still exhilarating after the thousandth play. A beautifully fun-filled ode to the joys of coming out, its tale of gay nightlife with a doting mother painting the town red was inspired by singer Jake Shears relationship with his own mum.

Beastie Boys at their block-rocking best, Ch-Check It Out harks back to hip-hop’s block-party roots with its staccato horn stabs and break beats. The chorus hook may be a little close to the Beasties own 1992 hit So What’cha Want — but if you’re so legendary that your retro call backs see you referencing yourself, that puts the Beastie Boys in rare company.

To paraphrase Partridge, “The Walkmen — only the band The Strokes could have been”. They may not have enjoyed the commercial success of their New York peers in The Strokes, Yeah Yeah Yeahs or Interpol — but has that city produced a better song than The Walkmen’s The Rat? Shimmering guitars, lightspeed high-hats, a crazed fairground wurlitzer and Hamilton Leithauser’s razor-cut vocal. Alienation and isolation never sounded so good.

If Interpol’s critics were quick to call them Joy Division revivalists, second album Antics saw them elevated to true alt-rock royalty. The moodiness and mystery remains, as does singer Paul Bank’s trademark baritone, but C’mere showed the band playing with an elegiac danciness that would eventually become their ice-cold trademark.

The greatest debut single of all time? Neighbourhood #1 (Tunnels) from Arcade Fire has to be a contender. From a beautifully wistful opening, Tunnels builds into an epic sweep of rocking reminiscences and cathartic codas. That something this stadium-sized can be a band’s first effort? No wonder we’ve been enjoying everything they’ve done for the twenty years since.

Grime before it was even a thing, East London’s Dizzee Rascal’s one of the greatest MCs the UK’s ever produced. Fizzing with rage but punctuated with self belief and wit, Stand Up Tall has an immediacy that’s still hard to find in today’s UK scene. Back in 2004? It was so ahead of its time that it sounded like it was from another planet.

It may sound like it came out in 1964 rather than 2004, but rest assured, The Bees’ Chicken Payback is as noughties as they come. Paying homage to the house-band era jams of the swinging 60s, by evoking the past it takes on a timeless quality that somehow removes it entirely from the space-time continuum.

It was a literally live-or-die time for The Libertines circa 2004 — the dangerous-living lifestyle that had made their debut album Up The Bracket so raucously charming had descended into genuine diciness, with frontman Pete Doherty in and out of prison and struggling with drug addiction. That the band managed to put out as heartfelt a tune as Can’t Stand Me Now, a call-and-response duet between Doherty and co-lead Carl Barat chronicling the pair’s fractious on-the-wire relationship is as remarkable as it is unbelievable. It’d all come crashing down soon afterwards — but we’re glad to see everyone clean, sober and focussed once again on the music with the band reunited in 2024.

An inescapable club classic for 20 years, Daddy Yankee’s Gasolina has had us all mangling its Portuguese reggaeton rap for decades. Swaggering, sweltering and sleazy, it’s got a biting attack and heart-racing build that makes it infectious and undeniably danceable.