When looking for the 10th song to round out my first collection of Quintessential Songs of the ’00s — by the way, I’m dubbing this playlist “The Rock Set” — I had a few different contenders, but settled on OK Go’s “Here It Goes Again” which typified the decade in that it became a hit after the band posted its unique video (a.k.a. “The Treadmill Video”) on YouTube.

The video became an internet sensation (even spawning this rendition from a group of industrious students at a high school talent show) and it doesn’t hurt that the song is catchy as hell, either.

According to the song’s wiki page, it took 17 takes to finally nail the video.

So that wraps up the first Quintessential Songs of the ’00s set. Here’s an overview:

1. The White Stripes: “Seven Nation Army”
2. Franz Ferdinand: “Take Me Out”
3. Modest Mouse: “Float On”
4. Jet: “Are You Gonna Be My Girl?”
5. Kings of Leon: “Use Somebody”
6. The Killers: “Mr. Brightside”
7. The Strokes: “Last Night”
8. Spoon: “The Way We Get By”
9. The Hives: “Hate to Say I Told You So”
10. OK Go: “Here I Go Again”

See all 10 posts here.

It was early 2002 and the “The” bands (The White Stripes, The Strokes, etc.) were taking the U.S. by storm. This track from The Hives was actually first released in late 2000 and re-released about a year and a half later.

From the song’s wiki page:

In March 2005, Q magazine placed it at number 54 in its list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. The chord structure bears a strong similarity to The Kinks “All Day and All of the Night”. It also lists at 244 on Pitchfork Media’s Top 500 songs of the 2000s.

The song peaked at #86 on the Hot 100 and #6 on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart, and is known for its opening riff.

More Quintessential Songs of the ’00s.

This is the first track on my Quintessential Songs playlist that doesn’t have its own wiki page or a songfacts page. Sigh.

Luckily, I interviewed Britt Daniel a while back and he had this to say about the track:

That one came really fast and it was another one of those that was sort of like, “I’ll just throw down and idea. It probably isn’t going to work.” But once I sang that chorus the first time and got it on tape, I kind of knew it was going to be a good one.

According to Last.fm, this is easily the most played song in the Spoon catalog and it’s certainly one of the catchiest. In that interview, Daniel said it was one of the most “immediate” of the band’s songs. This Kill the Moonlight track put the band on my radar, and was prelude to the brilliance on display on their next album, Gimme Fiction.

More Quintessential Songs of the ’00s.

“Last Nite” was the Strokes’ biggest hit of the ’00s, as it hit #5 on Billboard’s Modern Rock chart and put the band on the map nationwide.

Does the opening riff seem familiar? From the song’s wiki page:

The guitar riff that begins the song is similar to the intro of Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers’ “American Girl”. In a 2006 interview with Rolling Stone, Tom Petty said “The Strokes took ‘American Girl’ [for their song “Last Nite”], and I saw an interview with them where they actually admitted it. That made me laugh out loud. I was like, ‘OK, good for you.’ It doesn’t bother me.”

That’s pretty cool.

From the song’s Songfacts page:

British music magazine NME placed Is This It in first place in their list of the albums of the decade. Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas said of the award: “It’s totally crazy! I don’t know what that means. Does it mean it’s a good musical decade or a bad musical decade? I don’t know, I’m such a bad judge of my own stuff. But I thought it was great when I heard. Recording the album was fun, it was stressing, it was exciting. I think if I was to know then that I’d be having this conversation now I couldn’t be more pleased. I’m restraining myself now, I don’t want to get carried away, but I’m pretty damn psyched with myself. Mental high five!”

It’s funny that this was not the first single released off of Is This It, but I guess “Hard to Explain” is pretty damn catchy too.

More Quintessential Songs of the ’00s.

The heavily promoted “When We Were Young” actually hit #1 on Billboard’s alternative chart, but “Mr. Brightside” climbed to #10 on the Hot 100, which is an impressive feat these days for a rock song.

Here are a couple of interesting facts from the song’s wiki page:

The song was named “Song of the Decade” by UK radio stations Absolute Radio and XFM, and in April 2010 Last.fm revealed that it was the most listened to track since the launch of the online music service, with over 7.66 million plays scrobbled

Not only do the Killers own the most-played song on Last.fm, but probably have the lyric of the ’00s as well, in another song (“All These Things I’ve Done”) — I’ve got soul / but I’m not a soldier.

Per the Songfacts page:

Killers guitarist Dave Keuning wrote this about lead signer Brandon Flowers’ ex-girlfriend who cheated on him. Flowers recalled to Q magazine March 2009 how he discovered her with another man at the Crown and Anchor pub in his hometown of Las Vegas: “I was asleep and I knew something was wrong. I have these instincts. I went to the Crown and Anchor and my girlfriend was there with another guy.” Flowers added that the song was “born” at the Crown and Anchor.

More Quintessential Songs of the ’00s.