Welcome to my countdown of the 101 Best Songs of the Aughts!

I can’t wait to hear your reactions. Which choices are perfect? Which ones are wrong-wrong-wrong? Which classics should’ve made the cut?

(To find the entire countdown, just go here.)

And now, let the games begin!

101. “Returning to the Fold” by The Thermals (2006)

Of all the garage rock bands to emerge in the naughty aughties, The Thermals are creating the soundtrack for the dance party in your bedroom. “Returning to the Fold” is their kick-assiest achievement, fueled by a vicious guitar hook and Hutch Harris’ soaring vocals. Crucially, the song’s messy edges also make it feel recklessly alive… like the band couldn’t practice too much because it had to start jamming right this very minute.

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100. “Stand Up” by Ludacris (featuring Shawnna) (2003)

Oh Luda, you create havoc in my soul. On one hand, you drop some of the most misogynistic rhymes I’ve ever heard, but on the other, you undercut your own hatefulness by mocking the notion of hip-hop masculinity. Every time you appear in a video sporting inflatable biceps, I feel like you’re slyly commenting on the very tropes you embody. And then I hear a song like “Stand Up,” with it’s tooth-rattling bass and unstoppable chorus, and my booty drops so fast that I forget to think at all. (You’ll be happy to know, Luda, that you get bonus points for talking about the midget hanging off of your necklace. It’s so wrong it’s right.)

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99. “These Words (I Love You, I Love You)” by Natasha Bedingfield (2005)

Natasha Bedingfield’s breakthrough single in the United States, “These Words” floats on drum loops, clever lyrics, and a killer piano hook, which the first verse helpfully explains is built from “the combination D-E-F.” Songs about writing songs can be pretentious, but Bedingfield makes the concept winning by admitting that she can’t actually write the perfect love song, so she’ll settle for this catchy little number instead.

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98. “What I Cannot Change” by LeAnn Rimes (2007)

Remember in the nineties when everyone was irritated that a middle schooler like LeAnn Rimes was singing Patsy Cline castoffs and poppy numbers about drinking pink champagne? Many felt she was a show pony with bangs, but that with age and experience, she might actually become a compelling performer.

And then she did. In 2007 rimes released Family, an album that demonstrates her sudden transformation into a master of both pop and alt-country sounds. I know, right? It’s such a gratifying story. Rimes could’ve been swallowed forever by the slick pop machine—or churned out desperate-sounding singles that hollowly asserted her “roots,” a la Faith Hill—but instead she forged her own path.

Family‘s best song is “What I Cannot Change,” a restrained and beautiful ballad about accepting yourself and your family as they are. Only a singer of real maturity could deliver it the way Rimes does.

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97. “July, July!” by The Decemberists (2002)

That Colin Meloy… he’s such a yarn-spinner! The songs he writes for his band The Decemberists always create unusual characters, but on “July, July!”, there’s even more to love. We get a weird rural couple and a rollicking beat.

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96. “Only This Moment” by Röyksopp (2005)

So I usually have this thing about producer-driven electronica, and that thing is…  I  hate it. Like, I can’t stand how cold and repetitive it is, and no matter how many times it tells me to be harder and faster and better and stronger, I just don’t care.

On “Only This Moment,” however, Norwegian duo Röyksopp leavens its bleeps and bloops with human voices and a comforting structure. The haunting chorus is especially grand: It makes me want to chill out and shake it at the same time.

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95. “It Can’t Come Quickly Enough” by Scissor Sisters

Scissor Sisters are best known for their retro dance anthems like “Take Your Mama” and “I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’,” but for me, you can’t top this ballad, which sounds like the best lighter-raiser that Duran Duran never recorded.

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94. “Independent Women Part I” by Destiny’s Child (2000)

I’m sorry… Did you say you could resist this jam? Because I don’t like liars in my house. If you have hips, then I defy them to stay still while this ladypower anthem melts your speakers.

I love how earnest this song is, despite its blatant product placement for the first Charlie’s Angels movie. Beyonce’s solemn delivery pushes past the “Cam’ron D.” bullshit  and lets us cheer the notion of women paying their own bills. Therefore, we can laugh and feel empowered at the same time. Thanks, B!

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93. “I Need You” by Tim McGraw with Faith Hill (2007)

In the grand tradition of “Leather and Lace” and “Sometimes Love Just Ain’t Enough,” this duet celebrates hard-asses in love. Thanks to the whiskey-and-heroin lyrics, Tim McGraw’s gruff drawl, and Faith Hill’s quietly emotional delivery, you get the impression that the singers love each other because they’ve survived some seriously messed up stuff. Personally, I prefer this track to that other country-pop duet—Kid Rock and Sheryl Crow’s “Picture”—because McGraw and Hill are better singers.

Meanwhile, I mentioned earlier that I was turned off by Hill’s transparent cred-boosting on the song “Mississippi Girl” (which is the Nashville equivalent of  “Jenny From the Block”), but here, she doesn’t make a big show of casting off her pop diva trappings. She just cuts the crap and starts singing.

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92. “You’re All I Have” by Snow Patrol (2006)

“You’re All I Have” encapsulates the appeal of Snow Patrol’s brilliant album Eyes Open: On one hand, it’s a plaintive  ode to the girl who got away, but on the other, it’s a bouncy slice of power pop. Mopey yet fun, serious yet unpretentious… the song and its album are tiny treasures.  The band’s next release was a gloomy snooze, but at least they got it right in 2006.

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91. “S.E.X.” by Lyfe Jennings featuring LaLa Brown (2006)

It could have been disastrous: Gravel-throated R&B singer Lyfe Jennings tries to educate a seventeen year-old girl about the rough realities of her burgeoning sexuality (men are going to be dogs, parents are going to freak out), and then he enlists LaLa Brown to give a woman’s perspective on the issue. On paper, that sounds like those motivational speakers who come to high school assemblies, rapping about staying in school.

And yet… Lyfe’s lesson rules. The great hook and the frank lyrics are important, but Brown is the secret weapon. Check out the start of her guest verse, when she sings, “See, he’ll tell you all kind of things to get in your pants.” The word “pants” has so many syllables that it becomes its own sentence, plus she adds that crazy accent at the end, so that “pants” becomes “paints.” Now I know what to do when those fool men come around.

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90. Don’t Let Me Stop You” by Kelly Clarkson (2009)

Let me describe what I imagine when I hear Kelly Clarkson wail her way through this song about her emotionally unavailable boyfriend: I imagine that I am running down a busy city street, perhaps wearing a super-cool denim jacket, and that I am moving at normal speed while everyone around me is frozen. As I run, I’m singing the lyrics, and I occasionally touch people that I pass. When I touch them, they unfreeze and start running with me. Eventually, there’s an entire pack of us, racing to some kind of river, and when we get there, the power of this song’s guitar line actually lets us run over the water.

Oh, and during the power note in the bridge, all the glass breaks out of a skyscraper.

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89. “A Postcard to Nina” by Jens Lekman (2007)

How to describe the Swedish singer-songwriter Jens Lekman? His music and lyrics are aggressively idiosyncratic, yet he commits to them with such enthusiasm that they’re totally charming.

“A Postcard to Nina,” for instance, is a five minute story about a man (named Jens) who pretends to be a lesbian’s boyfriend so that she can fool her father into thinking she’s straight. Only then, the father and Jens become friends, and the father keeps e-mailing, and Jens feels so guilty that he puts an “Out of Offce” autoreply on his e-mail account. And this yarn gets spun over bells and chimes and occasional bursts of drums. And it’s all pretty awesome.

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88. “I’ll Miss You Till I Meet You” by Dar Williams (2005)

I still miss the Dar Williams of the nineties—the one who wrote funny songs like “The Christians and the Pagans” and “The Pointless, Yet Poignant Crisis of a Co-Ed,” but even as a Serious Balladeer, she makes beautiful music. This song, from My Better Self, sticks with me because it adds percussive urgency to wistful, articulate regret.

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87. “Sober” by Pink (2008)

It’s hard to remember that Pink started her career as a knock-off R&B diva. She’s become such a convincing rock star that it seems like she was ripped from Joan Jett’s thigh.  I’ve written extensively about why I like her music—and there’s more to come in this countdown—and I’ve also explained why I love the video for “Sober.” Suffice it to say, then, that this song destroys my face.

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86. “Heimdalsgate Like a Promethean Curse” by Of Montreal (2007)

Of Montreal is an indie group that’s mostly the work of singer-songwriter-performance artist-love guru Kevin Barnes. His music is low-fi, structurally challenging, and surprisingly accessible, and I know from experience that it makes cleaning your apartment more fun. I recommend digging through the entire Of Montreal catalog, but you should start with “Heimdalsgate…”, a zippy number about vicious mood swings.

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85. “Black Hose & the Cherry Tree” by KT Tunstall (2005)

Don’t laugh, but I like this song because when Katherine McPhee sang it on American Idol, it made me like her. Anything that can make Fakey McPhakerson seem genuinely cool has got to get some love. (Also? Tunstall’s version kicks ass.)

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84. “Ain’t No Other Man” by Christina Aguilera (2005)

From the moment she unleashes that incredible first note, Christina Aguilera owns this song. Producers D.J. Premier and Charles Roane support her vocals with a track that simultaneously sounds like big band music and contemporary dance-pop. Everything else on the Back to Basics album tries to recreate that formula, but nothing else does it as well.

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83. “How Shall I See You Through My Tears” from the Camp soundtrack (2003)

The clip I’m embedding is not the original version—it’s here, in stankly unembeddable form—but this cover is pretty damn good. It certainly proves that Camp, a cute movie about musical theatre dorks, produced one of the best pop-gospel numbers of the decade.

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82. “Drive (For Daddy Gene)” by Alan Jackson (2002)

Let me tell you something about myself: When taciturn men express their feelings, I always choke up. Like, if you want to sell me a greeting card, then show me a father opening a “Get Well Soon” card from his son in the Navy, then cut to the scene where he calls his kid and says how much better he feels. After I stop crying, I will buy stock in your company.

Now that you know this about me, I’m sure you realize that I’m a sucker for country songs about who cry. There are a lot of them.

Alan Jackson’s paternal ode is my all-time favorite for two reasons. The first is the lyric, which creates such vivid images of a man teaching his son to drive—and of the son passing the lesson to his daughters—that I can conjure the entire scene in my head.

The other key element is Jackson’s vocal. He hits the high notes with this emotional uncertainty that makes it sound like he’s going to cry. (Listen when he sings “king of the ocean” at the end of the first chorus.) It’s like he’s so overwhelmed by the sadness and joy of remembering his dad that he almost can’t go on.

Wait… who’s peeling onions? My eyes are totally watering.

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81. “Oh My Sweet Carolina” by Ryan Adams (2000)

Ryan Adams has released about 6,000 songs in the last ten years, and most of them are good. Few of them, however, can top this devastating ballad. Simple and plaintive and built on a gorgeous melody, it just feels honest, which is not always true of the hard rock posture Adam strikes on later records.

Plus, the lyrical themes of homesickness and loneliness are even more powerful because Adams and guest vocalist Emmylou Harris sound so damned sad. When their voices mingle, I swear there’s a tangible ache.