It’s the final countdoooown! Here it is folks, the last installment of The 101 Best Songs of the Aughts.

Thanks for all your comments and feedback. They’ve inspired me to keep going with a project that has proven to be incredibly time consuming and incredibly rewarding.

(To see the entire countdown, go here.)

5. “Jesus Walks” by Kanye West (2004)

Is Kanye West an arrogant jerk who doesn’t know when to shut the hell up? Yes. Is he also an exhilarating artist? Yes. Yes. Triple yes.

Just listen to the sound of “Jesus Walks.” He pauses the beat to make strangled gasps. He weaves a choir and a church soloist together with slashes of strings. He underscores throbbing bass beats with ominous chants. The track is insistent and alive, and it’s matched by lyrics that are wounded, passionate, and funny (“Regis/Jesus”).

West’s antics are distracting, but for his personality to truly overshadow his music, he’d have to dress up like a Girl Scout and stage a food fight in Ethiopia.

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4. “Joey” by Sugarland (2008)

Jennifer Nettles has the perfect voice for “Joey’s” story. A woman mourns her boyfriend’s death in a car crash, wondering if she could’ve done something to stop it. She chastises herself for not taking his keys, for not going with him, for not being there as he lay dying. She chastises herself for falling in love. And then in the chorus, too choked with feeling to keep making sentences, she just says she’s sorry, sorry, sorry.

Nettles communicates that pain with evocative phrasing and paint-peeling wails. Bandmate Kristian Bush supports her with Springsteen-style rock. Meanwhile, the ghosts of every teen angel and leader of the pack give a thumbs up to Sugarland for keeping this particular songwriting tradition alive.

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3. “Be Mine!” by Robyn (2005)

Remember back at #21 when I said that “Handle Me” came from tough-girl Robyn? Well, “Be Mine!” comes from heartbreak Robyn.

If you don’t know this song, then I recommend listening to it twice in a row. It takes that long for the insistent rhythm and the chanted chorus to really sink it. And then they’ll stay in your brain for days.

Also… keep an ear open for the spoken-word bridge, where Robyn describes an inconsequential moment that breaks her heart into six million pieces. We’ve all been wounded by a single word or fleeting expression.The tiniest shards of glass go deepest under the skin.

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2. “No Children” by The Mountain Goats (2002)

A song with so much anger that it becomes funny and scary at the same time, “No Children” has been holding me by the lapel for years. Check the bottom of this essay for all the reasons I love it. And then go back to savoring those lyrics. And that raw, raw feeling.

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1. “Not Ready to Make Nice” by Dixie Chicks (2006)

“Not Ready to Make Nice” is a great song, a superlative song. It’s musically exciting, especially during the bridge, when Natalie Maines’ voice soars over all those drums and violins. As always with the Chicks, the harmonies and musicianship are impeccable, and the lyrics are astute.

But there are 100 other superlative songs on this list. “Not Ready to Make Nice” is number one because it’s not only a great work of art, but also a bold political act.

In the wake of the anti-Obama tea party protests, and people toting guns to Obama’s speeches, and parents refusing to let their children hear Obama speak, it is embarrassing to remember that so many people were outraged when Natalie Maines said she was ashamed that George W. Bush was from Texas.

Back in 2003, however, when the war was just starting and the neocon culture was at its peak, there was no way a country artist could dis Dubya. Eddie Vedder could impale a Dubya mask on a microphone stand, but that was different. That was a liberal rock star preaching to the choir. But country music—and especially county radio—was a bastion for songs about unquestioning patriotism. It was a haven for conservative ideology. (It still is.)

So when Maines made her statement in front of a London crowd, she threw boiling water in the face of the industry that supported her. She had the right to do it, of course, and country radio and country fans had the right to react how they wanted. You can’t publicly express yourself without accepting the possibility that somebody won’t like it. (Nobody had the right to threaten Maines’ life, but I’ll get to that in a second.)

It’s important to remember, though, that Maines’ statement was an accidental flashpoint. She didn’t know it would unleash a shitstorm. On the other hand, “Not Ready to Make Nice,” the lead single off the Chicks’ first album after the controversy, is a carefully planned statement.

And that statement is, “Screw you, you so-called fans and so-called Americans. I’m not going to apologize for having an opinion, and you should be dog-damned ashamed for threatening to kill me and teaching your children to hate me because I said something you didn’t want to hear.”

That’s an act of artistic bravery. The Chicks defined their principles, stood their ground, and refused to pretend they were fine. Instead of making nice with the country music world—a world that probably would have taken them back, since by the time the song was released, Faith Hill and Tim McGraw were openly chastising Bush over the Katrina debacle—instead of making nice with that world, they decided to call it on the carpet. They railed against the very industry that made the famous and made them rich, all so they could say what they thought was right.

Even classic country rebels like Waylon Jennings and George Jones never rebuked their community. They got their status because they rebelled against the parts of America that their base ostensibly hated. They rejected societies that seemed to look down on the blue collar and/or Southern fans who drive country music’s revenue.

By slamming New York City or fancypants rich people, the classic country rebels told their audience what they wanted to hear. They suggested that simply by being working class or Southern, their listeners were outlaws.

That’s rebellious in a way, but Haggard and Jones weren’t risking anything with their behavior. The Dixie Chicks, however, told their audience what they didn’t want to hear. Instead of flashing the “screw you” sign at New York, they flashed it at Tennessee.

They paid a steep professional price. Their last album, Taking the Long Way, was hardly a flop, but it sold significantly less than their previous records. It also never generated a hit on country radio. And when the band went on tour, they had to cancel Southern dates for lack of sales.

So again, the Chicks rejected the status quo of their community, and they paid a price. That’s rebellion.

My point here is not “the Chicks were right” and “country music was wrong.” It’s that most of the time, people don’t take a stand against the values of the groups that have accepted them, even if they disagree with those values. I would respect any artist who did that. I respect Cat Stevens, for instance, for going hardcore Islam, despite how it offended his liberal base.

Then again, because I agree with the Chicks, I’m especially taken with their actions. I find them inspiring because they stood up against behavior that offended me. When the world was watching, the used their art to take action.