Mr. Brightside
2004 · From Hot Fuss
Flowers wrote it after a bad night at a Vegas bar; Britain has kept it charting past 500 weeks.
★ 7.6
The Songs canon
Sourced and sung.
Every song chosen by hand, with the recording to play it.
Browse all 2,393 songs or filter by genre, subject, artist, and year.
Browse all 2,393 songs or filter by genre, subject, artist, and year.
Midnight City
2011
Gonzalez built that shrieking hook from his own distorted voice, then let James King's saxophone close the record.
★ 7.5
Do I Wanna Know?
2013 · From AM
A stomping riff, a desert studio in Joshua Tree, and the band's first single to reach the Billboard Hot 100.
★ 7.5
Take Me Out
2004 · From Franz Ferdinand
Two songs welded together, the tempo dropping a minute in, and a sniper film lending Kapranos his double-edged title.
★ 7.5
Wake UpArcade Fire
Wake Up
2005 · From Funeral
A wordless chorus half of indie rock then copied, and Bowie sang it onstage with the band in 2005.
★ 7.4
Float On
2004
Brock wrote it in the final days of tracking, fed up with darkness, and built indie rock's warmest chorus.
★ 7.3
Maps
2004 · From Fever to Tell
Zinner's looped riff, twenty minutes of writing from Karen O, and a video where the tears are real.
★ 7.3
Jesus, Etc.
2002 · From Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Reprise rejected the album, Wilco streamed it free, and a sister Warner label put out these swooning strings instead.
★ 7.2
In the Aeroplace Over the Sea
1998 · From In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Julian Koster's singing saw over double-tracked acoustics, cut in Denver with Robert Schneider, and a chorus that faces death smiling.
★ 6.9
I Am Trying to Break Your Heart
2002 · From Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
O'Rourke mixed this one song as an audition, won the whole album, and Wilco made it the opening track.
★ 6.9
Do You Realize?
2002 · From Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Coyne wrote it during Drozd's recovery, a plain statement about mortality that Oklahoma voted its official state rock song.
★ 6.8
New Slang
2001 · From Oh, Inverted World
Sub Pop pressed it as a one-off single in 2001; three years later Garden State made it a generational password.
★ 6.8
Holland, 1945
1998 · From In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Every instrument distorted at Schneider's Denver studio, and Mangum turns an elegy for Anne Frank into pure forward momentum.
★ 6.8
Cut Your Hair
1994 · From Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain
Malkmus turned a fake band advert into a hook, and Pavement's snipe at image became their biggest hit.
★ 6.8
Reptilia
2004 · From Room on Fire
Nigel Godrich's sessions got scrapped, Gordon Raphael came back, and the descending twin-guitar riff turned everything into a sprint.
★ 6.8
Bloodbuzz Ohio
2010 · From High Violet
Cut in Aaron Dessner's Brooklyn garage, a horn part stripped out late, leaving that rolling drum pattern and Berninger's baritone.
★ 6.4
Somebody Told Me
2004 · From Hot Fuss
Flowers called it the story of trying to meet someone in a club; Keuning's hook does the flirting.
★ 6.3
Two Weeks (Grizzly Bears)
2009
Chris Bear started the piano line on a Cape Cod weekend; Victoria Legrand's stacked harmonies make the rest glow.
★ 6.3
Mykonos
2008 · From Sun Giant
Pecknold rebuilt a piano soul demo with Phil Ek at Bear Creek, and the harmonies own the second half.
★ 6.2
1901
2009 · From Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
A fantasy of Belle Epoque Paris, handed out free online, that then spent thirty-one weeks climbing to alternative number one.
★ 6.2
Step
2014 · From Modern Vampires of the City
Rostam's harpsichord reharmonizes a melody that traveled from Bread through Grover Washington Jr. to Souls of Mischief, then here.
★ 6.2
Hard to Explain
2001 · From Is This It
Four feet of air between hi-hat and snare mic, and a drum machine sketch reborn as live New York rock.
★ 6.2
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Pt. 1
2002 · From Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
Coyne named his karate warrior after Boredoms drummer Yoshimi P-We, then cast the heroine's disease as pink robots.
★ 6.1
I Turn My Camera On
2005 · From Gimme Fiction
Daniel wrote it late for Gimme Fiction, cut it first, and sang in a Prince falsetto over Eno's hi-hat.
★ 6.0
The King of Carrot Flowers, Part 1
1998 · From In the Aeroplane Over the Sea
Schneider got the fuzz from tube preamps and compression, not pedals, and Mangum sings childhood into two minutes flat.
★ 5.9
The Underdog
2007 · From Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Jon Brion produced this track and no other on the album, adding mariachi-style horns and handclaps to Britt Daniel's warning.
★ 5.9
Transatlanticism
2003 · From Transatlanticism
Gibbard watched goodbyes at Heathrow; the band used Weezer's Only in Dreams as the map for that closing climb.
★ 5.8
Evil
2004 · From Antics
Charlie White's video put an animatronic puppet through a real emergency room, six puppeteers digitally erased; fans named it Norman.
★ 5.8
The Suburbs
2010 · From The Suburbs
A rolling piano, Butler's boyhood in The Woodlands outside Houston, and an album he called a letter from the suburbs.
★ 5.8
Red Eyes
2014 · From Lost in the Dream
Granduciel spent two years second-guessing these sessions, and the song still turns on one yelp before the chorus.
★ 5.8
Young Folks
2006
Yttling whistled a placeholder melody, ran it through tape delay, and kept it; Bergsman answers line for line.
★ 5.8
Hannah Hunt
2013 · From Modern Vampires of the City
Koenig named it for a Columbia classmate from his Buddhism class, and the final minute cracks wide open.
★ 5.8
Pumped Up Kicks
2011
Five hours in a Los Angeles jingle studio, the demo kept as the master, its subject hidden in plain sight.
★ 5.8
Archie, Marry Me
2014
Snowed into a Prince Edward Island farmhouse, Rankin wrote a proposal song; VanGaalen cut it in Calgary.
★ 5.7
Dry The Rain
1997
Six minutes that drift, then lift; the track Rob plays in High Fidelity to sell five copies on the spot.
★ 5.7
12:51
2003 · From Room on Fire
Guitars pushed to sound like synthesizers, and a Roman Coppola video that borrows its neon from Tron.
★ 5.7
Help I'm Alive
2008
Haines wrote it on piano in Buenos Aires as a ballad; the tempo went up and panic became a hook.
★ 5.6
Ocean Breathes Salty
2004
Recorded at Sweet Tea in Oxford, Mississippi, and it turns a hard look at mortality into something close to serene.
★ 5.6
Someday
2002 · From Is This It
Moretti woke to hear Casablancas inventing the melody in the bathroom, and it became the warmest song on Is This It.
★ 5.5
Lisztomania
2009 · From Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Heine coined the word for Liszt's swooning fans, and Philippe Zdar gave these guitars their chrome shine.
★ 5.5
The Way We Get BySpoon
The Way We Get By
2002 · From Kill the Moonlight
Piano, bass and a single nagging guitar figure, with Daniel making aimlessness sound like the best available plan.
★ 5.4
Do You
2014 · From They Want My Soul
Spoon's eighth album brought in Dave Fridmann and Alex Fischel, and Daniel spends the chorus asking to be understood.
★ 5.4
The Wire
2013
Three sisters, one kiss-off, and Ariel Rechtshaid's production splitting the difference between Laurel Canyon soft rock and nineties R&B.
★ 5.3
The New Year
2003 · From Transatlanticism
A field recording of distant Seattle freeway noise opens the album, then the guitars come crashing in behind Gibbard.
★ 5.3
Kissing the Lipless
2003 · From Chutes Too Narrow
Cut in the basement of Mercer's Portland house, a breakup song that starts at a whisper and detonates.
★ 5.2
We Are Young
fun. and Janelle Monae
2011
Six weeks at number one, and it began with Ruess singing the chorus, tipsy, at the Bowery Hotel.
★ 5.2
Phantom LimbThe Shins
Phantom Limb
2006 · From Wincing the Night Away
Mercer sketched a young lesbian couple stuck in a small town, then floated it on Chiccarelli's widescreen jangle.
★ 5.2
In Circles
1994
Enigk wrote it as a solo acoustic song; the band took it over, and his cracked howl carries it.
★ 5.2
Wakin' On A Pretty Day
2013
Guitar that unspools for nine and a half minutes, Stella Mozgawa on drums, Vile in no rush anywhere.
★ 5.1
Rill Rill
2010
Funkadelic's Can You Get to That, looped and sweetened, under the one Sleigh Bells song that whispers.
★ 5.0
Simple Song
2012 · From Port of Morrow
Mercer wrote it in his living room about his marriage, with Greg Kurstin on guitars, Mellotron and piano.
★ 5.0
California
2002
Jason Schwartzman still drummed for the band when they cut it; The O.C. later made it a UK top ten.
★ 5.0
Hang Me Up To Dry
2007
Cut first for the Up in Rags EP, all four members co-producing, a clothesline standing in for one-sided love.
★ 5.0
The Sound of Settling
2003 · From Transatlanticism
Walla had to talk the band into keeping it, and Gibbard's throwaway became their singalong.
★ 4.9
Soul Meets Body
2005 · From Plans
Gibbard wrote it for his girlfriend, Walla produced at a Massachusetts farm studio, ten weeks atop Adult Alternative.
★ 4.7
I Will Possess Your Heart
2007 · From Narrow Stairs
Five minutes of Harmer's bass riff before a word arrives, a krautrock crawl radio edits had to hack apart.
★ 4.7
Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect
2002 · From Castaways and Cutouts
Two chords written in a northeast Portland duplex, and Nate Query put the whole album on his credit card.
★ 4.7
Title and Registration
2003 · From Transatlanticism
Unhappy with the mix, Walla squashed the drums through speech-therapy hardware and rebuilt the track around a glove compartment.
★ 4.5
5 Years Time
2007
Laura Marling's ukulele and Charlie Fink's deadpan flopped in 2007; a 2008 re-release carried the sunshine to number seven.
★ 4.4
Steve McQueen
2011
Justin Meldal-Johnsen co-produced at Sunset Sound, and Gonzalez turns unembarrassed optimism into a wall of synthesizers.
★ 4.3