Lose Yourself
2002 · From 8 Mile (soundtrack)
Written between takes on a film set, delivered like a man with exactly one shot at everything.
★ 9.1
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2002
Showing 115 works across all media from 2002
City of God
Directed by Fernando Meirelles and Katia Lund
2002
Nothing else moves quite like it: Meirelles cast the favela itself, cut two hours into what feels like twenty minutes, and took a Brazilian crime film to four Oscar nominations.
★ 8.8
The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
Directed by Peter Jackson
2002
Gollum changed what a digital character could be: Andy Serkis acted him fully and the industry rebuilt itself around motion capture, all inside a four-month night siege in the rain.
★ 8.6
Hurt
2002 · From American IV: The Man Comes Around
Rubin handed Cash a Nine Inch Nails song, and Reznor watched the video and said it was no longer his.
★ 8.5
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
2002
Reprise refused it, so the band bought the tapes back, streamed the record free, and then sold it to another label owned by the same company.
★ 8.4
Work ItMissy Elliott
Work It
2002
Timbaland's beat under a hook Elliott had reversed, a Run-DMC sample, and ten weeks parked at number two.
★ 7.9
The Pianist
Directed by Roman Polanski
2002
Polanski escaped the Krakow ghetto as a child and waited sixty years to film any of it: a pianist left alone in the ruins of Warsaw, and no heroism anywhere.
★ 7.4
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
Clocks
2002 · From A Rush of Blood to the Head
A piano riff Martin nearly saved for the next album, rescued by their manager, then Record of the Year.
★ 7.2
American IV: The Man Comes Around
2002
Trent Reznor said that after hearing Cash sing Hurt, the song no longer felt like his. Cash died the following year.
★ 7.1
Cry Me A River
2002 · From Justified
Storch's clavinet, Timbaland's beat, and a breakup Timberlake spent years declining to explain; the Grammy arrived anyway.
★ 7.1
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
Minority Report
Directed by Steven Spielberg
2002
Spielberg hired futurists to design 2054 and most of what they invented has since arrived: gesture screens, targeted advertising, and a police force that arrests you beforehand.
★ 6.8
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
One Mic
2002 · From Stillmatic
Chucky Thompson looped Phil Collins, and Nas rises from a murmur to a roar and back, verse after verse.
★ 6.8
The Scientist
2002 · From A Rush of Blood to the Head
One out-of-tune Liverpool piano, an attempt at a Harrison song abandoned, and the chord run Martin kept instead.
★ 6.7
The Eminem Show
2002
Eminem produced most of this himself rather than handing it to Dr. Dre, and it leaked so widely that the release was moved forward.
★ 6.7
Stories of Your Life and Others
2002 · 285 pages
Chiang treats theology, linguistics and free will with the rigor of proofs. A linguist learns an alien script written all at once, and it changes how she experiences her whole life.
★ 6.7
Hero
Directed by Zhang Yimou
2002 · China
Zhang Yimou shot each retelling of one assassination attempt in a different color: Christopher Doyle's photography is so beautiful that the film's politics start an argument every single time.
★ 6.7
Heartbeats (The Knife)
2002
Pitchfork's fifteenth-best song of the 2000s, the Dreijer siblings' synth pulse, later stripped to one acoustic guitar by Jose Gonzalez.
★ 6.6
Hot in Herre
2002
The Neptunes flipped Chuck Brown's "Bustin' Loose," and Nelly rode it to number one and the first male solo rap Grammy.
★ 6.6
Infernal Affairs
Directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak
2002 · Hong Kong
Scorsese's The Departed is a remake of this, and the Hong Kong original is fifty minutes tighter: two moles assigned to find each other, and a plot that never stops to explain itself.
★ 6.5
Catch Me if You Can
Directed by Steven Spielberg
2002
Spielberg's lightest film runs on charm and a great John Williams theme: a teenager talks his way into a pilot's uniform and a doctor's coat, with an FBI agent always one hotel behind.
★ 6.4
Sea Change
2002
Beck wrote it after a nine-year relationship ended and recorded it in about two weeks. His father wrote the string arrangements.
★ 6.4
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
The Seed 2.0
2002 · From Phrenology
Cody ChesnuTT's four-track bedroom original rebuilt by a live band, his guitar hook intact, Questlove pushing the tempo up.
★ 6.1
Beautiful
2002
Perry wrote it for herself, then refused Aguilera a retake; the demo vocal is what reached number two.
★ 6.1
A Rush of Blood to the Head
2002
The piano figure in Clocks turned up so late in the sessions that it nearly missed the record. Everything here is built to fill arenas.
★ 5.8
Dilemma
Nelly and Kelly Rowland
2002
Bowser's beat interpolates Patti LaBelle, Kelly Rowland sings the hook, and it spent ten weeks at number one.
★ 5.7
Turn on the Bright Lights
2002
The bass lines run as counter-melodies rather than following the guitars, which is why so much of it sounds like two songs at once.
★ 5.6
On My Block
2002 · From The Fix
Five mics from The Source for The Fix, a Mike Dean beat, and Scarface drawing his Houston block affectionately.
★ 5.6
Oh Boy
2002
Just Blaze built the beat for Memphis Bleek, chopped a Rose Royce vocal, and Cam'ron took it to number four.
★ 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
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
Lost Cause
2002 · From Sea Change
One week of writing after a nine-year relationship ended, and Godrich kept the arrangement to acoustic guitar and brushes.
★ 5.4
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots
2002
Yoshimi is a real person, a Japanese drummer, and the screams on the record are recordings she made and sent them.
★ 5.3
Hey Ma
Cam'ron and Juelz Santana
2002
DR Period built it on the Commodores' "Easy," and Cam'ron and Juelz Santana rode it to number three.
★ 5.2
Middlesex
2002 · 544 pages
Cal Stephanides was born a girl in Detroit and became a boy at fourteen, and traces the gene responsible back through Asia Minor to grandparents who were brother and sister.
★ 5.2
2002
About Schmidt
Directed by Alexander Payne
2002
Payne stripped Jack Nicholson of every trick he has: a retired insurance actuary drives a motorhome across Nebraska writing letters to a six-year-old in Tanzania he has never met.
★ 5.1
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
A Thousand Miles
2002
Carlton built that piano figure in about an hour and titled it Interlude; her label insisted on something catchier.
★ 4.8
Landslide (Dixie Chicks)
2002 · From Home
Nicks wrote it in Aspen weighing whether to quit music; the Chicks add three-part harmony and take it top ten.
★ 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
2002 State of the Union Address · 2002
She Will Be Loved
2002
Levine says he and Valentine wrote it in about an hour, drawing on a troubled couple he knew.
★ 4.6
Warning SignColdplay
Warning Sign
2002 · From A Rush of Blood to the Head
Buckland gave up on a guitar part and played maracas instead, and Martin's slow crawl back still aches.
★ 4.5
Come Away With Me
2002
A twenty-two-year-old on a jazz label made a very quiet record, and it sold twenty-seven million copies and swept the Grammys.
★ 4.4
Kill the Moonlight
2002
Spoon leave most of the space empty, so a tambourine or a single piano note does the work a guitar solo usually would.
★ 4.4