The advent of new technology is notorious for altering listening habits. In 2003, widespread file-sharing, per-song downloads, and open-minded discourse between online music fans began breaking down the long-held biases we sometimes stubborn indie music fans once harbored for non-indie music. Easy and immediate access to any track we wanted– and the ability to look into friends’ MP3 folders and see that we weren’t the only ones who dug that Kelis song– allowed us to realize that, hey, maybe what we all really love is just good songs.

As music in both the mainstream and the underground continues to push the envelope, tying ourselves to outmoded rules and regulations that dictate which music is or isn’t acceptable to enjoy seems needlessly limiting. It now seems clear that, despite their differences in politics, these two sworn enemies can peacefully co-exist on our hard drives without one corrupting or destroying the ideals of the other.

Now, as iPods continue to gain prominence, our self-determined playlists– increasingly consisting of recommendations by friends, websites, message boards, and MP3 blogs– offer what commercial radio never could: No commercials, no song overplayed, and no fucking Nickelback slow jams, ever. If ever there was a year to celebrate the single, this is it.

To hear most of the singles, check out our Spotify playlist.

50: Johnny Boy
“You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve”
[Vertigo]

Phil Spector doesn’t need Johnny Boy to further cement his status as a rock-solid mountain of pure-cut psychotic godliness, but they certainly aren’t hurting him any. Though he’s yet to produce anything this decade (or last) that climbs the concrete Wall of Sound he poured during the 1960s, his influence has echoed– literally– in leagues of C-86 girl groups, and now in this London duo’s extremely promising second single. The eye-catchingly titled “You Are the Generation Who Bought More Shoes and You Get What You Deserve” is eight miles of reverb, uncontained and beautiful, with giant clanging church bells and fireworks going off in the background. It sounds like a big cold wind, and appropriately, it gives me chills. –Ryan Schreiber

49: The Von Bondies
“C’mon C’mon”
[WEA]

After an unassuming intro, excitable boy Jason Stollsteimer wails as he grieves over the baddest of bad breakups and wonders “was it right to leave?” and “will I never learn?” In a taunting call-and-response, Marcie Bolen and Carrie Smith chant the song title and push him toward his emotional breaking point. It’s two minutes of powerful punk pop that now provides the theme for FX’s firefighter drama “Rescue Me” (over the obvious choice) and the, um, heart of The Von Bondies’ major-label debut, Pawn Shoppe Heart. The song palpitates with such intense sexual antagonism that it abruptly keels over before Stollsteimer can get to the last chorus. –Stephen M. Deusner

48: Estelle
“1980”
[V2]

I’m all for British hip-hop, but does it always have to sound so damn cold? I was just in England, and it doesn’t get that wintry; yet the sound of garage/grime continues to sound more foreboding, metallic, and icy. Fortunately, Estelle didn’t get the memo, and her eager childhood scrapbook is appropriately drenched in retro-soul syrup as warm as a Motown August– all torch-song piano and swooping strings. To my American ears, Estelle’s round vowel sounds don’t sound so foreign when she rap-sings about Connect Four and Cosbys, and it all reminds me of when Lauryn Hill wasn’t being willfully difficult. –Rob Mitchum

47: Xiu Xiu
“I Luv the Valley OH!”
[5RC]

In 2004, indie cheerleaders got a new slogan: “Je t’aime the valley, OH!” wails Xiu Xiu’s Jamie Stewart on a track that brazenly attempts to recast emotional excess as a tool rather than something to downplay. Emo? Yes! At once one of the most overwrought and tenderly dynamic songs of the year, “I Luv the Valley OH!” wedges teary-eyed bluster into an immaculate pop structure. Drowsy electric guitars seep through snarling effects as Stewart presides over the milieu like a heartbroken Zeus. In a different era, Stewart might be institutionalized for such lack of composure, but this track compels us to wonder if it’s the calm and collected who have it all wrong. –Sam Ubl

46: Justus Köhncke
Zwei Photonen EP
[Kompakt]

With memorable A/Bs from Rex the Dog, Kaito, and Superpitcher, Cologne’s Kompakt label had better success with 12-inches than LPs this year, and no single release from the label’s 2004 campaign stood out as much as Justus Köhncke’s Zwei Photonen EP. Clocking in at just under eight minutes long, the superb A-side “Timecode” literally tick-tocks its way through a slow fizz of warm synth pads and twerky basslines to a gushing refrain without ever once repeating the same bar. It’s basically French house with a Kompakt-influenced, motorik bent, and about as addictive as fun. With its percolating synths and narcotized melodies, singalong “The Answer Is Yes” marks an acute left turn, but it also has its charms, provided you’ve managed to flush the “Timecode” withdrawal out of your system. –Mark Pytlik

45: Ratatat
“17 Years”
[Audio Dregs]

In a year when indie rock could have used a few more surprises, a bedroom laptop composer and a hired studio hand (whose résumé included work with Ben Kweller and Dashboard Confessional) joined forces and squeezed the theme music to Tetris in between hyper-compressed power chords over a beat as appropriate for a monster truck as it is an Escalade. More surprises came when the squealing MIDI melody that inspired righteous, irony-free air guitaring was, in fact, made by a guitar. Ratatat’s album didn’t live up to this track’s promise, but “17 Years” is the sound of hip-hop, rock, and Nintendo perfectly co-existing. –Jason Crock

44: Mclusky
“She Will Only Bring You Happiness”
[Too Pure]

Andy Falkous’ voice might have lost some of its glottal sputum on The Difference Between You and Me Is That I’m Not on Fire, but the softened approach yielded nothing less than the best song Mclusky ever recorded. On “She Will Only Bring You Happiness” Falkous’ lyrical vitriol is intact, only done up in subversively comely raiment. Chiming over a jangly eighth-note guitar melody, he effortlessly morphs from reprobate to refined, spewing to-dos with rehab-like sobriety: “Be erect by half-past 10/ Be strong/ Be proud/ Be able/ Be charmed.” It’s an admirable, if surprising, about face, until the final refrain– in a round — jettisons all intimations of seriousness: “Our old singer is a sex criminal.” No wonder they used to sound so nasty. –Sam Ubl

43: Goldfrapp
“Strict Machine (We Are Glitter Goldfrapp Remix)”
[Mute]

Borrowing liberally from Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll, Pt. 2”, Goldfrapp turn a pretty good single into a hedonistic, black-out masterpiece. The bass churns underneath the thick shuffle, and rubber-band synth lets its overtones do the dirty work. Allison Goldfrapp’s vocals are treated as shadowy wallpaper, never once getting in the way of the midnight impressionism. This was kind of slept on, as great 2004 singles go, only showing up on the second of two “Strict Machine” 12-inches in May. Maybe DJs filed it before hitting that second track. Their loss, your gain: 515K is calling. –Dominique Leone

42: The Streets
“Dry Your Eyes”
[679]

That’s how it feels, that moment when it’s just starting to dawn on you and there’s nothing you can do and it’s already over and your vision blurs and you just stare off into the middle distance trying to think of something to say. “I can’t imagine my life without you and me/ There’s things I can’t imagine doing, things I can’t imagine seeing,” says Mike Skinner in his talking-to-a-girl-on-the-phone voice, a fragile wheedle. Your friends tell you it’s all for the best, but it still feels the same. “Dry Your Eyes” is the one great standalone track on A Grand Don’t Come for Free because it’s about the moment that the world stops, the only moment that matters. –Tom Breihan

41: Excepter
Vacation EP
[Fusetron]

Until I heard this track, I was always the asshole at parties who denied the existence of ghosts. Man, was I a fucking idiot at parties. On “Vacation”, a ghost hotboxes heaven with a sound that’s half stuttering riddim and half house remix of the Cardigans’ “Lovefool”. The noise is lush but loud, and wakes up the ghost’s dad. First ghost dad yells a lot, then (inexplicably) he starts impersonating the good Dr. Egon Spengler. By the end, the first ghost sounds a lot like Bruce Willis; the second, a surprisingly coherent Bill Cosby. –Nick Sylvester

40: Phoenix
“Everything Is Everything”
[Source]

Soft-pop got a shot in arm this spring when French quartet Phoenix released this single from their too-smooth-for-school second album Alphabetical. Thomas Mars’ vocals are lush like Alan Parsons in the 80s, which tells you just about everything you’d want to know about this song. Just don’t apologize for drowning, there’s no need. “The more I talk about it, the less I do control.” And the guitar hits up against the kickdrum and that triangle just keeps on playing: I’m not really sure how this stuff didn’t conquer pop radio but in my world, it got all the details right. –Dominique Leone

__39: Snoop Dogg [ft. Pharrell]
__“Drop It Like It’s Hot”
[Geffen/Interscope]

By way of “Grindin’”, Pharrell & Chad make like Timbaland Lite, fashioning this backing track out of a sparse ensemble of clicks, claps, hisses, and bass bumps that put all the focus on where the beat isn’t. On top go Pharell and Snoop, with the former making like a CostCo Kanye, and the latter briefly recalling the days when he was a sly, slick-tongued hound that earned the right to strut and pimp right out of the pound. When he’s talking about keeping a blue flag on his Crip side, or scratching himself up like a DJ, or even trying to turn “crip” into a verb, it sounds so wrong and so right all at once. Also, if you can keep yourself from enjoying the hell out of “Snooooooooooo-OOP!”, then you’re made of sterner stuff than most. –David Raposa

38: Art Brut
“Formed a Band”
[Rough Trade]

Art Brut play up self-conscious artmaking both in their name– which refers to the 1940s movement in which educated painters worked in a knowingly unschooled style– and in their debut single, “Formed a Band”, all messy brushwork and dripping noise against a neo-primitive background. On the catchy chorus, Eddie Argos yells, “Look at us!! We formed a band!!” as if finding a practice space deserves applause, then sing-speaks his dreams of fame with sophisticated unsophistication and completely unironic irony. When he claims, “And yes, this is my singing voice/ It is not irony and it is not rock ‘n’ roll/ We’re just talking to the kids,” the world turns itself inside out. To be followed up with the singles “Made a Brilliant Album” and “Conquered the Planet with Tremendous Ease”. –Stephen M. Deusner

____ 37: Interpol
“Slow Hands”
[Matador]

All straight, clean lines and cocksure menace, Interpol’s “Slow Hands” levels an unyieldingly confident response at those who were anxiously anticipating the group’s sophomore slump. Over the impeccable, quicksilver fluidity of Carlos Dengler’s bass and Daniel Kessler’s guitar, Paul Banks delivers his strangely robotic pronouncements on love (“I submit my incentive is romance…/ We rejoice because the hurting is so painless”) with the malevolent detachment of a hitman calmly slipping a knife between your ribs. –Matthew Murphy

36: Mu
“Paris Hilton”
[Output]

Mu’s “Paris Hilton” is probably the most idiotically accurate indictment of smarmy, rich-girl excess that America will ever hear: Over a slathering of weird, deliberately cheap synth beats (punctuated by hollow pounds and, wait! Is that a siren wail?), Matsumi Kanamori blankly urges everyone to “Shake your body body! Move your body body!” Considering how many righteous, hopelessly indignant articles have been written about Paris Hilton– most of which feature politely irritable columnists editorializing the downfall of youth and lamenting the perils of wealth and the vapidity of our icons– Mu’s genius abstract is even more impressive: In three lines, they give us the sum total of a night out with Paris. –Amanda Petrusich

____ 35: The Arcade Fire
“Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)”
[Merge]

“Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)” is perhaps The Arcade Fire’s most cohesive and overarching statement. From its curtain-raising orchestral pulse to its open-ended, ethereal finale, it is unavoidably marked as a preview of things to come. And Win Butler effortlessly delivers, as his fantastical, bittersweet tale of reluctant maturity perfectly encapsulates the band’s ineffably magical appeal. Butler’s haunting vocal melody is backed by every weapon in the band’s arsenal, but the band expertly avoids maudlin excess with simple arrangements and an insistent disco beat that coalesces with the surrounding acoustic theatrics. The song is self-contained, epic, brilliant– and it’s the sound of The Arcade Fire just getting warmed up. –David Moore

____ 34: Dizzee Rascal
“Stand Up Tall”
[XL]

Stood next to each other, Dizzee’s debut and latest singles– the 8-bit ghetto squall of “I Luv U”, and the comparative high-fidelity of “Stand Up Tall”, respectively– suggests rags-to-riches in just under two years. While the excellent and otherwise murky Showtime clouds that notion, “Stand Up Tall” is at very least a peek at where Rascal might go once his sludgy, minimal productions lose their bite. Copped from Youngstar’s “Mayhem 2”, which comprises the entirety of this backing track, “Stand Up Tall” sets Rascal’s quickened, pulse-racing yawp against a breakneck beat. The videogame aesthetic is still in play, but glossier, at a higher resolution. Meanwhile, Rascal– who never sounds anything less than vital– delivers his verses with typical ferocity, pinballing around the beat with ease. –Mark Pytlik

____ 33: Devendra Banhart
“Little Yellow Spider”
[XL]

The “animal song” is a folk convention from way back, and Banhart’s spin is appropriately twisted. The same logic that produced an elderly woman ingesting creatures of increasing girth to do battle inside her digestive tract drives this unusual survey, where sexy pigs sleep with men and dancing crabs are destined to be crabcakes (too thick with breading, no doubt). Banhart’s lispy ark is playful with a pinch of danger and dollops of uncertain wisdom. Any old hippie will tell you that animals have something to teach, but we relate to Banhart because he has trouble articulating precisely what. –Mark Richardson

____ 32: Belle and Sebastian
“I’m a Cuckoo [by the Avalanches]”
[Rough Trade/Sanctuary]

My wife considers Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town” to be one of the dumbest songs of all time, so the original version of Belle and Sebastian’s cheeky Lizzy homage “I’m a Cuckoo” from last year’s Dear Catastrophe Waitress hasn’t always been well-received around my household. Much more welcome is The Avalanches’ radical reinterpretation of the track, which surrounds Stuart Murdoch’s vocal with wooden flutes, North African percussion, and a Sudanese choir. In this new context, the song’s agile melody seems to bubble organically out of the village soil, slyly subverting the original’s roguish gloss. –Matthew Murphy

__ 31:__ J-Kwon
“Tipsy”
[LaFace]

The beat to “Tipsy” is almost industrial; it flattens everything around it. If it sounds alive, it’s because almost all the elements are biological– stomps, claps, breaths, heartbeat pulses– but there’s nothing warm or organic about it. With its ravey synth bleeps and vwerping digital bassline, “Tipsy” sounds cold and futuristic and oppressive, like a sentient alien spaceship landing on the White House lawn. J-Kwon isn’t a great rapper– he does the sing-songy Midwestern twang thing better than Chingy but not as well as Nelly– but he’s smart enough to stay out of the way of that beat, one of the year’s best. –Tom Breihan

30: Christina Milian
“Dip It Low”
[Island Def Jam]

Wherein our intrepid and sultry protagonist tries to show the ladies how to play hard-to-get and keep your man wanting more. Fabolous generously offers his services as Exhibit A of the corny quivering sack of manmeat such empowered broke-back dipping will create. Christina coquettishly coos and trills her way through this intoxicating Middle Eastern mélange, and one’s mind will undoubtedly wander to images of Ms. Milian and her dancers slithering like less sadistic Salomes, which would have been a better visual than the black-ink Twister offered in the video. Thankfully, the song transcends all that mess with just one of Christina’s heaven-sent “oh”s. –David Raposa

29: Nina Sky [ft. Jabba]
“Move Ya Body”
[Universal]

“Move Ya Body” is a perfect pop song– like ice cream on a hot summer day. Nicole and Natalie Albino nonchalantly drip gorgeous, liquid hooks over the frantic handclaps-and-bongos spazzout of the Coolie Dance rhythm. They’ve got the same voice: a cool, easy, unforced coo. They don’t try to overpower the beat; they quietly weave around it. A smeared, woozy synth hums along in the background. Dancehall no-name Jabba yells some stuff. A beautiful, sun-dappled bridge drops in from nowhere and promptly disappears. Hearts melt. –Tom Breihan

28: Big & Rich
“Save a Horse (Ride a Cowboy)”
[Warner Bros.]

When kitchen-sink groups like Big & Rich and the Scissor Sisters are both able to achieve success, it’s been a very good year. Where the Sisters went about turn kitsch into cool, Big & Rich continued the work pioneered by Mutt Lange’s Nashville in turning what to many is cool into kitsch. Mix Alan Jackson’s drawl, Charlie Daniels’ violin, and Willie Nelson’s spirit with black-cat metal, new-age disco tech, a nod to the bling-bling, and John Barry’s secret agent man reincarnated in Deliverance country, and then move this neon three-ring circus next door to Siegfried & Roy where it can glow and sizzle. In a world where some world leaders are working hard at keeping countrymen at odds with each other, it’s nice to see Big & Rich succeed at creating such beautiful music from such strange bedfellows. –David Raposa

27: Les Savy Fav
“The Sweat Descends”
[Cold Crush]

“Souvlaki Spacestation” starts the same way: nylon drips from green clouds or spaceships or something equally high and bizarre, accumulating until the track’s a backlogged mess of distortion. Yet where “Spacestation” slipped on swimmies and jumped in the pool, “The Sweat Descends” throws on shitkickers, and Les Savy Fav– “one cocksure fox in a house of hens”– stomp through the slosh with spurs bigger and sharper than most indie swamp things out there with them. “The Sweat Descends” is violent and beautiful and masterfully played guitar rock; 2004 saw too little of its kind. –Nick Sylvester

26: Justus Köhncke [ft. Meloboy]
“Frei/Hot Love”
[Kompakt]

Winner of the 2004 award for song that most reminds me of Taco’s “Puttin on the Ritz”! While Kompakt has gotten a lot of mileage out of overcast electronic textures, it’s refreshing to hear Köhncke and others inject a bit of schaffel playfulness into the sometimes noirish scene. With its swaggering beat and punchdrunk lyrics, it’s not hard to imagine a vocoder-sporting Fred Astaire swinging around a soundstage to the sound of “Hot Love”… although Ginger might not be too happy about the gender of the song’s target. That this showstopper was constructed by connecting the dots between a stiff Wolfgang Voigt composition and a T. Rex oldie only adds to its paradoxically ultramodern timelessness. –Rob Mitchum

25: T.I.
“Rubberband Man”
[Atlantic]

Many fans have yet to hear the unmolested album version of this cocksure crunk classic-to-be; rather, they’ve been fed a counterfeit. Evidently, rappers “wild as the Taliban” are too risqué for MTV, and as a result, T.I. comes off far less clever, enthusiastic, and unabashedly solecistic on the censored version of “Rubberband Man”. But this jiggly, mesmerically repetitive track features some truly jaw-dropping verses. T.I.’s delivery is technically infallible but never flaunted. Kanye West may have spoiled things for rappers who like to end lines in exasperated “man”s, but T.I. makes the tired gimmick seem utterly fresh. Ay, who he be? Only one of the most infectious crunk personas around. –Sam Ubl

24: Rachel Stevens
“Some Girls”
[Universal]

So, it’s the second “Strict Machine” remix on our countdown… I kid, I kid. The lads’ mag’s favorite S Clubber, Rachel Stevens is the Cecil Fielder of UK pop– two-for-four with a couple of homers and a couple of Ks. That’s a batting average that Britney would die for these days, but in the notoriously fleeting world of UK pop success it’s enough to leave Stevens wringing her hands. Here she does it in public, sharing her champagne wishes and caviar dreams but bemoaning her luck with the help of Richard X’s sharp production, a pair of zip-up boots, and even a few Adam Ant-esque “whoa”s. –Scott Plagenhoef

23: Alicia Keys
“You Don’t Know My Name”/”Will You Ever Know It? (Reggae Remix)”
[VP]

This track wasn’t widely circulated, but it seems like everyone who heard it felt compelled to talk it up at some point over the year. Set against the backdrop of Burning Spear’s 1980 classic “Columbus” (which is suitably sped up), Keys sounds jubilant, her vocal parts interlocking with Burning Spear’s reggae chugs and horn trills with almost eerie perfection. The sunny, post-date counterpart to her more soulful (but equally brilliant) piano-cascade original, this is an inspired mashup, and worth hundreds of 80s New Wave band vs. 00s New Wave band blends. –Mark Pytlik

22: Alan Braxe & Fred Falke
“Rubicon”
[Vulture]

You’re not exactly taking a roll of the dice when you buy a Alan Braxe & Fred Falke single– what you’re typically getting is the best French house track of the year. And so it is again with “Rubicon”: Erlend Øye turned on a load of rock kids to the radio edit while dancefloors were turned on by the unedited, DJ Assault-biting one. In either case, it works best with sheer volume, although the neighbors might prefer the purely instrumental track’s electro-cool sheen to the vocal version’s ghettotech dick slingin’. Maybe I’m gettin’ old because I do too. –Scott Plagenhoef

21: M.I.A.
“Sunshowers”
[XL]

Something about globalization, a guy making Nikes in a factory with a smile courtesy of Colgate. The verses are okay, but sometimes M.I.A.’s vocals can be a bit interchangeable, and the deeper meaning has never quite sunk in. The chorus, on the other hand, where singing and synths braid into a single tuneful thing, is a wonder. It’s exactly what a sunshower might sound like, and apparently the rays are aimed directly at some lucky dude. All I can think when I hear it is that Prince used to write hooks like this. –Mark Richardson

20: Kylie Minogue
“I Believe in You”
[Parlophone]

Collaborating with the Scissor Sisters on this Olivia Newton John-esque power ballad, Australian chanteuse Kylie Minogue again successfully mines for glittery gold, piling up ghostly whispers and a huge yodel-of-a-chorus atop bubbling white-suit beats and descending flairs. The lyric is a basic grab bag of romantic lines; but with the addition of magic (check for the sounds of pixie dust!) and notions of death and psychic traces (“I don’t believe when you die your presence isn’t felt”), icy disco is reborn as something tinselly and grandiose. –Brandon Stosuy

19: Usher [ft. Lil Jon & Ludacris]
“Yeah!”
[Arista]

It’s hard to believe hat the year’s most enduring, encapsulating pop song wasn’t even originally earmarked as a single, but such is the beauty of pop music– it is, by definition, the stuff that most demands to be heard. At the beginning of “Yeah”‘s slow leak into the R&B world, crunk was still a hip-hop sidebar, but with Usher to guide it into the mainstream (while patron saint Lil Jon stood by and cheered), it sopped up the audience that its hugeness demanded. With Usher’s subtle vocal hook there to offset Lil Jon’s four-alarm fire, rave-synth squall, “Yeah” hit nearly everyone in the belly, in the process setting the table for crunk-inspired crossovers like Ciara, Nivea, and the small army that are certain to follow next year. –Mark Pytlik

18: Kanye West
“Jesus Walks”
[Rocafella]

Kanye West emerged in 2004 with his post-jaw-wired The College Dropout, a per-zine platter that punk-slapped Hot 97 templates, garnering 10 Grammy nominations and countless critical tongue baths in the process. There are gems aplenty but “Jesus Walks” is the album’s most compelling blast: Spinning clipped vocal patterns that mix humor and impassioned declamation, West enacts a spiritual quest before a jammed-up backdrop of Wizard of Oz ‘oh-ee-oh,’ chain-gang drone, jump-rope chants, and catchy flippity flap percussion. Really, there’s more going on in this one track (musically and textually) than in Ja Rule’s entire oeuvre. –Brandon Stosuy

17: Modest Mouse
“Float On”
[Sony]

“Have you heard that new band Modest Mouse?” Statements like that twisted even the most non-elitist fan’s visage as the universe burped and “Float On” somehow slipped to the top of Billboard‘s modern rock charts. But when they’ve written such a cheerful radio-perfect bounce without losing the quirks of the sound they’ve worked toward perfecting for years, why do anything but give credit where it’s due? After all that the band went through to put out the Good News LP, it seems Isaac Brock is seeing some returns on his Karma Payment Plan, and optimism suits him well. –Jason Crock

16: Gwen Stefani
“What You Waiting For?”
[Interscope]

Talk of this track invariably returns to that well-worn refrain, “Take a chance, you stupid ho.” I can’t speak authoritatively on Gwen’s IQ or sexual fidelity, but a quick scan of her career trajectory shows she’s definitely been pushing her own envelope. Her roots in happy-fun-time ska have borne Day-Glo fiber-optic time-traveling fruit, blooming in a world where “Video Killed the Radio Star” is the intergalactic anthem, Madonna’s pre-Kaballah DNA is readily available in jelly beans and scratch-n-sniff stickers, and blade runners get high licking the sweat from the fur of Pokémon pets. If that’s all there is, my friends, then let’s keep freaking. –David Raposa

15: Soulwax
“NY Excuse”
[PIAS]

At a crowded Halloween party, I shared floor space with a kid in an astronaut suit and a cheap plastic bag for a helmet. “NY Excuse” came on and he started dancing harder than anyone in the room. After he suffocated himself, he took off his plastic bag, gasped for air for about two minutes, and danced really hard for five seconds before he had to stop again. Funny what a feisty Belgian electro-disco number can do to people when they’re short on oxygen. –Nick Sylvester

14: Animal Collective
“Who Could Win a Rabbit”
[Fat Cat]

Although Animal Collective have never been a singles band by any stretch of the imagination, “Who Could Win a Rabbit” is the group’s most accessible moment, and fits well alongside the year’s catchiest pop singles. The song’s furiously strummed acoustic guitar hook, hectic free-associative verses, and borderline incoherent (but utterly memorable) chorus strike like an amphetamine-driven summer camp sing-along. Animal Collective have a goofy charm and authenticity that appeals to something innately cruder and sillier than most pop music, and “Who Could Win a Rabbit” is all the more rewarding for it. –David Moore

13: The Go! Team
“The Power Is On”
[Memphis Industries]

There are many songs best heard while driving, but “The Power Is On” is more specifically best heard while driving a van. And I don’t mean some SUV-hybrid shaped like a sneaker, I mean a real Bad News Bears in Breaking Training van– one with swiveling captain chairs, carpeted walls, and room in the back to load up B.A. Baracus and enough ammo to go rescue some fuckin’ hostages. And though, as you come down the block, the bad guys might recognize your theme song’s propulsive piano, horns, and urgent Double-Dutch chanting, all they’ll have time to do is run. –Matthew Murphy

12: Twista [ft. Kanye West & Jaime Foxx]
“Slow Jamz”
[Atlantic]

“Slow Jamz” ended up being the reverse Midas track of 2004: Everyone who touched it turned to gold. By the end of this year’s award cycle, it could possibly feature both a Grammy winner and an Oscar winner, and the song put Twista’s Micro Machines guy style back on the map, deepening Chicago’s stable as it finally arrived as a viable hip-hop locus. Hell, even Vandross had a great year, if you ignore that whole infirmity thing. Recovered from its early-year overplay, “Slow Jamz” still stands as choice musical meta-fiction, and the funniest hip-hop moment not to spring from “Chappelle’s Show”. –Rob Mitchum

11: Annie
“Chewing Gum”
[679]

Great pop songs almost always make you want to shout into your bedroom mirror, hair flying, junk going everywhere, hollering stupid romantic advice to your own red-faced reflection: Nordic chart heroine Annie has finally taken pop self-obsession to new meta-levels, addressing an entire single to herself. “Chewing Gum”, a playful collaboration with Richard X, is sharply, painfully addictive– all jangly beats, zip-zaps, handclaps, and Annie’s sheer, range-less pipes mewing wholly absurd lyrics (“Oh no, oh no/ You’ve got it all wrong/ You think you’re chocolate but you’re chewing gum”). It may seem hollow on paper but like Kylie before her, Annie infuses every second of “Chewing Gum” with girly, gorgeous dizziness, singing so plainly that you can’t help but empathize, nodding along with her odd self-awareness, even joining in for a flat verse of “la la”s. Annie’s advice may be self-directed, but there’s plenty of room for everyone in this song. –Amanda Petrusich

10: Beyonce
“Naughty Girl”
[Columbia]

In 2003, all the talk was about the 100% gold that was “Crazy in Love”, but I secretly wondered how many tricks Beyonce had up (and under) her sleeve. Well, as it turns out, her lightning struck twice: Months after its release, this track is still on most pop radio playlists while other singles like “Baby Boy” and “Me, Myself and I” are not– and for good reason. “Naughty Girl” absolutely burns. It doesn’t overwhelm with a platinum production; rather, its minimal, Eastern-tinged flavor serves up Beyonce’s declaration, “tonight, I’ll be your naughty girl” like oil in a hot pan. Delicious and practically perfect. –Dominique Leone

09: Fabolous
“Breathe”
[Atlantic]

Legend holds that Just Blaze crafted this beat purely from thunder and stomach-knotting tension, but Supertramp beg to differ, and understandably so: It, in fact, transforms the central piano hook of their sax-sucking “Crime of the Century” into one of the most powerful backing tracks hip-hop’s seen this decade, effectively reducing the worth of their original to dust and ash like a giant gorilla foot crushing a skyline in heart-rending slow motion. Fabolous– who, weirdly, proved himself a master of dusky melancholia and nerve-wracked urgency with last year’s late-summer slow jam “Can’t Let You Go”– is not just smart enough to realize what he’s working with here, but inexplicably talented enough to do the beat justice: His lines are so shot-through with heroic adrenaline it makes “Eye of the Tiger” sound like Air Supply. –Ryan Schreiber

08: Belle and Sebastian
Books EP
[Rough Trade]

Cashmere nerds, beer hatters, and the criminally hip betwixt– here’s a Belle & Sebastian EP we all like. Count the summery Dear Catastrophe Waitress single “Wrapped Up in Books” and spiteful love jangle “Your Secrets” among only the best hate-that-I-love-this loch-pop you’ll ever hear, fine, whatever– “Your Cover’s Blown” is still flat-out brilliant. The Queen comparisons flatter it so, but frankly, this song’s dorkier by metric miles, more tender, and somehow more fist-pumping, too: A “Hey Ya!” for the outcasts, an Ernest Goes to Camp for less pissy Napoleon Dynamite s. –Nick Sylvester

07: Franz Ferdinand
“Take Me Out”
[Sony]

The special thing about “Take Me Out” is how much better it is than it needs to be. The vast majority of indie guitar bands would’ve stretched the song’s driving Pixie/Spoon intro for three minutes, added a bridge, and then sat back congratulating themselves. And most of us would’ve been satisfied, not realizing anything was missing. Only Franz Ferdinand knew that we hadn’t yet reached the song’s molten core; that we also deserved its glittery inversion of the “Trampled Underfoot” riff, its swaggering mirror-ball chorus and crafty Cupid’s-arrow-as-assassin’s-crosshairs lyrics. Call it going the extra mile, and savor it accordingly. –Matthew Murphy

06: The Walkmen
“The Rat”
[Recordcollection]

In a year when “indie rock” encompassed both major label darlings and mainstream favorites, “The Rat” compelled us away from fruitless narrow classification and toward a more universal form of musical bliss. But while Hamilton Leithauser’s snarling exasperation in the anthemic first verse perfectly matches the song’s bookend intensity, ultimately his bravado is a red herring. “The Rat”, at its core, is about ambivalence, loneliness, and disappointment. In so expressively articulating the frustration of being alone, The Walkmen speak to anyone who’s ever felt disenchanted, disenfranchised, or generally lost. There’s a lot of it going around, and plenty of people are eager to shout along. –David Moore

05: LCD Soundsystem
“Yeah (Crass Version)”
[DFA]

Like “Losing My Edge”, “Yeah” is another history lesson, but instruction here comes from the music, and the topic is how to plunder correctly. Propulsive disco beat, Stevie Wonder’s “Superstition” clavinet, the Mark E. Smith vocal with another laundry list of complaints, and the acid freakout at the summit: LCD Soundsystem have such good ears and impeccable taste no one cares which parts of their sound have been done before. That alone is refreshing as hell, and here the bits are again assembled with an Aristotlean sense of drama. The vocal portion of “Yeah” is pop-song-length and decries the all-talk/no-action types who ain’t getting it done. Then, in the tradition of “She gave me a kiss/ Like this,” LCD cuts the talk and puts money where the mouth was, taking their sweet time ramping up to the sort of frenzied climax most producers only dream about. –Mark Richardson

04: M.I.A.
“Galang”
[XL]

Before she hooked up with Diplo and lit up a million WinAmp playlists, M.I.A. made all the UK pop stock-watchers go crazy with this song. It’s not just the bass-heavy dancehall-goes-to-Bombay beat, or the blipped-out synth lines that hit you like a shave too close, or even her voice, green and rough as it is. It’s the deadened sensation of being run over by an army of light, too hard for your mind, too smart for anywhere else. Or is it? “Purple haze, galang-a-lang-a-lang-a” could mean anything (though her interests appear to lie closer to politics than love), but what it most certainly does not mean is an easy way to pigeonhole M.I.A. Maya Arulpragasam probably isn’t going to get a boob job, and I don’t think she’s going to start wearing schoolgirl outfits in her videos– she’s more Neneh Cherry than Britney. What she will do is anyone’s guess. With any luck, it’ll be something like this. –Dominique Leone

03: Britney Spears
“Toxic”
[Jive]

Appreciating Britney Spears was the final frontier of shedding my old pop-fearing husk, so laced was her music and persona with the red flags of hitting/slaving misogyny, leering pedophilia, and mannequin sexuality. But the throttled strings of “Toxic” finally scuttled all that kneejerk sociology, being just too damn irresistible a pop song for it to matter what media super-entity it was attributed to. It sure didn’t hurt that it was the first Britney single in a while not to parasite off of her persona– finally, she just acted like an adult, rather than constantly reminding us she wasn’t a girl anymore. And mysteriously Scandanavian producers Bloodshy & Avant hung the perfect slinky musical drapery: The aforementioned strings, which swell perfectly to that recurring screeching punctuation, and a sinister surf-guitar riff that made the Alias-inspired video an obvious call. Thanks a lot, Britney, now who the fuck am I gonna irrationally hate? –Rob Mitchum

02: Jay-Z
“99 Problems”
[Roc-A-Fella/Def Jam]

In Mark Romanek’s video for Jay-Z’s “99 Problems”, producer Rick Rubin waddles around New York City scowling, striking quasi-anonymous poses from behind a colossal beard, a pair of black Ray-Bans, and a full-length fur coat, dutifully playing the tough, silent sidekick to Jay-Z’s tired hero. But that non-mugging is so not necessary: The Black Album may have been a long, inadvertent homage to Jigga’s back-out, but “99 Problems” is all about Rubin. Old-school slams/scratches rub up against brash 808 beats, while Jay-Z spits standard law enforcement woes. It could be 1984 or 2004; it just doesn’t matter: “99 Problems” is the kind of propulsive, mobilizing urban fight song that packs enough universal fervor to make total sense wherever or whenever you live. “You crazy for this one, Rick!” –Amanda Petrusich

01: Annie
“Heartbeat”
[679]

With Modest Mouse, Franz Ferdinand, Garden State, and “The O.C.” opening doors for small bands to earn some mainstream respect, 2004 is being considered by some publications to be the year that “indie” ceased to be shorthand for “independent”; just as likely, it could be the year that “pop” ceases to be derided as merely short for “popular,” as it saw MP3 blogs and other internet outlets paving new, industry-free avenues for should-be worldwide hits from artists such as M.I.A., Rachel Stevens, The Knife, Fox n’Wolf, Ce’Cile, Scissor Sisters, U.S.E., Slim Thug, PAS/CAL, Lady Sovereign, Love Is All, Johnny Boy, and Girls Aloud, among others.

The best of this new wave of fluxpop– tracks with a pop sensibility and communicative, crossover potential that are nevertheless more often transferred via 0s and 1s than Hot 97s or Radio Ones– is Annie’s “Heartbeat”. Annie’s encapsulation of anxious moments and the thrill of possibility and simple pleasures hasn’t yet had the chance to become a proper hit; it was issued as a promo this year and will be given a full UK release in February. For now, it’s a quiet success, which is fitting for this shy slice of bundled nerves and nervous energy. Without striving for any of the benchmarks usually associated with year-defining singles– say, barrier-crashing innovation, or spearheading a new genre— “Heartbeat” achieves the very rare feat of simply being a perfect pop song, as well as the arbiter of a very new means of discovering classic pop tracks. –Scott Plagenhoef