Dan McLaughlin started a war about what the greatest pop song of the 21st century is. Judson Berger ruthlessly escalated it. I am here to end it. I come in peace. I didn’t bring 300 other nominees. But I’m pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: This nonsense will kill you all.
The “song of the century” is not turning 20 in April of 2023, or any time this year for that matter. This is not just because Radiohead’s album from 2003 (Hail to the Thief) is only middling as far as their typical output is concerned, but because the White Stripes themselves are a band of distinctly limited virtues who maximized them on 2003’s Elephant but failed to transcend them in any way. This is fine; as a man who frequently enjoys hopping into his groovy Seventies “Scooby Van” to go space truckin’, I am very much in the market for extremely dumb, relentlessly effective hard rock. The problem is that “Seven Nation Army’s” riff is neither hyper-memorable (it is good; it is not great) nor is the song’s production anything other than a self-sabotaging mess. Nice try gents, but no cigar.
I don’t want to end on a purely controversial note, so instead: For those who were wondering? The actual best songs of the 21st century so far — the ones that are going to last long after ephemera has fallen away as formally superb creations that capture something ineffable about the era — are rather indisputably either this, this, or this. The last-named (you should click) is one in particular we’re going to remember culturally even after the rock era is no longer a living memory; iconic, utterly haunting, and the embodiment of the birth of an uncertain generation of American youth. Wake up, friends, the battle is over.