10 Perfect Rock Songs Of The 2000s

For all of the pop punk and nu metal going on at the time, it still felt like music for adolescents. Even though acts like Blink 182 and Disturbed may have sold a ton of records in their day, these were the kind of lyrics that you could either listen to when you're feeling down or blast in your car as you're heading over to the mall. Rock had seemed to lose its core identity, until the Strokes helped bring everything back to basics.

Although most fans would argue that anything from Is This It would qualify as perfect, Reptilia is where they really started to hit their stride in terms of songwriting. Taking the kind of ramshackle delivery that they had on their debut, this is the kind of rock and roll chaos that's a lot more controlled this time around, with Albert Hammond Jr. delivering one hell of a riff that zooms around your head throughout most of the chorus. The real focus here is Julian Casablancas's delivery, switching on a dime from sounding bored to being on the verge of a panic attack in some of his bars.

Compared to the kind of verses that we were going to hear from the corporate side of rock and roll, this is where we started getting back in touch with our roots again. This was the kind of rock song that's ripped straight out of the genre's glory years, where you're bound to get into some trouble while listening to it.