10 Rock Music Acts Who Peaked With Their First Album

7. The Strokes - Is This It

Arriving in 2001, The Strokes' Is This It is one of those albums that became a pivotal piece of the music collection of the high school kids and young adults of the time.

As someone who falls into that particular bracket, it's hard to explain just how everywhere Is This It and its singles were in 2001 and across the next year or two. Hard to Explain, Last Nite, and Someday were the three singles released from this debut record, yet they were matched in quality by so many of the album tracks accompanying them on Is This It

It's fair to say that Last Nite was the biggest song on the album, but album track New York City Cops proved just as popular amongst certain fans. Both songs - like the majority of this debut outing - had an effortlessly cool vibe to them, with an energy and rhythm that was alluring yet not particularly complex. The Strokes were balancing being stupidly cool, fresh and raw with also being relatively simple in their approach to music - and man, did it work brilliantly.

The key word to Is This It is "catchy". Whether it's the title track, The Modern Age, Soma, Barely Legal, Someday, Trying Your Luck, Take It or Leave It, or Alone, Together, each and every song on Is This It is different from the others, yet all have in the common the ability to have you humming along before you've even realised what you're doing.

Some might place Is This Is follow-up Room on Fire on a pedestal with its predecessor, but those people would be in the vast minority.

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