I ♥ MUSIQUE: ihrtmusique's Top 100 Songs of 2000

Okay, the time for tinkering is over. Deep breath - here we go, here's my list.

It hadn’t really crossed my mind that there was cause for a major ‘Best of the Decade’ list until I saw Pitchfork’s Top 500 list a couple of month’s back – the first of many similar since then, though Pitchfork’s remains the biggest I’ve seen, and probably also the closest to my own list).

Once the idea was there, I knew there’d be no resisting getting involved. So I started chipping away at it – putting all the likely ones in a playlist and then just living with them for a bit, whittling the 300/400 down to something approaching 100.

Then came the hard part, of prioritising that 100. It’s so easy to keep going round in circles and on more than one occasion I’ve found myself agreeing with friends who’ve said that they could never do it – where would you start? And there’s definitely been a couple of occasions when one day the order’s made sense and the next day it’s out the window.

But I've drawn a line under it and now have what I consider the Top 100 Songs of 2000 – 2009.

A couple of points…

There’s only one of me.
I put a substantial, but not infinite, amount of money towards buying music, but there will always be some that slip through the net.

Lists are about personal taste.
And so because there's only one of me, this really is a reflection of my tastes, not any kind of poll or consensus.

If it's Taste vs. Right - taste wins
I’ve really tried to avoid including artists or songs just because they ‘should’ be here, hence not very high showings for some bands that a lot of music critics laud highly. If that makes me look like a musical dumbass then so be it, but better that than a musical fraud or bandwagon-jumper.

So tune back in tomorrow for the first part of the countdown, but to give you an idea of where my head's at, below are the ones that were close but no cigar (in no particular order).

All Listen links go to iTunes