The 200 Best Rock Songs of the 21st Century
Rolling Stone's ranked list of the 200 best rock songs of the 21st century so far, framed as a rebuttal to anyone claiming rock is dying and as a companion to its "Reasons to Love Rock" feature. It deliberately spreads across pop-punk, emo, metal, indie, garage revival, Latin rock, Tuareg desert blues, country-rock, and crossover acts like OutKast, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, and Olivia Rodrigo. Each entry is a short blurb mixing backstory and artist quotes, and the rule of mostly one song per artist is bent only for a few legends (Radiohead, Muse, Foo Fighters, the Strokes, and others). It builds to a top ten that includes the White Stripes' "Seven Nation Army," the Killers' "Mr. Brightside," and Yeah Yeah Yeahs' "Maps." The argument throughout is that rock stays healthy because it keeps mutating, so the list works as a wide-ranging survey of the era rather than a narrow canon.