Daveportivo's Cultural Evaluation Facility

To kick off the 21st Century Moby laid all his cards on the table with his most commercially successful album Play. While it struggled to hold together as a single piece being was pulled down by it's own sense of sparsity and gloom; it did manage to spawn a huge number of successful singles. From an artistic point of view Porcelain was Moby's finest, a gorgeous sweeping down beat piece, while it lacked the emotional wear and tear of Massive Attacks work, it was a remarkably well judged and subtle piece. Porcelain has become a timeless track, it has been immortalised in a thousand motion pictures, and will likely be used over and over and over again, this was music made for the largest of canvases and pitched for the most personal of moments. Hear It Here.

On Take Of Your Pants And Jacket there were signs that Blink might well be evolving and developing into real songwriters, that there might just be more to their world than just angst and knob gags. On their self titled final album Blink proved that they were ready to move with the times, and pointed the way to the emo revolution that was set to envelop the world in the coming years. Down was downbeat serious and driven by a powerful combinations of drums and keys. It still to this day sounds like the best Angels And Airwaves track, that Angels and Airwaves never released. Hear It Here.

Okay so it's another big leap of faith in the top 1,000, another sure fire single that has yet to get it's official release, but I'm willing to play psychic on this one, as Men Is This Town is not only the finest track from Shakira's Shewolf album, it's a track that has hit written allover. It seems remarkable that Shakira worries that Matt Damon isn't meant for her, I mean if Shakira can't get Matt Damon, I'm not gonna have much luck with Lily Allen I fear. Anyway the track is brilliant, as Shakira grows in confidence with every passing second, before convincing herself that the men in the town are just scared of her aggressive sexuality because after all she's too fresh, too clean and too fly, as she explains in a hilarious daffy end rap. It's sexy, it's stupid, it feels honest, and most surprisingly from the world of pre written over produced pop it feels remarkably real. Another classic single that could only come from Shakira lips. Hear It Here.

(Def Jam 2006, Xtreme)

Neyo isn't good for much but he sure can lay down a divine chorus for people with actually talent to spit over. Ghostface Killah and Kanye went to work on the remix of the excellent Back Like That it was tough deciding which version to include, Killah's understated rant about a girl hell bent on revenge, or Kanye's joke packed remix? I went with the remix because you get verses from two of the top notch rappers in the game, and after all who can resist Ye's line "She Ordered The Koby Beef, Like Shaquille O'Neil". In many ways the track felt like a throw back to the late nineties, but once in a while a bit of retrospection can lead to a damn good time. Hear It Here.

Scandinavians are nice right? They make all the sweet sunshine pop that makes you smile for days right? Well wrong, Annie turned that whole notion on it's head with her breakthrough single, back in 2004 before we had Lily Allen and Amy Whinehouse, pop music was seriously lacking in tough divas, and Annie stormed onto the scene with this playful jibe. Annie made it clearly that she'd sleep with men indiscriminately and then wrap them round her little finger for her own amusement. It was all built on the top of one of Richard X's trademark so over produced it's inescapable beats. Unfortunately it would take Annie four years to follow up on her debut and by then the world had Lily Allen, but Annie fired the first shot in pop's grand old 21st Century revolution. Hear It Here.

Where exactly was I supposed to place this track? How do you go about comparing Atlas to a Shakira or Annie track? I'm still not sure exactly but the late six hundreds seems about right. Atlas was the second track on Battles' Mirrored album and I think it was at that moment; as the track started to build momentum that critics world wide suddenly realized that they were listening to something very special indeed. It has a real grinding arrangement that builds momentum slowly, using multiple jazz elements power exploding with crunching guitars and a powerful Muse style bass and clap combo. Of course when that unforgettable and inescapable hook take hold in the final few minutes the song is elevated instantly and becomes a truly mind blowing piece. Were this a best song list it may well place very much higher but as a single it's hard to push it higher despite it's brilliance. Hear It Here.

This was originally a grudging inclusion Sheila was so overplayed in 2006 it was simply mind numbing when Jamie's label decided on a 2007 re-release. Thankfully two years removed and the tracks brilliance re-emerges, and I can once again remember why I fell in love with the track in the first place. Jamie T in his ska/rap vocals delivers a powerful, dark and moving narrative which he intersperses with spoken word samples, screams and a variety on instrumentation. Yet at the centre of the track, underneath all the clever storytelling devices lays a simple, irresistible hook, design to be belted out, on a friday night when you've had one too many to drink and failed to heed the tracks clear warning. Hear It Here.

Depending on with whom you speak The Coral are either the unappreciated saviours of British popular music or their an annoying little Liverpudlian outfit of little or no relevance. Well the truth is they're neither, and as a result have landed themselves in that horrible uncool middle ground shrouded in fond memories. It's probably the right place for the band who never quite clicked at the top level, maybe they were a little too nice. Who knows, but they did leave behind some pop gems, and Pass It On was actually their biggest charting hit, and things looked very bright in 2003 when this laid back and surprisingly philosophical track was tearing up the charts. Hear It Here.

(Global Warning 2002, Laim Lynch)

A brain dead comedy rock track or a brilliantly brutal satire on contemporary society and it's values? Well who cares, it doesn't matter, because if you don't like this track there may very well be something seriously wrong with you...huh...my brief bit of analysis make me think it was definitely the latter...well...Whatever. Hear It Here.

Foals must have been doing something right in 2006/7 as they got the psuedo intellectual morons charged with dictating trends to the young and impressionable at Channel Four to give this track and the band a slot on the unbearable Skins. Well at least they got a decent track on the nations ipods for a change. Hummer still remains the high point in Foals career, it was the track that swelled the anticipation to monstrous levels, before we uncovered there was little more to their off beat rock than Dave Sitek's sublime production and intellectual posturing. I'm willing to give Foals one more chance but at the moment they stand as yet another band who were hyped far too hard, far too soon, on far too little hard evidence. Hear It Here.