Party Like It's 1996

Is NME really only 15? Shurely shome mishtake! Usually when these kind of anniversaries roll around, I find myself surprised to find things are older than I thought (older than me, mainly). At school, I always wanted to be an NME reader but in truth, I only bought it a few times to impress guys I liked. In any case, to celebrate its 15th anniversary, the magazine has produced a list of the best 20 songs from the past 15 years.

As the majority of the music in my iTunes library comes from the second half of the '90s, I thought I'd agree with many of their choices but it turns out that--with the exception of Radiohead's Paranoid Android and The Verve's Bittersweet Symphony--most of the songs that I like on the list are ones that were played every Tuesday and Wednesday night in the crappy clubs of Nowheresville during my university years. Hot Chip's Over and Over, Beyonce's Crazy in Love, The Killers' Mr Brightside, The Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines, Bloc Party and, especially, Outkast's Hey Ya. Yes, those songs all formed the core of the soundtrack of my fortunately limited clubbing years; I can't quite believe I'm already nostalgic about them.

I thought about putting together my own top 20 songs from 1996-2011 but, of course, the list would probably end up being pretty similar to most of my all-time favourite songs lists (this list would probably just about cover it).