Dan Condon: Sick Tunes, 20 Best Tracks Of The Past 20 Years

I never tend to vote in those big Best Songs Of Blah-Blah-Blah polls and for one simple but solid reason; it's too fucking hard.

I can't choose my 20 favourite disco songs, I can't select the ten best number one hits of the 1960s, I'd lose sleep if I had to pick five One Hit Wonders that oughtn't be forgotten… hell, I struggle coming up with five best songs I heard on the internet this past fortnight to put together this crappy humble little blog.

In what is almost certainly an attempt to make my life very difficult, triple j have decided to count down the top 100 songs of the past 20 years, as voted by the people of Australia. And, in what is sure an attempt to make my life very difficult, I've decided to be one of the voters.

So here's how this plays out: here's my 20 songs – some chosen for personal reasons, some because they “deserve” to be in there – and below I'm going to argue the case for five of the suckers.

That was really, really, really hard.

YOU AM I – Berlin Chair

Hopefully this will be one of the few songs I've picked that actually makes it into the list. There have been times in my life where I have genuinely considered this to be the best song ever written and I'm yet to find irrevocable proof that it's not.

It's two minutes and 35 seconds long and it kinda seems to go in circles for its entire duration, never really settling into any kind of rhythm. But, even though it's kinda hard to figure out exactly what the song is doing or where it's going, it has an intensely catchy chorus – perhaps not catchy in the typical sense, but catchy all the same.

You Am I have written plenty of my favourite songs of all time, but the kinda hopeless, listless protagonist that Tim Rogers plays here, mixed with music that's relentless, dark and anthemic, just means it can never quite be beaten.

THE QUEERS – Debra Jean

I've loved bratty pop punk most of my life, but rather than bowing at the altar of Blink 182 or the Fat Wreck crowd, I've always been more of a Lookout Records kinda guy. Not sure why, I guess I wasn't really enough of a skater type dude (read: not at all) to identify with what was coming from Fat Mike's stable and, while bands like Green Day, Screeching Weasel and The Queers are far from clean, I just never really dug the cheap laughs so many bands on that side of the fence go for.

Joe King (aka Joe Queer) writes some stupid fucking songs, but for the most part he's given us what I consider to be the best pop-punk of the past 20 years. If you haven't heard it, you absolutely must seek out 1993's Love Songs For The Retarded and play it at a volume that could be deemed as potentially dangerous; it's a pop-punk masterpiece.

Choosing one song from the record was easy; not that there aren't others on the album that don't deserve to be on here, but Debra Jean tones down the aggression the band show in the vast majority of their music, which serves to further uncover King's spectacular pop nous. Also, his heart-on-sleeve pining just pulls up before being altogether too earnest, meaning he comes out of the tune sounding like no less than a real sweetheart.

Anyway, enjoy it here because you won't be hearing it on the countdown. Tom Waterhouse could give me 150,000,000-to-1 odds on this song making the Hottest 100 and I wouldn't put a dime on it.

RYAN ADAMS – Come Pick Me Up

Ryan Adams' 2000 album Heartbreaker was the final push that I needed to fall face first into the world of country music and it remains one of the all-time great country albums; listen to it again if you disagree.

The majority of people voting in this poll are going to be quite young, but those of us who are well out of our teen years now will have lived through some pretty horrid shit (read: relationships – reciprocated or not) in their time and Heartbreaker just presses all those intensely painful buttons right in the spot that hurts the most. It's funny how we can get a perverse joy out of something that can make you so miserable.

There's plenty of awesome crap in this song, which sees Gillian Welch backing Adams up in the finest of ways, but nothing as awesome as this chorus:

“Come pick me up
Take me out
Fuck me up
Steal my records
Screw all my friends
They're all full of shit
With a smile on your face
And then do it again”

What does it mean? Well I know what it means to me; you make up your own mind.

BEASTIE BOYS – Sabotage

Unlike most of the songs I've chosen, I'll actually be really upset if this song doesn't make it into the 100. Perhaps it says something about the inherent racism in the music industry or the inherent racism of white middle class Australia, but most of my peers (of my age) who are into hip hop got their via either the Beastie Boys or Eminem.

I don't need to use this space as a place to espouse the brilliance of the sadly defunct New York hip hop powerhouse that brought us so many brilliant songs for so many years; but there can be no overstating the importance of this vitriolic three minutes of musical brilliance. Putting together a unique blend of punk rock and hip hop – both of which the Beastie Boys played in quintessentially New York styles – their 1992 and 1994 albums Check Your Head and Ill Communication are probably the two pieces that define the band best.

Sabotage was short, sharp, punchy, angry and fun all at once; on one hand it demanded to be taken seriously right out of the gates, on the other it was laughing at itself the entire time. What intensified the song's grasp on so many of us was its brilliant Spike Jonze produced clip, which you absolutely must watch above. Music videos were possibly bigger than ever in the mid-1990s, as actual directors began teaming up with bands that fell below the mainstream, and this was one of the best we had ever seen.

THE WHITE STRIPES – Fell In Love With A Girl

I'm not sure if I'd actually say this is one of my favourite songs of the past 20 years, but I think what The White Stripes did for garage rock a decade ago needs to be acknowledged (and, frankly, I'd like to at least get one out of the 20 I have chosen correct).

It's hard to put your finger on what it is exactly that endeared that constantly widening demographic that sits on the precipice of the mainstream and the underground to this group out of all the great garage rock acts that had released corking records around the same time; though no doubt their refined, slightly gimmicky image and finely tuned pop sensibilities had something to do with it. The brilliant Michel Gondry clip that accompanied this song can't have hurt either – it's still brilliant after all these years.

Fell In Love With A Girl was one of those songs I remember playing over and over again as a high school kid, trying to figure out why something so simple and bare could be so captivating. It did what all good garage rock should; made you smile, stirred your soul and made you think “fuck, I could do that”. But, of course, you can't.

Great tune.

Feel free to drop me a line tomorrow as I will have probably completely changed my list by then.