The Listomania I make the lists, you shoot them down. Quid Pro Quo.

146. The Chemical Brothers – Star Guitar

Yeah, kids. There is some straight forward electronic on this list. Because if you went through the 00’s without listening to dance/electronic/beat/four-on-the-floor music, you missed out. On a lot. This was the decade when electronically-produced music finally became mainstream – and don’t give me that disco shit, that’s different. That’s like saying the Everly Brothers brought rock n’ roll to a whole new level. Or a reference from this century, like saying Something Corporate really brought punk roots to the foreground. What did Britney, Radiohead, Daft Punk, LCD Soundsystem, Timberlake, and Timbaland all have in common in the Aughts? Boom-chk boom-chk boom-chk.

This is far from the best Chemical Brothers song. But it’s the best song in years of arguably the most important electronic musicians of the last decade and a half. It’s an impressively brief slice of majestic, precise beat-making from two of the best, and like its music video, it passes by like sprawling landscape outside a commuter train. When it breaks open at 2:30, it feels to me like one of the most wide-open spaces in recent music history, with room to breathe, stretch, and really look around at what’s going on in the music. Also, there are a lot of whooshes into and out of phrases, and I like that. I like being told when it’s time to dance, and when it’s time to wipe the sweat off my face and watch the lights for a couple seconds. And then just like that, the song’s over, accomplishing exactly what I imagine Ed and Simon wanted: 4 minutes flat of rushing, gorgeous beats and synths with enough pop music sensibility and architecture to be their best song in a long, long time.