Ten songs to fall in love with music

The song that ended one decade and started another. A riff everyone knows, a chorus that detonates, and a band that seemed embarrassed by how huge it made them. Still the sound of everything changing at once.

The most effortless hit on the most heartbroken album. Stevie Nicks wrote it in minutes about a collapsing marriage, and it floats like nothing is wrong. Pop songwriting at its most deceptively simple.

The groove that crowned the biggest pop star on earth. That bassline, that paranoia, that impossible vocal: four minutes that still sound like the future of pop decades on.

A jazz-rap psalm that became a protest anthem in the streets. Kendrick Lamar turned hope into a hook, and the song outgrew its album to become something the culture needed. Proof a single track can carry weight.

Smoky, slow and devastating: trip-hop's most beautiful four minutes. Portishead built a torch song out of dust and a sampled guitar, and Beth Gibbons sings it like the last words on earth. The sound of 2am.

Three minutes of effortless cool that relaunched the guitar band. The Strokes made not trying sound like the highest art, and a whole decade took notes. The song that made rock feel young again.

Wisdom, warning and an unbeatable hook from one of the great voices of her generation. Lauryn Hill rapped and sang with equal command and made it sound easy. A masterclass in three and a half minutes.

A hushed, heartbeat-driven ballad that became one of the most recognisable songs of its era. Massive Attack and Elizabeth Fraser made something fragile and enormous at once. Beauty you feel in your chest.

A statement of pride, power and Southern Black identity that doubles as a knockout pop song. Beyoncé made her most political record sound like her most fun, and shifted the conversation overnight.

A bassline you cannot shake wrapped around a story of romantic defeat. Tame Impala smuggled heartbreak into a disco-funk groove and accidentally wrote the decade's most-streamed psych song. Impossible not to move to.