100 Greatest Songs of the 00’s #15 The Strokes – Last Nite

Released: 2001

Jealousy is a dish best served hot. When the British music weekly the New Musical Express made The Strokes debut EP The Modern Age it’s single of the week in early 2001 they were unknown to practically everyone from outside their adopted Lower East Side neighbourhood; even then almost nobody who was awake during the daylight hours had heard of them either.

Recorded with producer Gordon Raphael, those three songs sparked a frenzy over rock n’ roll not seen in decades; the subsequent label bidding war was either an unholy mess or highly amusing spectacle, that depending largely on how close you were to the beneficiaries.

Not everyone bought a ticket for the cool train. Writing about their debut album Is This It on release, Trouser Press stalwart Ira Robbins sneered that the quintet “don’t own the clothes they’re modeling at this fashion shoot” whilst Flak magazine’s Yancey Strickler declared “They aren’t even a perfect reproduction of the Velvet Underground, the Stooges or Television“, presumably with both arms sassily folded.

Derivation, appropriation, plagiarism; without these there would be hardly a note of music struck anywhere, and Julian Casablancas’ history lesson was a good one – and a Limey discovered one at that. Last Nite was a raggy, blues punk showtune that needed only a tiny sacrifice of un-remembering before dragging you and and it’s new wave smarts out of the subterranean bar of their choice. It shouldn’t have mattered who found The Strokes, but for a few months at least, it seemed like that was the most important thing about them.