As voted on my NME readers:

1. Oasis - 'Live Forever'
2. Nirvana - 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
3. Pulp - 'Common People'
4. The Smiths - 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out'
5. The Libertines - 'Don't Look Back Into The Sun'
6. The Libertines - 'Time For Heroes'
7. The Smiths - 'How Soon Is Now?'
8. The Stone Roses - 'I Am The Resurrection'
9 The Strokes - 'Last Nite'
10 Arctic Monkeys - 'I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor'
11. The Smiths - 'This Charming Man'
12. The Stone Roses - 'She Bangs The Drums'
13. The Libertines - 'Can't Stand Me Now'
14. Oasis - 'Don't Look Back In Anger'
15. Blur - 'Song 2'
16. Franz Ferdinand - 'Take Me Out'
17. The Stone Roses - 'I Wanna Be Adored'
18. The Verve - 'Bitter Sweet Symphony'
19. Joy Divison - 'Love Will Tear Us Apart'
20. Joy Division - 'Transmission'
21. The Smiths - 'Panic'
22. The Breeders - 'Cannonball'
23. The Gossip - 'Standing In The Way Of Control'
24. Babyshambles - 'Fuck Forever'
25. Oasis - 'Supersonic'
26. Radiohead - 'Creep'
27. Oasis -' Wonderwall'
28. Pavement - 'Cut Your Hair'
29. Arcade Fire - 'Rebellion (Lies)'
30. Manic Street Preachers - 'A Design For Life'
31 Oasis - 'Cigarettes & Alcohol'
32 The Stone Roses - 'Fool's Gold'
33 The Killers - 'Mr Brightside'
34 Radiohead - 'Just'
35 Pixies - 'Monkey Gone To Heaven'
36 Kaiser Chiefs - 'I Predict A Riot'
37 Kasabian - 'LSF'
38 Pixies - 'Gigantic'
39 Oasis - 'Champagne Supernova'
40 Klaxons - 'Golden Skans'
41 Blur - 'Parklife'
42 The Cribs - 'Hey Scenesters'
43 Suede - 'Animal Nitrate'
44 The Stone Roses - 'Love Spreads'
45 The La's - 'There She Goes'
46 Dinosaur Jr - 'Freak Scene'
47 The Libertines - 'Up The Bracket'
48 Sonic Youth - 'Bull In The Heather'
49 The Rapture - 'House Of Jealous Lovers'
50 My Bloody Valentine - 'You Made Me Realise'

there's no way in hell that "golden skans" is better than "parklife", "there she goes", "bull in the heather", and especially not "house of jealous lovers".

"there she goes" is near perfect.

Right, but this is NME.

It's easy to pick apart lists and I certainly could find issue with some of these but I really think it's a fairly decent representitation of current indie rock for better or worse.

1) no.
2) there's no rule about currency, so Mr. Brightside is ONE OF THE GREATEST INDIE ROCK (wtf) ANTHEMS OF ALL TIME.
3) no.

"house of jealous lovers" is a pure anthem. it should be top-10. for about two years you could not go into a club that was at all "indie" without hearing it. and everyone loved it every single time.

It's a list. We're always gonna have WTF about at least some of the tracks because we didn't make it and someone else did. I'm just tired of the Obner excercise of posting a list and picking it apart, I guess.

And I absolutely don't think Mr. Brightside should be on the list, but overall the list really isn't that awful. But you see NME and it starts.

And House of Jealous Lovers is grossly overrated by you folks.

And everyone should have focused on the Kaiser Chiefs making the list and not the Killers.

Also if you haven't realized yet, Indie is the new Alternative. So a list in 1997 of "alternative" music would have been alot different in the types of bands with main stream success when compared to "alternative" music in 1991.

Well, we have 3 options: just look at the list, talk about how great it is, or talk about how crappy it is. In this case it's crappy, so I went that route. Would it be less tiresome to you if we talked about how we wouldn't have picked the songs, but we can see NME's point, and good for them for going out of their way and listing 50 songs?

By in large I've seen obner jack it to almost all of these artist since it's inception. And they obviously make up most of the bottom half of the top 50, which should be pretty good by our own albeit mediocre standards. I think people see Killers and NME and start the knee jerk parade. I think if it were possible for us to come up with a similar list, it wouldn't have been too far from this.

It might surprise you to find that Obner is comprised of individuals.

I don't really find a number of those entries too surprising. NME always ranks some band that came out tomorrow in their GREATEST lists. The only shock for me was "Bull in the Heather". That came out of nowhere.

If you're tired of the exercise of people picking apart lists, why bother reading any posts outside of the list itself? Because, really, I'm tired of people complaining about people picking apart lists.

So there.

Tired of posting and picking = tired of life.

It's NME, so brit heavy and kids-these days heavy. Even so, I can think of a lot of better songs that qualify as anthemic that I bet won't make the top 30. (Everyone Choose Sides, for instance, based purely on having seen 'em Sunday; Pump It Up). They'll get to Common People, clearly. given what they've got. They'll miss To Hell With Good Intentions.

I'm saving my picking for the full one, but I'll say this - if I never hear Oasis again in my life, that'll be just fine.

I've been here for six years. We're much more sheep than you want to admit. But that's not really the point. I'm talking consensus. The fact that no list will comprise everything each individual wants was actually kind of my original point. If you drop, "it's not my list" attitude, you might see it's not really awful for what it aims to portray.

Good point. I'm grouchy and shouldn't have even bothered reading this thread.

I'm always surprised/suspicious to see recent "hits" on top lists.



I think one needs time, perhaps 5 years or even longer to identify whether a song is a "classic" or not.

I hate that gdf La's song.

I didn't know indie rock had anthems.

way too many british acts

I don't like the list but I'm going to stick up for the NME kids that voted in this poll.

None of us emerged from the birth canal with encyclopaedic knowledge of Jazz Butcher albums or the ability to draw the guitar tabs for the BMX Bandits 'Hard Drugs' on the back of an envelope. They are just kids, so give them a break.

Soon enough the ones interested enough in music to continue listening throughout their adulthood will become snobby assholes just like our good selves, putting people down on internet message boards because some 16 year old had the temerity to list a song from the present instead of a Meat Puppets b-side from 1982.

NME and bland indie rock is just part of caterpillar-pupae-music fan dickhead transformation so let's not be too hard on the black-jeaned larvae.

again, darrin owns us all.

Meat Puppets B-side, please? Everybody knows the only really good Meat Puppets song was the self-produced flexi disc they only made 200 of and handed out at shows.

Mayhaps I have a different definition of "anthem" than the IPC crew? I like most of these songs, but I'd hardly associate them with being anthemic.

LIAR!