When The Strokes first emerged in 2001, they came at a time when guitar music was in the pits. Rock radio was dominated by nu-metal and post-grunge, and it felt like the spirit of the guitar band was on life support. Then five kids from New York City changed everything. Fronted by Julian Casablancas and rounded out by guitarists Nick Valensi and Albert Hammond Jr., bassist Nikolai Fraiture, and drummer Fabrizio Moretti, The Strokes didn’t just arrive; they caused a chain reaction.
Their debut album, ‘Is This It’, is widely considered one of the most important rock records ever made. It was a watershed moment, crucial in the reinvention of post-millennium guitar music, and its influence spread almost immediately. Stripped back, raw, and recorded with almost no studio trickery, it sounded like nothing else on the radio at the time, yet somehow felt instantly familiar: the twin guitars of Valensi and Hammond Jr. locking together like two hands in a handshake, Casablancas’ distorted, laconic drawl sitting on top of it all like he couldn’t care less whether you were listening.
Tracks like ‘Last Nite’, ‘Someday’, and ‘Hard to Explain’ became anthems almost overnight. Bands like The Killers, Arctic Monkeys, Franz Ferdinand, Kings of Leon and The Kooks all owe a significant debt to what The Strokes did in 2001, and the ripple effects are still being felt today. As Arctic Monkeys’ Alex Turner once put it: “I just wanted to be one of The Strokes.”
They followed ‘Is This It’ with ‘Room on Fire’ in 2003, a record that maintained their signature twin-guitar sound while pushing their songwriting further, and then ‘First Impressions of Earth’ in 2006, their most ambitious and sprawling effort to date. After a five-year hiatus, ‘Angles’ arrived in 2011, followed by ‘Comedown Machine’ in 2013, a more synth-driven and experimental record that divided opinion but showed the band were unwilling to simply repeat themselves. A short EP, ‘Future Present Past’, came in 2016, before ‘The New Abnormal’ in 2020, their Grammy-winning sixth album, proved they still had plenty left to say.
Now, six years on from ‘The New Abnormal’, The Strokes are back with their seventh studio album, ‘Reality Awaits’, due for release on June 26, 2026. Recorded in Costa Rica with legendary producer Rick Rubin, it is one of the most anticipated rock records in years. The band have already returned to the live stage in emphatic fashion, headlining Coachella 2026 just yesterday, a performance that served as a timely reminder of quite how formidable they remain as a live act. The lead single, ‘Going Shopping’, arrived first via cassette tapes mailed to 100 fans before being released widely, a characteristically stylish move from a band who have always understood the theatre of rock and roll. The song itself, however, is a relatively disappointing opener: jangly and pleasant enough, but lacking the urgency and electricity that made the world fall in love with this band in the first place.
As a longtime fan, I am hoping ‘Reality Awaits’ surprises us all and delivers the kind of bold, infectious anthems that made The Strokes essential in the first place. I would love to see the band tap back into the raw energy and chemistry of their early records, while also finding new ground and taking creative risks. Given Rick Rubin’s reputation for bringing the best out of artists, I am cautiously optimistic that there will be at least a few instant classics here, songs that capture the unpredictability and swagger that made us all care in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, they can conjure up something that stands alongside ‘Last Nite’ and ‘Someday’ as defining moments in modern rock.
Whether ‘Reality Awaits’ as a whole can recapture that magic remains to be seen, but with The Strokes, hope springs eternal.
In the meantime, here is my list of what I believe are the ten greatest songs they have ever recorded.
‘Ode to the Mets’ closes ‘The New Abnormal’ and does so in the most Strokes way imaginable: unhurried, wistful, and quietly devastating. Named after New York’s long-suffering baseball team, it is less a sports tribute and more a meditation on nostalgia, ageing, and the strange grief of watching your youth recede in the rear-view mirror. There is something almost elegiac about it; a band in their forties looking back at everything they have been, everything they have meant, and wondering, perhaps, whether the best days are behind them.
Given the turbulent history of The Strokes, with all the well-documented tensions, hiatuses, and solo projects, the song carries an extra weight. It feels earned.
Musically, it is unlike almost anything else in their catalogue. The production is lush and unhurried, built around a gently ascending guitar figure that gives way to one of Casablancas’ most restrained and genuinely affecting vocal performances. He is not hiding behind a vocoder or a wall of distortion here; he sounds exposed, and all the better for it. The song builds slowly, patiently, until it opens up into something that feels genuinely grand without ever tipping into bombast. It is the sound of a band at peace with themselves, at least for a few minutes.
Casablancas sounds genuinely moved here, his voice uncharacteristically tender beneath the swelling, almost cinematic production. It is the kind of song that creeps up on you; you might not notice it on first listen, but give it time and it becomes one of the most affecting things the band have ever committed to tape. There is a lyrical looseness to it, too; Casablancas has never been a writer who spells everything out, preferring instead to gesture at feelings rather than define them, and here that approach works beautifully. The song does not need to explain itself. It simply exists, heavy with implication, and trusts the listener to meet it halfway.
It is also worth noting how unusual a closing track it is for The Strokes. Their albums have rarely ended on moments of quiet reflection; they tend to go out swinging. That ‘The New Abnormal’ closes on something this gentle and introspective says a great deal about where the band were at in 2020, a year that tested everyone and perhaps gave even the most guarded of artists permission to be vulnerable. ‘Ode to the Mets’ feels like a song that could only have been made by a band with twenty years behind them, the kind of song that younger Strokes could not have written, and would not have wanted to. As closing tracks go, it ranks among the finest in modern rock, and it is a reminder that beneath all the cool detachment and leather jackets, The Strokes were always capable of real emotional depth.
‘Welcome to Japan’ is one of the most underrated songs in The Strokes’ entire catalogue, a sleek, propulsive track from ‘Comedown Machine’ in 2013 that deserves far more attention than it typically receives. It opens with a guitar line that is immediately, almost unfairly, catchy, the kind of riff that lodges itself in your brain within seconds and refuses to leave. From there, it builds with confidence and momentum that feels effortless, which is, of course, the Strokes at their best: making the difficult look completely natural.
Casablancas is in fine form here, his vocal melody snaking around the groove with a looseness that belies how precisely constructed the song actually is. Lyrically, it is characteristically oblique, full of images that suggest rather than state, but there is an underlying restlessness to it, a sense of someone always moving, always searching, never quite arriving. It suits the title perfectly; Japan as a destination, as an idea, as somewhere just out of reach.
What makes ‘Welcome to Japan’ particularly impressive is how well it holds up as one of the standout moments on an album that divided the fanbase. ‘Comedown Machine’ was a more experimental, synth-tinged record, and not everyone came along for the ride, but this track has genuine energy and drive, a reminder that The Strokes could still write a lean, urgent rock song when they put their minds to it. It is the kind of track that would have sat comfortably on ‘Room on Fire’, and that is about as high a compliment as you can pay.
It is also worth considering what ‘Welcome to Japan’ says about the band’s range. By 2013, there were plenty of critics and fans who had written The Strokes off, convinced that the magic of ‘Is This It’ could never be recaptured and that each subsequent record was simply further evidence of a band in decline. ‘Welcome to Japan’ is a direct rebuttal to that argument. It is sharp, focused, and alive in a way that suggests a band that still had genuine creative fire, even if they were channelling it in unexpected directions.
The rhythm section deserves particular credit here, too. Moretti’s drumming is tight and propulsive without ever feeling mechanical, and Fraiture’s bass locks in beneath it with a quiet authority that gives the whole track its backbone. It is the kind of song where every element earns its place, nothing wasted, nothing superfluous, just five musicians who know exactly what they are doing and doing it very well indeed.
‘Bad Decisions’ is one of the most immediately joyful things The Strokes have ever recorded, a sugar rush of a song that grabs you by the collar from the very first bar and doesn’t let go. Released in February 2020 as the second single from ‘The New Abnormal’, it arrived like a shot of pure, uncomplicated fun from a band who had spent much of the preceding decade being anything but uncomplicated.
The song carries an interesting footnote: its chorus melody borrows so heavily from Billy Idol’s 1980 classic ‘Dancing with Myself’, originally written by Idol and his Generation X bandmate Tony James, that both men were given co-writing credits. It is the kind of thing that could have been a distraction or an embarrassment, but The Strokes pull it off with such breezy confidence that it barely matters. If anything, it feels entirely in keeping with a band that has always worn their influences openly and without apology. They heard something they loved, they absorbed it, and they made it their own.
Casablancas sounds genuinely energised here, his vocal performance looser and more playful than on much of the rest of the album. The guitars are bright and propulsive, the rhythm section locked in and driving, and the whole thing moves with the kind of effortless momentum that only the very best pop songs manage. It is not the deepest song in their catalogue, and it does not need to be. Sometimes a great hook is enough, and ‘Bad Decisions’ has one of the best they have ever written.
It also bears mentioning that the band first debuted the song at a Bernie Sanders rally in New Hampshire, which is perhaps the most Strokes thing imaginable: casually iconic, slightly surreal, and completely their own. Footage of the performance circulated widely online, with fans rushing the stage during a rendition of ‘New York City Cops’ as police attempted to shut it down. Only The Strokes could make a campaign rally feel like the most exciting gig in the world.
Interestingly, ‘Bad Decisions’ is not the only song on ‘The New Abnormal’ to borrow a vocal melody from a beloved eighties track. ‘Eternal Summer’ does something similar with the Psychedelic Furs’ 1984 classic ‘The Ghost in You’, with the Furs’ brothers Richard and Tim Butler both receiving co-writing credits as a result. It says something about where The Strokes’ heads were at during the making of ‘The New Abnormal’: steeped in the sounds of their youth, unashamed about it, and confident enough to wear those influences as a badge of honour rather than a source of embarrassment. On ‘Bad Decisions’, at least, it works brilliantly.
‘Eternal Summer’ is the most ambitious, sprawling, and divisive song on ‘The New Abnormal’, and it is all the more thrilling for it. Clocking in at just over six minutes, it is one of the longest tracks The Strokes have ever recorded, and it uses every second of that runtime to take the listener somewhere genuinely unexpected. This is not a band playing it safe; this is a band swinging for the fences.
As noted in the ‘Bad Decisions’ entry, ‘Eternal Summer’ incorporates elements of the Psychedelic Furs’ 1984 classic ‘The Ghost in You’, with the pre-chorus in particular echoing that song’s dreamy, melancholic quality. But where ‘Bad Decisions’ wears its influence lightly, ‘Eternal Summer’ absorbs it into something altogether stranger and more expansive. The song shifts mood and texture repeatedly, moving through new wave, funk, and something approaching psychedelia before arriving at an outro that sounds unlike anything else in the Strokes’ catalogue. It reportedly took longer to complete than any other song on the album, and that labour is audible; every element feels considered, deliberate, hard-won.
Casablancas gives one of his most theatrical vocal performances here, alternating between a falsetto that catches you off guard and a full-throated roar that suggests genuine feeling beneath the studied cool. Lyrically, the song gestures at themes of denial, fantasy, and the seductive pull of ignoring reality, which feels entirely fitting for a record made in the shadow of a collapsing world. It is also tellingly drummer Fabrizio Moretti’s favourite song on the album, and you can hear why; his performance here is among the most dynamic of his career.
‘Eternal Summer’ is not an easy song, and it was never meant to be. But for those willing to meet it on its own terms, it is one of the most rewarding things The Strokes have ever made.
It is also worth noting the sheer sonic ambition of the track’s structure. Most Strokes songs are lean and economical, built on the principle that nothing should outstay its welcome. ‘Eternal Summer’ throws that rulebook out entirely. It sprawls, it detours, it doubles back on itself, and just when you think you know where it is going, it pulls the rug from beneath you and heads somewhere else entirely. The outro in particular is extraordinary; a slowly dissolving wash of guitars and atmosphere that feels less like a song ending and more like a world fading out. It is the kind of finish that leaves you sitting in silence for a moment before you reach for the repeat button.
There is also something quietly political about the song, or at least politically adjacent. The lyrical imagery of denial and fantasy, of a summer that refuses to end, carries an unmistakable undertow of anxiety about the state of the world; the sense that things are unravelling and that nobody in a position of power is willing to admit it. Whether that reading is intentional or not, it gives the song a weight that goes beyond the personal, and makes it feel like one of the more urgent things the band have committed to tape in the latter half of their career.
For a song that took longer than any other on ‘The New Abnormal’ to complete, it has the rare quality of sounding both effortful and inevitable, as though it could not have existed in any other form.
‘Under Cover of Darkness’ is the sound of The Strokes remembering exactly who they are, and it is one of the most exhilarating moments of their entire career. Released in 2011 as the lead single from ‘Angles’, it arrived after a five-year silence and immediately silenced any doubts about whether the band still had it. They did. Emphatically.
From the moment that opening guitar riff kicks in, all jittery momentum and barely contained energy, ‘Under Cover of Darkness’ announces itself as a classic. It is the kind of song that sounds like it was always there, waiting to be discovered; familiar in the best possible sense, drawing on the twin-guitar interplay and propulsive rhythm section work that made ‘Is This It’ and ‘Room on Fire’ so irresistible, while still feeling fresh and alive. Valensi and Hammond Jr. are in exceptional form here, trading riffs with a looseness and chemistry that suggests a band genuinely enjoying themselves again after years of tension and uncertainty.
Casablancas, for his part, sounds like a man reborn. His vocal performance is sharp, urgent, and full of the kind of cocksure swagger that had been missing from much of the band’s output in the years leading up to ‘Angles’. There is a hunger to it that is infectious; you can feel him leaning into the microphone, willing the song forward. The lyrics are classic Casablancas: elliptical, image-driven, and just opaque enough to feel meaningful without ever quite resolving into a clear narrative. Which is, of course, exactly how it should be.
What makes ‘Under Cover of Darkness’ particularly special is what it represented at the time of its release. Five years is a long time in music, and The Strokes had spent much of that period beset by rumours of infighting, creative paralysis, and the possibility that ‘First Impressions of Earth’ might have been their final word. ‘Under Cover of Darkness’ put all of that to rest in three and a half minutes. It remains one of the great comeback singles in modern rock history, and a reminder that when The Strokes are firing on all cylinders, there are very few bands on the planet who can touch them.
Context matters here, and the context for ‘Angles’ was about as fractured as it gets. Things were at their most strained during the recording of the album, with solo projects pulling each member in different directions. Casablancas had gone solo with 2009’s ‘Phrazes for the Young’. Hammond Jr. had two full-lengths under his own name. Fraiture had started his own project, Nickel Eye. Moretti had put out the self-titled debut of his band Little Joy in 2008. Everyone, it seemed, had their own outlet; everyone except Valensi, who was remarkably candid about his frustrations, saying: “I’m of the opinion that you’re in a band and that’s what you do. If there’s leftover material and time, then sure, by all means. But if you’re playing material that you haven’t even shown to your main band and you’re just sort of keeping it for yourself, I’m not a big fan of that.”
On ‘Angles’, Valensi seems to take matters into his own hands, and ‘Under Cover of Darkness’ is the clearest expression of that. Casablancas can be heard in the lyrics lamenting how “everybody’s been singing the same song for 10 years”, a line that takes on extra resonance given the band’s circumstances at the time, and the song’s accompanying video even references ‘Last Nite’ directly. Meanwhile, Valensi’s guitar work drives the whole thing forward with a restless, almost defiant energy, trading between riffs that slot neatly into the classic Strokes sound and sharper, more urgent passages that feel determined to push things somewhere new. It is not the band at their most unified, but it is the band at their most alive, and sometimes that tension is exactly what great rock and roll needs.
‘Machu Picchu’ opens ‘Angles’ and does so with a jolt of pure, uncut Strokes energy that feels almost wilfully defiant given everything the band were going through at the time. It is a statement of intent: loose, funky, and irresistibly propulsive, built on a guitar groove that owes as much to the Rolling Stones and Talking Heads as it does to anything in The Strokes’ own back catalogue. From the very first note, it feels like a band shaking off the rust and rediscovering the joy of simply playing together.
The track has a lightness to it that is genuinely infectious. Where much of ‘Angles’ carries the weight of the band’s internal tensions, ‘Machu Picchu’ sounds almost breezy, as though Casablancas and company decided, at least for three and a half minutes, to stop worrying and just play. The rhythm section is particularly impressive here; Moretti’s drumming has a loose, almost shuffling quality that gives the song its distinctive bounce, and Fraiture’s bass line is one of the most immediately memorable he has ever laid down.
Lyrically, the song is classic Casablancas: restless, slightly surreal, full of images that feel vivid without quite cohering into a conventional narrative. There is a sense of escape to it, of movement, of heading somewhere new and not being entirely sure why. Which, given that the band were recording an album largely via email and file-sharing rather than in the same room together, feels rather apt.
As album openers go, ‘Machu Picchu’ is close to perfect. It sets a tone, establishes a mood, and makes a promise that the rest of ‘Angles’ only partially keeps. But that is no reflection on the song itself, which stands as one of the most purely enjoyable things The Strokes have put their name to.
It is also worth dwelling on just how unusual the song sounds within the Strokes’ catalogue. The funk influence is unmistakable, and it sits in interesting contrast to the more austere, post-punk-leaning sound of their early records. There is a looseness here that feels genuinely liberated, as though the distance between band members during the recording process, rather than stifling the music, had given each of them room to bring something slightly different to the table. The result is a song that sounds like The Strokes, but a version of The Strokes with the windows open.
Casablancas’ vocal performance is also worth singling out. He sounds relaxed and playful in a way that is not always the case on the band’s more self-consciously cool recordings. There is a warmth to his delivery that suits the song’s breezy, sun-drenched energy perfectly, and the melody he finds in the chorus is one of the most immediately singable things he has ever written. It is the kind of song that puts you in a good mood without quite being able to explain why, which is perhaps the highest compliment you can pay to a piece of pop music.
For a band whose internal dynamics were at their most difficult, ‘Machu Picchu’ is a remarkable document of what The Strokes could still achieve when the music itself took over. Whatever was happening off the record, on it they sounded like five people who were, for a few minutes at least, genuinely glad to be in the same band.
‘Hard to Explain’ was the song that started everything. Released as the debut single from ‘Is This It’ in 2001, it was the first proper introduction the world had to The Strokes, and it remains one of the most thrilling opening statements any band has ever made. From the moment that choppy, interlocking guitar riff kicks in, you know you are in the presence of something genuinely special.
The song has a quality that is almost impossible to manufacture: it sounds effortless. The guitars of Valensi and Hammond Jr. weave around each other with a precision that belies how spontaneous the whole thing feels, while Moretti’s drumming drives the track forward with a coiled, restless energy. Fraiture’s bass sits low in the mix but provides the essential anchor that holds everything together. And then there is Casablancas, half-singing, half-muttering, sounding for all the world like a man who has better things to do than make one of the greatest rock singles of his generation.
Lyrically, ‘Hard to Explain’ is quintessential early Strokes: elliptical, streetwise, and full of a peculiarly New York kind of ennui. The words resist easy interpretation, which is part of what makes them so compelling. You get the feeling that Casablancas himself might not be entirely sure what the song is about, and that is precisely the point. It captures a mood rather than a meaning, and that mood, restless, young, slightly bored, and absolutely electric, is one of the most perfectly rendered in modern rock.
It is also worth noting just how much ground the song covers in under three and a half minutes. There are tempo shifts, key changes, and a guitar solo that arrives and disappears before you have time to fully register it. Everything is in motion, nothing is settled, and the whole thing burns with an urgency that still sounds fresh more than two decades on. ‘Hard to Explain’ did not just introduce The Strokes to the world; it redefined what a rock single could be.
There is also something to be said for the song’s production. Working with Gordon Raphael, The Strokes made a conscious decision to record with almost no studio embellishment, capturing the sound of five people playing together in a room with all the imperfections that entails. The result is a record that sounds alive in a way that most early 2000s rock simply did not. At a time when production was becoming increasingly polished and processed, ‘Hard to Explain’ sounded like it had been recorded in a hurry, in a basement, by people who had no interest in being anything other than exactly what they were. That rawness was not accidental; it was the whole point.
It is also worth reflecting on what the song meant in the context of the moment. When ‘Hard to Explain’ arrived, it was not just a great single; it was a provocation. It said that guitar music did not need to be elaborate or self-important to matter. It said that cool was a valid artistic position. And it said that New York City, which had been largely absent from the rock conversation for years, was back. All of that in under four minutes, and it still sounds like nothing else.
‘Last Nite’ is, by any measure, one of the most important rock songs of the twenty-first century. It is the song that turned a generation onto guitar music, that persuaded a thousand kids to pick up an instrument, that made being in a band feel like the only thing worth doing. It is an indie disco classic in the truest sense: a song that has soundtracked more drunken stumbles, more late-night revelations, and more unforgettable nights than almost anything else in the modern rock canon.
An awful lot can happen in just under two decades. Infighting, out-of-body experiences, solo projects of all ridiculous shapes and sizes. One thing that has not changed is ‘Last Nite’s impact; it still has the power to send tremors through a room, and it still persuades kids to form bands. It is on a tiny list of songs that can turn a tragic party into an unforgettable night with the flick of a switch. ‘Is This It’s most successful single has outlived the indie club’s heyday and soundtracked drunken stumbles for decades, and it shows no signs of relinquishing that grip any time soon.
The song’s influence on wider indie music is almost incalculable. You can hear it in the DNA of Arctic Monkeys, The Libertines, Kings of Leon, The Killers, Franz Ferdinand, and countless others who came in its wake. When it was released in 2001, it felt like a flare going up; a signal to a generation that guitar music was not dead, that something exciting was happening, and that New York City was once again the centre of the rock and roll universe. The indie disco, that peculiar and wonderful institution of the early 2000s, was built in no small part on the back of ‘Last Nite’, and it is hard to imagine what that era of music would have looked like without it.
Musically, the song is deceptively simple. The chord progression is famously borrowed from Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl’, a fact that has been noted so many times it has almost become part of the song’s mythology. But what The Strokes do with those chords is entirely their own: the production is raw and compressed, the guitars are overdriven and intimate, and Casablancas’ vocal performance is a masterclass in studied nonchalance. He sounds like he is telling you something important while pretending not to care whether you hear it, which is, of course, the most compelling way to deliver a message there is.
Lyrically, ‘Last Nite’ deals in the currency of the late-night, the aftermath, the morning-after ambiguity that follows a night you cannot quite piece back together. It is a song about connection and disconnection simultaneously, about two people in the same room who are somehow still miles apart. Casablancas delivers it all with a shrug, as though the emotional stakes are beneath him, but the melody tells a different story entirely. It is one of the great contradictions of The Strokes’ early work: songs that pretend not to care, written by people who clearly care enormously.
And then there is the live dimension. ‘Last Nite’ in a room full of people is one of the great communal experiences modern rock has to offer. The moment the opening notes ring out, something happens to a crowd; shoulders drop, faces change, and for three minutes everyone in the room is exactly where they are supposed to be. That is not something you can manufacture or replicate. It is either there or it is not, and with ‘Last Nite’, it has always been there.
Ize of the World’ is the most audacious song The Strokes have ever made. Closing ‘First Impressions of Earth’ in 2006, it is a song that swings for something genuinely grand, a sprawling, lyrically dense, musically restless piece of work that reveals more of itself with every listen. It is also, for many fans, the moment The Strokes proved they were capable of something beyond the effortless cool of their early records.‘
The lyrics are extraordinary, and deserve to be sat with properly. Casablancas opens with a question that feels almost unbearably relevant: “How do you wake someone up from inside a dream?” From there, the song moves through a cascade of images and observations that range from the deeply personal to the sweepingly political. There are lines of startling tenderness, “You’re sad but you smile, it’s not in your eyes, your eyeballs don’t change, it’s the muscles around your eyes”, sitting alongside passages of mounting, almost satirical fury: “A desk to organize, a product to advertise, a market to monopolize, movie stars to idolize, leaders to scandalize, enemies to neutralize.” It is a lyric sheet that reads like a diagnosis of modern life, and it was written over twenty years ago.
The song’s central tension is between the personal and the political, between the intimate and the systemic. Casablancas moves freely between the two, asking “Am I a prisoner to instincts or do my thoughts just live as free and detached as boats to the dock?” before pivoting to the almost liturgical repetition of the closing verses, where the list of things to organise, advertise, monopolise, and neutralise accumulates into something genuinely overwhelming. It is the sound of someone staring at the machinery of the world and finding it both absurd and terrifying.
Musically, the song is equally ambitious. It builds slowly, almost patiently, before opening up into one of the most powerful and unexpected climaxes in the band’s catalogue. The guitars are enormous here, the production dense and layered in a way that stands in sharp contrast to the stripped-back minimalism of ‘Is This It’. Casablancas sounds genuinely impassioned throughout, his voice moving between a near-whisper and something approaching a howl, and the band match him every step of the way.
‘Ize of the World’ is not an easy listen, and it was never meant to be. But it is the song that most clearly demonstrates what The Strokes were capable of when they pushed past the limits of what was expected of them, and it is the reason this list places it second.
It is also worth considering what the song says about ‘First Impressions of Earth’ as a whole, an album that was critically misunderstood on release and has only grown in stature since. Where ‘Is This It’ and ‘Room on Fire’ were celebrated almost universally and immediately, ‘First Impressions of Earth’ was met with a degree of critical ambivalence; too long, too sprawling, too willing to test the patience of listeners who had come expecting another tight, lean record. With hindsight, that ambition looks far more like courage. And ‘Ize of the World’, sitting at the end of it all, is the fullest expression of what the band were reaching for.
There is also something remarkable about the song’s prescience. Written in the mid-2000s, its litany of systems and structures, of markets to monopolise and generations to desensitise, reads now like a commentary on the world as it actually became. Casablancas has always been a writer who gestures at larger forces without quite naming them, and ‘Ize of the World’ is the most sustained and ambitious example of that instinct. It is a song that rewards returning to, not just because it sounds extraordinary, but because it keeps revealing new layers of meaning as the world it describes continues to unfold around us.
Finally, it is worth noting the song’s place in The Strokes’ live set. It has not always been a regular fixture, which makes the occasions when it does appear all the more electric. When the band play it, there is a sense of occasion to it, a feeling that something genuinely significant is happening on stage. It is not a song that coast on familiarity or nostalgia. It demands attention, and it rewards it completely.
‘Reptilia’ is the song that very nearly made this list, and the fact that it did not is less a reflection of its quality and more a testament to just how deep The Strokes’ catalogue runs. From ‘Room on Fire’ in 2003, it is one of the most viscerally exciting things the band have ever recorded: a coiled, menacing, absolutely ferocious piece of guitar music that hits like a freight train from the very first bar and does not let up for a single second.
The opening riff is one of the great riffs in modern rock, full stop. It is the kind of guitar line that makes you want to immediately pick up an instrument, or at the very least turn the volume up until the walls shake. Valensi and Hammond Jr. trade it back and forth with a ferocity that is almost intimidating, while Moretti’s drumming provides one of his finest performances on record: thunderous, precise, and absolutely relentless. The rhythm section here is a wrecking ball, and it is impossible not to be physically moved by it.
Casablancas, characteristically, plays it cool against the chaos around him. His vocal delivery is laconic and almost detached, which only makes the song feel more dangerous. There is a tension between the looseness of his performance and the tightly wound fury of the music beneath him that gives ‘Reptilia’ its particular charge. It is a song that feels like it is constantly on the verge of flying apart, and the fact that it never quite does is a testament to how good this band are at holding things together.
Live, ‘Reptilia’ is one of the most reliable crowd-detonators in The Strokes’ arsenal. The moment that opening riff lands in a room, something shifts. It has been a staple of their setlists for over two decades, and it never loses its power. Some songs are built for studios; ‘Reptilia’ was built for stages, for large rooms full of people who know every word and are waiting for that riff like a congregation waits for a hymn.
That it sits outside the top ten is, frankly, for some is, an outrage. But such is the embarrassment of riches The Strokes have accumulated over a career that now spans a quarter of a century.
‘Someday’ is the greatest song The Strokes have ever recorded, and it is not particularly close. It is a perfect pop song disguised as a rock track, a danceable banger with a heart full of melancholy, and one of those rare pieces of music that manages to be simultaneously joyful and heartbreaking. Put it on at any gathering and watch the room change.
When the hype eventually hit boiling point, the band did their best to deflect attention. “It’s not like fuckin’ Beatlemania,” guitarist Nick Valensi claimed at the time. Crucially, they were aware that the buzz could move on at any moment. Scruffy, leather jacket-sporting, nodding to relics of the past; this surely couldn’t be in vogue for much more than a couple of years. Plus, they had been together for three years by 2001, despite the overnight success tag.
Alongside producer Gordon Raphael, they set about capturing a moment on their debut album ‘Is This It’, compressing and containing the headrush of New York in less than 40 minutes. ‘Someday’s opening lyric, “In many ways they’ll miss the good old days”, captures the essence of their early work perfectly. Despite an awareness that the good times wouldn’t last forever, they were determined to make the most of their creative spree. “I ain’t wasting no more time!” barks Casablancas at the close, and you believe every word of it.
Musically, ‘Someday’ is The Strokes at their most irresistible. The guitar melody is one of the most immediately recognisable things they have ever written, the kind of riff that lodges itself in your brain on first listen and never quite leaves. Beneath it, the rhythm section locks in with a groove that is genuinely danceable; this is a song that works as well on a dancefloor as it does through headphones, which is a rarer quality than it might seem. Moretti’s drumming in particular deserves recognition: propulsive, precise, and full of a barely contained excitement that perfectly matches the song’s emotional register.
What elevates ‘Someday’ above almost everything else in the Strokes’ catalogue is the way it holds two feelings in tension simultaneously. It is a song about youth and its inevitable passing, about making the most of the moment while knowing the moment will not last, and yet it never tips into self-pity or sentimentality. It is too alive for that, too urgent, too much fun. It is a song that makes you want to dance and makes you want to cry, sometimes at exactly the same time, and that, ultimately, is what the very greatest pop music does.
It is also, in a strange way, the most honest thing The Strokes ever recorded. The band were acutely aware, even at the height of their early success, that the moment was fragile; that the hype could evaporate as quickly as it had arrived, that the good times had an expiry date. ‘Someday’ does not try to deny that. It leans into it, wraps its arms around the impermanence, and turns it into something transcendent. That is an extraordinarily difficult thing to do, and The Strokes make it sound completely effortless.
There is also something to be said for where the song sits within ‘Is This It’. Arriving near the end of the album, it functions almost as a thesis statement for everything that came before it: a summation of the record’s mood, its preoccupations, its particular brand of wistful swagger. By the time Casablancas delivers that final “I ain’t wasting no more time!”, it feels less like a lyric and more like a vow. And twenty-five years on, with a new album on the horizon and a Coachella headline set just behind them, it is a vow The Strokes are still, somehow, keeping.
It is also worth considering just how unusual ‘Someday’ is as a number-one song in a Strokes ranking. It is not the most ferocious thing they have ever done; that is ‘Reptilia’. It is not the most ambitious; that is ‘Ize of the World’. It is not the most culturally seismic; that is probably ‘Last Nite’. But it is the most complete, the most perfectly realised, the song where every element, the guitars, the rhythm section, the vocal, the production, the lyric, arrives at exactly the right place at exactly the right time.
Great songs are not always the loudest or the most complex. Sometimes they are simply the ones that get everything right, and ‘Someday’ gets everything right.
Any list of this kind is, by its very nature, an argument. For every song that made the cut, there are two or three that did not, and the omissions are as revealing as the inclusions. ‘Reptilia’, as noted, is a genuine outrage. But so too is the absence of ‘New York City Cops’, a song so brazenly confident it was pulled from the American release of ‘Is This It’ in the wake of September 11 and still managed to become one of the band’s most beloved live moments. ‘12:51’ from ‘Room on Fire’ is another; a song that sounds like a transmission from some perfect, parallel New York, all glittering guitars and breathless momentum. ‘The Adults Are Talking’, which opened ‘The New Abnormal’ with such authority that it briefly felt like the greatest thing the band had done in fifteen years, deserves a mention too. And ‘You Only Live Once’, from ‘First Impressions of Earth’, a song that builds and builds until it becomes something genuinely overwhelming, could make a strong case for the top five on its best day.
But the conversation always comes back to ‘Is This It’. It has to. Because ‘Is This It’ is not merely a footnote in the history of guitar music; it is a footprint. A deep, indelible mark pressed into the earth of modern rock that has shaped the 2000s, the 2010s, and the 2020s in ways that are still being felt and still being debated. The bands it inspired are themselves now legacy acts. The kids who formed groups after hearing ‘Last Nite’ or ‘Someday’ or ‘Hard to Explain’ have made their own records, toured their own circuits, and in some cases inspired another generation in turn. The chain of influence that runs from that compressed, imperfect, extraordinary debut album is one of the longest and most consequential in modern music.
What makes ‘Is This It’ so enduring is not just that it was good, though it was, almost impossibly so. It is that it arrived at precisely the right moment, said precisely the right things, and said them in a way that felt both timeless and utterly of its time. It did not sound like it was trying to save guitar music. It sounded like five people who could not imagine doing anything else, playing the songs they had written because they had to, because the songs existed and needed to be heard. That quality, that sense of inevitability and necessity, is what separates the truly great records from the merely very good ones.
The Strokes changed guitar music forever. Not by design, not by calculation, but by accident of greatness. And as ‘Reality Awaits’ prepares to arrive this summer, with all the hope and uncertainty that entails, it is worth pausing to remember what this band have already given us, and quite how extraordinary a gift it was.