The Strokes have, famously, had an up-and-down career. They started on a high with Is This It, and then every album they put out after that was met with mixed-to-hostile reviews, though those records often became better liked (and even beloved) in retrospect. But when you think about their very best tracks — your top 10 faves — The Strokes suddenly seem super consistent. In that context they can stack up against any band of their generation.
In celebration of the new Reality Awaits, we need to go back and count down the greatest songs of Strokes’ past. It’s too early to tell which of the weird and wooly tracks from Awaits might eventually make the cut. (“Gone Shopping” and “Lonely In The Future” are early contenders.) But these tunes are definitely certified bangers.
10. “You Only Live Once” (2006)
On First Impressions Of Earth, The Strokes attempted to do two seemingly opposing things — prove they could make a slick mainstream rock record and their most sophisticated and experimental music to date. With “You Only Live Once,” they achieved the former with smashing success. When it comes to delivering punchy swagger in an easily digestible, radio-friendly package, it’s hard to beat.
9. “Under Cover Of Darkness” (2011)
That is, unless we’re talking about this song, which is an even hookier rocker. Despite its reputation as a misfire borne of possibly the deepest intra-band conflicts of The Strokes’ career — the members typically describe the making of the album with various synonyms for “miserable” — Angles actually contains some of their snappiest and most likeable singles. Starting with “Under Cover Of Darkness,” which is highlighted by some excellent dual guitar work from Albert Hammond and Nick Valensi.
8. “Ode To The Mets” (2020)
The New Abnormal not only signaled an unlikely mid-career comeback, it introduced The Strokes to a new audience, mostly via definitively “Strokes-y” sounding hit “The Adults Are Talking.” (More on that song in a minute.) But the anthemic track that closes the record has also become a fan favorite, and a popular encore choice to close concerts. “Ode To The Mets” nods to both their NYC heritage and hard-luck history, positioning The Strokes as yet another Big Apple institution that sometimes confounds, but never at the risk of severing fan loyalty.
7. “Soma” (2001)
Is This It is loaded with so many classic songs that it’s hard to single out the best from the pack. But “Soma” continues to register as a standout, both on the record (where it helps to set the record’s tone of magnetic insouciance) and apart from Is This It as one of their most beloved deep cuts. In the context of their greater career, “Soma” also presages Julian Casablancas’ interest in social commentary, repurposing the mind-control drug from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World for a more generalized statement about interpersonal (as well as societal) phoniness.
6. “Under Control” (2003)
On Is This It, Casablancas wrote a series of songs that encapsulated the experience of being young and single in a big city at the turn of the century. The album can be broadly described as a collective of bad-boyfriend missives, though they’re delivered with enough rakish charm to make such behavior forgivable. For the next Strokes album Room On Fire, he had matured enough to graduate to his first (sort of) love song, “Under Control,” a Motown-esque ballad with bedroom eyes that’s ultimately more of a “lust” number.
5. “Life Is Simple In The Moonlight” (2011)
Casablancas did himself (and his band) no favors during the promotion of Angles, essentially admitting that his creative involvement was limited and his feelings about the final results mixed. This naturally informed how the record was received at the time, though there’s evidence that parts of Angles are more personal than they might have initially appeared. That certainly seems true of “Life Is Simple In The Moonlight,” one of the prettiest and most melancholy tracks in the Strokes canon, and a highlight of their current tour. The song’s defiant refrain — “don’t try to stop us, get out of the way” — seems like a callback to the old bravado, though the defeated air of the music communicates a different reality.
4. “The Adults Are Talking” (2020)
When The Strokes debuted this song in 2019 at an L.A.-area concert, their stock was relatively low. It had been six years since their last album, and 2016’s EP Future Present Past had been mostly ignored. But “The Adults Are Talking” signaled a new era for the band. Not only was it their best song in years, it showed they were capable of writing new music that both acknowledged their classic style while also sounding thoroughly contemporary. While the opening instrumental passage recalls the wiry guitars and man-made drum-machine rhythms from “Hard To Explain,” Casablancas wised-up vocal suggested that he was fully embracing his role as the cool older brother of contemporary rock. On Is This It, The Strokes sounded like a new band that felt like they had already been around for ages; on “The Adults Are Talking,” they were like a band that had already been around for ages that suddenly seemed new again.
3. “Last Nite” (2001)
When “Last Nite” hit popular culture in the early aughts, The Strokes were criticized by some for sounding overly derivative. Specifically, they were accused of “borrowing” heavily from “American Girl” by Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, a debt that Casablancas gamely acknowledged in interviews. But what critics failed to understand — though Petty, a Strokes fan, understood intuitively — is that great rock bands are founded on stealing from their forefathers. (Petty himself took a lot from The Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” for “American Girl.”) The key is to perpetrate this theft with a lot of style and charisma, two properties The Strokes have always had in high supply. Heard 25 years later, “Last Nite” now seems less like a rip-off and more like a link in an ongoing chain.
2. “Reptilia” (2003)
An ongoing debate among Strokes fan concerns Room On Fire and whether the second Strokes album is actually better than Is This It. The latter album is certainly more iconic, but Room On Fire has the advantage of capturing The Strokes after they had toured the world and acquired the chops that the relatively green outfit behind the debut simply didn’t have. This is most apparent on the fastest and hardest rocking song from Room On Fire, the one they were already playing live before the album even dropped. Because when you have a song that kills as consistently as “Reptilia,” how can you possibly keep it under wraps?
1. “Someday” (2001)
Throughout his career, Casablancas has consistently expressed ambivalence about two properties with which he is commonly associated — straight-forward rock songs and nostalgia. His artistic ambitions are bigger than the former and too uncompromising for the latter. Which might be why “Someday” is such a refreshing change of pace. For a guy so often stuck deep in his own head, Casablancas rarely sounds as relaxed or blissed out as he does here, singing over a swinging backbeat about feeling in-the-moment longing for a sweet moment in your life that you can feel passing through your fingertips as it’s happening. In retrospect, it also feels like a metaphor for The Strokes’ career.
