Looking back at 2007, what stands out isn’t a single dominant sound but rather the year’s refusal to commit to any one direction. Rihanna’s “Umbrella” became the year’s unavoidable anthem, its rain-soaked hook lodging itself in collective consciousness while Jay-Z’s opening verse added hip-hop credibility to what was already a perfectly constructed pop song. Meanwhile, Amy Winehouse’s “Rehab” proved that retro-soul could feel urgent and contemporary, her defiant delivery turning personal struggle into something both devastating and oddly triumphant. These weren’t songs that simply topped charts—they were cultural moments that demonstrated pop music’s expanding possibilities.
The indie and alternative world was having its own moment of crossover success, with acts that had been bubbling under suddenly finding mainstream attention. Peter Bjorn & John’s “Young Folks” turned a whistle riff into an inescapable earworm, while Feist’s “1 2 3 4” made counting feel revolutionary, particularly after its appearance in an iPod commercial blurred the lines between advertising and artistry. LCD Soundsystem’s “Someone Great” offered something more melancholic, a dance-punk meditation on loss that proved electronic music could carry genuine emotional weight. These songs suggested that the wall between “indie” and “popular” was becoming increasingly porous, if not entirely irrelevant.
Rock music in 2007 occupied a fascinating space between theatrical ambition and raw simplicity. My Chemical Romance’s “Welcome To The Black Parade” opened with a piano line that promised—and delivered—pure arena-ready drama, a five-minute epic that wore its Queen influences proudly. On the opposite end of the spectrum, The White Stripes’ “Icky Thump” was all garage-rock aggression and Jack White’s snarling guitar work, while Kaiser Chiefs’ “Ruby” split the difference with its hooky, festival-ready energy. Even Foo Fighters’ “The Pretender” managed to sound both massive and tightly controlled, proof that straightforward rock could still command attention.
The electronic and dance music represented here reveals a year when those genres were becoming more adventurous and less confined to clubs. Justice’s “D.A.N.C.E.” filtered disco through a French electro lens, creating something that felt both nostalgic and futuristic, while Klaxons’ “Golden Skans” brought rave culture into the indie sphere with its pulsing urgency. Björk’s “Earth Intruders” and Battles’ “Atlas” pushed even further into experimental territory, the former with its martial rhythms and the latter with its stuttering, math-rock complexity. These tracks suggested that electronic music was no longer content with simply making people move—it wanted to challenge and surprise them too.
What emerges from this collection isn’t a neat narrative about where music was headed, but rather evidence of a year when multiple possibilities existed simultaneously. You had Britney Spears’ “Gimme More” and its deliberate, almost menacing production sitting alongside P!nk’s “Who Knew,” a straightforward power ballad that wouldn’t have felt out of place a decade earlier. Mims’ “This Is Why I’m Hot” represented hip-hop’s confident swagger, while Modest Mouse’s “Dashboard” showed alternative rock could still be genuinely weird and still find an audience. Two thousand and seven was a year when the music industry hadn’t yet fully figured out what the streaming era would mean, when radio still mattered but was losing its grip, and when artists could still surprise us by becoming stars without following any established playbook.
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