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Top Songs of the 2000s: the iPod decade, told as a story

Every song on this page plays a free 30-second preview, right in your browser. No sign-up, no app — press play and hear the decade of the iPod, one chorus at a time.

A thousand songs in your pocket

The 2000s were the decade music broke out of its packaging. Napster scared the industry, the iPod answered it — a thousand songs in your pocket — and the single came roaring back after thirty years as the album's opening act. Hip-hop completed its takeover of pop, rock split between garage revivalists and arena-sized emo, R&B and dance music fused into the decade's chrome-plated sound, and a show called American Idol proved the public would happily do the A&R department's job on live television.

Deezer's 00s Hits playlist opens with the decade's two poles in its first three songs: Coldplay's “Yellow,” all sincerity and starlight, and Eminem's “Without Me,” the decade's most gleeful demolition job — with Linkin Park's “In the End” between them, carrying nu-metal's diary entry to a billion bedrooms. From there it's Shakira's hips, Gorillaz's cartoon funk, The Killers' “Mr. Brightside” (the song that has never left the party since), 50 Cent, and Rihanna's “Umbrella” announcing a reign that still isn't over. Eclectic is too small a word. The shuffle era had arrived.

Top 10

The opening ten of the playlist, at a glance. The full list, playable top to bottom, is just below — loaded fresh from Deezer's “00s Hits” playlist every time this page opens.

  1. Yellow — Coldplay
  2. Without Me — Eminem
  3. In the End — Linkin Park
  4. I'm Yours — Jason Mraz
  5. Somewhere Only We Know — Keane
  6. Hips Don't Lie (feat. Wyclef Jean) — Shakira
  7. Feel Good Inc. — Gorillaz
  8. Mr. Brightside — The Killers
  9. In Da Club — 50 Cent
  10. Umbrella (Radio Edit) — Rihanna

The full 2000s playlist

The shuffle decade

Every decade gets the listening habit its technology demands, and the 2000s got shuffle. When a thousand songs live in one white box, genre stops being a neighborhood and becomes a mood: Eminem into Coldplay into OutKast, no DJ required. The decade's hits were built for that churn — front-loaded hooks, choruses in the first thirty seconds, songs as self-contained units again after the album era's long reign. Ringtone rap, pop-punk, crunk, and blog indie all fed the same little machine.

This page is shuffle's natural home, honestly: a hundred of the decade's defining songs, each auditioning in the same thirty-second window the era taught us to judge by. Press Play All and let them run in order for once — the 2000s had a story too, underneath the randomness. It just liked to pretend otherwise.

Looking for a song from another time?

This playlist is only the front door. On the main site you can search millions of songs by artist, album, track, or genre — and every one of them plays the same free 30-second preview.

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