10. OUTKAST – ‘Hey Ya!’
If a hip-hop tune is supposed to be a joyless braggadocio-laden recitation of misadventures with guns and / or hos, someone certainly hasn’t told Outkast’s Dre. ‘Hey Ya!’ is imaginatively uninhibited in a way perhaps only The Coral could match.

9. THE WHITE STRIPES – ‘7 Nation Army’
Only one bassline was more ubiquitous than that of Timberlake’s ‘Rock Your Body’ this year, and it wasn’t even played on a bass.

8. MEW – ‘Comforting Sounds’
What Sigur Ros might sound like on record if they didn’t live in their own alternative universe on a diet of helium and tranquillizers.

7. JANE’S ADDICTION – ‘Just Because’
A storming, stampeding, bludgeoning brute of a single that screamed, “Get out of our fucking way, or be mown down like a Belle-And-Sebastian-loving shrew by a steroid-rock juggernaut! We’re BACK, motherfuckers!” Sales of gold trousers have picked up where they left off in 1991.

6. ELECTRIC SIX – ‘Gay Bar’
THAT riff, hamsters, homoeroticism, Abraham Lincoln – all the ingredients needed for a video that still kicks The Darkness into next week. Resistance was futile – I tried for a while, but then found myself forced to bend over and be buggered by its punching-your-fist-in-the-air greatness.

5. THE DELGADOS – ‘All You Need Is Hate’
Romanticism, humanism, hippyism be damned. Set to a disarmingly sprightly tune, self-loathing and misanthropy don’t come much more concentrated than this. Like biting into a coffee cream and finding it’s full of pus.

4. MICHAEL ANDREWS AND GARY JULES – ‘Mad World’
A remarkable cover, and an even more remarkable Christmas #1 – one in the eye for the hype machine. No doubt The Darkness, the Pop Idles, Cliff Richard, Atomic Kitten and the rest are all cursing the fact that it really is a very very mad world. To which I say: fuck ‘em, this is brilliant.

3. BEYONCE FEAT. JAY-Z – ‘Crazy In Love’
With this preposterously bombastic and showy planet-gobbling pop Godzilla, Beyonce seemed to be saying, “Now THIS is a tune! On your knees, you snivelling peasants! You’re not fit to lick the shit from my shoes!” Few would care to argue.

2. THE RAVEONETTES – ‘That Great Love Sound’
Sometimes the simple things can be the most spectacular. Everything a pop song should be, and in spades – a thrillingly instant headrush.

1. JOHNNY CASH – ‘Hurt’
Poignant isn’t the word. The Man In Black twists Trent Reznor’s gloomy original into something inestimably more compelling – a simple yet painfully eloquent elegy for his own life, and a reminder that death stalks us all.

And, finally, a reminder of the SWSL Top 10 Singles Of 2002:

1. SUGABABES – ‘Freak Like Me’
2. QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE – ‘No-One Knows’
3. THE MARS VOLTA – ‘Tremulant’ EP
4. YEAH YEAH YEAHS – ‘Master’ EP
5. THE WHITE STRIPES – ‘Fell In Love With A Girl’
6. THE CORAL – ‘Dreaming Of You’
7. THE ICARUS LINE – ‘Feed A Cat To Your Cobra’
8. THE DATSUNS – ‘In Love’
9. INTERPOL – ‘PDA’
10. THE VON BONDIES – ‘It Came From Japan’