"MakeDamnSure" by Taking Back Sunday from the album Louder Now (2006)

Long Island’s great post-millennial garage-rock hope cemented their legacy early on with 2002’s essential Tell All Your Friends, but Adam Lazzara’s burning desire to “break you down so badly” gave an even Louder Now battle cry for those bitter souls not content to quietly burying feelings in diaries. Stalking through Nassau and Suffolk counties’ hapless high school halls and endless strip malls, “MakeDamnSure” was as anthemic as emo gets, which is saying a ton. It remains one of the genre’s defining moments of the ’00s, a perfect example of the insatiability of love and the frustration of wanting what you can’t have. “You are everything I want,” he squirms, “’cause you are everything I’m not.”

_Michael Marotta