2007: #3 - "Stronger"

When we first heard "Stronger", the Daft Punk-sampling electro-pop single off Kanye West's excellent Graduation, we thought it was the exact opposite of catchy and memorable, and wondered if we'd ever want to hear it again, not to mention if it would last a week or two on radio playlists. But like some kind of festering infectious sore, it grew on us like possibly no other song in history.

Kanye's awkward rhymes and sub-Diddy flow were held up by the beat - spiky keyboard and drum machine, loud reverb and of course the modulated vocal hook - and those weak raps eventually transformed into the purest distillation of Kanye that we had heard on record to that point.

The bridge where, amidst the starkness of those minor chord keyboard stabs, he effortlessly interacts with the sample - a technique that it seems only he has embraced, but somehow, for us, seems like such an easy route to awesomeness - is pure bliss.