2003: #4 - "Growing On Me"

For our money, The Darkness had an amazing year in 2003 - two songs on the DOTY Top 20, neither of which were the best song on Permission to Land (that honor goes to the AC/DC stomp of "Givin' Up", one of the few literal, unambiguous love songs on the album - it's about a love affair with heroin, described in explicit detail).

Second single "Growing On Me" was the tougher cousin to the silly, glammy "I Believe In a Thing Called Love" - if the latter was theatrical, melodic hair metal (think Scorpions-meets-Queen), the former was pure meat-and-potatoes Van Halen, complete with super-distorted arpeggiated and shouted backup vocals.

Lead singer Justin Hawkins has (hilariously) denied that the song is about sexually transmitted diseases, but despite deliberately vague (and also hilarious) lyrics, it so obviously is. I guess that's part of the joke.