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.

2003: #7 - "I Believe In A Thing Called Love"

Now that hipster irony has died, it's safe to listen to The Darkness without feeling like a puerile jackass. Seriously, how awful was it six years ago when folks would hype Permission to Land by calling it the perfect soundtrack to ridin' around in a Camaro, as if that were a good thing (or was it an ironically bad/cool thing?)?

In any case, coming from legitimate, non-ironic fans of "cheese-metal" (we can call it that because we actually like it, and embrace its cheesiness), "I Believe In A Thing Called Love" wasn't good because it mocked hard rock cliches, but given that it did - including the ridiculous operatic falsetto vocals, stupidly sleazy lyrics, cheesy double entendres, harmonized axe-work, Neil Diamond references (?), and dum-dum riffing of all our favorite metal bands - did it well, and had one of the best verse melodies of any hard rock song ever, it ended up being a huge success not only as a metal send-up, but as an actual metal song.