Are you still with us? We most certainly hope so…

30. Been There All The Time – Dinosaur Jr.
From the 2007 album Beyond. This is where space rock meets alt. rock with just a touch of grunge. In other words, it can only be one band. Sparse yet also richly endowed with musical feistiness. Watch the video here.

29. Boots Of Chinese Plastic – The Pretenders
From the 2008 album Break Up The Concrete. Chrissie Hynde and the boys right back on track with a classic that wouldn’t have been out of place on any of their early 80s output. Watch the band play it live here.

28. Johnny Appleseed – Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
From the 2001 album Global A Go-Go. A song that typified the band’s refusal to conform to genre specifics. Punk, jazz, reggae, folk… it was all melded together in cortege of creativity. Watch the video here.

27. Bring Me To Life – Evanescence
From the 2003 album Fallen. The song that not only first introduced us to Amy Lee et al, but actually turned goth metal into a real global force. Still nothing in this genre beats it. A Grammy Award winner. (Also Geoff Barton’s favourite song and video of the decade.) Watch the video here.

26. I Love You More Than Rock’n'Roll – Thunder
From the 2005 album The Magnificent Seventh. Why do we love Thunder? Because they constantly ratchet out blues-rock with a really English tunefulness, and a singular laugh factor. Like this song, in fact. Watch the video here.

25. Bible Black – Heaven & Hell
From the 2009 album The Devil You Know. While so many big bands get back together and struggle to come up with anything new that has a meaning, no such problems here. It wouldn’t have been out of place on The Mob Rules record. Watch the video here.

24. Into The Fire – Bruce Springsteen
From the 2002 album The Rising. The Boss marches into the new millennium still settting standards, reinventing himself and holding everyone in his thrall. A tribute song to the Noo Yawk firefighters who lost their lives on 9/11. Listen to the song here.

23. Jaded – Aerosmith
From the 2001 album Just Push Play. Is there another band who can make simple pop tunes sound just a little saucy and depraved? Right up there with the best of the ‘Smiths’ iconic 1980s output. Watch the video here.

22. Sing For Absolution – Muse
From the 2003 album Absolution. This is where Muse first showed the ability to cross-reference mainstream pop, retro 1960s instrumentation and progressive inclinations. If that sounds like a recipe for a mess, then you’ve clearly not heard this. Watch Muse play it live here.

21. Electric Worry – Clutch
From the 2007 album From Beale Street To Oblivion. The Maryland band might have started out with hardcore aspirations, but by the time they reached this climactic song, the band were deeply devoted to their own history-clinching sense of dense blues. Watch the video – and invoke the spirit of Norman Greenbaum – here.

Go here for previous entries in the Classic Rock chart.

* Coming tomorrow on www.classicrockmagazine.com – numbers 20 through to 11.