150 BEST TRACKS OF THE PAST 15 YEARS

To mark NME.COM's fifteenth birthday, we've selected the 150 tracks that have meant the most to us over the site's lifetime.

You can also stream the whole lot as a Spotify playlist. From 1996 to the present day, it's a decade-and-a-half of incredible music.

Words: Priya Elan, Luke Lewis, Tim Chester, Mike Williams, Tom Goodwyn, Rebecca Schiller, Krissi Murison, Emily Mackay, Matt Wilkinson, Laura Snapes, Jamie Fullerton, Alan Woodhouse.

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104

Released: July 2006

It’s all in the way she tells it. No-one else could simultaneously sound as world-weary and mischievous as Lily Allen delivering that line about her emotionally-retarded ex "fucking the girl next door…what d’you do that for?". In those ten-and-a-half words alone an exasperated modern female icon was born, bloomed and was shortly after hounded into an early retirement. Lily always said she’d made the ‘Alright, Still’ album for a laugh and that we were lucky even to get a follow-up, but that doesn’t stop ‘Smile’ being one of those perfect storms in pop music when a song, an attitude and an unlikely star (in this case Harry Enfield’s gobby step-daughter) collide to create what is commonly known as a bit of a moment. (KM)

How I Wrote 'Smile'
Lily Allen

It was the first song I wrote. I always thought you should write about what you know and this guy had taken up so much of my time and emotions that the words just poured out. It was never going to be a sugar-sweet love song because by that time I was over him and felt a slight desire to get revenge through a song. So the lyrics are definitely bittersweet.

Then the record got to Number One and everyone asks if I feel it is a revenge story. I guess it is – but the truth is it’s too painful for me to think of it in that way. It’s a period of my life that I would rather not go back to.