14. Graham Coxon – Jamie Thomas

While Blur were busy creating the most cerebral music of their career on penultimate album 13, their guitarist was pleasing himself outside of school with the most visceral of his. And what a delight. Music doesn’t get much wilder than Jamie Thomas: it’s a blitzkrieg of a record, a panzer attack of precision chaos, all over in the blink of an eye, leaving smouldering remains and a stifled squeal of feedback at the tail for good measure. Nothing is tethered here, and that abandon makes the song so awe-inspiring. If Blur’s authenticity was often questioned because of their constant musical shifts from album to album, the bludgeoned bleat of Coxon’s vocals here – not to mention the brutal guitar work – is simply too feral to be affected. But above all, every emotion bundled up in these 150 seconds feels pure: Jamie Thomas is pure ferocity, pure adrenalin, pure windmill-fists mushroom-cloud-laying sonic assault. Set it against virtually any other track this decade in terms of undiluted zeal, and it’ll surely come out on top.