“Losing My Edge” by LCD Soundsystem

"Losing My Edge" was LCD Soundsystem's first single, a 12-inch on DFA in July 2002, and it later found a home on the CD edition of their self-titled debut album. It's James Murphy's hilarious, rattled confession of a tastemaker watching everyone else catch up. By his own account it came from his DJ days, when spinning Can, Liquid Liquid and ESG briefly made him cool, and hearing other DJs play the same stuff left him scared the moment was slipping away.

Murphy wrote it alone and plays nearly everything: drums, percussion, bass, synths and drum machine, with Tim Goldsworthy on synth and drum machine and Tyler Pope on bass. The rhythm owes something to Killing Joke's "Change", and the whole thing is a relentless, clattering dance-punk groove. Pitchfork later ranked it 13th among the best songs of the 2000s, and Rolling Stone placed it 77th among the century's greatest so far.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.