“Wake Up” by The Arcade Fire

"Wake Up" is the big-hearted rallying cry on Arcade Fire's 2004 debut album, Funeral, and it sounds like an entire town marching up a hill at dawn. The Canadian band produced it themselves and stacked everything they had on it: Win Butler's 12-string and Tim Kingsbury's electric guitar, Will Butler's bass, Régine Chassagne's synth, Richard Reed Parry on piano, accordion and percussion, violins from Owen Pallett and Sarah Neufeld among others, a French horn and a harp.

The heart of it is the chorus, a wordless gang holler that Pitchfork later set in the line of great classic-rock crescendos like "Born to Run", "Biko" and "Hey Jude". It was the album's fifth and final single, pressed as a one-sided 7-inch in November 2005, and the lists came calling: NME put it at 25 among the decade's best songs, and Rolling Stone had it at 42 for the 2000s.

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