GUITAR RIFFS OF THE 2000S

Here's 20 iconic guitar riffs from the 2000s you’ll recognize immediately

What’s that old saying? “What goes around comes around?” All we’re saying is that plenty of new things grow out of old soil. We saw how the ’90s grunge scene killed the hair-farming aspects of ’80s metal. So it was inevitable that the next gen of rockers would marry sick riffs with expanded guitar shredding. This APTV video references 20 of the most iconic 2000s guitar riffs from our orbit.

Some of the songs we cited were hits. Others were deep cuts that were only embraced by a small cadre of band stans. But the one thing all these 2000s guitar riffs have in common? They have the innate ability to make you want to adjust the volume settings on any device you may be listening to. (We hope your playback unit has some huge speakers. That way, your neighbors can weigh in from a social distance.)

Read more: Can you recognize the 2000s music video from an obscured screenshot?

In our semi-contrarian style, we passed on a lot of the more obvious tracks. Our list of 2000s guitar riffs takes a deep dive, saluting players who we think didn’t get enough love. So before you try to own us with “right band, wrong song” comments, check all these tracks out. If you missed them the first time, it’s no problem. You could disagree with us vehemently or wonder how you missed them. Dude, there’s no wrong answer here.

Actually, we lied to you in that second paragraph. There’s another thing these songs all have in common. That would be their undeniable ability to make you strap on an air guitar and get your pretend-shred on. We’re sure you have your list of favorite 2000s guitar riffs that you think puts ours to shame. What that tells us is you’re just a mad ‘n’ bad rock lifer. And there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.