Rocktober '00s Song #1: "I Believe In a Thing Called Love" by The Darkness (2003)

I am kicking off this year's Rocktober with my favorite song of the '00s.  I remember first learning of The Darkness not too long after their debut single "I Believe In a Thing Called Love" and their debut album Permission to Land came out in the fall of 2003.  One of my friends said he heard this band that was a mixture of Queen and AC/DC.  That obviously piqued my interest, and I fell in love with this song the first time I heard it.  Lead singer and lead guitarist Justin Hawkins has not only a magnificent falsetto, but also amazing guitar skills.  The song was the glammy hard rock song the world needed in 2003, bringing back machismo and bravado that rock had been missing.  It's over the top, it's fun, and it's just fucking awesome.  It's also the song I've sung most in my life at karaoke.  The video is a ridiculous counterpart to the song, showing that hard rock bands don't need to take themselves so damn seriously.

The song was a big hit in the band's native UK, reaching #2 on the UK pop charts, and it was also a big hit elsewhere, reaching the Top 15 on the Eurochart Hot 100 and the pop charts in Belgium, Ireland, The Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Scotland, and Sweden.  It was also #94 on VH1's list of the Greatest Hard Rock Songs of All-Time, and a 2020 readers poll in Classic Rock Magazine named it the "Greatest Song of the Century (so far)."