The Bay Area artists on Rolling Stone’s Best songs of the 21st century

The Brief

• Rolling Stone released its list of the Top 250 songs of the 21st Century on Wednesday.

• The list features three Bay Area artists: Train, Green Day and Del the Funky Homosapien.

OAKLAND, Calif. – Rolling Stone on Wednesday released it’s list of the 250 greatest songs of the 21st century thus far, and amid the expected shout-outs like Rihanna and Kendrick Lamar and the one-hit-wonders like Wheatus, a small handful of Bay Area artists made the list.

Train

Number 250

At number 250 is Train’s “Drops of Jupiter,” the title track off their sophomore album, which was released in 2001.

The song was inspired by a dream Pat Monahan had about his late mother.

“I couldn’t figure out what to write, but then I woke up from a dream about a year after my mother passed away with the words ‘back in the atmosphere’… It was just her way of saying what it was like — she was swimming through the planets and came to me with drops of Jupiter in her hair,” Monahan said in a 2012 episode of Vh1’s Behind the Music.

The song peaked at number five on the Billboard Hot 100 in June 2001, and has been certified nine-times platinum.

“Train had other hits, like “Hey, Soul Sister,” but “Drops of Jupiter” has taken its place as a true standard, the closest this era has gotten to a “Don’t Stop Believin’” or “Africa” of its own. In other words, it’s the music equivalent of the best soy latte that you ever had,” Rolling Stone wrote of the song.

Green Day

Number 205

At 205 is East Bay veteran punk rockers Green Day, for “Jesus of Suburbia,” the second track off their 2005 album “American Idiot.”

The five-movement track, which plays out over a sprawling nine minutes and eight seconds, was meant to be the “‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ of the future,” frontman Billie Joe Armstrong told Rolling Stone in a 2005 interview.

“They aimed for an emo “Bohemian Rhapsody” but delivered something more like glam-punk “Rockin’ in the Free World” for kids watching U.S. tanks roll through Baghdad on cable. The music is as ambitious as its message, with nods to their forebears, from Patti Smith to Ginger Baker to “Moonage Daydream,” served over big chords and crisp couplets,” The Rolling Stone ‘Best Songs’ article states. “The band keeps re-aiming the charge for MAGA, Ukraine, Gaza. The angry-old-man song they swore they didn’t want to write is exactly what each new version of idiot America demands.”

Del The Funky Homosapien

Number 131

The final Bay Area artist to get a call-out on the list is Del the Funky Homosapien, albeit as a guest vocalist, for his contribution to Gorillaz 2001 hit “Clint Eastwood,” off their self-titled debut album.

Rolling Stone ranked it number 131 on their list of the best songs released since the turn of the century.

Del, who was born Teren Devlon Jones, was brought in to record the song at the last minute.

In a 2010 interview with Spinner, Jones said his producer Dan the Automator, who was also working on Gorillaz debut album, asked him to quickly write verses for the song, which originally featured a different rapper.

“I wanted to go home. We had already been up all night working on (our music). We had finally finished. I’m ready for him to take me home, but he was like, ‘come on, man. You know you can do it in like, 15 or 30 minutes.’ So I’m like, ‘OK.’ I whipped it up,” Jones said in the 2010 interview.

The song would reach number 57 on the Billboard Hot 100 charts, and number 3 on the Alternative Airplay chart, but Jones said he wasn’t aware of the song’s impact until friends started praising the song after hearing it on the radio.

“‘Clint Eastwood’ is a dub-pop delight, at once buoyantly catchy, deliciously opaque, and mildly foreboding, with Albarn’s dappled vocals heralding an intriguingly indeterminate “future coming on” and Bay Area hip-hop vet Del the Funky Homosapien coming through with an authoritatively off-filter freestyle. Somehow this left-field mix rendered a global hit,” Rolling Stone wrote about the track.

The complete Rolling Stone list can be found here.