Placebo was, out of all the bands that followed Nirvana’s three-chord grunge attack, the most glammed-up and the most single-friendly. Brian Molko, the group’s singer, may have been a fashion icon. But it was Placebo’s numerous memorable songs that make it one of the greatest alternative rock bands of all time.

Molko came from an era where singles and their promotional videos helped sell albums and made a band’s career. Consequently, Placebo has plenty of both.

This is a look and listen at one of the most consistent groups of the post-grunge era. These are Placebo’s greatest 10 songs.

The Greatest 10 Songs by Placebo

10. “36 Degrees”

Blending British glam-rock flair with Nirvana’s grunge dynamics was a good enough idea. However, the U.K. produced a number of fashion-forward bands, like Menswear or Shed Seven, who couldn’t maintain a long, meaningful career.

Placebo was different. For one thing, the group’s deceptively simple songs tapped into pop culture obsessions. For another, Brian Molko was already an ambitious songwriter by the time of the band’s debut.

You can hear the inexperience in a song like “36 Degrees.” But you can also hear the excitement of making it. This was a highly promising debut record.

9. “Battle for the Sun”

Bands typically don’t survive. They get crashed by their own fame. They’re not able to move with the times. Or, most often, they run out of good ideas or energy.

Placebo beat the odds. By 2009, the band wasn’t dominating the charts anymore. But the band’s sound and Molko’s personal story were interesting enough that audiences hung around.

Besides, the group could still produce emotionally-charged hooky songs like “Battle for the Sun.” Molko presented the trio as survivors of some unspeakable horrors. Whether this was true or not made little difference. What a tune!

8. “Special Needs”

Molko figured out what he was good at early on. The band’s photos and androgynous image certainly helped spread its fame. The singer pushed for those whenever he could, presenting Placebo as a new kind of degenerate cool.

In terms of songwriting, Brian Molko had a fashion for writing teenage heartbreak stories. These tales nearly always contained an element of tragedy. These kinds of tunes were nearly always good.

“Special Needs” was the slow rocking dark romance song that the band needed at its commercial peak. This helped 2003’s “Sleeping With Ghosts” become one of the biggest rock albums of the era.

7. “Meds”

Few doubted that Placebo was a good rock band. Still, few of its fans could stay away from the gossip. Much of that involved Brian Molko and his modern Oscar Wilde-like persona.

In 2006’s “Meds,” Molko gives those fans what they want – a bit more information. As customary, he picks up the story from the moment that it all feels ready to fall apart.

“Meds” is a song about being glamorous, and hopelessly damned. It’s also one of the band’s finest. The back-and-forth vocals between Molko and Alison Mosshart of The Kills call to mind Pixies, and work exceptionally well here.

6. “Pure Morning”

Get a good chorus in, and you can use the rest for whatever else! That was something that Molko must’ve learned on Placebo’s early tours.

“Pure Morning” is, essentially, one great looped hook. It’s a very convincing one, though.

The rest of the songwriting, however minimalist it is, plays into the band’s reputation. They’re unpredictable, drug and darkness-friendly, and looking to cause trouble. This was all a very effective way to sell the band to the world.

5. “Nancy Boy”

Placebo wrote themselves into the story. When grunge was getting more muscular and aggressive, the Brito-North European group positioned themselves as outsiders.

They wore make-up, were looking for a bit of trouble from their romantic liaisons, and were taking genre-bending to places that Marc Bolan and David Bowie could approve of.

And, just like Nirvana‘s singles, “Nancy Boy” was a song designed to be blasted from speakers the world over. It was the band’s first early success and one of its definitive songs.

4. “Every You Every Me”

Placebo’s musicians didn’t just seem fit to soundtrack a remake of “Dangerous Liaisons.” They looked like characters who’d walked off set. Molko’s songs were, for the most part, darkly romantic tunes about control.

“Every You Every Me” became a hit when a movie producer had the inspiration to feature it in “Cruel Intentions.” But the truth is that there was hardly anything as dramatic and catchy as this on rock radio.

A great single, and a calling card for the band, “Every You Every Me” is one of Placebo’s best songs.

3. “The Bitter End”

The thing about Placebo is that, for all of the band’s experimentation with electronic textures, you’ll know whether you like them from a song’s opening 30 seconds.

“The Bitter End” cut that time down. Few guitar-vocal introductions are as immediately impactful as this one.

Frankly, the song would be nearly as catchy if it were about chips or football. The lyrics, however vague as they are, feel like a revenge fantasy. It’s territory that you’d imagine Molko exploring. It was another clever way of writing the ideal role and casting himself in it.

2. “Without You, I’m Nothing”

Was David Bowie obsessed with the trends he’d help start? Or was he simply soaking up some of the limelight? Perhaps there was a bit of both when Bowie proclaimed Placebo (and Suede) as his natural successors.

Molko was clever enough to use this cordiality to get Bowie to add vocals for the single version of “Without You, I’m Nothing.”

This is the definitive version of a great song. I think that there were plenty of songs that fit a similar style at the time. There’s none quite like it. That’s due to Molko’s talent as a writer and an arrogance that’s served him well. Maybe David Bowie was right after all.

1. “Special K”

Placebo can’t allow themselves to get boring. Concept albums about endangered frogs may be alright for some bands. But Molko and Stefan Olsdal (along, at the time, with drummer Steve Hewitt) know what the world expects of them.

Fans of Placebo expect bite-sized stories of debauchery, set to the biggest choruses that alternative-rock can offer. It’s the approach that the band’s always used, and “Special K” is the song on which it worked best.

Named after a potent party drug that ought to give you an out-of-body experience, and may kill you, Molko was playing up to type.

And while other bands had made grungey power chords sound predictable and boring, Placebo finds a way out of that conundrum using smart production tricks.

“Special K” is Placebo’s shining moment, a great single and one of the best alternative rock songs of all time.