The best ever corporate anthems

Slumdog Millionaire composer AR Rahman has penned a chord heavy number for Indian car company Hero Honda. But it's got nothing on PriceWaterhouseCoopers's hip-hop track – or accountants Ernst & Young's gospel tune

AR Rahman is the composer best known for the Oscar-winning soundtrack to Slumdog Millionaire. These days, though, it seems he is experimenting with genre: his latest work, released last week, is a corporate anthem for the Indian car company, Hero Honda. Set against searing strings and guitar chords, Rahman's track reassuringly tells us "there is a hero within us all".

It's subtle. But not subtle enough to break into G2's pantheon of favourite corporate anthems, all five of which can teach Rahman a thing or two about nuance. With lyrics, for instance, such as "We create, we innovate/We pass the ones that are late", KPMG's power ballad Global Strategy has that polished turn-of-phrase that Rahman's effort lacks. Indeed, a bit more oomph to its mellow synths and Global Strategy might have scaled our rankings even higher.

As it happens, it's pipped into fourth by PricewaterhouseCoopers's Downright Global, a powerful rap that utterly disproves David Starkey's theory of street music as a force for evil: "Innovation, imagination,/Fascination, total global integration/PricewaterhouseCoopers, PWC!" The roots of hip-hop, right there.

Next up: computer security giant Symantec, which has achieved what many thought to be impossible – combining anti-virus technology with motivational soul music. "We got you personal firewalls/Security is where we stand tall," runs one couplet that daringly eschews traditional scansion in favour of a looser, freer meter. Rahman, take note.

But originality is not everything. Silver goes to Ernst & Young, the accountancy firm whose cover of the Edwin Hawkins Singers' Oh Happy Day may be derivative, but positions them firmly – and fittingly, you might say – within the gospel canon. "Oh happy day," they sing, "Oh happy day/When Ernst & Young showed me a better way." And what a happy day it was when they penned this anthem.

Not as happy, admittedly, as when McKinsey released the corporate anthem to end all corporate anthems. "There is a dream," sing McKinsey, "A dream that's ours: we're gonna be the best R&R in the world." Precisely what this means is never clear – and therein lies its genius: layers of meaning that AR Rahman can only dream of.