The past is fascinating. It is the home of nostalgia, of infinite experiences, of different feelings, of different loves, selves, places and people. Since publishing My Life in 100 Films, I’ve been drawn again to collect experience under the umbrella of a medium. 100 Songs emerged naturally, and morphed into a soundtrack of existence. Music transforms the past from a static museum to a living archive, recolouring faded memory like an archivist restoring film.

What is it that makes music unique? Unlike films or paintings, music dissolves the boundary between subject and object. Sounds may be located in space, but music itself cannot. It fills the intangible realm we inhabit, becoming us as we become it, forming within our minds in the very moment we experience it. Music appears from within us, spontaneously manifesting as us.

How can arranged sounds elicit such powerful emotions? Why do certain harmonies pick locks within us, long thought sealed shut? How do isolated notes merge into symphonies that speak so directly to the center of our being?

Each song on this list carries layers of experiences and people, irreducible to any single instantiation. First encounters, revisitations, rediscoveries – each listening is a different experience with the same notes. Music serves as a repository for lived experience, a vehicle for revisiting moments otherwise lost.

At the centre of this project is the music. As such, I have curated an accompanying Spotify playlist. In truth, the prose here is the accompaniment; the music ought to occupy entirely the foreground. Perhaps just listen to the playlist, returning to this piece as you go along when you fancy explanation or pontification. Both the list here and the playlist are in the same order, so navigation should be easy enough.

Listen on Spotify: My Life in 100 Songs

As the words serve as a guide, so too do the photos. Ultimately deciding a visual component was necessary to break up the text, each photo featured (all taken at different junctures of life) conveys something about the feeling of the song to which it is attached.

This is not an objective collection of the “greatest” songs ever recorded, nor a list of tracks that changed music history. Instead, it is an autobiography of felt experience. Each song represents a strand of memory opening to a world of feeling, that when cast into the pensieve of experience, allows a return to how life has felt to me.

It is thus, with the greatest pleasure, that I share with you: My Life in 100 Songs.

…

1. Sound and Vision (1997) David Bowie

My favourite song of all time. Sheer perfection. An unimprovable work of art, it is the human experience incarnate. Bowie is a genius, and this song is the proof.

Blue, blue electric blue, it is the colour of consciousness – the room in which we all live. Boredom creeps, dissatisfaction grumbles, and we wait for the gloried gift of Sound and Vision.

Shifting, layered sounds and fragmented lyrics – that create space and depth, only to squeeze back in on themselves. Contraction and expansion; soaring, sweeping hilarity. This song sounds to me exactly how Being feels.

2.  Hot Wind Blows (2021) Tyler the Creator

“Ladies and gentlemen, we just landed in Geneva. Yeah that’s in Switzerland. We on a yacht, a young lady just fed me French vanilla ice-cream. We all got our toes out too! Call Me When You Get Lost!”

The shining jewel of Tyler the Creator’s globe-trotting, trunk-toting, creation: Sir Baudelaire. Tyler is dripping in myrrh, Chanel and mountain lake water, as he stunts from bar to bar and greater height to height. Classy and classless, this is Tyler at his best.

The real star is Lil Wayne. “Weezy is an alien”, once said Macklemore, and he was absolutely spot on. So buttery, his mastery of flow is positively wince-inducing. He skids, skitters and two-steps across the hot wind that blows through the track’s underscoring flute.

3. Once in a Lifetime (1980) Talking Heads

My mum and I once found ourselves driving over the Dartford Crossing. As we approached its apex, Mum asked me to put this song on, which I had previously never heard.

Delighting in the music and the moment, we basked in its watery waves. As we sped over the bridge’s high point, the sun streaming through the windshield, I felt such a deep and contented love.

We both laughed our heads off, imagining with high-definition clarity my Dad singing – “in a beautiful house, with a beautiful wife, and you may ask yourself, well, how did I get here?!”

Joyous, bewildered, and entirely accepting – David Byrne’s lyricism here is so affirming. We’ll define goals, chase pursuits, then turn around and realise they’re not at all what we wanted. Beautiful houses, beautiful wives, removing water from the bottom of the ocean.

But rather than panicking or dismaying, we instead smile. It’s the same as it ever was. There is always water flowing under, no matter when it feels otherwise. Wake up to the majesty of the blue and the silent water and enjoy the beautiful madness that this all is.

4. Venus As A Boy (1993) Björk

Björk encapsulates the essence of desire and elevates it – refined, immense infatuation. An ode to sensuality and to Sex as the Divine.

It feels like Eve pulling back draped vines in a dense garden, and finding a clearing in which Adam lays. Venus as a boy: entirely unthreatening, completely erotic, and utterly enamoured with her ethereal femininity.

It is dreamy, entrancing, and delectably sumptuous.

5. Gold Sky (2020) The Avalanches

Bells toll, pace accelerates, and Kurt Vile surfs on in atop a wave of humility. It feels like the start of everything, and the end of everything, entwined in the same single moment.

A glorious expression of wisdom, clarity and exuberance. Every lyric is gorgeous, each speaking to an acceptance and a bravery in the face of the complete unknown. The music that underscores The Avalanches’ track is characteristically as rich as a transcendental chocolate ganache.

A moment of sublime serendipity threads this song through my brothers and I. And for that, as well as the sublimity of the song, it is one I will always adore.

6. Come on! Feel the Illinoise (2005) Sufjan Stevens

In 2005, Sufjan Stevens embarked upon one of the most ambitious musical projects ever: a series of fifty albums, each encapsulating an American state. The fact he didn’t make it past the first is a source of crying shame, as his album Illinois is one of my favourites ever.

It is grand, accomplished, and bubbling at 1000°C with exuberant intensity and artistic genius. It is so rich, so orchestrally layered, so magnificently textured. This song embodies this impression of the entire album. How Stevens’ so seamlessly marries his gorgeous softness with the bombastic brilliance of his instrumentation continually stuns and perplexes me.

7. I Can Change (2016) Raleigh Ritchie

A fourth-story flat, in a Glasgow townhouse, with enormous bay windows that were opened into the cold, wet and vicious night. Rain blows in sideways as the brothers and Bobby’s circle of friends gather.

Dre holds court as he freestyles over tropical beats; we laugh and guffaw; and the clock strikes 2am. Eventually someone takes the aux and I Can Change comes on through the speaker.

Raleigh Ritchie charts his experience through a wildly swinging night out on the town, punching out sharp bars and marching with bravado as he does so.

Joe and I rap along, not having realised we both know each and every word. We find each other in a perfect moment of unity, synchronicity and brotherly love. Life doesn’t get better than that.

8. The Four Horsemen (1972) Aphrodite’s Child

Mountains rolling into lakes, pines and firs bowing to meet the lapping ripples, and the Sun sitting proud atop a sky of brilliant blue. I was hiking through a woodland untouched by time in the wilderness of Maine, and absolutely peaking on Life, when this song first obliterated my consciousness.

Awe and doom, married into one inextricable sound. A mushroom cloud billowing and four horsemen – white, red, black, and green – riding astride it toward the horizon. A pulsing undercurrent of the primal and the inevitable.

Explosive crescendos, delicate chimes, and a wavering vocal that is truly transcendent. Tension and release exemplified, creating an undeniable sense of the sublime.

A tale as old as time itself, The Four Horsemen charts an invocation of the apocalypse greater than achieved by any earthly religion.

It cannot be the work of human minds. More likely, it was distilled from the cosmic background radiation left in the wake of the universe’s formation, or extracted from the horn of an interdimensional unicorn. 

9. Good Will Hunting (2022) Black Country, New Road

A wobbling inequity of intention – casual acquaintance collides with complete commitment. One weekend of inexpressible magic gives way to grating desire and desperate clinging.

Never before has a song spoken to the exactitude of my experience quite like this. Second year of university, tumbling head over heels in wondrous love, down a slope that was entirely unnavigable.

Lead vocalist Isaac Wood’s lyrics are loaded with poetic profundity, and his intonation is a nailed expression of self-conscious longing. The whine of a teetering violin, and the crunching jubilation of an uncertain snare further underlines this sensation.

10. Anyone Else But You (2001) The Mouldy Peaches

Playful, intimate, and wholly sincere. It is an expression of the messy, exposing, softness of love.  This almost-out-of-tune back and forth between these two lovers is so endearing.

Funny and personal, exposing and delightful, it is love colouring in idiosyncrasies as entirely endearing.

11. Close To Me (1985) The Cure

Breathy excitement. It feels like running through the streets with your best friends, like tipping over the opening crest of a corduroy-lined ski slope. Like when excitement and joy overflow, and you’re left with a sense of – what do I do with this feeling? Overwhelmed with breathy ecstasy, it is punchy, sweet and comforting. 

It feels like impermanence. The feeling that this – life, being, hereness – is just overwhelmingly magnificent. To be here, to be alive, and to bask in all its glory. Ecstasy, married to the knowledge that it is all passing and that you cannot hold onto any of it. The breathy undertones evoke an excited anxiety, and Robert Smith’s pained vocals express perfectly the tragic beauty of existence.

12. Born Slippy (1996) Underworld

The club is closing, your feet are aching, and your soul feels as if it has been hollowed out by a dinner lady with a ladle. On it goes, and soon it must end, but for now, it goes on. Exceeding good and bad, extended beyond the pleasant and unpleasant.

There is an ethereality to the emptiness. But as the bass increases, this is replaced by a thudding intensity. Sound and noise and heaviness, threatening to cave in. Thoughts circle, words are shouted, and when it all is too much, the door to spaceless ethereality is thundered down again.

Born Slippy is this feeling, clarified into 7 minutes and 36 seconds. Masterful and iconic.

13. All My Days (2006) Alexi Murdoch

In the opening sequence of Real Steel, Hugh Jackman drives a truck across a wide, open, American landscape at the crack of dawn. The sun is breaking the darkness, and there is a feeling of lonely yet optimistic stoicism.

This song feels just like that. I remember being twelve and sitting in the back row of a coach, at 3am in the morning, off on a school trip to Germany. As I closed my eyes, in a half-awakened slumber, I listened to this song. I felt safe. Safe, and assured that everything is okay.

14. Truth (2011) Alex Ebert

Probably one of my most listened to songs ever, yet I still don’t know what it is about. But I do know that it fills a pit of feeling like no other.

Like a quantum-hug, like dispassionate compassion. Always to be turned to when there is too much feeling, or not enough feeling, or just feeling that you cannot understand.

15. A$AP Forever REMIX (2018) A$AP Rocky

Moby’s halcyon Porcelain. Ethereal vocals, sliding violins, and a twinkling piano combine into a layered crystalline haze.

Where Moby’s original feels like resting on top of a single cloud in a blue sky, A$AP’s reimagining feels like bursting through it and floating on thermal currents. He swaggers with an effortless swagger-liciousness, bombastically bopping across a glimmering surface of porcelain.

I think it’s my favourite Kid Cudi cut, too, with his transcendent hums underscoring the chorsues, and bringing a rhythmical control to his lyrical delivery.

16. Send Me on My Way (1992) Rusted Root

Freedom, promise, yearning and gratitude. A song that bubbles with a desire to drive far and live fully. Anthemic on a roadtrip across France that two of my best friends made in 2020 – flying through the baked countryside in a Vauxhall Corsa, windows down with hands riding the air’s currents. A song of my brothers’ and mine also. Oh so very classic.

17. Cosmic Dancer (1971) T. Rex

I remember loving this song – alongside my brothers and parents – at a very young age. A profound meditation on looped experience and self-questioning.

It sounds like being collapsed onto one’s knees, looking out into the foreverness of the great big sky, and asking questions that you know no one will answer for you. Morose and reassuring, sliding and grooving, it is a masterpiece.

18. family ties (2021) Baby Keem & Kendrick Lamar

A brain-cleaving elevation of the rap game. Keem is electric – so raw, so terse, so enlivening – and Kendrick fully matches his young cousin’s energy. The scoring trumpets are bombastic, the beat switches are bountiful, and the bass is wondrously heavy.

Probably my greatest live music experience of a single song. Livid and enlivening, it is excellent.

19. I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (1987) U2

One of the greatest songs ever written, and a song to which one of my life’s most beautiful moments belongs.

Throughout my life, Dad and I have often driven out to France together, later meeting my Mum and brothers who would fly. Setting off in Dad’s big car, we’d aim to catch the first Euro Tunnel of the day.

As one drives off, you break from the darkness of the carriage, into the blinding sunlight. A sweeping bridge-road surrounded by green knolls straight from the Teletubbies.

This particular day, we were the first off the train into France. The road to ourselves, the rising sun shattering the day with iridescent brilliance, the windows down, and this song playing at full volume.

Indescribable love and gratitude – for my Dad, for Life, for Love, for Music, for Being. Completely overwhelmed by the magnificence of it all.

20. Drink With The Leaves (2018) Lausse The Cat

This track channelled a certain kind of London-boi Bristol-cool that I admired for a long while. Lausse’s staccato flows go back-to-back with a fictionalised mentor, as they explore the dangers of substance abuse and alcoholism. The beat is delightful – tinkling, tingling, and deeply layered – and the production throughout is excellent.

21. Never Tear Us Apart (1988) INXS

Michael Hutchence, the lead of INXS, possessed one of the most magnetic auras I have known. In my second year of university, I watched a documentary on him and his life which absolutely floored me. From it, I forayed into his music, and was floored all over again.

Never Tear Us Apart is yet another perfect song. So much gravitas in the violins. So much noble honesty in Hutchence’s lyrics, and even more charismatic realness in his intonation.

This idea of two worlds colliding is one that speaks to me deeply. The saxophone’s collision with the electric guitar embodies this with perfection, and the song marries them in a sublimely symbolic manner.

22. No CD (2017) Loyle Carner

My Brother George introduced Loyle Carner to me in 2015, when Benjamin Coyle-Larner was so young and unpolished. We were captivated by the playful nature of his flows, the heavy beats, and the general feeling of kind-coolness he exuded.

NO CD was the best of this early bunch, epitomising his playful references, impressive style, and sometimes forced rhymes. The funkiness of the guitar riff lends great credibility to Loyle’s claims, of indeed having spent all his P’s on old CDs.

We saw him live first at Truck Festival where he performed this track with great aplomb in a sweaty circus tent, and again after the release of his debut Yesterday’s Gone at the Brixton Academy. Unreal teenage memories.

23. Self Control (2016) Frank Ocean

The sound of wretched sublimity. It is Blonde at its most sublime.

Exquisitely layered vocals that are mixed supremely; a pitch-shifted chorus which is endearing rather than grating; and a performance from Frank that is breathtaking throughout. 

I’m sure I’ve have shed many tears to this song. I’m sure too that it has underscored many moments of gleeful gratitude. Truly beatific.

24. Beautiful Boy (1980) John Lennon

Exotic and entirely familiar, Lennon is the parental voice of assurance and infinite compassion. It feels like being held by a tropical sea so salty that it has the quality of jelly. It is comforting, slightly aching, and entirely timeless.

25. Comfortably Numb (1979) Pink Floyd

Sonic perfection. Discovering Pink Floyd on one of the first nights of Lockdown was pure revelation. Eyes closed, sun sunk, duvet drawn, headphones on, and Comfortably Numb lifting me to previously untasted arenas of bliss.

Fleeting glimpses, little pinpricks and hands that feel like two balloons. One of the greatest guitar solos of all time; a masterwork of world-building; and one of music’s greatest invocations of euphoria. 

26. Be Myself (2018) Parcels

Oh man. The riff is so funky, the bass so playful, the harmonies so rich. It epitomises the feeling of laying back on Ayan’s beautifully made bed in our third year university house, in his vibe-haven of a room. He had a phenomenal pair of speakers, and retained an even greater taste in music. So many days spent kicking it in the delight that is Parcels’ Live Volume 1.

27. Drinkee (2015) Sofi Tukker

Sofi Tukker: a multi-lingual, genre-melding duo, who possess an ear for the ear-worming bassline. The opening track to Sam Harris’ earlier podcasts, it is a song that remains deeply ingrained in my psyche.

“You are in the jungle, lost and confused, and you hear a rustling in the bushes. Out of the vegetation stumbles Sam Harris, holding a Bluetooth speaker, which is playing Drinkee. ‘This is Sam Harris’, he says, ‘and this is the Making Sense podcast’” – A YouTube comment under Drinkee, that the thought of always makes me laugh.

Sat with Choppy under a yew tree on Colley Hill, under a blue sky filled with wonder and a burning summer sun. Smiling and smiling and smiling.

28. Come Together (2019) Urban Dawn

A genius reimagining of The Beatles classic. With The Beatles’ original, I could never shake the feeling that it unsatisfactorily never resolved. It always teased resolution from the build, but never did.

Urbandawn’s remix amends this and transforms it into an ecstatic anthem of ecstasy. So creative, so energetic.

Emblematic of being at university, enjoying pleasures prior unknown, and having my virgin brain stimulated by the invigoration of drum and bass.

29. I’m In It (2013) Kanye West

Yeezus drips with a gritty, gooey lust. When fifteen, I found this song to be absolutely intoxicating. Thumping with passion and an unrivalled power.

The bass is heavy, the feature’s mightiness is overwhelming, and the vocals jumpily erratic. Moans interrupt claims of desire, as flows switch through fast lips.

30. Fix You (2005) Coldplay

A friend of mine took his own life when we were fourteen. That poor, poor boy. I recall lying in a darkened room and listening to Fix You on repeat.

31. Dance Now (2022) J.I.D

No one spits like JID, and Dance Now demonstrates this in its fullness. A panacea of arrogance, competence, delight and lyrical command.

The tribal sample loops over a skuzzy beat, providing the perfect stage for JID to show off upon. His flows meander and crunch – so catchy, so listenable. Rounded out fantastically with the spoken-word wisdom at its end.  I listened to this countless times whilst on the AT and eventually locked in all the lyrics.

32. Tom’s Diner (2019) AnnenMayKantereit & Giant Rooks

Tom’s Diner was written by folk singer Suzanne Vega on November 18, 1981, and was first released in 1984. She sings disjointedly about her experience of sitting in a diner, dictating her thoughts and the diners’ happenings. It is a cappella, sparse, haunting, and unsettling.

Remixed in 1990 by DNA – a pair of English music producers – as a grooved-up dance hit which charted successfully. It is brash yet understated, and Vega’s solitude is set off by the warmth of the drums and the character of the trombone.

In 2019, it was covered again by two German bands, AnnenMayKantereit and Giant Rooks, and is an excellent reimagining.

Back and forth the two croon at each other, across a symposium of instrumentation, that finds the magic of DNA’s remix yet also Vega’s lonely yearning fron the original.

Any three of these versions could have taken this spot, but the most recent pips it. Infamous for the gorgeously rough vocals of Henning May – “it is alwaaaaaayys nice to see you” – and its supremely cool music video, Banj, Juj and I listened to this on repeat throughout university.

Check out the music video for sure, as well as AnnenMayKantereit’s and Parcel’s collaborative cover of Can’t Get You Out of My Head.

33. Going to California (1971) Led Zeppelin

A perfect song? A strong contender. So soft, so sad and so warm. Pinpoints a number of feelings that I have never had words for. Maybe something like desire creating such yearning – if I could just find a wife, if I could just get to California – but knowing with experience, that it is always not quite satisfactory.

34. Sit Down (1990) James

My Mum and Dad used to tell stories to my brothers and me of them being at parties and clubs where this would be played. As James instructed the enraptured to Sit Down, they all moved lower and lower, singing quieter, until eventually everyone was sat on the floor.

A magnificent image it evokes in my head, of compassion and love and hilarity and acceptance and shared humanity 

I can see my Mum in her Platonic form – laughing, filled with love and gratitude, and just delighting in being alive. Bright red hair bouncing, and a beaming smile splitting her face. I can see my Dad looking into the camera of my mind, wearing a knowing smile, singing each lyric as if to emphasise the meaning beholden in each.

Both of them, filled with such a silly glee, and a gloried love for Being.

35. Pays Imaginaire (2017) Polo and Pan

Imagine yourself in a video game, trouncing across giant, bouncy mushrooms that propel you forwards and upwards with a delightful levity. As you do, you turn and smile at the sun, who wears the face of an incomprehensibly beautiful woman. Smiling, she sings to you in French, words you cannot translate but just know to be as beautiful as she is. 

Welcome, to Pays Imaginaire. A song of delightful rhythm, ethereal vocals, sublime production, and harmonies that make your spine buzz.

36. Knock Knock (2015) Blu and Madlib feat. MF DOOM

My first exposure to MF DOOM’s butter-basted and play-laced lyricism, and Madlib’s collage-chopping beat-building. Days spent sliding around with Big Warbs, basking in this track’s gooey symbiosis. 

37. Lover’s Rock (2014) TV Girl

A tiny room of tumbling plants, and records, and an unmade single bed that sits beside a sash window that opens onto more green and even more rain.  Avocado and halloumi bagels, and discovery, and reference, and laughter and laughter and laughter. Halcyon days. Heaven on Earth.

The gliding violins taste like nostalgia: so sweet and so yearning. The voice of TV Girl here is one of observational, indifferent balance – a perfect counterbalance. If you start to kiss, and the record skips, just flip it over – and sit a little closer. Divine wisdom, and a divine encapsulation of an experience in a sound.

38. Two Fingers (2012) Jake Bugg

Familial relationships, teenage rebellion, that swelling feeling of change that you can’t quite grasp. Freedom and hope found in leaving behind all that has been, and understanding that you can move onwards.

Celebrating honestly the coarseness of childhood and the joy of shifting into your own lane. The imagery is strong, Bugg’s (eighteen year-old!) voice is wizened, and the instrumentation is fittingly punchy.

39. Walkin (2022) Denzel Curry

This song feels like floating. An anthem of my time on the AT, it always kept me moving. It feels like facing down life’s ills with your head held high and a smile on your face.

Denzel is fluid in his flows, effortless in his effort. Such great energy ripples throughout, and the mid-way beat switch is gorgeous. So catchy too.

40. Mona Lisa (2018) Lil Wayne feat. Kendrick Lamar

Dark and foreboding, I’m not sure I know another song so thrilling. Lil Wayne and Kendrick spin a yarn of a femme fatale who seduces only to let the gang bangers in to take everything. Absolutely genius storytelling and unparalleled lyricism. The intonations, the sustained sense of threat, the varied characters, the descriptive imagery. Truly breathtaking stuff, that never feels old. Superlatives fail me.

41. Debonair (2020) Giggs

Giggs, without question or debate, is the coolest rapper in the game. His swagger-filled tone, his nonsensical rhymes. It’s all about fun and confidence and playing with words for the sake of doing so. Infectious energy. Livin’, live a little.

I was once chilling with my brother Joe and one of his best mates. We started talking about Giggs, and I said I had a favourite of his that I’d found recently. I put on Debonair and they leapt up with joy, laughing, and sharing an amazing story of their prior shared experience with it. Wicked.

42. I’m New Here (2011) Jamie xx, Gil Scott-Heron

Mind-expanding music that shifted my perspective of what a song could be.

I was hiking out of Fontana Dam up into the Smoky Mountains, listening to a playlist orchestrated by my friend Charlie. The climb was difficult – something like 4,000 feet of elevation gain – and the February sun was absolutely baking.

This came on and completely shattered me like a pane of glass in a black hole. Fluid, charged, visionary, hypnotic. It feels like a good stretch. It feels like ecstatic serenity.

Jamie xx’s reimagining of Gil Scott-Heron’s soul-bearing original is magnificent.

43. Drawing Board (2014) George Ezra

Ezra recounts the silliness of trying to get over an ex-girlfriend. The pained desperation of wanting someone who doesn’t want you, is lifted by the skippy pluck of his guitar and sarcastic humour. Taking a non-swimmer scuba diving, recommending Mr Todd for a haircut. My favourite track off the first vinyl album I owned.

It strikes the perfect balance between wishing someone well, and really also wishing them the worst. Like a different flavour of Action Bronson and Chance the Rapper’s Baby Blue.

44. Chinatown (2013) Shaky Graves

Quivering tenderness. It sounds like something that could have been sung by Disney’s Robin Hood, if he were sweeter, and warmer, and much more endearing. A lovely little ode to the tightrope-walk of love.

First heard on a Spotify Hiking Mix, whilst hiking in the French Alps on one of my favourite trails in the world, it tastes like pine-twinged mountain air.

45. Doomsday (1999) MF DOOM

Unparalleled in its smoothness, it is like a deep-tissue massage for your cerebrum. Smoochy velvet is how I’d best describe this track – the sound of silk, the texture of butter. Sade’s gorgeous Kiss of Life is gorgeously mixed, floating in and out, and Doom brings a prototypical performance of inconceivable inspiration.

46. Running (2016) James Bay

When in my early teens, I’d sometimes get really angry. I’d feel like I was either about to hit someone, or cry. Invariably, I cried. I used to love crying to this song.

The warmth of Bay’s voice; his commitment to unwavering support; and the continual build of emotion. It’s a really nice song, and one I will always be grateful for.

47. Not Like Us (2024) Kendrick Lamar

It’s difficult to express how much I adored the Kendrick that, last year, brutally dismantled Drake. Kenny was scathing, impassioned, acerbic and magnetic – and hilarious too. I spent much of last year delighting in this work, and Not Like Us brought a joyous final triumph over Drake’s bloated ego.

48. Avant Gardener (2013) Courtney Barnett

Barnett is wicked. This rolling, lolling, effortlessly cool account of a panic attack is so much more fun than it ought to be. It’s laugh out loud funny, the rhythm of speech aligns seamlessly with the music, and the imagery is vivid.

This track soundtracked much of my Masters year – I’d often find myself cruising around Durham on my bike, with this blaring through my headphones – and it always makes me think of my dear friend Millie, who herself embodies this song’s fantastically carefree energy.

49. Club Classics (2024) Charli XCX

My (re)introduction to Charli XCX was in the form of her New York Boiler Room set. It epitomised a world that intimidated me – sweaty clubs, cool-conscious people, careless sensuality, and open sexuality.

Club Classics was the first track I began playing on repeat, before I inevitably became enamoured with the whole album. It’s gritty, cold, ecstatic, bratty, and a truly bopping bop. This track, and the wider project, enabled me to both explore and express feelings previously unknown. And have a tremendous amount of fun whilst doing so. Thanks Charli.

50. Now or Never (2012) Kendrick Lamar

A track that giggles with gratitude, acceptance and ego-less celebration. It feels like the ecstasy of collecting one’s flowers, with all those whom you love beaming back at you. Mary J. Blige’s vocals are supreme, and Kendrick’s lyricism and intent are (as ever) perfectly pitched.

51. She (2011) Tyler the Creator, Frank Ocean

Grungy, dreamy, and forever listenable. A teenage tale of obsession, angst, awkwardness, and fanciful bloodshed. Frank and Tyler coalesce sublimely, and the production is so fantastically layered.

52. The Lonely Night – Reprise Version (2013) Moby

I once went for a very big walk around Durham, with a beautiful man named Mike. It was an extraordinary day. On the way back home, we walked past HMP Franklin, one of the most high security prisons in the UK.

The sun had set, the night was still, but the sky was lit by the greenish-whiteness of one hundred high luminosity lamps around the prison. We had this playing quietly as we walked past, but we otherwise walked in silence.

You could feel in the air the pain of all those inside. The torment in their souls, and the horrors they had wrought in the lives of others. A strange moment of compassion, sadness, and gratitude.

This song has a feeling of generational wisdom greater than any other I’ve heard. Mark Lanegan and Kris Kristofferson’s voices reverberate with an honest, unpolished loneliness. The sound of two men who truly have seen it all, sharing the similarities of their respective experiences.

53. Wetsuit (2011) The Vaccines

Truck Festival 2017. The thumping, building drums, the ringing harpsichord. Rippling with challenge, desire and steady confidence. Georgey and I, full of the love one will only ever feel for your best friend at sixteen, barrelling through a British festival. Mud, love, passion, and fraternal divinity.

54. Foundations (2007) Kate Nash

Vegan Campout 2024. Witty, silly, sassy, sharp and perceptive, this song is such a banger. In the main tent, alongside Brother Georgey. Years had passed since we last danced together, since we last stood shoulder-to-shoulder in fraternal love.

How good it was to be there, with Kate Nash – fun, whimsical, intense – running across the stage in a wedding dress. I’ve always loved this song.

55. Into My Arms (1997) Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds

Exposed, courageous, swooning, and brutally committed. Lyrics of unparalleled devotion, speaking to a love capable of reconfiguring all previously held notions of faith, religion and beauty. A perfect song, that cradles the depths of human experience like a newborn child.

56. This Wild Darkness – Loaded Remix (2018) Moby

A song that feels not like the wild darkness, but the pulse of wonder invoked by a solitary firefly of hope.

Patient, probing, gentle, and swaddling. Violins swell and pianos scuttle up stone-carved scales. The backing vocals are taken straight from the mouth of Gabriel. Moby’s signature drum track fades in, providing a central theme of gratitude and grace that punctuates the hum of the dark.

It is a plea, a prayer, an acceptance, and an expression of surrender.

57. Good Looking (2022) Suki Waterhouse

Exultant and tumbling, it is a fantastical statement of love that makes your core vibrate in an opium haze. I adore the lyric about the skyline falling as she tries to make sense of it all. What a lucky boy Robert Pattinson is, to have a song so glorious written for him.

58. Chances (2015) Subculture Sage

Across the track’s length, Subculture Sage – a British rap duo – contemplate love in all its manifestations. Its drivers, manifestations, absurdities and sensations.

Half a stream of consciousness musing, and half a philosophical treatise, it is clever, funny, and effortlessly nonchalant. And a track I spent many of my teenage years loving.

59. Sun King (1969) The Beatles

Spring was giving way to summer, as the boulders of PA were giving way to the smooth rolling fields of NY. I had spent the day in heaven, listening through The Beatles’ entire anthology from start to finish.

Waist-high grass lapped at my hips. The shining sun caressed the ground of my being. And Abbey Road presented me a shining platter of Sun King. 

It is the breath of the chloroplast, the touch of vitamin-D. It is the song of the Sumerians and the Aztecs, the Babylonians and the Mayans. I laughed, in ecstasy, at the delightfulness of the track, and the sheer audacity of the Spanish verse.

Inexpressible magnificence.

60. Sprinter (2023) Dave and Central Cee

Dave and Cench going back to back over a plucky ukulele beat is so much fun. The bars are excellent, being the perfect marriage of braggadocio and wit. Sharp and staccato, they dance and delight.

61. Duckworth (2017) Kendrick Lamar

“Just remember what happens on Earth stays on Earth – we gon’ put it in reverse!” The true opening track to Kendrick’s Pulitzer-prize winning DAMN., DUCKWORTH. is a masterclass in storytelling.

Over a beat that is sampled and itself put in reverse, Kendrick lays out a twisting, criss-crossing tale of fate, happenstance, coincidence and chance. A Compton of chicken shops, gun violence, pimpin’ and bangin’, in which Kendrick finds so much rich contemplation.

His rhyming schemes are breathtaking, the pace of the story exhilarating, and it emerges as a track entirely unpredictable. So evocative, so visceral. It is oh so very good.

62. when the party’s over (2018) Billie Eilish

Cavernous in its intensity and depth of emotion. Billie’s vocals teeter across a ledge of anguish, as crystal-cut as the glass which she could equally so easily shatter. Married to a bass-soaked hum and thump, it is enough to make one’s heart spin then crunch.

63. As It Was (2022) Harry Styles

I once walked from my hometown, Reigate, to the seaside city of Brighton. Something like 40 miles, just to see if I could. Silly fool.

I left wearing a thin pair of ankle socks, carrying only 500ml of water, three satsumas, and two bagels. It was a beautiful albeit brutalising day, spent under the baking sun in the hills of the South East.

Harry’s House had dropped the day prior I left, and I spent my many hours of walking listening through it on repeat. I’ve always loved Harry Styles’ music, and this track is a titanic feat of songwriting. So catchy, so smooth, so soothing.

64. Pursuit of Happiness (2009) Kid Cudi

Angus and I, when we were 18, went over to the Oxted Everyman to see Booksmart. This was in the era of free tickets, and half priced food and drinks. We had a phenomenal evening together – loving the film, and loving each other’s company. To me, at least, it felt like a seminal maturing of our friendship.

He dropped me back home afterwards, and we went down to the end of the garden. We smoked cigarettes, and he put me on to Kid Cudi’s Pursuit of Happiness. So was born my love affair with the music of Scott Mescudi.

Pursuit of Happiness is a frolicking psychedelic hymn. A sincerity rings through his testament to psychoactive substances, as well as the emptiness of the void he is trying to fill. Heard in his heavenly humming is an admission that he’s just trying to find something that looks like happiness, whilst in the beat one finds the necessary accompanying resilience.

65. Yellow (2017) Aminé

I recall once walking into the Drama Studio for a Saturday rehearsal. My beloved friend Alex was playing this, and I dug it immediately.

A song that always makes me think of him and our deeply treasured friendship. A song of silliness, good vibes, and fun-bumping braggadocious steeze.

66. The Day I Died (2009) Just Jack

So endearing. A lovely meditation on what makes life good. A song about the fragility of life. A song about the passing of moments, the magic of the mundane, and the essentiality of savouring each and every second we are given.

Try to see what pleasure you can eke from the small things. To see what delight you can find in unoccupied park benches, smiling secretaries, and lovers standing in doorways wearing your old brown dressing gown.

All we love will one day be taken from us, and we don’t know when that will be. Before that day arrives, make sure to delight in what you have before you. Make today the Best Day of Your Life. And give yourself a chance of indeed making the Day You Die the best of your life.

67. Mandela Days (1989) Simple Minds

French radio is consistently atrocious, but when skipping through stations whilst driving through the Alps, I have bizarrely on multiple occasions been treated to a listening of this track.

I love the romantic optimism of the eighties’ oh-so-prevalent pop-for-peace thinking. Nostalgia for an era I never experienced, I like what this song embodies.

Millions of people believing music to be capable of erasing political injustice. Millions placing faith in the crying twang of an electric guitar, speaking to the inexpressible.

68. Billy Brown (2007) Mika

The story of a man who had prior lived an ordinary life – two kids, a dog, and then the cautionary wife – who, when it was all going according to plan, fell in love with another man.

Peak Mika. Very gay, rather poignant, deeply funny, and so much fun.

69. Take On Me – MTV Unplugged (2018) a-ha

a-ha’s high-octane and high-note-reaching 1985 pop classic, reimagined by the band themselves in an MTV Unplugged live session.

Where the original is scintillating and frenetic, the revision is tender and exposed. The lyrics are imbued with an entirely different feeling – they are pleading, warm, and frighteningly intimate.

The matured vocal chords of the band’s lead singer, Morten Harket, evoke wearied eyes who have seen so much. A galaxy of feeling is found in the crystal-clarity of his pitch.

It is a song that gently caresses the ground of my being.

70. Tea and Toast (2013) Lucy Spraggan

I have long adored the Tea and Toast motif. The idea that no matter what speed of spin the tumble dryer of life is whirling you at, the morning will bring tea and toast. Comfort, love, and safety.

It is a life in a song. Sweet, raw, tender, and deeply heartfelt. So much sincerity and humanity, in each and every one of the lyrics. 

71. You’re So Cool (1993) Hans Zimmer

When I was 17, I spent hours on the telephone on hold, trying to sort out my car insurance. The hold music played on repeat, but I found myself delighting in it. “I’ve definitely heard that xylophone melody somewhere”, I would ponder, sitting there for ages, never quite pinpointing its familiarity.

I’m not sure why I did not use Shazam. It was only when rewatching the magnificent True Romance that this ear-worming thought-loop was finally resolved.

A composition of jubilance, resilience, and sunshine emerging after a monsoon. Though entirely instrumental to many ears, I cannot listen without hearing Alabama’s love-filled voice echoing in my mind… “You’re so cool, you’re so cool, you’re so cool”.

72. Can I Kick It? (1990) A Tribe Called Quest

Intergenerational coolness, sewn effortlessly into a tapestry of imperial hip-hop brilliance. Sampling Lou Reed’s sublime Walk on the Wild Side, 

A Tribe Called Quest retains the mellowing twang of Reed, whilst adding an echoing kick snare and scratching the living daylights out of it.

A Tribe Called Quest bring a magisterial swagger, passing the mic around like a spliff, and dropping gleaming bars like a busted truck on its way out of Fort Knox.

73. Bohemian Rhapsody (1975) Queen

Laugh-inducingly grandiose. Justifiably vainglorious in its flamboyance, ambition, and success. How dare you write a song so serious and yet so silly?

The line “I don’t want to die, but sometimes wish I’d never been born at all” articulated a felt paradox I used to find inexpressible – being in love with life, but feeling sheer terror at the prospect of oblivion.

And yet, I harbor too so many memories of singing along with glee to what is one of the most fun songs of all time. To write a song capable of both really is no mean feat.

74. Love Yourz (2014) J. Cole

No such thing as a life that’s better than yours. No such thing, no such thing.

75. Same Love (2012) Mackemore & Ryan Lewis

A gorgeous rebuttal to the foolish madness that is homophobia. Sublimely educational for any 11-year old. Macklemore is brave, and strong, and insightful, but continually maintains epistemological modesty.

The beat is simple and so are Macklemore’s bars. But there is a world of love contained within this track, and many lines I quote to this day.

It is not angry, patronising, or disrespectful. Instead, it is measured, compassionate, and warm. It’s a masterclass in how to communicate difference.

76. Where Is the Love? (2003) Black Eyed Peas

“Rap for people who don’t like rap, pop for people who don’t like pop”, once said Robert California. Maybe harsh, but the Black Eyed Peas do definitely provide a pasteurised version of each.

Where Is The Love always got 9-year-old me in my feels. I loved the rap, and loved feeling the weight of the subject matter.

Listening to it now, the beat is actually great, and the impassioned delivery of each Pea really sells the sentiment. Maybe a little twee, definitely rather on the nose, but nonetheless a great song.

77. Classic (2013) MKTO

How does an eleven-year-old make the apple of his eye fall in love with him? Make them a playlist that acrostically spells “I LOVE YOU”, of course. I never did make the playlist, nor did I tell her of my complete infatuation.

Two years I spent in such a state, and I knew Classic to be one of her favourite songs. I remember trying to learn all the words (thinking that would definitely make her fall in love with me) – and loving every second of it. It brings back waves of nostalgia, that are nothing but entirely pleasant.

78. When You Say Nothing At All (1999) Ronan Keating

A song that sounded, to my twelve-year-old self, like love distilled into sound. When in second year (Year 8), I was in the lower school play of Aladdin, occupying the esteemed role of ensemble.

Hugh and Jenna, both in the year above, played Aladdin and Jasmine. They sang this to each other, and I remember simultaneously falling in love with them both. What a mature love, I remember thinking. How could I be blamed, with Mrs Branston having chosen a song of such sweet glory?

Keating sings of a love so pure. A promise of being needed, of unwavering commitment, and an assurance to be caught whenever  we fall  – all said through a smile, truthful eyes, and a glancing touch.

79. Charlie (2019) Mallrat

Tender, child-like, breathy, and innocent. Another song that sounds both like one of love’s many divine faces, and one too that sounds like a break in the clouds.

80. U.N.I (2011) Ed Sheeran

A school-era relationship crumbling in the face of an immovable object: university. I had two very deep and formative relationships that each ended in such a manner.

The relationships were beautiful in their own ways, but by this point in them both I had fallen far short of the man I wanted to be. This song encapsulated for me the feeling of smallness, and confusion, that I experienced at the time. Shifting perspectives, sliding values, warped perceptions.

Knowing that so much has changed and that irreparably rocks the foundations of the love that was once so honey-succulent. Still bitter-sweet to this day.

81. Arrows (2014) Fences, ft. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

A thumping, optimistic struggle against the forces that oppress, both internal and external. It is impassioned, joyous, and Macklemore at his celebratory best.

I remember arriving at university, and falling completely and instantaneously in love with a girl who had a boyfriend, and who had no romantic interest in me.

We spent days listening to music together, and quickly struck upon this as being a song which we had both long loved. I’ve never heard of anyone else who knows of it.

82. Rocky Trail (2021) Kings of Convenience

This feels just like The Great Sigh. I can taste the Bill Byrson library, at 23:30 on a Thursday night in my final year, in the timbre of this track’s mellow ache. Completely in love with someone who didn’t love me as I loved her. 

Elated to be falling in love, but crushed by the knowledge it is not properly reciprocated. A very unique feeling, divinely human, and one that this song embodied.

Norwegian easy-listening folk music, that I find to be everything but easy listening. So soft are the lyrics; so dignified the violin; and so anxious are the competent hands caressing, tapping, and sliding across the guitar’s fret.

83. Never Forget – Single Version (1995) Take That

I love the grandiosity of the opening brass, the boldness of the crashing drums, and the following break into silence, from which a child’s angelic voice emerges.

Funky bass, foreign percussion and Take That’s voices of sage-like insight combine seamlessly, and give way to a chorus that soars like few others.

“We’ve come so far, we’ve reached so high, we’ve looked each day and night in the eye. And we’re still so young, and we hope for more”

I used to sing it on PS3 Singstar, somehow always clocking perfect scores when hitting the high notes. Less notably, I quoted it in a speech I made to my year group on the last day of school.

84. Fade Into You (1993) Mazzy Star

Upon first hearing this song, I made a playlist called That’s Nice, Really, to fill with other songs that also were that nice. I soon forgot about it and months passed, until one day a Spotify mix served this song to me again.

Falling into the mattress of kind sunlight offered by her voice, it reminded me that I had a playlist just for this kind of song. I went to add it in, only to be asked “Are you sure you want to add this again?”. What a silly little brain – clearly with no free-will (or memory) at all. 

It really is a very nice song.

85. Crazy Rap (2001) Afroman

Green hair in Hollywood, shrimp fried rice, Dolly Parton in Tennessee, and Colonel Sanders’ wife. No single source of artistic expression better glorifies tumbleweed and heterogeneous sex than Afroman’s Crazy Rap. 

A group of friends trading outrageous accounts of sexual exploits, around a fire pit and a fired up spliff. It is laugh out loud funny, unspeakably crude, and the joyous hyperbole smacks of silly and braggadocious machismo.

86. Mr Brightside (2004) The Killers

I actually hate this song. It has been played during the closing throes of every other party I’ve ever been to, and I hate it all the more for it.

87. Oblivion (2012) Grimes

Fuzzy and alien – it is a song that skates across the waves at the centre of my soul.

Light airy melodies and shady mechanical beats combine into an exhilarating promise to see you on a dark night. Darkness suggests fear, but also an electric promise of the electrifying unknown.

Thrilling and ethereal, it was shared with me by Choppy, and is a symbol of his terrifically open mind.

88. Old Thing Back (2015) Matoma, The Notorious B.I.G.

Windows down and a buzzy breeze bringing respite from a stifling hot summer sun. Biggie is outrageously filthy and sickeningly self-assured, and yet completely gets away with it.

A lighter reimagining of a much darker original, it is bumping with summer fun and easeful lust. Packs of rough riders, thirteen-sized Karl Kani jeans, and wielding a Hennessy appendage that is the cleanest and meanest, you’ve ever seenest – which is always ready to shatter a bladder.

Disgraceful. And yet, remixed by Matoma in a way that somehow pulses with an exuberant innocence.

89. Je Suis Un Petit Garçon

When very very young, we had a CD in Dad’s car of French nursery rhymes. They were all classics – Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, Row Row Row Your Boat – apart from this one. Translated, the lyrics are as follows:

“I am a little boy, with a round chubby face, who likes eating lots of sweets and who likes eating jam. If you want to give me some, I will eat them, every one. What a good adventure, such a good adventure, what a good adventure, such a good adventure”.

How we cried with laughter, my brothers and my Dad and I, on a drive to the tip or somewhere equally exciting.

What a good adventure. Such a good adventure.

90. My Name Is (1999) Eminem

Slim Shady was as freshly rambunctious and delightfully jarring in 2015 as he was in 1999. His energy is so enlivening and his bars sizzle with a genius flair, that makes each relistening feel like the first.

I loved Eminem throughout my teens, and this song best embodies what I loved about his music. Truly hilarious, infinitely creative, jaw-droppingly appalling. For a couple of years I sported a blond buzz cut, and was asked whether my name was the Real Slim Shady just as I was asked if the Real Slim Shady could please stand up.

91. Ideas As Opiates (1983) Tears For Fears

Ideas are the opiates with which we placate ourselves, every moment of every single day. Religious notions, philosophical concepts, political sentiments – ideas about who we are, what we’re doing here, the continual rationalisations of why what we’re doing makes complete sense.

I’m glad we have ideas – with which to reinforce the bulwarks of our existence – but my goodness are ideas tiring. Thinking is tiring, and thinking is all we ever do. This song sounds like thought itself.

Rhythmic, strained, harmonious and continuous, continuous, continuous. The unwavering percussion is the ever-current of thought; the lyrics are the cyclical recursiveness; and the occasional saxophone is the occasional wailing of the tiredness.

92. Ridin’ Solo (2010) Jason Derulo

Cheery, camp, celebratory pop-rap. I found much fun in it when younger – knee sliding across year six discos, and somehow also into Freshers Week. I remember getting ready for a night out, bumping this on a CD through the hi-fi system I’d brought with me to halls.

A proper bop, that represents a Mandela Effect in its temporal positioning in life’s discography.

93. Let The Light In (2023) Lana Del Rey ft. Father John Misty

Two loons, cooing to each other across a misty lake of frost. Solidarity in emptiness, mutual compassion in loneliness. A relationship born of situation, founded on habit rather than passion. 

It feels like crawling into the arms of someone you once loved, for comfort and reassurance rather than desire. When sleep fails and minds race, and you know that somewhere there softly burns a candle beside a bed of warming comfort.

Lana Del Rey + Father John Misty = sweet, nihilistic, feminine heaven.

94. Kids (2020) Current Joys

A twanging grunt, that expresses how it is to be a child. Both then and now. For we are all children – confused, and blindly scrambling to make sense of it all. Obsessed with ideas, scared of the dark. Hearts and imaginations as a replacement for brains. I like how this song makes me feel.

95. For No One (1966) The Beatles

The sound of unresolved love, of unrequited love, and of empty love. McCartney shares a profoundly perceptive wisdom in his lyrics, and such subtle expression in his voice. A perfect song.

96. Circles (2020) Mac Miller

So honest and kind, yet so resigned to the pure exhaustion that is life. So tired and wearied. As tender and gentle as Mac himself.

In his own struggles and his inability to help himself, he invariably finds space for compassion and wisdom. Circles feels like a hug, like a back rub, like a consoling smile when all words otherwise fail.

97. Then I Met You (1988) The Proclaimers

What a belter. Every time I end up single, I always completely convince myself that I have found everything there is to find in relationships. That I enjoy life far more living out by myself.

And then, you meet someone, and all of that changes. This song nails that feeling. It is The Proclaimers at their romping, passionate, joyous best.

98. Father and Son (1970) Cat Stevens

An intergenerational breakdown of compassionate comprehension. A conversation underscored by raging currents of love and good-intention, but failing to see each other in their fullness. Wisdom at the expense of sincere engagement. Platitudes replacing the personal.

Such sentiment has never characterised the nature of my relationships with either Mum or Dad. They have always been unwaveringly supportive, of who I am and who I have been. An extraordinarily profound blessing.

It is, nonetheless, a song that has always touched me deeply. Cat Stevens’ instrumentation is so simple, but his vocals and lyrics are anything but. He is sublimely expressive, playing these two characters with nuance, depth and understanding – and filling his voice with like reverberation.

99. We Need A Bigger Dumpster (2022) Cheekface

“Coffee from the bank, Fritos isn’t free, I only wanna be with other people like me. Advil, Tylenol, there is no relief, I only wanna be with other people like me”. This is a cheek absolutely full of tongue.

Burning all that is absurd about our generation, only to realise that there is no dumpster quite big enough – and telling ourselves throughout that everything is fine! everything is fine! Droll, silly, ironic – and smartly perceptive too.

Moments filled with hilarity, listening to this in the Nottingham Arboretum’s Chinese Bell Tower, and in the depths of the River Wear’s Adventure Valley.

100. Dog Days Are Over (2009) Florence + The Machine

Bubbling, skipping, giddy euphoria. The gravitas of being’s heart-wrenching smile. It feels like relief from a struggle which never seemed it would resolve. 

Harps, guitars, drums, and Florence’s voice coalesce into a brilliant magnificence, like sun streaming in through the windscreen as you fly at 70mph across wide and open roads. 

It is a celebration of running wild to expend a boundless energy that has no natural grounding mechanism.

It is a celebration of breathing; a celebration of having a heart; a celebration of having mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, with whom you can rejoice that the Dog Days are, indeed, over.