The Ten Best Songs For New Year's Eve Playlists

When is a banger a New Year’s Eve banger? Or to put it another way, what separates the best songs for New Year's Eve events from the more routine party-starters you'd drop in any mid-year playlist? Many of you will be asking yourselves these questions as you sit in front of Spotify, wondering what music your intimate dinner party or wild house party needs to get it going until 00:01 on January 1, 2025—and beyond.

There are some general rules of thumb that come with making a playlist for any big occasion. Firstly, match that occasion. Don’t put drum and bass on when you’re having canapés and champagne. Secondly, respond to your audience. If the mood is getting a little listless, drop a stone-cold banger. If everyone is still enjoying the sitting-and-chatting phase of the evening, then keep things light. Relatedly, it’s always a nice idea to take (some) requests, particularly if it’s an intimate occasion. Just make sure you deal with any wannabe playlist-monopolizers politely but firmly.

Finally, don’t be too cool. The point of the evening is to have fun, not for you to show off your knowledge of Arabic funk deep cuts. Which brings us to the most important question: what makes the best songs for New Year’s Eve work as well as they do? They generally need to be celebratory and forward-looking—a musical booster rocket to launch you, full of glittery, boozy optimism, into the year ahead. And for a night as ritual-bound as New Year’s Eve, it’s no bad idea to lean on the classics, and tap into the accumulated vibes of all the New Year’s Eves that have come before. Depending on the kind of party, you might even want to introduce a little hint of melancholy – another year flying by can be a bittersweet feeling sometimes.

Here are our top suggestions. We’ve (almost) dodged “Auld Lang Syne," but if you want to whack that on at midnight, we won’t blame you.

It doesn’t matter how cool you think your party is—that party needs ABBA. We could easily add about half of the band’s catalogue to this list, but for New Year’s Eve, it probably has to be “Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)”. The disco vibes are immaculate, that instantly recognizable synth line will have partiers flocking to the dancefloor—and, of course, it mentions “midnight” in the chorus. An absolute slam-dunk.

As is this one. “I Feel Love” is a very appropriate song to spin during the transition from one year to the next, partly because, thanks to the synth-laced production of Giorgio Moroder, it sounded incredibly futuristic when it came out. But far more important than that is the giddy, utterly infectious mood of hedonistic abandon that descends like a spell when the chorus kicks in. It’s one of building blocks of modern dance music, and it’s rarely been equalled.

Here, we come to that point about a hint of melancholy. “All My Friends” is an indie-dance banger that builds and builds around a hypnotic piano loop to an almighty crescendo. It’s also a ruminative, bittersweet meditation about the importance of clinging onto your friends as you get older. Put this on with all your friends, and take that message to heart.

One of Prince’s best-loved tracks, this is a fabulously funky and groovy number—but if you listen to the lyrics, you’ll learn it’s got a decidedly apocalyptic theme, which makes it one of the best songs for any New Year's Eve playlist in a couple of different ways. “We could all die any day,” Prince coos, “But before I’ll let that happen / I’ll dance my life away”. And after all, what’s a properly good party without a streak of nihilistic hedonism running through it?

Maybe you don’t need up-tempo bangers on New Year’s Eve—maybe you’re having a quiet dinner with a couple of friends, or even going solo. In that case, the gravel-voiced Tom Waits can sort you out. There are many songs explicitly about New Year’s Eve, but this is one of the few that’s any good. Waits does his usual thing of singing about romantic down-and-outers, but throws in a few lines of “Auld Lang Syne” for the occasion too.

Vampire Weekend are dab hands at cooking up brilliant pop with a reflective side. “This Life”, from their fourth album, Father of the Bride, is a shining example. The zippy, pop-rock instrumental is perfect for dancing around a kitchen to, but the deft lyrics are something else. At first, it seems to be about infidelity; then, with the line “I’ve been cheating through this life”, the scope widens into something more existential. Everyone will, a few drinks down, inevitably be pondering their lives to some extent on New Year’s Eve. Put this on to fuse celebration with group therapy.

Firstly, the theme of the song makes it a great accompaniment to a fireworks display. Then there’s the sheer maximalism of it, with frenetic drums, the fattest horn line since James Brown, and more than a dozen A-grade artists, including Alicia Keys, Rihanna and Elton John, on the hook. This is pure musical elation as only Kanye West used to do it, and it can light up any party.

We’ve swerved full-fat dance music on this list, as it’s not for everyone, and those who do like it know what they like. But “Inspector Norse” isn’t any old dance tune: it’s pure ecstasy, in musical rather than pharmaceutical form. A spacey, synth-packed electro disco jam, it has a gleaming melody line that gradually ratchets up the ante, until about halfway through, when the arpeggiators (and the whole song) take off into the stratosphere. Modern science is yet to find anyone who can resist going nuts to this.

Drake has not had a great year. If he’s making any resolutions, one of them is probably “get into fewer rap beefs.” But that doesn’t mean he can’t make it onto your New Year’s Eve playlist, because putting out party-starters is something he rarely fails at. “One Dance” is nice, but “Nice for What” is nicer—an impeccable beat, a Lauryn Hill sample tweaked to perfection, and Drake himself rapping about ignoring social media and being in the club after a pay day.

Some people might clamor for “Blue Monday”, but “Bizarre Love Triangle” is the New Order hit with the best pure pop credentials—in that classic 1980s formula, gleaming melodies and vocal lines twinkle above a robotic rhythm section. And that bittersweet chorus is the perfect thing to holler when you’re well into the 1^st of January, the cab is waiting outside, but you just need one more moment of celebration before getting on with 2025.