Songs You Need To Know To Live

There are certain songs that I think you need to know nowadays to be able to live. No, I don’t mean songs that I really like and think are awesome and everybody should hear, and I don’t mean songs everybody necessarily likes. It’s the songs you just need to know because they are the Songs That Everybody Knows. I was thinking about this because I was considering making a CD of some of these songs for my little sister, so that she will be able to survive in the outside world, and I’ve been trying to work out which songs they actually are. Here are ten (in no particular order):

1) Michael Jackson – Thriller

Obvious. Everybody knows Thriller. Everyone knows the dance . . . sort of. (God, I wish I could do the dance properly). Say what you like about MJ, but he could dance. It’s the default Halloween song, but it’ll come up at a lot of other get-togethers anyway.

2) Blink 182 – All The Small Things

Come on, everyone knows it, and I bet you’ve got Tom Delonge’s voice going round your head now (seriously, what on earth is that accent). I don’t even remember why, but my entire maths class was singing this once. I think it was to cover up the sound of this one girl who was trying to sing it as some warbly power ballad and was absolutely murdering it. Anyway, pretty much everyone knows this one.

3) Oasis – Wonderwall

I don’t particularly like Oasis, but you can’t really deny their ability to make very memorable songs. For me, this one brings back firstly my Year 11 prom last summer, when, towards the end of the evening the DJ put it on and everyone in the year got together on the dance floor and sang along, and the teachers got really emotional. Secondly, it brings back one of my friends who, back in Year 8 on an own clothes day thought it’d be a brilliant idea to dress up as Noel Gallagher. I still don’t know his reasoning for it. I've got it playing now and I automatically have this urge to sway and sing along in the broadest Manc accent I can manage.

4) Dexys Midnight Runners – Come On Eileen

I’m not sure how often this one comes up in the US or other countries, but at probably every single family do I’ve been to here, there will come a point in the evening, usually when everyone’s smashed, when they will play this song and everyone will sing along and it’s just cemented in my head as A Tune You Must Have At Parties. They played it at Aquatica for some reason while I was there last summer, and you could see every single British person in there pricking up their cultural ears and singing along (what on earth do cultural ears look like?).

5) Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg – The Next Episode

I don’t know, is this a bit of a random choice? Everyone I know knows this one. They don’t know the words, but they know when to chime in with ‘lalalalala, it’s the motherfuckin’ D-O-double-G’, and that’s all you need to shuffle your way through any song.

6) Bob Marley – Three Little Birds

Everybody knows Bob Marley (sadly not personally), and everyone knows most of his major songs, like I Shot The Sherriff, which is what I was originally going to put here, but Three Little Birds just seemed more right. Everybody knows it, whether it’s people who just like reggae, people like me who got made to sing it in primary school after they remembered they weren’t a Christian school and stopped making us sing hymns, or if you happen to listen to him because he’s the first thing you generally think of when you heard the word ‘weed’ so you use him to show off your lifestyle.

7) Europe - The Final Countdown

(suggested by my friend Ryan)

This has been used for everything. Ever. I don’t know how they created frantic deadline-meeting montages before this song existed. I don’t know how they ever built up tension before this song. How does one count down to a big event without The Final Countdown? It is THE final countdown. The countdown of all countdowns. You just try to have any big event with some kind of deadline and see if this isn’t used. I dare you. And if you don’t use it, you will have that terrible feeling in the pit of your stomach that something is very, very wrong.

8) Arctic Monkeys – When The Sun Goes Down

Again, this is just what I see as essential songs from what I know of the world, and from what I know of the world, with pretty much everyone I’ve ever met, if you go up to them and say “And I’ve seen him with girls of the night, and he told Roxanne to put on her red light. They’re all infected, but he’ll be alright, ‘cause he’s a scumbag, don’t you know?” I can pretty much guarantee that they will shout back “BUTHESASCUMBADDONTYOUKNOW” and then start thrashing about. Arctic Monkeys haven’t been around massively long, and their newer stuff’s not really that good, but everyone knows the singles from the first two albums.

9) Destiny’s Child – Bootylicious

Come onnnnnnnn. I grew up watching this one on MTV, never quite grasping the concept of ‘bootyliciousness’, but still knowing it was an awesome song. I’m still not ready for the jelly. Just imagine if one day you opened the door and it was Beyonce, and she was there ‘cause you’d offended one of her friends. She’d beat the shit out of you. She would destroy you. I just know that you should never, ever take on Beyonce in a fight. And that’s why this song is here; to appease Beyonce and the other two.

10) The Cure – Friday I’m In Love

I was considering putting The Smiths here, but then I remembered this song. I love this one. It’s the one that got me into The Cure, because someone left me alone on New Year’s Eve a few years ago with Singstar, and I was just doing this song over and over. This one is just necessary. It’s just a very needed song. I don’t quite know how to express how much I love this song in words, aside from using the song itself. Aaaah, listen to it, it's lovely.