I listen to One Direction, I have no shame.  One Direction have a song called ‘Best Song Ever’, and like so many other One Direction songs I will have a little song and dance along, because I’m basically Zayn’s replacement.  As pretentious as the title sounds, the song is not necessarily claiming to be the best song ever(which is just as well, because it’s not and that would be a lie and lying is bad).  It is in fact the (debatably) beautiful story of what happened to one of the lads when he met a pretty girl and a great song came on.

So I was sitting chilling on the train (I find myself doing this quite a lot) when this song came onto my iPod, and since I was unable to have my cheesy 1D boogie I found myself wondering just what song it was that was playing on that fateful evening. I mean, it must have been something pretty special to be The Best Song Ever.    As I listened to the song I realised that it didn’t really give any clues to the nature of the song, so I started thinking about what could possibly make a song The Best Song Ever.  I mean, there are billions of songs out there, and hundreds of thousands of them are great in their own way.  Some are lyrically fabulous or vocally wonderful or instrumentally mesmerising.  Sometimes a song is your favourite because it triggers a memory or a feeling.  Every single one of us have songs which remind us of people or places or events, be it good or bad.  Does any of this make a song The Best Song Ever?

I decided that in order to be The Best Song Ever, a song must have a variety of traits.  The event in question involved a social gathering, so the focus of the search for The Best Song Ever was whittled down to songs which would be successful at such an occasion.  Now, socialising is by no means my forte and is absolutely something which I tend to avoid at all costs, so my knowledge from personal experience is limited. Limited perhaps, but not non existent.  In order to be The Best Song Ever a song must:

get everybody singing.

get everybody on their feet.

get everybody excited.

Now admittedly this seems like a really easy checklist.  The thing is, you need to find a song which checks ALL of these boxes.  I don’t mean the current chart topper, where everybody knows the words because it has been so overplayed and people ‘love’ it because basically they have been told that they should, I mean songs which can be a million years old yet still everybody knows the words because you just can’t know the words.  even if you don’t know the words you will make up the words until it gets to the bit where you do know the words.  Maybe it has a dance which everybody knows, but even if it doesn’t have a recognisable dance you will still find 99% of the room getting onto their feet when this song comes on.  Finally, the entire atmosphere of the room changes.  The air becomes electric and everybody is buzzing.  This song is the jam of everybody in the room.

Using this checklist I created a shortlist of five songs which could possibly be The Best Song Ever (This was originally a much longer list but I whittled it down, admittedly some songs were really difficult to cut!).  Do you agree?  What songs do you think should have made the cut?  Let me know in the comments!

So here they are, in no particular order:

Dolly Parton – 9 to 5

Everybody loves this song because this song speaks to everybody. Simple.

Queen – Bohemian Rhapsody

okay so perhaps this doesn’t get you dancing as such but I stand my ground that this song has earned it’s place in this list.

Los Del Rio – Macarena

Okay so this might be a slightly biased choice because it is one of my favourite songs ever, but everybody loves a cheeky macarena.

The Killers – Mr Brightside

This song is definitely more modern than the other songs making the cut but I definitely feel it has earned it’s place…it started out with a kiss how did it end up like this?

Rocky Horror Picture Show – Time Warp

I was slightly loather to put this here because I absolutely can not stand Rocky Horror, but as much as I do not care for the song if it were to come on I’ll still find myself participating in the frivolities.

Remember and let me know what you think!