Music might be the greatest mood enhancer in the world. It can tip happiness into euphoria or create a suitably gloomy space for melancholy. While albums like Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely have long evoked moods, streaming services now overflow with mood-based playlists. Spotify offers hundreds, from Happy Vibes to All the Feels, and user-generated ones now outnumber curated ones. However, Liz Pelly's 2025 book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist argues that Spotify's focus on mood playlists caters to 'lean-back consumers,' treating music as unobtrusive background muzak. There's something unsettling about a computer deciding what music fits an emotion it cannot feel. Yet the human connection of shared musical experience remains powerful. Here are six mood-based playlists compiled by Guardian writers.
Excited
Girls Aloud – Something Kinda Ooooh: This song feels like a mad idea from the pub—a pumping hi-NRG dance track with glam rock guitars. It's relentless, ridiculous, and utterly exhilarating.
Orbital – Chime: Beginning like a manic alarm clock, Chime hammers out dopamine stabs before beats and bassline kick in. It's the sound of British techno exploding into life, perfect for a promising night ahead.
Cat Power – Manhattan: Inspired by Langston Hughes' Let America Be America Again, this track carries disillusionment but also thrilling city possibility through fluttering rhythms.
Gucci Mane – Lemonade: The chorus hook, sung by children, recalls nonsense rhymes. It's infectiously joyful: 'Lemons on the chain with the V-cuts / Lemonade and shade with my feet up.'
Steely Dan – Reelin' in the Years: From the opening trilling guitar line to shuffling drums and close-stacked harmonies, this song is ebullient. Despite being about a bitter breakup, it invites excited singalongs.
Romantic
Fleetwood Mac – Only Over You: This song doesn't try to be sexy; it's languid and heavy-lidded, a soft sigh weak with love rather than lustful growl.
Arooj Aftab – Diya Hai: Based on Urdu verse by Mirza Ghalib about a love triangle, Aftab's voice is deep and longing, with guitars and violins wrapping shimmer around you.
Van Morrison – You Know What They're Writing About: A five-minute half-scat where breath, strings, and brass create a world where 'Meet me down by the pylons!' becomes the most romantic invitation.
Lana Del Rey – White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter: The line 'He's my white feather hawk tail deer hunter' speaks to the delightful derangement of love. Mixing vulnerability with gothic elements, it feels like being under a spell.
Toni Braxton – You're Makin' Me High: A sensual groove with a hip-shaking bassline and soaring vocals, this 90s R&B hit showcases a sultry side beyond her famous ballad Un-Break My Heart.
Angry
Fugazi – Waiting Room: Tense and supremely pissed off, with bellowed vocals, pregnant pauses, and explosive guitar. It's propulsive and funky, channelling rage into defiant action: 'don't sit idly by.'
Olivia Rodrigo – Vampire: Beginning slowly, this revenge song builds rage ('the way you sold me for parts') before a drumbeat kickstarts a piano-slamming epic of pop catharsis.
Paul Simon – You're the One: A careful study of love turned to rage, with percussive jabs and twists. The lyric 'Nature gives us shapeless shapes / Clouds and waves and flame / Yet human expectation is that love remains the same' is a favourite.
Nonpoint – Alive and Kicking: Heard first in a video game, this song channels anger into rebellion and defiance, alchemising it into resilience rather than indulging it.
The Prodigy – No Good (Start the Dance): Liam Howlett's hard-hitting drum programming explodes from a muted breakbeat into a layered cacophony, matching all manner of rageful moments.
Relaxed
Freddie Hubbard – Mirrors: From the 1962 album Breaking Point, this track features warm piano chords, barely-there drums, and lovely trumpet and flute. It feels like a gentle afternoon breeze.
Brian Eno and Harmonia 76 – Welcome: A 1976 collaboration between ambient master and motorik pioneers. Rippling analogue synthesizers and glossy guitar create tranquillity in motion, the best sonic balm.
John Betjeman – Myfanwy and Myfanwy at Oxford: From the album Late Flowering Love, this track melds poems inspired by art critic Myfanwy Piper. It mingles desire and sensory overload with subversive nods to Freud, Kant, Marx, and Joyce.
Mariah Carey – Bliss: A slow jam about deep infatuation and surrender. Carey's continuous whistle notes and whispery vocals lull you into calm, dreamy and hypnotic.
Bill Evans Trio – Nardis: From the 1961 album Explorations, Evans' softly twinkling piano reaches a blissful peak with deep-seated swing that invites head-nodding relaxation.
Restless
Mabe Fratti – Márgen del Indice: Venezuelan cellist's music sounds in constant motion, shifting from ominous industrial rhythm to delightful melody, discordance to sweet pop, without fracturing.
Saint Etienne – Like a Motorway: Propulsive, twitchy beauty with nervous energy, a 1990s electronic twist on the folk ballad Silver Dagger. Lyrics burst with images of a love affair cut short.
Tift Merritt – Traveling Alone: Unflinching and direct, this song captures self-reliance overtaking sweetness and the world opening up anew.
David Bowie – Starman: Provides a feeling of control by imagining an alien force offering hope and light in a dark world. If the sandman brings dreams, the starman brings salvation.
Gas – Pop 7: German producer Wolfgang Voigt's ambient techno drones provide gently undulating bass frequencies for a fidgeting mind. The final track's pulsing kick drum melts tension away.
Miserable
Barbara Mason – Darling Come Back Home: Inconsolable lyrical misery with bitterness and pleading set to slow-motion disco. The impassioned vocal cuts to the bone, and the spacious sound suggests fathomless despair.
Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat: A cliché of misery, but Cohen's bassy voice lifts you to cinematic places. This short story about betrayal in midwinter crackles with mystery and deep feeling.
Ben Folds Five – Brick: An unlikely 1997 hit about a high-school relationship and abortion. It retains remarkable loneliness in quiet details, forlorn piano, and a sudden cloud-break chorus.
All Saints – Never Ever: Asking 'what's the worst you've ever felt?' this breakup ballad speaks to heartache and confusion from abrupt, unexplained endings.
Coldplay – Trouble: Chris Martin's empathic vocal and downtempo moodiness make early albums a balm for the wretched. The piano refrain and yearning chorus are a perfect soundtrack to misery.
