WI asked you, Guardian readers, to name the song you want on the definitive New Year’s playlist: one that represents the year we’ve had, the year we’re waiting for, or just the way we’ll feel ( and the words we will shout) at midnight. Then 9,534 of you voted for them.
It all ended, however, once the mountain goats got involved. Their popular 2011 track This year was sitting at number 3 until the band discovered it and tweeted about it with a brazen request for votes.
The Mountain Goats
(@mountain_goats)To my great surprise, we are currently number three in this poll, behind Monty Python and REM. I am not above asking the masses of mountain goats to vote for us and in fact I am doing so through this tweet https://t.co/SssR2EVrOR
It may not be surprising that a song with the chorus “I’ll Pass This Year If You Kill Me” would win this poll, but that it would generate 9.6 times the number of votes than its strongest competitor and account for 59% of the total votes all in all, it’s quite a success. This year he received 5,643 votes.
The two songs that previously gave mountain goats a run for their money, REM’s It’s the End of the World as We Know It (And I Feel Fine) and Monty Python’s Always Look on the Bright Side of Life, entered a cheerful if cynical 2 and 3 respectively, with 100 votes separating them. Even Eric Idle’s own intervention on Twitter didn’t help at all, especially when he revealed that he could also vote for something else.
Eric Idle
(@EricIdle)I was intrigued to find which Python song but of course it is Bright Side. Then I noticed that things can only get better @ProfBrianCox so I tore myself. https://t.co/Y3lAs32R5O
It was a good drop from Monty Python’s 490 votes to fourth place, where the Beatles’ Here Comes the Sun was left with 335 votes.
Carly Rae Jepsen injected pure euphoria into the party at No. 5, with Cut to the Feeling lifting the dance floor with 289 votes.
It is a little a little awkward for 276 of you to vote for the police Don’t Stand So Close Me Me, since it’s a song that checks Nabokov’s name Lolita and tells a similar story, but we understand that sometimes people just listen to their hearts . It is the era of social distancing, we achieve it.
Despite being defended by none other than Guardian Australia editor herself, Lenore Taylor, Am I Ever Gonna See Your Face Again by the Angels and her cathartic and cursed heart only reached number 7, with 217 votes.
From here, an eclectic selection of popular and memorable songs from Talking Heads, Phoebe Bridgers, Ian Dury and the Blockheads, Florence + the Machine, Lily Allen and the Triffids should keep the party lively.
The best thing to see in the year, according to 115 of you, would be a great classical work: Symphony no. 9 by Beethoven, which lasts more than an hour, so we have only included the fourth movement of 22 minutes comes the unmistakable melody of the Ode to Joy. What it will feel like at 11pm from the D: Ream dance anthem of the 90s Things Can Only Get Better, we can’t tell you, but it’s just your fault.
Get ready for some depressing funk after that, as Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here (number 16, 114 votes) leads to Godspeed You ’sadly gloomy Dead Flag Blues! Black Emperor (17, with 109 votes). If I Ramblers and Wanna Be Sedated by the Ramones and Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel can’t get you out of it, No 20 is nothing short of Chumbawamba’s unforgettable (sadly) Tubthumping. May we all rise again after this year has brought us down.
The full playlist plays in 1 hour and 55 minutes, so we advise you to play around 10:05 p.m. We’ve put the winner on top, but if you want to hear it from number 20 to number 1, just rearrange the playlist by “recently added” and let the Mountain Goats see you out of this miserable year.
Nominated and voted for by you.