Now that’s what I call a New Year’s Eve party playlist !!!

 

The problem with New Year’s Eve is the pressure to have fun, to feel amazing about everything, to go against your better nature and do things you wouldn’t normally do. It’s the worst night of the year, for example, to go to a nightclub. People who haven’t set foot in one for the other 364 days troop out in droves, meaning you will probably be seeing in the new year queueing in the freezing cold as a large man in a hi-vis jacket shouts at you to move behind the metal barrier. Then there is the cottage-in-the-country option, which is also fraught with danger. Either somebody makes a disastrous attempt to get sexual and ends up crying about how lonely they’ve been since their divorce, or the evening is so crushingly dull that going to bed at half past 12 actually comes as a blessed relief.

Better to hold, or better still go to, a house party where you can eat and drink far too much, plan incredible things for 2016, and enjoy great music from the past five decades. The first thing you must consider as you hone your DJ skills, however, is: who is your audience? Will the Women’s Institute chapter appreciate the two-and-a-half-hour drum’n’bass set you have been planning since Boxing Day? Likewise, everybody knows Joy Division’s Love Will Tear Us Apart is a great song, but do you have to inflict it on your pre-teenage children at the stroke of midnight when all they really want to do is dance around to Beyoncé? Here are a handful of fail-safe classics to make the party go on and on until you really wish everyone would leave.

Early evening
 
Listen to the Music by the Doobie Brothers
Everyone is standing around sipping champagne, poking at the vol-au-vents and going on about how busy and/or tired they were throughout 2015. Loosen them up with this Seventies boogie classic, which has a great groove but is gentle enough for even Uncle Richard, with his gammy leg and tendency to pass out by 11pm, to do the soft-shoe shuffle to.
Rolling in the Deep by Adele
It’s been the year of Adele but there wasn’t actually anything on her new album, 25, that made you want to dance. Head back to this classic soul stomper from 2011. People of all ages can relate to it, even if Noel Gallagher recently described Adele, harshly but not entirely inaccurately, as “music for grannies”.
Can’t Feel My Face by the Weeknd
The Michael Jackson-like vocals and slinky funk beat of this 2015 R&B smash will please the oldies, while the narcotic suggestiveness of the lyrics will find favour with those talkative partygoers who have an inexplicable need to troop up in pairs to the bathroom every half-hour.
Green Onions by Booker T & the MGs
A laid-back groover, the instrumental Hammond organ classic from 1962 is cool enough to bring out the inner mod in us all.

Later on
 
Pedestrian at Best by Courtney Barnett
The Melbournian broke through in 2015 with this self-deprecating indie-rock classic that’s so exciting, you may find yourself knocking over a bowl of cashews in a fit of wild abandon. “Put me on a pedestal and I’ll only disappoint you,” she shouts, over fantastically raw guitar.
Foggy Notion by the Velvet Underground
This has a fantastic rock’n’roll energy and comes from a time — 1969 — when Lou Reed’s New York band were trying (and failing) to move away from the avant-garde and reach a wider audience.
Don’t Wanna Fight by Alabama Shakes
Former postal worker Brittany Howard cooks up a soulful storm on this modern classic from the Shakes’ 2015 album Sound & Color, sounding like a female Otis Redding as she makes a plea for understanding (which may be necessary at this point in the evening).
Hotline Bling by Drake
Drake’s 2015 hit is great to dance to while feeling sorry for yourself. The Canadian rapper admonishes a former girlfriend who no longer calls him now she’s living the high life, against a sample of Timmy Thomas’s 1972 soul classic Why Can’t We Live Together.

At midnight
 
Auld Lang Syne by Mariah Carey
Rabbie Burns’s evocative but confusing poem about bidding farewell to the year just gone while remembering old friends has a delicate, maudlin quality. Who better to stomp all over it than the big-voiced belter from New York?

After midnight
 
I Feel Love by Donna Summer
For those magical hours you want to evoke the glamorous spirit of New York’s legendary disco-era nightclub Studio 54, which means Donna Summer’s sensual classic alongside Cheryl Lynn’s Got To Be Real, Van McCoy’s The Hustle and any number of escapist glitter-ball masterpieces from the late Seventies.
You’re Gonna Miss Me by the 13th Floor Elevators
Everyone needs a bit of primeval Sixties garage-punk at some point in the evening and it doesn’t get better than this unhinged masterpiece from 1966, on which the singer Roky Erickson screams his lungs raw in the name of teenage rejection.
Gimmie Love by Carly Rae Jepsen
For a moment of pure pop, try this tender contemporary hit. It might just make you feel brave enough to reveal your feelings to that person you’ve had a crush on for the past year, with Jepsen capturing the sense of vulnerability and romance that’s at the heart of all great pop.
For What It’s Worth by Sergio Mendes
The Brazilian bandleader’s jazzy rendition of Buffalo Springfield’s protest classic has long been a late-night DJ’s favourite: slow, sultry and made for dancing.

When you really wish your guests would go home
Death with Dignity by Sufjan Stevens
When everyone is slumped on the sofa and feeling sorry for themselves, stick on Stevens’s exquisitely sad reflection on his mother’s death. If that fails try Highway to Hell by AC/DC.

Under no circumstances play
Hold Back the River by James Bay
Has anyone else noticed that the big hit by the breakout star of the year is just a few warbles away from Fog on the Tyne by Lindisfarne?
Lean On by Major Lazer and DJ Snake feat. MØ
It was the dancefloor smash of 2015 and became Spotify’s most streamed song of all time, but Mr Blobby got to No 1 too. Consisting of nothing more than a hook and a siren-like vocal, this is catchy pop at its lowest.

My killer tune for New Year’s Eve
 
Tim Burgess, singer with the Charlatans

“I am picturing a belter of a party that’s a real mix of friends and family, which is my kind of new year. The pressure is on for the big song at midnight and it has to be something absolutely irresistible and one where you can bring out any moves that you’ve got in your locker. For me there is one song that ticks all the boxes — it may be an obvious choice but obvious is good at new year. So, yeah, I am putting on Uptown Funk by Mark Ronson. Better head to the dancefloor.”
 
Peter Andre, pop hunk, face of Iceland
 
“Things have changed at my house since I did a signing in a record store two months ago, where I saw a record player on sale. I bought it alongside an Elvis album and the very first Now That’s What I Call Music!, with Spandau Ballet, Depeche Mode and Culture Club. Now my wife Emily comes in to find me sitting with my record player and says, “What’s going on?” I reply: “Just let me have my moment.” We’ll have people over for dinner on New Year’s Eve and the record player is coming out. At midnight I’ll play 1999 by Prince. With that song it doesn’t matter what year it is, although I do remember wondering why they didn’t re-release it at the millennium. Then it will be funk, soul and disco classics. I’m showing my age but I don’t care: Brick House by the Commodores and Car Wash by Rose Royce are fantastic.”
 
Cerys Matthews, singer, author, BBC 6 Music presenter
 
“I’ll be putting on my Shellac Collective compilations featuring Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Kid Ory, Sidney Bechet and Bix Beiderbecke, alongside Senegal 70 on the Analog Africa label, which has unreleased Seventies gems from this part of Africa. It’s tremendous. Gordie MacKeeman and his Rhythm Boys’ Laugh, Dance & Sing shows that the craft of playing your instrument well and fast, and adding some tap dancing, is as party-starting as any club beat. Add a brand new hot-off-the press album called Thrillers by the Romanian violinist Bogdan Vacarescu, who gives Nigel Kennedy a run for his money, and, for a warm-down, My Dusty Gramophone by Dunja Lavrova from Russia. Sit back, sink into the velvet bench seats in that pub/club with this on your headphones, and watch the New Year’s Eve crowd go crazy.”
 
Sam Lee, Mercury-nominated folk singer
 
“There are two songs to be played sequentially at midnight. The first is Thousands Or More by the Copper Family, with full audience participation, followed by Tina Turner singing Led Zeppelin’s Whole Lotta Love. And there is nothing better for instigating some mid-party spontaneous-contact improvisational dance than putting on a medley of Leonard Bernstein’s West Side Story and dividing the party into Sharks and Jets. This year I discovered Anna & Elizabeth, an Appalachian folk-singing duo, so I’ll play them later on; their cover of Father Neptune by Connie Converse makes me sigh with delight every time.”
 
Felix White, guitarist with the Maccabees
 
I will play Home by LCD Soundsystem because it’s an uplifting song everyone can dance to, but the lyrics are all about forgetting a terrible year and moving on. In The New Year by the Walkmen is great because it has a lot of frustration as he screams, “I know that it’s true, it’s going to be a good year”. And it may be super-cheesy but at midnight I’ll put on Move On Up by Curtis Mayfield because the extended bongo mix goes on for 12 minutes. Later on I’ll have to include It’s Alright, It’s OK by Primal Scream because it says it’s OK to make mistakes, which is a beautiful thing to hear at new year. Last year we were so behind [on the No 1 album Marks To Prove It] that we were in the studio on New Year’s Eve. We went up to Telegraph Hill in southeast London to see some fireworks at midnight, but that was it. This time we’ll be at a massive festival in Australia, so it should be more fun.