Best New Year’s Songs to Countdown to 2024

27 Dec,2023

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The legendary Swedish hitmakers included this paean to the new year on their turn-of-the-decade 1980 album, ‘Super Trouper’. A retrospective of-sorts on the close of the ‘70s, the Euro megastars croon, ‘It's the end of a decade / In another 10 year's time, who can say what we'll find?’ Sadly, the answer turned out to be just one more Abba album before this year’s unexpected comeback.

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‘Happy New Year’ by Abba

Prince’s party anthem hits hard every year, even two decades after Millennium Eve, but in 2023 there’s something kind of wistful about it. Most of us won’t be able to ‘party like it’s 1999’ this NYE, not really, but that doesn’t mean we can’t have a bash anyway. Just try not to listen too closely to the Purple One’s rather fatalistic lyrics about ‘judgement day’ and dancing ‘my life away’.

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‘1999’ by Prince

New Year’s is a time of looking backward and looking forward... how on Earth do you capture that in a song? But UK duo Let’s Eat Grandma somehow manage exactly that on ‘Happy New Year’, a tune that reminisces about the relationship of childhood friends Rosa Walton and Jenny Hollingworth but also celebrates how they’ll always be best mates. If you aren’t moved by this one, your heart’s made of stone. Plus, it’s got fireworks sound effects in it – it doesn’t get more New Years-y than that.

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‘Happy New Year’ by Let’s Eat Grandma

Nobody outside of Europe’s home country really knows anything about the Swedish rock band… apart from one thing: in 1986 they penned this exquisitely dumb global smash that upon close inspection seems to be about taking a rocket to Venus (!) but has forever been adopted as the storming official soundtrack to any sort of countdown based celebration.

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‘The Final Countdown’ by Europe

Bing Crosby—Mr. Holiday himself—sang this Irving Berlin-penned tune in the 1942 film Holiday Inn, co-starring Marjorie Reynolds and his pal Fred Astaire. The film also contained the Academy Award-winning ‘White Christmas’ for which this song was the b-side to when it was released on vinyl in 78 RPM (RIP).

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‘Let’s Start the New Year Right’ by Bing Crosby

Okay, this noughties banger isn’t specifically about December 31, but what better time is there to follow P!nk’s instructions and raise your glass? Boogie your way into 2024 to this catchy if not super cringey belter, whether you’re too cool for school or too school for cool. New Year’s Eve is literally the day to ‘don’t get fancy, just get dancy’, after all.

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Raise Your Glass by P!nk

Looking to replicate the success of Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell (and Kim Weston and more), Stax Records combined two of their biggest stars to knock an album together. The result, 1967’s minor soul classic ‘King & Queen’, was recorded in six days with Thomas and Redding backed by Isaac Hayes and Booker T & the MGs. The LP helped turn Redding into a major star a year before his tragic plane crash.

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‘New Year’s Resolution’ by Otis Redding and Carla Thomas

REM’s cult classic single wasn’t an enormous hit in 1987, but its apocalyptic/upbeat chorus has led to it percolating through the public consciousness in the decades since: its mixture of extreme ending and extreme joy speaks perfectly to to those of us happy to set fire to the old year and move on, while its borderline incomprehensible verses literally describe a massive party. 

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It’s the End of the World as we Know It (And I Feel Fine)

Katy Perry’s most enduring song basically works in almost any sort of social context: funeral? Yes! Christening? Undoubtedly. Passing your driving test? Why no? Still, her surgingly uplifting pop banger undoubtedly gets about 10 percent better if there are actual fireworks around, as there are wont to be at New Year’s Eve.

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‘Firework’ by Katy Perry