How do you farewell a year like 2020? By screaming increasingly vulgar profanities until it goes away? By celebrating its final demise with as many people as you can without breaking the law? By pretending it never happened at all?

Either way, we’re going to need a playlist.

Guardian Australia is asking readers to nominate the best song to play when 11.59pm ticks over on New Year’s Eve: a song that represents the year we’ve had, the year we’re hoping for, or simply the way we’ll feel at midnight, after all this is over.

We’ll be compiling these into a poll, and asking you to vote for the one that sums it all up best – before we release our ultimate playlist, to farewell this garbage year.

To get you started, Guardian staff have nominated their own. Please join us in the comments until Friday 11 December; we’ll launch the final poll the following Monday.

Am I Ever Going To See Your Face Again by the Angels

I thought about Elgar’s melancholy cello concerto in E minor to see out this year but I think I need catharsis before reflection, so I’ve settled on a song I first screamed as a schoolgirl pogoing on the sprung floor of Brisbane’s Cloudland dance hall. I know it’s not uplifting or forward looking or thoughtful. But I want to see out 2020 shouting the unofficial chorus of The Angel’s Am I Ever Going To See Your Face Again.

In my teens the thrill was just saying the swear words out loud. But at the end of 2020 I want to scream it like a purge, like a big middle finger at the anxieties and upheavals and sorrows we’ve all born. And then I want to dream of a 2021 that is better. – Lenore Taylor

Catch My Disease by Ben Lee

In a weird way, 2020 belongs to Ben Lee. Not only were two of his older songs eerily prescient to the vibe of the year (We Are All In This Together and Catch My Disease), but the singer-songwriter emerged as a major voice challenging the wellness industry to get real about misinformation and conspiracy theories. – Brigid Delaney

Dreams by Fleetwood Mac

I cannot think of a better way to see off this roasting, rotten trash can of a year than with Stevie Nicks singing about dreams of loneliness. The 70s banger resurfaced this year on the back of a charming skateboarder lip-syncing to the song while chugging a bottle of cranberry juice, but even without that I think it pretty accurately captures the energy of 2020. It’s a driven lament on decaying relationships, terrible people and the strange silence of being alone – all hallmarks of the past year. It’s the rare song you can vibe to no matter how you feel, and it’ll be blaring as I watch the fireworks light up Sydney this year, chugging some cranberry juice. – Mostafa Rachwani

I Know The End by Phoebe Bridgers

The closing song of Bridgers’ new album is about running away from the world – yes please – and has perhaps the most fitting final moments of all. Press play at 11.56pm on New Year’s Eve and be lulled by sweet folk until the 2:10 mark, when it starts climbing with the thrill of new beginnings and a roadtrip to infinity.

The song builds and builds and, if you’ve timed it right, the fireworks will coincide with the climax. “The end is here!” Bridgers announces, before a mounting chaos of brass and drums and voices repeating that refrain, until it ends exactly as the year should: with everyone screaming into the abyss. And then, finally, we breathe. – Steph Harmon

Song 33 by Noname

It may have been sparked by some aural subtweeting, over which all parties have subsequently apologised, but the prompt for Noname’s Song 33 is nowhere near as interesting as the track itself: a blistering one-minute, nine-second distillation of exactly why 2020 has been such an ordeal for so many, with killer production, that somehow closes on an optimistic note. Play it at the stroke of midnight and hope for the new vanguard. – Alyx Gorman

2021 by Vampire Weekend

I basically wrote the year off before it was cool to do so. This is because I am a Vampire Weekend tragic and they have a song called 2021, which goes “Mm-mm, mm mm mm / 2021, will you think about us?” and it’s so romantic I could die. – Helen Sullivan

Don’t Look Back In Anger by Oasis

We’ve all felt and dealt a stupendous amount of anger this year – at the unfairness and suffering of the world; at racial inequality; at the bushfires and our futures going up in smoke; at Donald Trump; at the Pete Evanses of the world; at our flatmates for inviting half of Tinder around in a pandemic; at our elderly family members for daring to leave the house. But in a year when we were all encouraged to start a revolution from our bed, the hour has come for us to make more like Elsa than the Gallagher brothers and simply let it go: throw your arms around your nearest and dearest and croon at the top of your lungs: “And sooooo Sally can wait ... ” – Janine Israel

This Year by the Mountain Goats

Picking this song is like picking “green” as your favourite colour of grass; the musical equivalent of saying, when asked what you would change about 2020, “the coronavirus”. But I think it is safe, and ultimately just, to call it: 15 years after it was first released, This Year by the Mountain Goats has finally found its year.

Sadness, determination, death – it is all there. In a year you maybe wished just hadn’t happened, it’s nice to know that other people feel that too. – Naaman Zhou

I’ve Made Up My Mind To Give Myself To You by Bob Dylan

I mean, Dylan has seen some stuff. And on his best song on his new album he makes clear we should just surrender (I’m pretty sure he’s singing about Covid). In all seriousness, this will remind me of the playlist my wife and I curated to keep us both sane as I worked from home with a newborn and a two-year-old, and she spent her year of maternity leave locked inside. Mostly, we actually loved our year in this little submarine, with Dylan occasionally stealing the speaker from Playschool, and our oldest frequently asking whether the germs had flown away yet. – Nino Bucci

F2020 by Avenue Beat

F2020 gets straight to the point. This year is terrible, there is no escaping it, and the only way to deal with it is to swear at it and hope 2021 comes fast. The Nashville-based trio Avenue Beat released the song in July, and the year has only got worse after that. Definitely one to blast at 12.57pm to see off 2020 the way it deserves. – Matilda Boseley

Cut to the Feeling by Carly Rae Jepson

Many people may have felt like they were waiting for their life to happen this year. Cut to the Feeling expressed that sentiment in a positive way. By imagining life’s arc like a will-they or won’t-they plot in a romance film, it suggests happiness is guaranteed by fast-forwarding to the scene when we’re cutting through clouds and breaking the ceiling; or dancing on the roof, you and me alone; or waking up with you in tangles.

There’s the bittersweet possibility it won’t end like that, but what more romantic way to attempt a new beginning than willing it into existence with misplaced but sincere confidence? – Paul Karp

What song would you add to the ultimate New Years’ Eve playlist, to say good riddance to a bad year? Join us in the comments