Music might be the greatest mood enhancer in the world: it’s certainly hard to think of another art form that can so effectively tip a feeling of happiness into euphoria or create a suitably gloomy space in which to wallow in melancholy. There have always been albums designed to evoke a certain mood, from Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely to Essential Chill Out Vol 2. But in recent years, we seem to have become more interested in the relationship between music and mood. Streaming services are thick with mood-based playlists. There appear to be hundreds of the things on Spotify, from the straightforward (Happy Vibes) to the vague (All the Feels), and they appear to have struck a nerve: Spotify’s own curated mood playlists are now vastly outnumbered by user-generated ones, soundtracking everything from Friday at the Office to – I swear I’m not making this up – Losing Someone to Suicide.

There are those who have detected something sinister in all this. Liz Pelly’s 2025 book Mood Machine: The Rise of Spotify and the Costs of the Perfect Playlist suggests that the Spotify’s seeming obsession with mood-based playlists is linked to its focus on what it calls “lean-back consumers” – not ardent music fans, but the kind of people who would once have turned the radio on in the morning and left it burbling quietly away all day. These playlists, Pelly suggests, exist as a latterday equivalent of muzak, designed to be as unobtrusive, unsurprising and unadventurous as possible, to seamlessly play in the background without really being noticed.

Moreover, you don’t have to be considering life off-grid to think there’s something a bit sinister about a computer deciding what music fits a mood or emotion it can’t actually feel. It’s a world away from the human connection involved in someone experiencing a reaction to a piece of music and suggesting that you might, in similar circumstances, feel the same way. But creepy execution of a good idea doesn’t stop it being a good idea, and the rise of the algorithm doesn’t stop music being the greatest mood-enhancer in the world. To that end, here are six mood-based playlists, compiled by Guardian writers. Alexis Petridis

Excited

Girls Aloud – Something Kinda Ooooh
A song that’s exciting because it feels like everyone involved was hugely excited to be making it, Something Kinda Ooooh less resembles carefully manufactured pop than a mad idea someone had in the pub – what would a pumping hi-NRG dance track sound like with glam rock guitars? – brought thrillingly to life: relentless, completely ridiculous, utterly exhilarating. AP

Orbital – Chime
Chime begins like the sound of a manic alarm clock or Morse code machine, hammering out its dopamine stabs before the beats and the bassline kick in. Orbital’s 1989 classic is the sound of British techno exploding into life. If the night ahead of me looks promising, this is what I play, every second of it attacking my synapses like gelignite. Jude Rogers

Cat Power – Manhattan
Chan Marshall is one of my most beloved artists – a master of oblique lyricism, and a consummate interpreter of others’ songs. This track, from 2012, was partly inspired by Langston Hughes’ Let America Be America Again, and while it carries some of that poem’s disillusionment, in the song’s fluttering rhythms I also find the thrilling sense of a city’s possibility. Laura Barton

Gucci Mane – Lemonade
This might be one of the best songs of all time. And I think it thrills me so much because the chorus hook reminds me of some of those nonsense rhymes you’d sing as a child. In fact, it’s sung by children: “Lemons on the chain with the V-cuts / Lemonade and shade with my feet up / Lemon pepper wings and a freeze cup”. In my excitement I add my own line: “Lemon drizzle cake and my P’s up” (P’s is money, in slang!) Jason Okundaye

Steely Dan – Reelin’ in the Years
From its opening trilling guitar line to the shuffling drum rhythm and close-stacked harmonic vocals, there is something infectiously ebullient about this standout from Steely Dan’s 1972 debut album Can’t Buy a Thrill. Although the song itself might be about a bitter breakup, its musical form is the perfect frothy singalong material, inviting listeners to excitably wail along to arpeggiated guitar solos and the keening chorus vocal riff. Ammar Kalia

Romantic

Fleetwood Mac – Only Over You
Music that goes out of its way to appear sexy seldom achieves its aim (the same is, of course, true of people). But Only Over You isn’t going out of its way to do anything: its sound is languid and heavy-lidded, a soft sigh rather than a lustful growl, weak with love rather than ripping its clothes off. AP

Arooj Aftab – Diya Hai
Arooj Aftab’s astonishing voice is the sound of love, deep and longing, its majesty brushed with fragility. From 20121, Diya Hai is based on Urdu verse about a love triangle by the 19th-century Indian poet Mirza Ghalib, it’s the kind of song that makes you want to pull a loved one even closer, as the guitars and violins wrap their shimmer around you. JR

Van Morrison – You Know What They’re Writing About
I often cite this song as an illustration of how music steps in when words falter. How this five-minute half-scat, this curious meeting of breath and strings and brass percussion, creates a world in which the line “Meet me down by the pylons!” becomes perhaps the most romantic invitation imaginable. LB

Lana Del Rey – White Feather Hawk Tail Deer Hunter
“He’s my white feather hawk tail deer hunter”. What does that mean? It doesn’t really matter, it speaks to the delightful derangement that comes with truly being in love. Lana Del Rey mixes vulnerability with excitement in this trap-folk masterpiece, and it’s the gothic and sinister elements which really make it soar. Sometimes being in love feels like being under a spell – all you can do is embrace the possession. JO

Toni Braxton – You’re Makin’ Me High
Take your pick of the hits from 90s US R&B artists and you’ll likely find a consummate playlist for passionate encounters. You’re Makin’ Me High is a particular favourite, thanks to its combination of a sensual groove with a hip-shaking bassline and Braxton’s own soaring vocals. While the lovelorn ballad Un-Break My Heart may be the track she’s best known for, this tune showcases a more sultry side. AK

Angry

Fugazi – Waiting Room
Anger isn’t much use to anyone unless it provokes you into do something positive. Fugazi’s most famous song sounds tense and supremely pissed off – the bellowed vocals, the pregnant pauses, the scratching, explosive guitar – but it’s also propulsive and funky. It sounds like rage channelled into action, music that’s resolved to move forward with a defiant sense of purpose: “don’t,” it cautions, “sit idly by”. AP

Olivia Rodrigo – Vampire
Rodrigo’s great revenge song begins slowly and seethes before its lyrics build up a head of rage (“the way you sold me for parts, as you sunk your teeth into me”). Then its drumbeat kicks in, and its momentum explodes as a young woman’s anger about being used is fed into a piano-slamming epic. Play it loud, scream it out – it’s pure pop catharsis. JR

Paul Simon – You’re the One
Simon’s careful study of love turned to rage and blame is one of the most undervalued gems of his catalogue. It’s musically intriguing – filled with percussive jabs and turns and twists, and also holds one of my very favourite lyrics: “Nature gives us shapeless shapes / Clouds and waves and flame / Yet human expectation is that love remains the same.” LB

Nonpoint – Alive and Kicking
I first heard this song when playing WWE SmackDown! vs Raw on my PlayStation 2 as a child, and it has stayed with me. I’m not a typical rock fan but Alive and Kicking really articulates how you can channel anger at another person’s treatment into a kind of rebellion and defiance – in that way it doesn’t simply indulge anger but alchemises it into resilience. JO

The Prodigy – No Good (Start the Dance)
In the pantheon of electronic drum programmers, the Prodigy’s Liam Howlett is up there with the best of the best: hard-hitting and screamingly immediate, providing the perfect foil to a listener’s angst. On 1994’s No Good (Start the Dance) those drums explode from a muted breakbeat into a layered cacophony, delivering a percussive assault that can match all manner of rageful moments. AK

Relaxed

Freddie Hubbard – Mirrors
Not all of Hubbard’s 1962 album Breaking Point is relaxing – you certainly wouldn’t put the title track on if you were planning to chill out – but Mirrors is just gorgeous: warm piano chords, drums that are barely there, the loveliness of Hubbard’s trumpet and James Spaulding’s flute. It feels like as a gentle, temperate afternoon breeze wafting over you. AP

Brian Eno and Harmonia 76 – Welcome
Among the fruits of a 1976 collaboration between Britain’s ambient master and Germany’s motorik pioneers, this instrumental track is tranquillity in motion. Eno fans will recognise the mesmerising textures of its rippling analogue synthesizers, while Michael Rother’s glossy guitar lifts you up gently, floating you into the waves. The best sonic balm. JR

John Betjeman – Myfanwy and Myfanwy at Oxford
A couple of years into his poet laureateship, Betjeman worked with the composer Jim Parker on the album Late Flowering Love. This track melds two poems inspired by art critic Myfanwy Piper. It’s a mingling of desire and sensory overload – locking of fingers, church bells and bicycle rides – plus subversive nods to Freud, Kant, Marx and Joyce that captures that youthful sensation of the whole world expanding. LB

Mariah Carey – Bliss
Bliss is a slow jam about deep infatuation, that moment when you are truly entranced by another person, and surrender yourself to their love. In my real life that’s an entirely frightening prospect, but it’s Carey’s continuous whistle notes and whispery vocals which lull you into a sense of calm. It’s dreamy and hypnotic and soothing, exactly what you need to unwind and unclench. JO

Bill Evans Trio – Nardis
Master of modal jazz Bill Evans is famed for his softly twinkling piano tone, a subtle signature that can be found on Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue, as well as in collaborations with Tony Bennett and saxophonist Stan Getz. On Nardis, from his 1961 trio album Explorations, Evans’ piano phrases reach a blissful peak as he plays through a deep-seated swing that you can’t help but sit back and head-nod to. AK

Restless

Mabe Fratti – Márgen del Indice
Venezuelan cellist and singer-songwriter Mabe Fratti makes music that sounds like it’s in constant motion, as if she’s struggling to contain all her ideas within the boundaries of each song. Márgen del Indice keeps shifting – from ominous industrial rhythm track to delightful melody, discordance to sweet pop – without ever sounding fractured or irritating. Teeming with sounds, it’s a genuine journey. AP

Saint Etienne – Like a Motorway
Propulsive, twitchy beauty from one of Britain’s greatest indie bands, a 1990s electronic twist on the American folk ballad, Silver Dagger, a song popularised in the 1960s by Joan Baez. Its sound bed and lyrics (“She never thought she’d fall in love”) burst with nervous energy as images flash by in the rear-view mirror, telling the story of a love affair cut short. JR

Tift Merritt – Traveling Alone
Restless songs make up a lot of my record collection, and I have a particular obsession with this plaintive beauty. I love how unflinching it is, as if Merritt has set out on the most direct route to saying what she wants to say. For me, it captures a very particular moment in my own life: self-reliance overtaking sweetness, and the world opening up in a new way. LB

David Bowie – Starman
Whenever I can’t sleep, or I’m overwhelmed by the state of everything, I reach for tunes that make me think of an existence outside of myself, how much there is out there in the universe. Bowie’s Starman has always provided me with a feeling of control; it posits that there’s a kind of alien force that can provide hope and light in a dark and decaying world. If the sandman brings you a dream, the starman brings you salvation. JO

GAS – Pop 7
The ambient techno drones of German producer Wolfgang Voigt, AKA Gas, might seem like the last thing you want to hear if you’re feeling restless but their gently undulating bass frequencies provide the ideal vibrational solution for a fidgeting mind. On his 2000 album Pop, Voigt creates a seamless hour-long journey though a continual, gauzy synth motif and on this final track the arrival of a pulsing kick drum melts all remaining tension away. AK

Miserable

Barbara Mason – Darling Come Back Home
From the fabulously titled album I Am Your Woman, She Is Your Wife, inconsolable lyrical misery – with a twist of vituperative bitterness and a garnish of hopeless pleading – set, improbably, to disco, albeit slow-motion disco of a darkly atmospheric, dubbed-out hue. Unlikely as it seems, it works: the impassioned vocal cuts to the bone, the sense of space in the track’s sound suggests fathomless despair. AP

Leonard Cohen – Famous Blue Raincoat
It’s a cliche that Leonard Cohen’s music is miserable, but it is a good support if you’re glum, his bassy voice lifting you out of the doldrums to transporting, cinematic places. One of his greatest songs, Famous Blue Raincoat is a short story about betrayal in midwinter that crackles with mystery and deep feeling. If you’re feeling low, why not experience it in widescreen with a Canadian genius? JR

Ben Folds Five – Brick
The story of a high-school relationship, an abortion, and its emotional aftermath, Brick became an unlikely hit for Folds and his band back in 1997. For all of its success, the song retains a remarkable kind of loneliness – there in the quiet details of the day, the forlorn piano line, Folds’ faintly cauterised vocal, and the sudden cloud-break of its chorus. LB

Never Ever – All Saints
All Saints ask you a question with Never Ever: what’s the worst you’ve ever felt? And why was the cause of it a man? Truly one of the greatest breakup ballads, Never Ever speaks to the heartache and confusion that can come with the end of a relationship, particularly where it feels abrupt and unexplained. I’ve revisited the song at the end of friendships and relationships. JO

Coldplay – Trouble
Whatever your opinion of Coldplay, one thing is undeniable: they make some of the most miserable music in existence. I mean this as a compliment: Chris Martin’s empathic vocal tone and penchant for downtempo moodiness makes their early albums a balm for the wretched. Nowhere is this more apparent than on the 2000 single Trouble. From the opening bars of its piano refrain to the yearning chorus, it’s the perfect soundtrack to misery. AK