What makes a perfect festival anthem? A great, soul-stirring melody? A simple lyric that everyone can sing along with? Or is it simply a question of timing – that glorious, unplannable collision of time and place, when a band catches a wave of mainstream exposure, and find themselves playing for a 50,000-strong crowd on the very day their album rockets to Number One?
Whatever it is, some tracks never fail to spark utter mayhem when unleashed at festivals. Here’s our Top 5…
Hey Jude
There’s no excuse for not knowing the words to that epic outro…
The Scientist
Coldplay’s majestic, wide-screen tearjerker was custom-made for the big occasions.
Seven Nation Army
At festivals that riff always becomes a gloriously dumb communal singalong: “Duh-duh-DUH-duh-duh-DUUUH-duh.”
Knights Of Cydonia
Traditionally played either at the very beginning or very end of Muse’s set, the crunching riff at the end never fails to spark field-wide moshpit carnage.
Fluorescent Adolescent
Surely destined to be the big crowd-pleaser at Glastonburythis year … you can hear the mass singalong already.
2:43 PM | 13/06/2007
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I reckon Karma Police is always a great festival anthem...even if it's sang by Panic!at the disco...that or Last Nite by The Strokes.
Posted by Rabaka Chowdhury at 7:34 PM | 15/06/2007 | Report Abuse
Just home from Wembley, watching Muse. Having heard Newborn live many times, last nights rendition was mind blowing, getting goose bumps just thinking about it!
Posted by Jane Kennedy at 3:59 PM | 17/06/2007 | Report Abuse
Got to be "Don't look back in Anger" by the greatest Rock n Roll band of all time.
Posted by I love Oasis at 4:54 PM | 19/06/2007 | Report Abuse
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