Song Lists
Curated answers to the questions people actually argue about, like the songs that work at 3am, the ones worth screaming in a car, and the ones that get a floor moving. Every pick has a reason attached.
Songs That Hit Different at 3AM
What follows is not a mood playlist. Each track is here for a specific reason, and the reason is the useful part. Once you can name why a song works at 3am, you can find twenty more yourself.
40 songs · Mood
Songs to Scream in the Car
The test is not whether a song is good. It is whether five people who cannot sing will commit to it without being asked twice.
15 songs · Bangers
Best Hype Songs
That four-second rule matters more than anything else on this page. A hype song that takes 30 seconds to arrive has already failed at the job.
50 songs · Bangers
Best Walk-Up Songs
Every track below carries the timestamp to cue it from. That is the part no playlist tells you, and it is the difference between a walk-up that lands and 15 seconds of somebody else's intro.
50 songs · Bangers
Best Pregame Hype Songs
The list is split by where a track actually plays. A stadium record needs a crowd to finish it; a locker-room record needs to survive being shouted over. Very few do both, and the filter above sorts them.
40 songs · Bangers
Best Driving Songs
Because "driving music" means at least three separate things (the daytime road trip, the night drive alone, and the motorway stretch where you just need the miles to pass), the list is split accordingly.
40 songs · Mood
Songs to Cry To
This is not a sad playlist. It is a list of songs with a specific mechanism, and knowing the mechanism is what makes the list useful.
15 songs · Mood
Sad Songs That Hit Hard
Songs are grouped loosely from most bearable to least. The bottom of this list is genuinely heavy going.
15 songs · Mood
Best Breakup Songs
The list is ordered by stage rather than by quality, because a breakup playlist that opens with acceptance is useless to someone still in week one.
15 songs · Mood
Best Party Songs
Timing matters as much as the tracklist. A perfect song at the wrong hour empties a room, so the list is annotated with when to use each one.
40 songs · Bangers
Best Summer Songs
Songs that sound enormous indoors often disappear outside, where there are no walls to reflect them. The tracks here are chosen partly for surviving that.
15 songs · Holidays & Seasons
Best Workout Songs
Matching BPM to your actual pace is the difference between music that helps and music that is just on. It is the only part of playlist-building here that is measurable.
40 songs · Mood
Best Songs to Fall Asleep To
The key constraint is that a good sleep song must be uninteresting. Anything that makes you want to pay attention is working against you, which rules out most music you actually like.
15 songs · Mood
Most Underrated Songs of the 2010s
"Underrated" is a slippery word, so the bar used here is specific: a track that is clearly the best or second-best thing on its album, and is not the one anybody names.
15 songs · Hard Mode
Songs With a Color in the Title
One song per color, so this covers the spectrum instead of stacking six blues. The reason next to each pick is the part worth disagreeing with.
15 songs · Title Game
Best Karaoke Songs
Picked for what happens in the room, not for what sounds best on record. A karaoke song is judged entirely by how many people join in on the second chorus.
15 songs · Wildcard
Best Yacht Rock Songs
The genre was named retroactively by a 2005 web series, which is why its edges are still argued over. This list sticks to the tracks nobody would throw overboard.
15 songs · Genre
Best 90s R&B Songs
The decade where R&B stopped borrowing from hip-hop and started sharing a rhythm section with it. Every pick here says which half of that story it belongs to.
15 songs · Decade
Best Needle Drops in Movies
Judged on what the song does to the scene, not on whether the song is good. Several of these are ordinary records that became permanent because of ninety seconds of film.
15 songs · Pop Culture
Songs That Tell a Story
Not songs about a feeling. Songs with a plot, where something happens to someone and the last verse is not the first verse repeated.
15 songs · Lyrics
Best Afrobeats Songs
Not to be confused with Fela Kuti's Afrobeat, which is an older and entirely different genre. The section below explains the split, because it is the most common mistake made about this music.
15 songs · World
Songs With the Best Bassline
Named players where they are known, because a bassline is a performance and somebody played it. Most of these people are more famous than their credits suggest.
15 songs · Instruments
Best One-Hit Wonders
Several of these acts have long careers sitting behind the one song, and that is the interesting part. The reason next to each pick says what else they did.
15 songs · Artists
Best Fleetwood Mac Songs
One band, eighteen members, and two catalogues that barely sound related. Picking only from Rumours misses half the argument.
15 songs · By Artist
Dark Academia Songs
The aesthetic is libraries, autumn and slightly ruinous obsession. A track qualifies on texture and subject, not on being sad, which is where most playlists get it wrong.
15 songs · Aesthetic
Best Dinner Party Songs
The test is whether someone stops talking to ask what this is. Once or twice a night is perfect. Every song is a problem, because then nobody is having dinner.
15 songs · Food & Drink
What is an aux battle song list?
An aux battle song list is a worked answer to one prompt: 15 to 50 tracks that fit a single brief, each with a written reason for being there. It is not a playlist and not a ranking. It exists so you can see what a strong answer to "songs to scream in the car" actually looks like before you have to produce one yourself.
How do you use one in a game?
Use the list title as the prompt and ignore the tracks. Give the room "best hype songs", let everyone submit their own answer in secret, then play the submissions back blind and vote. The list here is one person's answer; the game is finding out whether anyone in the room can beat it.
How were these lists picked?
By hand, one prompt at a time, with a reason written next to every track. No chart data and no streaming counts. That is the point: a list assembled from what is popular answers a different question than "what actually fits this prompt", and only the second one is worth arguing about.
Lists are just arguments
Every one of these is one person's answer. The better version is asking your friends the same question and making them defend it, which is what Aux Battles is for. Pick a prompt, everyone submits a song, the room votes blind.
There are thousands more prompts where these came from.
Song lists, answered
What are these song lists for?
They are worked answers to the prompts people actually argue about, 26 lists covering 585 songs in total. Every pick has a written reason attached, so the list is an argument rather than a playlist dump.
How do I use a song list in an aux battle?
Treat the list title as the prompt. Give the room "best hype songs" or "songs to scream in a car", let everyone submit their own answer, then play the submissions back blind and vote. The list here is one person's answer; the game is finding out whether your friends can beat it.
Are these lists ranked?
No. They are curated rather than ranked, because the order is the least interesting part of the argument. What matters is the reason next to each track, which is the thing worth disagreeing with.
Can I listen to the songs on these lists?
Every track names its artist and title, so you can pull it up on Spotify, YouTube or SoundCloud. Inside an actual Aux Battles room all three sources play in the browser, with no account and nothing to install.
Where do I find more prompts like these?
The full prompt library holds thousands of prompts across every theme these lists are drawn from, and the aux battle wheel will spin one at random if you would rather not choose.