Songs With the Best Bassline
The best basslines are the melody rather than the foundation. Chic's "Good Times", Queen and Bowie's "Under Pressure", Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and The Temptations' "Papa Was a Rollin' Stone" all collapse without the bass part, which is the test that matters.
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.
If you only play one
Chic - Good Times (1979)
Bernard Edwards’ line is the most rebuilt bassline in recorded music, and the song collapses into nothing without it.
Filter
Clean and explicit are Spotify's own markings on the track, not our judgement, so the flag matches what a school or club system will see.
- 01
Chic - Good Times
1979
Bernard Edwards. Sampled into "Rapper's Delight" within months and never really returned. The most consequential eight bars in the history of dance music.
Clean - 02
Queen - Under Pressure
1981
John Deacon. Six notes, invented during a jam, and disputed for years over who wrote them. Vanilla Ice built a career on pretending they were different notes.
Clean - 03
Michael Jackson - Billie Jean
1982
Louis Johnson, playing the line Quincy Jones made him try on four different basses before choosing. It never varies across the whole song and never needs to.
Clean - 04
The Temptations - Papa Was a Rollin' Stone
1972
Bob Babbitt. The song opens with almost four minutes of instrumental before a word is sung, and the bass is what keeps that from being a mistake.
Clean - 05
Marvin Gaye - What's Going On
1971
James Jamerson, reportedly lying on his back on the studio floor. He plays around the vocal continuously rather than under it, which was not how session bass worked at the time.
Clean - 06
The Beatles - Come Together
1969
McCartney treating the bass as the lead instrument and letting the guitar sit behind it. The whole arrangement is built around a part most bands would have buried.
Clean - 07
Stevie Wonder - I Wish
1976
Nathan Watts. A line so busy it is effectively a second melody, played at a tempo that gives it nowhere to hide. Still the standard audition piece for funk bassists.
Clean - 08
Herbie Hancock - Chameleon
1973
A synthesizer bassline rather than a bass guitar, which was close to heresy in 1973. Fifteen minutes built on two bars, and it does not wear out.
Clean - 09
Pink Floyd - Money
1973
Roger Waters wrote it in 7/4, which is why it feels slightly wrong and slightly hypnotic at the same time. Most listeners never notice the time signature.
Explicit - 10
Fleetwood Mac - The Chain
1977
John McVie's bass break arrives two and a half minutes in and turns a stitched-together offcut into the band's best song. It is the only part everyone in that band agrees on.
Clean - 11
Joy Division - Love Will Tear Us Apart
1980
Peter Hook playing high up the neck, where a guitarist would sit, because the band could not afford a second guitar. An accident that defined post-punk.
Clean - 12
Talking Heads - Once in a Lifetime
1980
Tina Weymouth holding one repeating figure while everything above it fragments. The song is about disorientation and the bass is the only thing not disoriented.
Clean - 13
Red Hot Chili Peppers - Higher Ground
1989
Flea slapping a Stevie Wonder song into a completely different genre. The cover exists purely as a delivery mechanism for the bass part and everyone knows it.
Clean - 14
Rick James - Super Freak
1981
Three notes and a slide, and thirty years later it is still the first thing anyone plays when handed a bass in a shop.
Clean - 15
Daft Punk - Around the World
1997
The only lyric is the title, repeated 144 times, so the bassline is carrying the entire song. It is also the only element that changes across seven minutes.
Clean
Settle it properly
Lists are one person's opinion. Put the same question to your friends instead. Everyone submits their answer to
"Best Bassline"
and the room votes blind on whose pick was best. Free, no account, about four minutes.
Start the BattleWhat a great bassline actually does
Most bass parts exist to glue the drums to the chords. A great bassline stops doing that and becomes the thing you would hum, which is why "Billie Jean" and "Under Pressure" are identifiable in two notes with no other instrument playing.
The best ones also leave gaps. Bernard Edwards on "Good Times" plays fewer notes than the tempo invites, and the space between them is what makes the line danceable rather than merely busy.
The test is subtraction. Mute the bass and ask whether the song still exists. On most records it survives; on every record here it does not.
The players behind them
James Jamerson played on more number ones than The Beatles, Elvis and The Beach Boys combined and was uncredited on nearly all of them. Motown did not print session names, which is why the most influential bassist of the century died largely unknown.
The same pattern runs through this list. Louis Johnson, Bob Babbitt and Nathan Watts are session players whose parts are more famous than their names, and Bernard Edwards was a bandleader whose eight bars financed the birth of hip-hop.
The exceptions are the band members: Deacon, McVie, Hook, Weymouth. What they share is playing in bands where nobody else was going to carry the melody, which is usually how a bassist ends up writing the hook.
Songs With the Best Bassline, answered
What is the most famous bassline of all time?
"Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie and "Billie Jean" by Michael Jackson are the two most instantly recognisable. Chic's "Good Times" is the most influential, having been sampled into hip-hop's first hit record within months of release.
Who is the greatest bass player of all time?
James Jamerson has the strongest case on influence alone: he played the uncredited bass on most of Motown's 1960s catalogue and changed what session bass was allowed to do. Bernard Edwards, Paul McCartney and Flea are the other names that come up.
What is a good bassline to learn first?
"Super Freak" and "Come Together" are the two most commonly learned early, because both are short, repetitive and instantly recognisable. "Good Times" is the best next step, since it teaches feel rather than notes.
More lists like this
This list came from our Instruments prompts. Browse all song lists or the full prompt library.
Songs with the best bassline land better once the room knows the rules: read the aux battle definition, then setting up your first round. Browse all 16 aux battle categories for the other themes, or the aux wars rules for the other name. Or skip ahead to games you can play straight from Spotify.