SEVEN songs about partying
in seven manners of speaking
In 1995, Vanna Bonta’s sci-fi thriller Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel invented the concept of “World Party Day,” a global celebration of peace, unity, and goodwill to be held annually every April 3rd.
That’s what the internet is trying to tell me, anyway. I’ve never read that book, heard of this makeshift holiday before now, or verified if anyone actually celebrates it, and as far as I can tell, the pages upon pages of search results confirming its existence resemble little more than algorithmically-generated regurgitations of older webpages that took the flimsy idea, provided no further context about its significance to the novel, and ran with it.
Pay no mind that in 2026, an actual holiday (bold of us to boast of Good Friday on a year that has been very bad thus far) directly competes with it: World Party Day sounds about as easygoing, non-committal, and re-interpretive as a recurring holiday could conceivably get. No offense to the likes of Zipper Day (April 29), Onion Ring Day (June 22), Collect Rocks Day (September 16), or any of the seemingly endless inanities co-opted as grounds for festivities, but I’ve got a SEVEN to write right now, and this day ought to be seized.
Besides, parties and music walk hand in hand! Simply chucking together seven upbeat crowd-pleasers would be too easy, however. Instead, here are seven personalized selections about, inspired by, or suggestive of parties, each one representing a lens through which we can observe the minutiae of one of humanity’s loveliest phenomena.
PARTIES AS A PHILOSOPHY
ANDREW W.K. – “Party Hard”
from I Get Wet (2001)
I mean, come on. Andrew W.K.’s entire discography belongs here in spirit, but “Party Hard” is the meatheaded party anthem to end them all. Simple math plays a factor—the word “party” appears no fewer than 73 times in the track’s three minutes and change—but it’d also be my choice if I had to preserve one barnstormer from the fetid swath of 80s(-indebted), hedonistic, macho party rock I otherwise never jam. I have never been one for the semi-self-seriousness, dated production choices, or pervading smarm of hair metal, and by the time Andrew W.K. came of age to launch his own spin on it, that era’s tropes had congealed into unrepentant cornmeal.
Instead of trying to strong-arm the march of time back into submission, this dude willingly gave up his entire public persona to caricature, cartoonishly headbanging and hollering so hard that it redefined partying as an act transcendent of (albeit not entirely disparate from) hazing or wanton self-destruction. Late career W.K. releases bear legitimate wisdom—pivoting into motivational speaking tours will do that to a rock ‘n’ roll mascot—but the brickwalled, sugar-coated fancies of I Get Wet remain an obligatory, if shallow foundation for all things partydom. For every incomprehensible outburst (the whole first verse, for instance), “Party Hard” nonetheless harbors zingers of evergreen willpower—if “we do what we like and we like what we do” isn’t the preeminent motto of World Party Day, what the fuck would be?
PARTIES AS FANTASIES
LCD SOUNDSYSTEM – “Daft Punk is Playing at My House”
from LCD Soundsystem (2005)
It’s only natural that an act founded upon cosmopolitan sass, reverence for the greats, and paradoxically brave sheepishness would dedicate the lead-off track on their debut album to a dream about a monumentally more famous act performing in an average suburban house party. Daft Punk never actually played at James Murphy’s place, but you’d be forgiven for mistaking the song’s tongue-in-cheek setup for the braggadocio of a guy who could base it on a true story; for a while there, LCD Soundsystem unexpectedly became documentarians of music nerd nightlife.
Nostalgia for the band’s quick ascension and the ever-magnifying dread of aging may ingratiate listeners to Murphy’s more under-the-microscope tracks, but sarcastic ditties like “Daft Punk...” still hold an invaluable place not only in the band’s canon, but indie music history at large. Name me even one other instance of a band working up a plan to save money for “seven years and fifteen days” to afford contracting A-list techno wizards to come entertain the block. You can’t, and this one does so with highly imitable vocal inflections. And gnarly bass. And a cowbell solo. Until your retort has all those goods and more, Sarah’s girlfriend will keep turning you and the jocks away at the door.
PARTIES AS FARCES
U2 – “Discothèque”
from PopMart Live From Mexico City (1998)
There’s a difference between these two categories, I swear: fantasies imply a fortuitous event that, while perhaps materially possible, is overwhelmingly unlikely to happen. Farces are facades through and through. They reek of kitsch. They’re all but designed to age poorly. They find kinship in Pop, an album generally regarded as either U2’s last gasp of earnest creativity or the clearest microcosm of their mid-to-late-career identity crisis depending on who you ask. Like most competing opinions, the truth lies somewhere in between: the band’s willingness to smash together club music with “the U2 sound” holds some water, but procrastination pressed the sessions up against locked-in deadlines, and the songwriting on the record often felt underdeveloped.
It took a while for the band to find their footing on the subsequent PopMart Tour, but after a few legs and plenty of reps, the Irish icons married their glib intentions to the sheer overstimulating spectacle that was the PopMart stage. For the uninitiated, architectural choices included a towering, McDonalds-esque golden arch, the then-largest LED screen on Earth, and a lemon-shaped mirrorball that would birth the quartet to a sidestage if and only if it didn’t malfunction and trap them inside, which I’m delighted to report happened multiple times.
The pomp and circumstance of it all is best captured on their Live from Mexico City concert film, a whiplash-inducing smorgasbord of gratuitous Spanish, feigned homoerotic tension, typecast sociopolitical commentary, and incongruous fashion direction. It’s a farcical costume party – the hosts are no longer committed to playing specific roles (contrast with The Fly or MacPhisto from the ZOO TV era), and trying to suss out a conceptual throughline is as futile as it is fixating. Your mileage with Bono pelvic thrusting the cameras or squealing in heat will vary, but that excess comes with the territory of megalomaniacs intentionally shooting further than common sense, knowing full well it’s rarely better than the real thing. “Discothèque,” Pop’s opening track and the launchpad for the tour’s encores, exemplifies the theme through one of The Edge’s funkiest riffs and a lyric sheet that’s so tacky it circles back around into tragic comedy.
PARTIES AS MOOD-LIGHTENERS
BRADIO – “Flyers”
from Power of Life (2015)
From 2013 to 2016, some friends and I frequented services like plug.dj, dubtrack.fm, and a few other short-lived online platforms that allowed users to load up a queue of songs via YouTube or SoundCloud embeds and jam out to one another’s curated jukeboxes in a distinctly chill, ad-free virtual setting. From the second my eyeballs first witnessed the music video for BRADIO’s “Flyers,” I knew it had to become a staple of these get-togethers. By the time the friend group (and those websites’ servers) collapsed, I think I’d subjected my pals to this track approximately 100 times. It became my signature sign-off, my last call, the climax of every session I attended. Meatspace notwithstanding, it is, statistically speaking, the song I have put on more than any other in what could be considered a party atmosphere.
The novelty may have faded a bit, but a decade later, “Flyers” still slaps. The guitar solo fuckin’ rips. The vocalist’s got crazy rizz. The drummer and bassist are locked the fuck in. The auxiliary horn arrangement is pop perfection. Allow yourself to soak in that hype for a moment, because clicking play on the video will overshadow any and all reactions to the actual music. Remember when green screen technology wasn’t within the economic reach of every aspiring streamer? BRADIO might remember such a time, but they were still several years too late to coast on silly backgrounds alone. That’s where time, quantity, and a dancing stunt double come in:
“Hey, Director-san, how many special effects can you fit into this bad boy?”
“As many as you’d like.”
“Word. We’re getting our money’s worth.”
And then they did, with the perfect ratio of amateur VFX hackery to genuinely smooth editing. For all intents and purposes, this isn’t just a goldmine of party song, or a hilarious music video, or my most reliable, guaranteed pick-me-up—it might now be yours, too. You’re welcome.
PARTYING FROM NOSTALGIA
A GREAT BIG PILE OF LEAVES – “Alligator Bop”
from Have You Seen My Prefrontal Cortex? (2010)
The line between a carefree, fun party, and a reckless, dangerous one should be clear in theory. Much like the memories made during the latter, they often tread blurry, one step away from disaster. A Great Big Pile of Leaves have a knack for inferring seedier antics while embodying sonic serenity; their discography is chock full of the shimmeriest, summeriest indie rock this side of the Hudson, characterized by arrangements that soothe aching nerves and sentiments that whet the appetite for monkey business and junk food.
Situational specificity yields humorous rewards several times over, but their signature song, “Alligator Bop,” finds jubilee in retrospect—the past tense delivery implies Pete Weiland and company’s days of “driv[ing] around for hours with no direction and no goal except to act stupid and intertwine ourselves into situations to laugh about” spells out the essence of nostalgic mischief so potently that it haphazardly spills atop the verse’s musical phrasing, as if the singer can’t possibly cram all the details he wants in unless he motormouths through them. Contrast that with the sing-along chorus: a mere nine words and hollered “oh oh”s repeated to oblivion so as to not let the lingering light of those hijinks end. Can’t blame ‘em for trying. “Alligator Bop” is the perfect, romanticized distillation of up-to-no-good youth. They don’t even need to attend a party for that vibe to register—when you’re with the people you love and there’s no agenda or stakes, the party comes to you.
PARTIES AS A CONDUIT FOR LIBERATION
LA DISPUTE – “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit”
from Wildlife (2011)
Too cheerful so far? Here’s one for the introverted, neurodivergent, and anyone who could benefit from a little therapy. No anecdotes to provide beyond that dedication—I’m not particularly interested in airing my dirty laundry and you’re probably just as disinterested in hearing about it. Thankfully, the resonance of a song like “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit” supersedes not just personal experience, but the sobering internal narrative of its parent album as well. Wildlife is not a fun listen! It speaks of unconscionable death and inconsolable loss, finding a way out of the tunnel mainly by affirming the precious fragility of life and stacking up comparably minor grievances to the burdens shouldered by the consistently neglected or stupendously unlucky.
If eventual closer “You and I in Unison” scrounges up the resolve to shirk the woe Olympics for good, “The Most Beautiful Bitter Fruit” wraps up the A-side with a track that’s far less overwrought but just as cathartic. Here, the party in question quickly becomes little more than a pretext, cloistered off by the narrator as he and a stranger initiate a rendezvous. The song’s dynamics crash and recede in waves, paralleling the narrator’s thoughts as he gets in his own head, temporarily pauses the encounter, and eventually gives back in to pleasure, the band’s final explosion evoking full-body orgasm. Even then, the speaker knows the sensation is fleeting, but in that moment—one only possible through escaping his own self-imposed deadlock and showing up in the first place—it feels holy, real, and more than enough of a reason to keep on keeping on. If including it here seems a bit out of place, remember that parties aren’t solely sources of joy and belonging. Even environments tailored to lightened moods aren’t free from the baggage we bring to them. It’s almost like for all the pretense, parties are just...parties.
PARTIES AS WHAT THEY ARE
THE DISMEMBERMENT PLAN – “You Are Invited”
from Emergency & I (1999)
I get it, I really do—parties are ostensibly designed to level the playing field and give every attendee the opportunity to have a good time, but shitty brain chemistry and awkward histories can threaten to make some people feel like a fish out of water, or a square peg trying to enter a round hole, or a guy playing the drum machine in a band that already has a live drummer. The Dismemberment Plan had worked these jitters down to a science by 1999: their observations of misfits’ quests for belonging had infiltrated prior tracks “Do The Standing Still,” “Tonight We Mean It,” and “The Ice of Boston,” and as with Emergency & I foil “Gyroscope,” they often depicted parties as spaces dominated by timidity, self-loathing, and mixed messages.
“You Are Invited” touches on all those same points, but it’s more nuanced than that—the song uniquely accounts for the daily lethargy that makes letting loose an occasional necessity, the dopamine release of finding warmth when you need it, and the waning interest in sticking around once the heat begins to fade. The verses’ sparse, mechanical sputtering provides an exceptionally stark counterpoint to the narrator entering a space of inclusivity, getting swept up in the energy and bombast of a chorus so immediate and hooky and timeless that I sometimes forget the majority of the song’s runtime consists of melancholic moping. C’est la vie.
In spite of that, it’s also a touching ode to paying kindness forward; as the narrator passes along the invite to another downtrodden bystander, the song trails off with one of the most quintessentially emo arpeggios ever, suggesting an unbroken chain of “come one, come all” camaraderie extended across time and space. Parties and partygoers may not be monoliths, but the desire to feel welcome is all but universal. It’s a lesson 19-year-old me, the editor of the image below, clearly needed a few more years and a few more spins of “You Are Invited” to figure out. At least I got there eventually.
How about y’all? How are you gonna celebrate World Party Day? What would make your personal “party song” playlist or get you in a partying mood? Reach out and let me know. You’re invited, after all.