Five songs that defined the first half of 2026
2026 has been a strange year everywhere you look.
Once again, the far right is dividing the United Kingdom. Israel has begun a second genocide (this time in Lebanon, to add to the one they continue to undertake in Palestine), the climate continues to break down, as does the social contract all across the world, and the less said about America the better at the moment (though, what can you really say about the dirt bike jump ramps and UFC fighting cage that were erected on the lawns of The White House this weekend?). Not to be glib, but the United States’ actions on the world stage this year have made the excitement surrounding the football tournament that they’re hosting this summer feel less like catching full-on World Cup Fever than it does succumbing to a case of World Cup Tickly Throat.
It might feel like the world is falling apart all around us in 2026, but at least the music has been pretty good. Springsteen’s address to his nation earlier in the year in the form of ‘Streets of Minneapolis’ might have felt like it was going to be one of the defining songs of the year, even though it only came out in January, but thankfully hasn’t needed too much of a reprise just yet. Actually, maybe the songs which best describe the place that we find ourselves in 2026 didn’t come out this year at all, but are actually a lot older. Jarvis Cocker’s gleefully sardonic ‘Cunts Are Still Running the World’ springs to mind, as do Dylan’s ‘Masters of War’, Edwin Starr’s iconic ‘War! (What Is It Good For?)’ and Marvin Gaye’s ‘Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)’.
Rolling back the years, The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr have all either announced or already released new albums, though it’s fair to say that while their influence is still enormous, the days in which they dictated the zeitgeist are by now in the rear-view mirror. Willie Nelson is even older than any of them, and his 2026 album, Dream Chaser, might be the best new release this year from any of them.
More contemporaneously, though, we’ve been treated to brilliant new music from artists like Mitski, Amanda Bergman, Bedouine, Holly Humbersome, Olivia Rodrigo, The Lemon Twigs and more, and we can look forward to new music on the way from The Strokes, Hayley Williams, Weyes Blood and Phoebe Bridgers in the second half of the year. I haven’t looked this up, but King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard probably have five or six new albums out so far this year alone, and seven or eight more on the way.
Elsewhere, more emerging talent like Sophie May, Chloe Slater, Big Long Sun, Girl Scout, Naomi In Blue, Frankie Morrow, Gifthorse and My Precious Bunny have announced themselves in a big way.
As always, some of the releases we’ve seen through the first half of the year have spoken more to the general state of the world than others have, but then, even the music which isn’t directly discussing the politics of our time is still speaking to our wider world and culture. Whether it’s to do with the micro, macro, granular or global, here are…
Five songs that have captured the spirit of 2026:
‘Fabienk’ – <br>Angine de Poitrine / ‘Dr Doctor’ – congratulations
Number five on the list comes from Angine de Poitrine for you instrumental heads out there, and congratulations for those of you who prefer their noise-rock to come complete with catchy vocal harmonies.
How better to define an undefinable and chaotic year than with a kind of music which can only accurately be described as “undefinable chaotic noise” itself? That might seem a little reductive, because there is actually a lot going on and a lot to take in in both songs, with Angine de Poitrine especially needing to be both seen and heard to be believed. As one of the top comments in the video below says, “They’re the best at whatever this is.”
‘Streets of Minneapolis’ – Bruce Springsteen
Introducing the song in Minneapolis earlier this year, Bruce Springsteen said, “This past winter, Federal troops brought death and terror to the streets of Minneapolis. Well, they picked the wrong town. The power and solidarity of the people of Minneapolis, of Minnesota, were an inspiration to the entire country. Your strength and your commitment told us, ‘This is still America, and this will not stand.’
“Minnesota, you gave us hope. You gave us courage. And for those who gave their lives? Renee Good, mother of three, was brutally murdered, and Alex Pretti, a VA Nurse, was executed by ICE. Shot in the back and left to die in the street, without even the decency of our lawless government investigating their deaths, their bravery, their sacrifice and their names will not be forgotten.”
But while his moving tribute to the two citizens murdered by ICE is a damning indictment of the current American administration, it doesn’t say much for Springsteen that he has become best-buddies, a co-author and podcast-host with Barack Obama, a man who gave ICE more in funding across his two terms than even Donald Trump has, and who removed so many people from the country that he earned the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief”.
‘Forever Lover (永远的爱人)’ – Chinese American Bear
There has been a huge array of glorious indie synth-pop released so far this year, with wonderful tracks and albums coming from countless artists, and any one of them could have made this list.
But I’ve opted for ‘Forever Lover (永远的爱人)’, this wonderful dream-pop song that recalls the best of Korean-American indie group Japanese Breakfast at their best, over any of the rest of them because of both the message in the song, and the way that it’s presented. The world is smaller than it’s ever been, thanks to the internet, we can connect with people anywhere around the globe in seconds, and yet more people are feeling disconnected from their lives than ever. ‘Forever Lover (永远的爱人)’ is about bringing things together, whether that is the narrator and the protagonist of the lyrics, the Western English language of the verses and the Eastern Chinese choruses, or the present, the past, and the future.
There’s so much more in this world that connects us than divides us, and as they sing in the song, “Forever is a long, long time.” Let’s make that forever better for everybody.
‘Mantis’ – Courtney Barnett
Courtney Barnett has a wonderful knack for singing lyrics that are so deeply personal and specific to her own life, but give them a universal feel. Taylor Swift might be the biggest-selling artist of our time, but is there anyone who can make a more compelling claim to being the voice of her generation than Courtney Barnett?
Whether it was in the sick-of-the rat-race and idling-insignificantly anthems ‘Elevator Operator’ or ‘Pedestrian at Best’ on her full length debut, her tackling of misogyny, social isolation and raised expectations across all of Tell Me How You Really Feel or the more casual, mature and worldly falling in love again of Things Take Time, Take Time, Barnett has always spoken to something bigger than herself. It’s no wonder that her fans both hang on to every word at her shows and fire them back at her as if they were their own individual thoughts.
Barnett is at her best when she is taking your complicated thoughts and feelings and turning them into simple, and simply brilliant lyrics, like on her latest (and best) album, Creature of Habit. “Keep on getting in my own way” she sings in ‘Site Unseen’, while the future-anthem ‘Sugar Plum’ gave us the quip “I’m in over my head, yeah, I’m over my head” and, maybe best of all, a lyric that not only sums up the state that most people seem to find themselves in just this year, but this decade altogether, in ‘Mantis’: “I got my head sorted, sort of”. We’re all just doing our best to get by, and Courtney Barnett’s latest is a wonderful and helpful companion in that endeavour.
‘Boots on the Ground’ – Tom Waits x Massive Attack
“Cold and hot, as Satan’s hoof
Spinning on the world, I’m hiding on a roof
I kill a brown man I never ass knew
Choked on spit and then he turned blue
He spouted black blood, he rolled fin out
He died right here I got the pearl from his snout
A puff of gray smoke from the tongue of a cloud
He rotted in the sand and all that they found
Was his boots on the ground
Boots on the ground, boots on the ground”
There’s a verse that could have summed up the state of the world, thanks to American imperialism, military interference and warmongering, in almost every single year since they dropped the Little Boy and Fat Man bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. This year, the song invokes news stories from Venezuela, Cuba, Somalia, Palestine, Lebanon and Iran, as well as, especially, of scenes from the streets of the States themselves earlier in the year in response to the wave of brutal detentions and murders carried out by ICE, but it could easily apply to the horrific violence unleashed on it’s own people throughout its short and bloody history, as well as to scenes from Vietnam, the Middle East, South America and beyond.
In a statement that accompanied the music video, created by Massive Attack in collaboration with the American photo-artist thefinaleye, they said, “This montage work portrays a momentous American epoch that is yet to be named, and comes in the aftermath of the largest public protests in American history – focused on opposition to ICE raids, the militarisation of domestic forces, and state authoritarianism.”
