The 10 best Wolf Alice songs
Over the last decade, Wolf Alice have been the most exciting British band to emerge, and their development has been nothing short of exceptional. From the moment they broke through in 2013 with their debut EP Blush, the untapped potential of the London group was clear to see, and since then, they’ve grown in stature with every release.
The band, comprised of Ellie Rowsell, Theo Ellis, Joel Omey, and Joff Oddie, released their debut album, My Love Is Cool, in 2015. The record immediately established Wolf Alice as one of the most interesting bands to emerge from Britain in years, and unsurprisingly, the album was nominated for the Mercury Prize.
Two years later, Wolf Alice returned with Visions Of A Life, also nominated for the Mercury Prize. Fortunately for the London-based four-piece, it was second time lucky at the ceremony. Their second album defeated competition from the likes of Arctic Monkeys, Florence + The Machine, Noel Gallagher, and Nadine Shah to win the most coveted award in British music.
In 2021, Wolf Alice started the third era of their career and released Blue Weekend. The album was another critically acclaimed masterpiece, and as a result, the band set sail on the biggest headline tour of their career. Additionally, they performed on the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury and staked their claim to return as headliners in the future.
The 10 best Wolf Alice songs:
10. ‘Your Loves Whore’
Wolf Alice’s 2015 debut album, My Love Is Cool, expressed the full spectrum of the band’s genre-spanning talent. On the shoegaze anthem, ‘Your Loves Whore’, singer Ellie Rowsell describes teenage infatuation and expertly uses her vocals to express her undying obsession. The powerful guitars add to the atmospheric track and emphasise Rowsell’s delivery.
On the track, she lovingly sings: “The light won’t flicker and the light won’t fade, believe me, And the world looks better in the place we made believe, Hearts keep pumping and there’s one thing that keeps me breathing, It’s the mantra I sing and the face I always see.” While ‘Your Loves Whore’ was never chosen as a single, it’s a highlight from My Love Is Cool and an instrumental blueprint for the future Wolf Alice sound.
9. ‘Play The Greatest Hits
Wolf Alice’s albums are packed with sincerity. However, the band knows that not every song needs to be an emotional tearjerker, and sometimes, there needs to be a punk interval. This aggressive side to the band has always existed, and it thrives on ‘Play The Greatest Hits’.
The song is an expletive-laden two-and-a-half-minute rollercoaster ride which refuses to let the listener catch their breath. Undeniably, the track was created to be played live, and Rowsell told Under The Radar: “We do love doing ‘Play the Greatest Hits,’ as it’s a real moment to let off some steam. Playing the heavier stuff live is always a lot of fun, it feels a bit like being a little kid having a tantrum, and it’s like the one place where you are allowed to become a kind of goblin version of yourself.”
8. ‘No Hard Feelings’
As much as Wolf Alice love exploring their heavier side, that’s only a small part of their personality, and their best work comes when they dare to tap into their soft underbelly. It’s remarkable that the bittersweet break-up song ‘No Hard Feelings’ and ‘Play The Greatest Hits’ are by the same band, let alone feature on the same album. Yet, surprisingly, they blend seamlessly on Blue Weekend.
Previously discussing the track in a press statement, Rowsell said: “I started out trying to make a really cheesy, almost Motown-y, Ronettes kind of song about the end of a relationship, and feeling ‘What’s the point of being miserable about it?’ But it was short because originally it was played so fast. I tried to make it longer, but I didn’t have any more words — I had said everything I wanted to say perfectly and didn’t want to ruin it with more. So instead, we slowed it down, and I felt way more moved by it like that.”
7. ‘Visions Of A Life’
The sprawling ‘Visions Of A Life’ is the titular track from Wolf Alice’s second album and is a key component of the record. While the Londoners are extremely versatile, this was the first time they’d been tasked with making an eight-minute song which was a challenge they made look easy.
Over the length of the theatrical track, Wolf Alice weave three pieces of music together to create a rock ‘n’ roll masterpiece. On the one hand, it shouldn’t work because of the different atmospheres brought by each piece, but they make it work. Meanwhile, Rowsell explained the title’s significance to NME (via SongFacts): “Even as a kid, I would play pretend and wish I was an adult, and now that I’m an adult, I sometimes wish I was someone else. That phrase just felt like a poetic way of expressing it.”
6. ‘White Leather’
‘White Leather’ is another cut from Wolf Alice’s stellar debut offering, My Love Is Cool, and opens with the heartbreakingly relatable line: “I bought a drink for you, But you were smoking with your friends outside”. The minimalist track is a coming-of-age number which epitomises the theme of their 2015 debut.
Despite not being one of the five singles to be released from the record, ‘White Leather’ has become one of the band’s most streamed songs, and the appeal of the intimate track is easy to comprehend. Furthermore, it shows that sometimes less is more, and high-quality production doesn’t replicate authentic emotion.
5. ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’
While many songs on this list thus far have been about falling out of love or a failed attempt at love, the dreamy ‘Don’t Delete The Kisses’ perfectly captures that unparalleled feeling of being head over heels for someone. The sentimentality of the song isn’t its only alluring factor. The vocals are strong enough to send someone into a haze and inject a dose of positivity into their life.
In conversation with Apple Music, Rowsell explained: “I kind of wanted to make one of those head-out-the-window-on-a-long-drive tunes. And I wanted to try my hand at like a hold-nothing-back love song. That was my thoughts. But other than that, I just kinda let it go where it wanted to go… I just think if you hold back, it will sound worse, won’t it?”
4. ‘Smile’
It’s again time to celebrate the other side of Wolf Alice’s personality and their love of grunge which shines through on ‘Smile’ from Blue Weekend. On the defiant track, which sticks two fingers up at the band’s critics, Wolf Alice show why the age-old formula of pounding drums, piercing guitar, and confrontational vocals make for a lethal combination. However, the true magic arrives when they switch it up and briefly show their tender side before immediately returning to the darkness. While the song still has the same passion as their early punk work, it’s more refined on ‘Smile’.
“I think this sounds like a mature Wolf Alice – people should listen to this if they want to hear a dreamy, cinematic, playful yet dark version of us,” Rowsell told Apple Music. “We wanted it to have a Hollywood feeling to it, which was helped along by Owen Pallett’s strings. The end passage is one of our favourite parts of the album.”
3. ‘Bros’
‘Bros’ is another love song by Wolf Alice, but this track celebrates friendship. On the track, Rowsell reminisces about childhood memories which, despite being personal to her, these lyrics tap into a universal feeling that exists within all of us as we get older and yearn for the days of being carefree with no responsibilities.
Rowsell said of the track: “‘Bros’ is a sentimental tune to us, it’s grown and changed with us over the past couple of years, taking on different shapes and forms until it evolved into being this definitive album version. It’s an ode to childhood imagination and friendship and all the charm that comes with that. The live response to the song has been truly humbling.”
2. ‘The Last Man On Earth’
When Wolf Alice returned in 2021 with their third album, Blue Weekend, they needed to make a grand entrance to ensure everybody would turn their head. After several years without releasing new music, ‘The Last Man On Earth’ was the perfect way for Wolf Alice to demonstrate their evolution and get the third chapter of their career underway.
On the track, Wolf Alice went back to basics. The song mostly features Rowsell’s vocals with only a piano for a company. Resultedly, the listener is left hanging on to every vulnerable note that leaves her mouth as she lets her feelings hang in the air. “It’s about the arrogance of humans,” Rowsell revealed at the time of release. “I’d just read Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle, and I had written the line ‘Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god’ in my notes. But then I thought: ‘Uh, your peculiar travel suggestion isn’t a dancing lesson from god; it’s just a travel suggestion! Why does everything need to mean something more?'”
1. ‘Delicious Things’
Since 2015, Wolf Alice have been on a clear progression, with each record marking a significant growth from their previous project. Blue Weekend begins with the interlude, ‘The Beach’, before ‘Delicious Things’ sets the tone for the rest of the album. The song uncomfortably drags the listener to a seedy party in Los Angeles and the strange positions that fame has taken Rowsell.
The jazz-infused track features the best honest, autobiographical songwriting of Rowsell’s career as she expertly describes the scene of ‘Delicious Things’ and the convoluted feelings which are simultaneously racing through her mind. She sings: “The guy from the garden, I think his name is Adam, He’s in bed here beside me, though I think he is a bad man, He likes the fact that I play music in a band, He is making a movie, and the score needs a hand, Feel like I’m falling, dreams slowly stalling, Extravagance disguised as elegance is boring, I don’t belong here, though it really is quite fun here.”
