10 of the Best Songs Celebrating Ecstasy

105 years after the Merck Company invented MDMA, popular music is riddled with the stuff, from Miley Cyrus’s ‘We Can’t Stop’ (“Dancing with Molly”) to Jay-Z & Alicia Keys’ ‘Empire State of Mind’ (“MDMA got you feeling like a champion”). And, of course there are a billion dance tunes marinated in the stuff, often with the word ‘Ecstasy’ dropped in liberally throughout. What’s less clear is which are the best actual songs – with words and choruses and all that - devoted to disco biscuits? So here’s our Top 10 countdown of the best ever songs about ecstasy.

The first single from the Brighton synth-pop outfit’s latest album is as catchy as anything they’ve ever done. It’s also a celebration of the way ecstasy combines with music so gloriously. Gradually building and building over a pulsing Moroder-esque bassline, it describes “disintegrating” and “coming apart at the seams” but makes the process sound luscious, before concluding, “I can’t get it out of my system”. After all, music never sounds quite the same after that first dose.

Sample lyric: “You take the minuses and leave me with the plus’s/Oh, my sweet serotonin rushes”

Bangin’ electro-rocker with bags of attack and a driving riff. Still the Dewaele brothers biggest UK hit, reaching No.27 in the charts, partly off the back of their blossoming success as 2ManyDJs. The lyrics are an impressionist portrait of a night out, on it, with a certain sense of unease (“I’m not sure which part I’m playing”), but eventually the “party feels like home”. It may be about E but the video famously features every drug going.

Sample lyric: “Try and look into their eyes/A part of the weekend never dies”