Lists
10 of the Best Songs Celebrating Ecstasy
All the highs with none of the lows
2 Pulp ‘Sorted For E’s and Whizz’
Jarvis Cocker’s lyrics poetically, brilliantly encapsulate his ennui at the whole ecstasy/rave experience. From the opening “Is this the way they say the future's meant to feel?/Or just twenty thousand people standing in a field?” to the chorus (“In the middle of the night it feels alright/But then tomorrow morning, oh, oh, then you come down”) to its bummer of an ending (“I lost my friends, I dance alone”), the perfectly detailed narrative nails the hollow side of E-partying.
Sample lyric: “Everybody asks your name, they say we’re all the same and now it's ‘Nice one, geezer’/But that's as far as the conversation went”
1 Hot Chip ‘Over and Over’
Without ever being specific, Hot Chip’s song is at once a critique and a celebration of candied-up looping on the dancefloor, off your bonce on hug beans. MDMA is an empathogen whose side effect is rendering repetition deliciously pleasurable and Hot Chip capture the sense of everyone being in it together (“when you look this way I really am with you”), as well as delivering a pulsing musical peak that matches the words. All in all, an ecstatic electro-pop classic.
Sample lyric: “Like a monkey with a miniature cymbal/The joy of repetition really is in you”
Also, honorary mentions for Tech N9ne ‘T9X’, Flowered Up ‘Weekender’, Magnetic Fields ‘Take Ecstasy With Me’, Arab Strap ‘The Shy Retirer’, and almost anything by Happy Mondays.
