What makes a perfect festival anthem? A great, soul-stirring melody? A simple lyric that everyone can sing along with? Or is it simply a question of timing – that glorious, unplannable collision of time and place, when a band catches a wave of mainstream exposure, and find themselves playing for a 50,000-strong crowd on the very day their album rockets to Number One?

 

Whatever it is, some tracks never fail to spark utter mayhem when unleashed at festivals. Here’s our Top 5…

 

Hey Jude

There’s no excuse for not knowing the words to that epic outro…

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uv1wf27GE0c

 

The Scientist

Coldplay’s majestic, wide-screen tearjerker was custom-made for the big occasions.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0w7WJYQpBk0

 

Seven Nation Army

At festivals that riff always becomes a gloriously dumb communal singalong: “Duh-duh-DUH-duh-duh-DUUUH-duh.”

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dz4kbuqteFA

 

Knights Of Cydonia

Traditionally played either at the very beginning or very end of Muse’s set, the crunching riff at the end never fails to spark field-wide moshpit carnage.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7uMvimbEAI

 

Fluorescent Adolescent

Surely destined to be the big crowd-pleaser at Glastonburythis year … you can hear the mass singalong already.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjL-EJV9sk0

 

http://news.q4music.com/2007/06/the_ultimate_festival_anthems.html

gotta LOVE Muse....

 

 

they're playing Madison Square Garden this summer here in NYC..... very impressive!! :wink3:

well i'm glad hey jude is number one, but why is seven nation army and flourescent adolescent in there? don't understand those.

from the video i understand seven nation army. but isn't it a little early to post a new arctic monkeys song? especially when there is so many other sing-a-long songs.

i really don't undestand what some of those songs are doing on that list

while the following footage exists:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=ebqcbn0ieKU

 

 

as for Muse, the performance of Time Is Running Out from Glastonbury 2004

was faaaaaaaar more impressive as a sing-along anthem than the Knights

Of Cydonia video on that list. as much as i dislike Muse, i have to admit that

this was amazing:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=RIZO6-fYmdI

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FtKYOtOIkE

 

Beats everything by the Arctic Monkeys

hahaha its the land of confusion video.... oh wait maybe not