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The songs you can’t do without. The more you use Apple Music, the more essential they become. Refreshed every Tuesday.

Whether it’s a weekday morning or Saturday night, get going with this personalised set of upbeat music. Refreshed every Monday.

Songs to help you relax and unwind. Updated every Sunday.

Discover new music from artists we think you'll like. Refreshed every Friday.

The songs you need to hear. Our editors regularly update this playlist—if you hear something you like, add it to your library.

The line between alternative and mainstream rock was especially blurry in the ’90s. Chalk that up first to Nirvana: the Seattle trio shook commercial rock out of its doldrums and brought underground punk into the spotlight with their gleefully noisy 1991 major-label debut, <I>Nevermind</I>. However, it’s clearer today how much the ’90s modern-rock explosion owed to traditional classic rock. Grunge-associated artists such as Pearl Jam, Alice In Chains and Soundgarden took cues from Led Zeppelin’s blues-oriented heft; mischievous punks Green Day loved more melodic British Invasion fare such as The Beatles and The Kinks. In hindsight, it's also no wonder so many veteran bands connected with a younger generation of fans. Seventies rockers Aerosmith and Tom Petty embraced big-budget MTV videos and vibey, laidback folk-rock, respectively, while ’80s-era bands favoured reinvention: Metallica polished their trademark thrash into menacing hard rock on their blockbuster 1991 self-titled album, and both R.E.M. and U2 toyed with new sounds and slippery identities.

The commingling of jazz and rock dates back to the late ‘60s, when artists like Miles Davis and Frank Zappa started feeling around for new ways to stretch out. That spectral sound that we’ve come to know as “fusion” has only widened over the ensuing decades, with all kinds of influences—funk, soul, blues—being adventurously mapped onto jazz’s template. What follows is a snapshot of today’s most invigorating jazz-centric hybrids, for listeners seeking progressive, improvisatory thrills. Our editors regularly update this playlist. If you like a song, add it to your library.

The initial furnace blast of mid-’70s punk in the U.S. and U.K. wasn’t all sonic chaos. Rabble-rousing bands Buzzcocks and Ramones cherry-picked popular music elements they loved—sticky melodies, lovely harmonies, buoyant tempos—and created pop-punk. The genre’s angsty, heartbroken lyrics would in time become a beacon for the bored teenagers who congregated in all-ages concert spaces, including 924 Gilman in Berkeley, California, to see bands such as Green Day. However, pop-punk’s pogoing rhythms and irresistible hooks also resonated with grown-up audiences: blink-182 hit big in the ’90s, and a mid-2000s mainstream wave swept up bleeding-heart romantics Fall Out Boy and Paramore, whose success would continue throughout the 2010s. Yet what’s most remarkable about contemporary pop-punk bands is how much they have in common with the early ones: as it turns out, buzzsawing riffs paired with insecurity-riddled sentiments are timeless.