@Ed Azachee

The tracks you can’t get enough of lately, all in one place. Updated as you listen.

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 personalized 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.

Music has been an essential part of any holiday celebration for centuries. This playlist honours that history, collecting old chestnuts, new classics, and future sing-along staples to soundtrack your next Christmas. Trim the tree, open the presents, and serve up some eggnog as pop stars, hip-hop legends, rockers, and soul singers raise their voices.

Enya Brennan's music is entirely unique. Over cascading synths, gentle string pads, and burbling bass tones, she layers banks of harmonies, building up an impressionistic picture using tiny melodic fragments, as heard on the international hit single “Orinoco Flow.” There are elements of Irish folk to her melodies—as you'd expect from her family association with the similarly ethereal and folkish Clannad—but these influences are always viewed through the prism of her idiosyncratic sound world.

Alt-rock icons Red Hot Chili Peppers embody all that is sunny and seedy about LA. The band—originally vocalist Anthony Kiedis, bassist Michael “Flea” Balzary, guitarist Hillel Slovak, and drummer Jack Irons—baked that dichotomy into their sound upon forming in 1982. Fusing Black Flag’s punk and Parliament’s funk, RHCP combined wild bass-slapping and absurdist humour, making them college radio’s court jesters throughout the ’80s. Slovak’s death and Irons’ exit forever altered the band’s DNA, but the arrival of drummer Chad Smith and guitarist John Frusciante helped breathe new energy into 1989’s hard-rocking <i>Mother’s Milk</i>, particularly on the caffeinated “Knock Me Down” and a cover of Stevie Wonder's “Higher Ground.” 1991’s <i>Blood Sugar Sex Magik</i> revealed the melancholic nuances of Flea’s and Frusciante’s playing, providing Kiedis with an emotional palette for the epic ballads “Under the Bridge” and “Breaking the Girl.” 1999’s <i>Californication</i> twisted the band’s funk-rock template into a sobering, sophisticated collection of cautionary tales, led by “Scar Tissue” and the title track. RHCP retained a chart-topping, festival-headlining reign well into the 21st century, including releasing two albums in 2022, <i>Unlimited Love</i> and <i>Return of the Dream Canteen</i>, which yielded “Black Summer” and “Tippa My Tongue,” respectively.

Memes don’t lie: Hair really was that big in the ’80s. And so was the rock. Dive into the decade’s classic tunes, and you’ll find yourself lost in an ocean of soaring choruses, in-your-face production values, humongous drums, and epic synthesizers. Just about every A-lister—Bruce Springsteen, Van Halen, Tom Petty, Journey, Guns N’ Roses, U2, you name it—conquered the charts and MTV with larger-than-life anthems. But it wasn’t just size that mattered; in contrast to the earthy introspection that dominated the ’70s, the ’80s were all about fun. Joan Jett raised her fists to rock ’n’ roll, while heartland icon John Mellencamp howled about sucking down chili dogs. Even R.E.M., the toast of the college-rock scene at the time, were having a blast proclaiming the end of the world. Of course, the world didn’t end, and the ’80s gave way to the much more angsty ’90s, but not before leaving behind some of rock’s most colourful and energetic jams.