Its genius manifests when sung a cappella, by anyone, from a towering vocalist to an amateur alone in the shower.Part of the beauty of a song is the way we share it, so I have tried to reflect that by celebrating songs everybody knows.


Holiday is said to have broken down every time she performed it.Soul stirring song of survival, our weary narrator drawing inspiration from a scarred fighter’s refusal to surrender.Springsteen is a master of American narratives, and digs deep on this huge, haunting ballad charting how economic hardship can destroy a relationship, with the dried river as a symbol of elusive hopes and dreams.The song that has everything: desire and rejection, love and sex, God and man, failure and transcendence.Jagger outrageously puts himself in the cloven hooves of Satan in a wild, evocative roll call of human outrages.Equally outrageously, Newman casts himself as God contemplating his pitiful creation.A secular hymn of compassion constructed around a simple picked rock-and-roll guitar motif.The rising melody and wistful lyric perfectly encapsulate yearning for a different, better life.A singer ponders lost love and prepares for his own funeral on a sad, defiant contemplation of mortality that has been passed down through the mists of time and recorded by artists as diverse as Billie Holiday and the White Stripes.Simple, stirring, strangely wistful anthem of freedom, both personal and political.Witty, compassionate, inspirational song of confused, transgender love, boasting dazzling rhymes, exultant melody and explosive emotion.A thousand karaoke versions cannot destroy this epic, vocally demanding ballad.Dylan’s dazzling narrative of star-crossed love and divorce was shaped by abstract art into a tableaux you can come at from any angle and discover something new.Gloriously strange sci-fi anthem. Strip away the extraordinary production and you are left with a lyric and melody that still strikes like an icy dagger to the heart.A raw, emotional cri de coeur magically rendered as a pure, uplifting blast of rock’n’roll.Bohemian Rhapsody may be a bigger, stranger and more idiosyncratic recording but this swooning ballad of longing boasts Queens most vertigo- inducing sentiment and melodiousness.Rising out of the depths of the internet to embed itself in popular consciousness, Hozier’s soulful, bluesy, gospel anthem offers a covert attack on organised religion while worshipping at the altar of sex. If playback doesn't begin shortly, try restarting your device. Songs Everyone Knows “Work” – Rihanna ft. Drake “No Broken Hearts” – Bebe Rexha ft. Nicki Minaj “Cheap Thrills” – Sia “Wild Things” – Alessia Cara “Can’t Stop the Feeling!” – Justin Timberlake “Ride” – Twenty One Pilots “Cake by the Ocean” – DNCE “Kill Em With Kindness” – Selena Gomez A stirring, yearning melody combines with vivid, poetic imagery to accomplish a trick very particular to the art of the song: to be at once completely impenetrable and yet resonant with personal meaning. The Telegraph values your comments but kindly requests all posts are on topic, constructive and respectful. Super-smart dance song you can sing in the shower.The new song forms of hip-hop don’t usually lend themselves to anthemic singalongs but Kanye West’s self-loathing apology for every sad sack in the human race is a powerful exception.

You want to raise your voice and sing along, yet Bowie’s abstract cut-up lyrics force you to invest the song with something of yourself just to make sense of the experience, and then carries you away to a place resonant with intense, individual emotion.

Simply the best: Dolly Parton, Prince, Kurt Cobain and Beyoncé

But it took an interpreter of Cash’s humanity to draw out the song’s heart.Most Robbie Williams fans would probably opt for the robust singalong charms of Angel but Feel is a slow-burning wonder, a subtle yet evocative song of emotional constriction with a huge chorus.Burned-out, world-weary, cynical but ultimately uplifting tale of daily survival that offers advice you can live by (“if you try sometimes, you just might find, you can get what you need”).Compelling, icy cry from the heart with keening melody and one of the strangest choruses in pop.Gentle character study of tap-dancing hobo and his dog, underpinned by issues of race and poverty on American streets, floating by on a melody infused with sadness.Unusually for Floyd, this is a simple acoustic folk-blues drone, with a powerful, ironic lyric about life as a war zone.Mysterious and sacred hymn of romantic praise, grounded in Harrison’s plain-speaking manner.
Find out more

That’s me in the corner.McCartney’s greatest singalong, a caring lyric combines with a rolling melody and “nah-nah-nah”s that feel like they could go on forever.You can smell the whiskey and regret on Waits poetic evocation of drunken melancholy, with a woozy chorus fashioned from Australian folk song Waltzing Matilda.Tender, fateful foretelling of the end of a relationship.Mesmerising song of sensual worship, improbably composed by sweater-clad communist folkie.Desire adrift in a surreal night-time world.