Favourite Keane Songs
Thought I may as well try and make a list and some explanations.
Behind the cut = my 10 favourite Keane songs and my 3 favourite B-sides.
I LOVE pretty well all of Keane's back catalogue with only a couple of exceptions. As such it was very difficult to narrow down my choices, but as it would take a million years to list all the reasons I love each and every Keane song, I thought I would narrow it to 10 album picks and 3 B-sides. Keane has an amazing collection of B-sides so it is only justified that they get representation. So without further ado, I will begin.
B-sides.
Honourable mentions to He Used To Be A Lovely Boy, Fly To Me, Heart to Hold You and Something In Me Was Dying, all of which I adore. These are my top 3 picks.
3. Walnut Tree
I like this one because it sounds a little different to other Keane songs - it clearly has the dreamscape of the Under the Iron Sea album to which it was a B-side, but it has its own unique vibe as well. I love the drums and the strings. To me it sounds like a ghost calling to a lost love.
2. Maybe I Can Change
This is one of my favourite bittersweet Keane lyrics. The perfect expression of when you know you have damaged or hurt someone you love and you only want to try and go back to the trust and love you had in the beginning.
1. Snowed Under
My all-time favourite B-side and one of my favourite Keane songs in general. Just an amazingly uplifting song about carrying on in life even when you feel overwhelmed.
Album Tracks
10. Stop For A Minute
Includes my favourite metaphor of all time "without you I'm a liner stranded in an ice-floe". Love the bombast of this track, and K-naan's rap is brilliance.
9. Love Is The End
This can be depressing or uplifting - but I think it is a gorgeous and painful exploration of the way that love is the vital piece of living and it is all that matters in the end. I feel like it is also a dream in the way it is explained - it is what is longed for, and held on to, and even if it isn't fully realised or if it disappears just the idea of it can sustain you.
8. Bend and Break
A song about friendship - pulling each other through the pains of life. Also an incredibly fun sing-a-long.
7. Perfect Symmetry
Has the most amazing breakdown in the middle of the song and worth being on the list JUST for that. Incredibly musically interesting, with humanistic lyrics about loving the people around you and abandoning hate.
6. Bedshaped
No list of Keane songs is complete without this song. It is an incredibly transcendent melody, hopeful, tender, and nostalgic. Tom's vocal is GORGEOUS.
5. Spiralling
Marked the new Keane - a band willing to take risks and have fun. Great song to sing or dance along to.
4. Try Again
My favourite of Keane's slow burners (others include My Shadow and Hamburg Song but sadly no room for them on this list). Beautiful apologetic lyrics, with an incredibly atmospheric melody. This song just aches .
3. Everybody's Changing
Amazing lyrics that really pinpoint that horrible feeling in life where you feel like you are being left behind somehow, and that you are on the brink of failure.
2. Better Than This
I love the multiple meanings of this song. I find it super motivating as well. I can't really explain why this song above any other is right at the top of my favourites except that I find something different in it each time and I always want to listen to it.
1. Somewhere Only We Know
It had to be. If I could only listen to one song for the rest of my life it would be this. I find it so profound about the nature of love and friendship: the way that life wears you down but love pulls you through. How about thousands of people singing it at the same time, I dare you not to be moved.
Behind the cut = my 10 favourite Keane songs and my 3 favourite B-sides.
I LOVE pretty well all of Keane's back catalogue with only a couple of exceptions. As such it was very difficult to narrow down my choices, but as it would take a million years to list all the reasons I love each and every Keane song, I thought I would narrow it to 10 album picks and 3 B-sides. Keane has an amazing collection of B-sides so it is only justified that they get representation. So without further ado, I will begin.
B-sides.
Honourable mentions to He Used To Be A Lovely Boy, Fly To Me, Heart to Hold You and Something In Me Was Dying, all of which I adore. These are my top 3 picks.
3. Walnut Tree
I like this one because it sounds a little different to other Keane songs - it clearly has the dreamscape of the Under the Iron Sea album to which it was a B-side, but it has its own unique vibe as well. I love the drums and the strings. To me it sounds like a ghost calling to a lost love.
Click to view2. Maybe I Can Change
This is one of my favourite bittersweet Keane lyrics. The perfect expression of when you know you have damaged or hurt someone you love and you only want to try and go back to the trust and love you had in the beginning.
1. Snowed Under
My all-time favourite B-side and one of my favourite Keane songs in general. Just an amazingly uplifting song about carrying on in life even when you feel overwhelmed.
Album Tracks
10. Stop For A Minute
Includes my favourite metaphor of all time "without you I'm a liner stranded in an ice-floe". Love the bombast of this track, and K-naan's rap is brilliance.
9. Love Is The End
This can be depressing or uplifting - but I think it is a gorgeous and painful exploration of the way that love is the vital piece of living and it is all that matters in the end. I feel like it is also a dream in the way it is explained - it is what is longed for, and held on to, and even if it isn't fully realised or if it disappears just the idea of it can sustain you.
8. Bend and Break
A song about friendship - pulling each other through the pains of life. Also an incredibly fun sing-a-long.
7. Perfect Symmetry
Has the most amazing breakdown in the middle of the song and worth being on the list JUST for that. Incredibly musically interesting, with humanistic lyrics about loving the people around you and abandoning hate.
6. Bedshaped
No list of Keane songs is complete without this song. It is an incredibly transcendent melody, hopeful, tender, and nostalgic. Tom's vocal is GORGEOUS.
5. Spiralling
Marked the new Keane - a band willing to take risks and have fun. Great song to sing or dance along to.
4. Try Again
My favourite of Keane's slow burners (others include My Shadow and Hamburg Song but sadly no room for them on this list). Beautiful apologetic lyrics, with an incredibly atmospheric melody. This song just aches .
3. Everybody's Changing
Amazing lyrics that really pinpoint that horrible feeling in life where you feel like you are being left behind somehow, and that you are on the brink of failure.
2. Better Than This
I love the multiple meanings of this song. I find it super motivating as well. I can't really explain why this song above any other is right at the top of my favourites except that I find something different in it each time and I always want to listen to it.
1. Somewhere Only We Know
It had to be. If I could only listen to one song for the rest of my life it would be this. I find it so profound about the nature of love and friendship: the way that life wears you down but love pulls you through. How about thousands of people singing it at the same time, I dare you not to be moved.