Party like it’s, er, 2018 with our guide to getting the tunes at your end-of-year bash just right.

Listen to our New Year’s playlist here

The first rule of creating a New Year’s Eve playlist is don’t get stressed. It’s not as if we’re talking about a night loaded with totally unrealistic levels of hope and expectation that people only get to experience once every 365 days now is it? Oh...

OK, so maybe it’s natural to feel a little bit of pressure when creating your midnight party soundtrack. But fear not. Here’s some banger-based guidance to help your bash go with a swing.

First off, remember that you’re celebrating this year and not the arrival of 1973. It’s a good idea to kick off with tracks that feel grounded in pop’s present (I’ve gone for Stormzy, Drake and Mr Frank Ocean) to remind people of the fact.

It sounds obvious, but make sure you have a stone-cold classic saved for midnight. This is no time to experiment with that obscure white label lurking at the bottom of your DJ bag. The excellent Italo house and disco night Disco Bloodbath once saw in midnight with Ms Candi Staton’s “Young Hearts Run Free” at a party in trendy Dalston in east London, and if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me (to play every year ever since and for the rest of my life). Try and build up to the midnight hour and save your heavy-duty party classics for afterwards so as not to peak too soon.

It’s important to think about how your playlist flows. No matter how good your selections, you want them to progress naturally through the night without feeling disjointed. I’ve kept genres loosely together in my playlist and thought of neat transitions. For exmpale, Soft Cell’s cover of “Tainted Love” moves you from northern soul to synth pop effortlessly, while Prince and Pulp both share a millennium theme that allows you to switch genres when nobody’s looking.

You may have started with modern tracks, but nostalgia is your friend on New Year’s Eve. Try and dig up a tune or two from your guests’ formative years, ideally ones that they’ve forgotten about. Dario G’s “Sunchyme” is a ridiculous record on many levels, but it caused unexpected jubilation when I stuck it on one year.

Finally, don’t be scared to throw in a slowie. No party can survive without some ebb and flow and you’d sooner your guests spent their downtime in a group hug bellowing a classic together than outside having a fag. For me, nothing works better for a communal singalong than “Champagne Supernova” by Oasis.

Oh, and if you do drop a duff track, it’s not the end of the world. Simply view it as an important lesson. From harsh experience I know that selecting Elbow’s “One Day Like This” shortly after midnight is not something I will repeat in a hurry. In my head, I pictured friends with arms around each other, singing in a drunken blur of sentimental harmony. In reality, the only unity it prompted was a chorus of “Turn this rubbish off”. But it’s all part of the learning curve, and if your party isn’t quite up to scratch (no pressure) then there’ll always be next year.

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