Top 2000 voting: how to choose your songs

Walk through your life

Take five periods of your life and, for each one, write down a few songs that come to mind right away.

• Your childhood: which records did your parents play, and which could you sing along to as a kid?
• Your teens: the first record you bought yourself, the music at your first parties.
• Love: the song of your first summer together, or of the wedding.
• The busy years: work, kids, the music in the car.
• Now: what are you playing most this year?

That gets you twenty or thirty songs within fifteen minutes. Fill in the rest with the classics you want to hear every year.

Where your vote makes the most difference

In 2025, Bohemian Rhapsody topped the list for the twenty-second time, and Hotel California and Stairway to Heaven rank high every year too. They'll make it without your vote. For a song fewer people know, your vote can make the difference between in and out. So feel free to add those songs.

And which five do you keep?

Once your list is done, try cutting it down until five are left. That's not easy, because you have to cross out records you'd actually like to keep. What remains are the songs most tied to your life.

You can save those five on this site for later, in your own order. Show them to someone who knows you well and ask which five they would have picked for you. And next year, when the Top 2000 comes around again, see whether anything has changed.