“Good Grief” by Bastille

"Good Grief" kicked off the Wild World era for Bastille in June 2016, the first single from their second album, and Annie Mac gave it its first airing on her BBC Radio 1 show, billing it as her "hottest track". Dan Smith wrote it alone and produced it with Mark Crew, and it was the band's first single to feature touring member Charlie Barnes.

It's a song about grief that refuses to sit still: Smith picks through the strange business of carrying on after someone is gone, and the music answers with bounce and big-screen pomp rather than a dirge. It opens the album, too. In 2020 an NME poll of millennials named it the song they'd most want played at their funeral, which is about as fitting a verdict as this one could get.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.