“Cold Little Heart” by Michael Kiwanuka

"Cold Little Heart" opens Michael Kiwanuka's second album, Love & Hate, from 2016, and it takes its time: the track runs past ten minutes, and the first five are all instrumental, a slow bloom of strings, guitar and hushed backing voices before Kiwanuka's warm, weary voice finally steps in. He wrote it with the album's producers, Danger Mouse and Inflo, and the Wired Strings players give it a cinematic sweep.

Pitchfork's Marcus J. Moore called it the best song on the record, placing it between Pink Floyd's soul-rock hybrid and Isaac Hayes' orchestral grandeur, and Alexis Petridis of The Guardian praised the nerve it took to open with it. It became the album's fourth and final single in February 2017, and it reached a whole new audience as the opening credits music for Big Little Lies.

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