The other day, a blog post was shared to The Insatiable Ones counting down the writer's ten favourite songs from Suede's glorious second career. A debate ensued and a commenter remarked that you could probably ask everyone and never get the same list. That got me thinking: which songs make it onto my list? It's not easy to narrow down, and even harder to rank. I wrote this list a few days ago and I'm not confident I agree with it even as I type this out, it's so subject to change based on mood and which songs I've seen the band play live most recently. So, below is my best effort, my top 10 favourite Suede songs of the last fifteen years or so, with some honourable mentions at the end.
10. The Sadness In You, The Sadness In Me (2022, from the She Still Leads Me On EP)
This song is so packed with hooks that it's crazy to think that it's a b-side, but then Suede were always good at putting astonishing songs on the b-sides of their singles (see: Sci-Fi Lullabies). It has a bridge that could be a chorus, a groovy bassline and a vocal line that starts out almost spoken and builds to a gorgeous soaring thing. It struck me immediately and I'm not alone - it's a fan favourite and after three years of begging, they finally gave it a live airing as part of the Southbank Takeover last September. The band have said that it's hard to play, that the recording is bad, that it's missing something, but those are lame excuses. This song is massive.
9. I Don't Know How To Reach You (2016, Night Thoughts)
I will admit it: Night Thoughts is my least favourite Suede album. I even prefer the disowned pre-split A New Morning. It's in in-between territory for me, not enough choruses to keep me excited, but not experimental enough to intrigue either. For that reason, I Don't Know How To Reach You is the sole Night Thoughts pick from my list.
The theme of the album is the anxieties around being a new parent, which is largely uninteresting to me, but IDKHTRY works for me when viewed alongside Brett's memoir, Coal Black Mornings. He claims that he initially started writing so that his son could read a bit of his family history one day, and the book explores Brett's relationship with his own father and the way that influences his relationship with his own son. The lyrics here - "I bought you those pretty things but you gave them back, and now I don't know how to reach you" - could be about a romantic relationship, but I always interpret it through the prism of the familial: that failure to relate to his own father, and the fear that the son he dedicates himself so fully to might grow up to regard him with that same distance. It's always a highlight of the live set when it comes out, Brett often sinking to his knees to perform the emotive closing section - "I never thought it would happen to me". Stunning.
8. Chalk Circles / Cold Hands (2018, The Blue Hour)
Are these two songs? Arguably, yes, but it's my list and I'll combine them if I want to. This is my favourite piece of 'experimental Suede', from their most out-there album. Chalk Circles paints the sort of scene familiar to Suedeworld - 'ringroads, stairways, roundabouts', even in this album that's ostensibly about the horror of the countryside, we're never far from the motorway. From there we descend into a menacing chant more akin to 1994's Introducing The Band than anything the band have done since, before the shorter piece segues into the more traditional banger Cold Hands. It's claustrophobic, terrified; Brett sounds like he can barely get the verses out, there are too many words that need to fit in before we get to the big Suedey chorus. Richard's guitar rings out with an urgent tone that matches the folk-horror dread of the words. Exhilarating, a song that I'm gutted I missed out on hearing live.
7. Barriers (2013, Bloodsports)
The first new Suede single in a decade, a song that Suede cared about enough to relaunch their career with and for some reason immediately stopped playing live. There's something about that opening guitar part and Simon's steady drums that just says 'we're back, you're home', a warm hug of an intro. I don't have any deep lyrical analysis, there's no particular line or performance that makes this one meaningful to me, I just think it's a forgotten classic.
6. She Still Leads Me On (2022, Autofiction)
It's hard for me to be objective about She Still Leads Me On. This is more than a song to me, it's like a sister. My first Suede gigs were on the Blue Hour tour, but the first Suede album that I was invested in as a fan was Autofiction. I was there for the roll-out, sat in front of the TV for the premiere of this song, the livestream from the last gig of the European Tour. I was there at the video shoot, invited by the fanclub that I had just begun to dip my toe into, there at the Crushed Kid secret show, there at Rough Trade the day the album came out. I've listened to this song so many times that it's hard to hear it, and I'm often so spent by the time it rolls round in the setlist that all I can do is clap along and take a moment to stare up at the ceiling of whatever theatre or park or club I'm in.
She Still Leads Me On is another song borne out of the reflection Brett did when writing his memoirs. This one is in memory of his mother who died many years ago and his everlasting love. He sings about being a child, about the way that she lives on in his thoughts, while Richard makes the loveliest, most uplifting sound with his guitar. It's hard not to be overcome with joy at that 'and I loved her' pre-chorus, no matter how many times I hear it.
5. Personality Disorder (2022, Autofiction)
As with SSLMO, I find it difficult to tell whether Autofiction is my favourite album, or whether it just means the most to me because it facilitated so many of my most cherished friendships and memories. Whichever one it is, I'm certain that Personality Disorder is an outstanding song. It's spiky and abrasive, spoken in the verses, shouted in the chorus, crooned in the middle-section. Lyrically the verses deal with death again, an acknowledgement that 'our lives too will pass and fade like this moment'. The chorus doesn't feel like the same song, really, doesn't have the depth, but who cares when it sounds this good? I loved it as a permanent part of the Autofiction live set, and I love it now as an occasional visitor in the Antidepressants set, particularly for the way Neil echoes the chorus vocal.
4. Manipulation (2018, The Blue Hour boxset)
People sometimes ask me why I keep going back to see Suede and, if that person is a fan, I tell them about the setlist at my first show: Dawn Chorus, Roadkill, The Next Life, and Manipulation. At that point I was thrilled to hear Animal Nitrate and Killing Of A Flash Boy, and had no idea how lucky I was to hear Manipulation in particular. Thank God for the person on Tumblr who I stole the mp3 from so I knew the song!
Manipulation points the way towards Autofiction; a song from The Blue Hour session that could never have been at home on that album. It's short, fast, announcing itself with a guitar slide into mayhem. The lyric is ripped from the Depeche Mode school of sexual push-and-pull - 'if I bend to you, will you bend to me?' - who's manipulating who? It's incredibly exciting, devastating in its brevity but perfectly formed, a muscle I wish Suede would flex more often.
3. Tides (2018, The Blue Hour)
Tides didn't rank in my top three when I first got into The Blue Hour; it appears at the point around two-thirds of the way through the album where I usually need something sharp to pick me up, and this isn't that so I think it initially passed me by. Hearing Tides live is a totally different experience and that's why it now tops my Blue Hour chart. The song starts small - a pretty arpeggiated riff from Richard, a subdued vocal from Brett. Then, with each verse, things get bigger and bigger, like the tide itself crashing in until everything is deafening and huge and intense, the music threatening to swallow you up.
Lyrically, I had an epiphany while the band were performing it last, in Edinburgh in February. 'Clutching at debris', 'waving at distant planes', 'riding a wave, it's dragging me under'... wait a minute, this is The Ninth Wave by Kate Bush! It's no secret that the band are influenced by Hounds Of Love, in fact Brett appears in that BBC4 documentary gushing over that side of vinyl, and I'm a little embarrassed to have taken so long to notice.
2. Dancing With The Europeans (2025, Antidepressants)
How many times can a man fit the word 'river' into a verse? About half a dozen, it turns out. And it turns out that it doesn't matter how silly a verse's lyrics are if you follow it up with a big beautiful chorus like this one. Dancing With The Europeans is euphoric, from the pretty intro riff to the ringing out of the final notes. It sounds like sunshine, like optimism, like all the things that Suedeworld pretends not to be. There are shades of The Cult, of Echo And The Bunnymen, of all the post-punk that Richard has poured into the last couple of albums. It's hard not to grin when the band's lighting director switches the lighting from white into colour during the line about blue and yellow lights. Brett claims it's not about losing our place in the EU - this is about a really good gig he had in Spain, not Brexit, he says - but he also says that sometimes he doesn't realise what the songs are really about until a lot later, so I'll wait for him to catch up on this one.
Sure, this is another Suede song that I'm biased about. I was there at Bush Hall with both my ear and my phone's microphone pressed to the stage door as the room was soundchecked. I was inside that boiling hot venue sweating with my best friends. I saw one of the best gigs I've ever seen that night even though the setlist was Suede's greatest hits plus Dancing With The Europeans four times. I got to wrap my arms around Brett, climb up on stage with my favourite band, see my stupid grinning face immortalised in the music video. But I stand by it - this is their best single in years.
1. Dirty Looks (2025, Antidepressants Deluxe Edition)
Wow, she's so edgy, picking a b-side as her favourite, you say, rolling your eyes. Maybe it's recency bias talking, but I really, really, really love this song. Dirty Looks takes everything I said about Manipulation and ramps it up even further, and I hope that this points the way to Suede 11 the way that Manipulation pointed to Suede 9.
It's loud, it's fast, it's spiky, it's menacing, it's sexy. It sounds like the band doing something totally new, and yet somehow it feels like a successor to Moving from way back in 1993. "I'm glad I'm not your husband, I'm glad I'm not your wife" is "we are a boy, we are a girl" all grown up, and Brett yelps his way through every line like he's in a sweaty club about to have his lace blouse ripped from his body by a crowd of NME reading teenagers.
Most of my Suede friends were NME reading teenagers, but I was a Kerrang! reading one, spending most of my student years teetering on the edge of a circle pit trying not to fall in. That's what Dirty Looks sounds like to me: a circle pit waiting to happen, my years of Glassjaw albums and grainy footage of early AFI shows and straight-edge hardcore cassettes (though they would never claim that 'whenever you're pissed it's so nice').
Just thinking about this song makes my heart race. If I'm listening to the album, I'm playing this one twice. Suede, if you're listening, please can your 'noisy fucker' of an 11th album sound like this?
Honourable mentions:
On another day, any of these could edge their way into the chart, largely due to their live showings.
- For The Strangers (2013, Bloodsports): the intro sounds like the clouds parting and the sky opening up on a beautiful day, the same euphoric feeling I get from DWTE. Reminds me of hearing it live on the Coming Up tour, where all the strangers I saw on the barrier every day became friends I can't imagine my life without
- It Starts And Ends With You (2013, Bloodsports): I hear it live all the time but I'm never disappointed when it's in the set. Another song that brings me so much joy, I love doing the actions with Brett during the choruses
- Sabotage (2013, Bloodsports): I think all I need to say about this is - drums are good on this. I love the opening line too, though.
- The Only Way I Can Love You (2022, Autofiction): I think this was my initial favourite from the album, and I go between it and Personality Disorder. Right now it's sunk a little because I'm not sure about it as the encore to the current live set, but even saying that sounds silly when I know it means Brett singing 'I love you' while I hold his hand. Obviously 'I pretend I don't adore you, but I'd take a bullet for you' is an all-time great line.
- June Rain (2025, Antidepressants): the big power ballad of the new album, a little like Tides in the way it builds, a little like Personality Disorder in the acknowledgement of death. Another one where Brett likes to come and mingle with the crowd, which never hurts a song's chances.
What's your top 10? If you read this, argue with me in the comments!
