When Nick Cave was asked to help newcomers to his work navigate their way through his extensive back catalogue, he engaged with fans and has produced a list of his “15 best songs” for people to start with.

As he posted, “Feeling not best placed to judge, I instead turned to the readers of The Red Hand Files for help, asking you to send in playlists of your 15 favourite songs…The response was overwhelming and well over two thousand playlists have come in so far (please stop sending them now!). Fearing drowning in my own songs, I handed the lists over to my team, who fed them into ChatGPT – that handy little data-cruncher! — which sorted through the responses and ranked the top 15.”

And they are:

‘Jubilee Street’
‘Into My Arms’
‘From Her to Eternity’
‘The Ship Song’
‘Tupelo’
‘The Mercy Seat’
‘Stagger Lee’
‘Push The Sky Away’
‘The Weeping Song’
‘Higgs Boson Blues’
‘Red Right Hand’
‘Ghosteen’
‘Bright Horses’
‘Straight To You’
‘O Children’