NPR Music - 11 more songs to reset your mood | All Songs Considered

Episode Date: June 9, 2026

NPR listeners share the songs they reach for when they need to reset the mood, their day or even their life.This is a followup to our April episode on songs for starting over.  NPR’s Dora Levite joins host Robin Hilton.A good review helps! So, leave us one on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. And tell a friend to listen!Questions, comments, suggestions or feedback of any kind always welcome: [e-mail]  Featured artists and songs:(00:00) Intro(01:13) Quincy Jones: “Dead End”(02:12) Bill Withers: “Lovely Day”(04:51) Florence + the Machine: “Shake It Out”(08:06) Jacob Collier: “Something Heavy”(11:24) Des’ree: “You Gotta Be”(16:32) Peter Gabriel: “Washing Of The Water”(19:57) Cat Power: “Nothin But Time”(23:02) John Denver: “Sweet Surrender”(27:46) Isley Brothers: “Summer Breeze”(31:22) Green Day: “Still Breathing”(34:10) Vienna Teng: “Level Up”See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This episode of All Songs Considered comes to you from the NPR Music podcast. NPR Music, of course, you're home for tiny desks, but also for Alt Latino. That show goes out in the feed every Wednesday. We've got new music Friday at the end of every week, and we've got new episodes of this show. All Songs Considered every Tuesday. It really is the best place for you to hang out if you're looking to get as far away from the news as possible. That's what I've heard. Everyone's saying that.

NPR Music, also, where you will find Dora Levitt. Hi, Robin Hilton. So Dora, back in April, we did a show with Noah Caldwell, all about songs for starting over, specifically songs that can reset like your mind. We did that show as like an entryway to spring, a spring reset. Yeah, clear your head, lift your mood, give you clarity, or, you know, maybe spark even some epiphany that set your whole life in a new direction. You, Noah, and I played a whole bunch of stuff,

but we asked listeners to tell us what do they reach for, you know, what do they put on when they need to reset? So we're going to share some of those picks on this week's show. We've actually been listening to one of them here. You know, you want to hear a little bit of this? Yeah. So this is Quincy Jones, the song Dead End, and this is one of the ones that listeners wrote in saying, like,

oh, just guaranteed will put me in a better mood. Actually, yeah, it's working. It's nice. Are you feeling it? It's nice and it's very unassuming. You know, you're just, you're being put in a better mood and you don't even realize it. Yeah, very chill. Yeah.

But I want to start with Bill Withers, the singer Bill Withers. He's one that comes up. Basically, any time we do a call out saying, tell us about a song that lifts you up or makes you feel better, puts you in a good mood, whatever. Bill Withers is always all over those lists. And this song from Bill Withers is called Lovely Day. It's from the album Menagerie. It came out in 1977.

A number of people picked this one, but I'll read this quote we got from Tina in Alabama, a listener named Tina in Alabama. She says, I have a dear friend with MS. And when I visited him, he played this song every morning. He used it as a daily tribute for the gift of life, and it resonated with my soul. The lyrics are spot on for not just living,

but living with purpose and gratitude. When I wake up in the morning love And the sunlight hurts my eye And something without want to love There's heavy on my mind Just one look at you And I know it's going to be When you think of a reset

Like resetting your outlook I can't think of anything more powerful Than gratitude Finding a way to just be grateful I feel like we talk such big game in the episode that we did about like finding the ultimate feel-good reset song and I can't believe we didn't play this song. Yeah, just about any Bill Wither's. Yeah, we didn't even like talk about it. It seems listening now, I'm just like, wow, we were so.

No, this is the one. This is the one. Yeah, I think I made a case for a couple of others like Nina Simone's Feeling Good. I think I played Bob Marley. Yeah, yeah. birds. But yeah, no, I think this is a legit contender too. Yeah, it really is. And even like I was listening on YouTube and I was scrolling through the YouTube comments, a lot of the songs that we're going to talk about, I was scrolling through the YouTube comments and every single one was

like, I really needed this today, or I always find myself coming back to this, or going back years and years, it just everyone comes together around these songs, which is really nice. Perspective. It's all just change your perspective and your whole world changes. So that was Bill Withers' lovely day from the album Menagerie, and that was picked by Tina in Alabama. What do you got? Yeah, so this pick comes from Terry in Iowa, and Terry picked Florence and the Machines Shake It Out from the album Ceremonials, and Terry said, when I'm down, this song lets me see my regrets, but tells me to stop, quote, dragging that horse around.

It reminds me that I can see my virtues as much a part of me as my flaws. And rather than constantly fighting those flaws or being overwhelmed by guilt, it's okay to accept and experience the messiness that is life. That's my reset reminder. This song just keeps getting bigger. It's just like it gets bigger and bigger. And you think it's gotten as euphoric and as massive as it could possibly get. And then it goes to another level.

Yeah. And at the end when Florence is doing the, ooh, it's so good. I love this song so much. You know, it's interesting. You started at about 30 seconds in, but to me, I used to listen to the song all the time, and it was because of the first line of the song, Regrets collect like old friends, here to relive your darkest moments. That line, I used to always sing to myself.

It was just so reassuring and it was such a great mantra. I love that line. It's just impossible to not get swept up in the energy of this song. This is exactly the kind of thing. thing that I would want to, and I had completely forgotten about this song. Me too, yeah. It came out, I think you said, 2011. Yeah. But it is exactly the kind of thing that 100% whether I want it to or not is going to just smash the reset button for me. I feel like I used to listen to the song and listen to Taylor Swift's shake it off and be like, this is exactly what Taylor Swift

wish she made was going for. Yeah, yeah. Which came out a few years later. Yeah, 2014. Yeah. Well, there's such a great energy to the song, Shake It Out, but the truth is, a lot of the picks that we got were much quieter, I thought, and very introspective and offered a different kind of reset. And I think that's what you get from this song from Jacob Collier that Jeff and Cambridge picked. The song is called Something Heavy. It actually just came out in 2025. But Jeff and Cambridge writes, start over? Not exactly. After all, I am 78. And I was hospitalized twice in the past 12 months due to severe internal bleeding requiring transfusions. I was left with the need to recuperate and cope with disordered feelings and the necessity

to face my own mortality. Shortly after the first event, I discovered the surpassingly wonderful talents and sensibility of Jacob Collier. I found this song, Something Heavy, profoundly consoling and uplifting. I've been holding something Something kind of heavy So you're getting older Goes a little smaller Just let go

Yeah this is really beautiful And sort of like The idea of finding gratitude And just getting some perspective This is another simple But such a powerful idea Just the simple idea of letting go Just let something go. As soon as you eliminate, I mean, because when you're letting something go, you're basically letting go of want and desire and all the torture that that brings you. And the minute you let your shoulders drop and you relent and you release, a great calm can come over you.

Yeah. And I love the perspective that you have the power to let it go when you want to. Yeah. This is something I tell my kids all the time that very often when you are upset or stressed out or whatever it is, if you're in a bad place, it feels like all these things are happening to you. The truth is you have more control than it feels like you do. You are in more control of you than you realize. And once you realize that you do have that control, that you can control how you are reacting, how you feel, take a breath, slow everything down. It's very empowering and then, you know, you're going to feel a lot better. Yeah. I love that Jeff in Cambridge is 78 years old and boy, music can just make everything better no matter the time, the place, your age, anything. I really love that. Yeah.

This next listener has a similar type of experience and a similar type of finding a song later in life. Their name is Rita in Portland, Maine. And the song they wrote in about is Desire's You Gotta Be from I Ain't Move In. And Rita says, the song is very uplifting. The message for me is that I'm in charge of what happens next to an extent. I'm nearly 70 and I'm happy with the choices I've made along the way. Listen as your day unfolds, challenge what the future holds.

Try and keep your head up to the sky. Lovers they may cause you tears Go ahead release your fears Stand up and be counted Don't be shame to cry You gotta be You gotta be bad You gotta be bold

You gotta be wiser You gotta be hard You gotta be tough You gotta be stronger You gotta be calm You gotta stay together Wiser You gotta be hard

You gotta be tough You gotta be stronger I have to ask, Dora, do you know this song? Had you heard this song before? I had heard this song before. Let me tell you, because it came out before you were born. But this song was inescapable, inescapable when it came out in 1994. You know, we just did the show about songs for millennials.

And I was thinking, well, what would we do if we did a Gen X episode? and I kept thinking of that idea that came up during the millennial episode, which is it has to be a song that has not escaped that generation and become a part of someone else's generation, right? And when I heard this song, I thought, this is a contender because this song was everywhere, but I'm not sure if any other generation could claim it. That's why I was wondering if you'd heard it before I knew it. Do you feel like it's easier to have a song of a generation for, like, Gen X or

for like a little bit of a pre-internet generation because there wasn't as much access to music? I don't know. That's a good question. I actually wondered if it was harder in some ways. Hazel Seals and Shelton Pierce, who did the Millennials Show, they were so good, I thought, at identifying all these different sort of touchstone moments, and they came up with these songs that I wouldn't have thought of.

And then as soon as I started trying to do the same thing for Gen X, I just kind of froze. I couldn't think of, you know. And I also thought there are just too many. Yeah. I mean, there's just too many over the stretch of time from the 70s to the early 90s or so where, I don't know, I'd have a hard time picking anyone. But anyway, this song from Desiree, we digress. Another one about gratitude and empowerment and perspective and letting go.

Yeah. I thought it was so cool to look at this song as like a mantra for looking back in your life and feeling happy and content. and excited about your choices, I'm great with how I am. And I was these things and I feel great about these things and I feel confident. Somebody once said, or maybe I read this somewhere, that it takes until you're around 70 years old to realize that it doesn't matter what other people think. Or whether or not you're conforming to how people think you should be or how you think they think you should be. It takes until you're 70 to get there.

I mean, that's what I've always heard. I mean, I'd like to think that I could come to that conclusion. before then, but I think there was a whole long list of things that I read about, like, it takes until you're about 70 to figure out. I think it was other things like that your life doesn't have to be remarkable to be fulfilling or, you know, that there are different ways to measure success. And, well, this is all about perspective, which is what this song is. Yeah. Brought it back. I'm still waiting for my prefrontal cortex to develop. Oh, God. I've been told. You know, I didn't know was a thing until many, many years later. And it explained so much. I was like, I wish I had known

that before I was 25. I would understand all the madness that was going on inside my head up until about that point. Anyway, Desiree, you got to be from the album, I Ain't Moving that came out in 1994. Let's go to Peter Gabriel. Peter Gabriel is another artist. I couldn't believe we hadn't thought of before, like especially his song, Don't Give Up, something like that. Yeah, you know, because he's got a lot of them. But the song that one of our listeners picked is Washing of the Water, and it's from the album, Us, that came out in 1992. This was the follow-up to his monster hit album. So Rudy and Virginia wrote in about it and says, while the song seems to speak mainly of heartbreak and loss, I've always thought it was also about hope and redemption.

I think I really connected with the metaphor of the water having the power to make it all all right, as Peter, Gabriel sings in the song. I probably sang this song to myself a hundred times while walking along a California beach years ago after a breakup. Somehow, it just made me feel better and helped me get to the other side. River, river carry me on, river carry me on to the place where I come from. What a great pick. This isn't the first one that I would think of with Peter Gabriel, but I'm so glad that it's the one that they picked. His voice alone to me is so calming. Yeah, the, like, raspiness in his voice is so lovely. I was thinking about the episode that we did with Noah a few weeks ago where, like, a big theme that we talked about is how

when you find your connection to nature is when you can have that reset. And we listen to this Cassandra Jenkins song that literally says, like, when you find your connection. And to nature, you find your connection with life. And I really felt that here where Peter Gabriel sings to the water and is asking, can you sweep me up with you and let the world keep going around me. Yeah. And he talks in the song also about letting go again and how hard it is to let go, but how important that is to what an important part of the process that is if you're trying to heal.

I actually am a big fan of the album Us that this is from. It's always, to me, sort of lived in the shadow of Soe, because So is such a monumental record. But to me, this is every bit as good as So. There's so many great songs on here. Another one that I think you could pick from this album. It's called The Blood of Eden. It features Chenato Connor.

She's actually on a couple songs. But another great pick. Really beautiful. What do you got, Dora? So this next one, again, was another one where I was like, how did we not talk about cat power at all? Oh, cat power. How did we not talk about Sea of Love by Cat Power?

Oh, wow, yeah. Or this song that Brayden in Utah submitted, which is nothing but time. Braden said, this song is so powerful. It speaks to our younger selves, maybe inner child. And it encourages us that we have nothing but time to do what we want to do. It's sprawling, anthemic, and features vocals by Iggy Pop. Just incredible stuff always resets my mood and gives me hope. I love how otherworldly this song starts out with with the electronic.

It sounds like, and honestly to me it sounds like space. And it really does transport you to another headspace. Yeah. So this is from the album Sun that came out in 2012 from Cat Power. That was my number one album of the year that year. It had been a number of years since Sean Marshall had released any new original music. I think like maybe five or six years between albums. And she had gone through so much in that time.

Like I think she went bankrupt. I think she was having money problems. I think she was having a mental health crisis during that time. And she pours all of that, like exercises all of that in this album. I thought the whole album was just incredible. Yeah. You can really tell that this is just like, her everything. I mean, it's a complete wash of sound and the vocals are so dreamlike in the way that

she layers her own vocals and then later in the song, when Iggy Pop comes in, it does really feel like there are these otherworldly figures that are guiding you along the way and are bringing you through this. It's a 10-minute song. It's a very long song and they guide you through the entire thing. And the album was called Sun, in fact, because it was her rebirth. It was like the sun coming up and on a new chapter for her life. And so again, Cat Power, nothing but time from the album's son that came out in 2012. I want to play one that it just has a short little note that came with it. And it's by an artist that I think a lot of people would accuse of being kind of sappy.

But I make no apologies for including him and his music here because, well, his music was played in my house all the time when I was a kid. So it's become a part of my DNA whether I wanted to or not, and therefore I love him. And that is John Denver, the song Sweet Surrender. And Ed and North Carolina writes, I had just been laid off. Driving home, this song came on the radio, and it changed my whole mindset. Lost and alone on some forgotten highway. Travel by many, remembered by few, looking. for something that I can believe in looking for something that I'd like to do with my life

there's nothing behind me and nothing that ties me to something that might have been true yesterday tomorrow is open Right now it seems to be more than enough To just be here today And I don't know what the future is I'm sorry, Doris. I'm sorry you had to see that. You know, it's not the first time I have.

No apologies necessary. Yes, I'm blubbering again And it's to John Denver. I get it. I know people who aren't John Denver fans. No, there's no shame in a classic. I love his music so much. Me too.

You got to get to the chorus. Sweet surrender in the water. The voice of an angel, Dora. The voice of an angel. So my mom and dad loved his music, and they played it in the house all the time, and I ended up loving it as a kid. And, you know, my wife tells me all the time when an anomaly I am, because she said, you know, most kids, when they hear their parents' music, they hate it.

And they do everything they can to get away from it and rebel against it. And I just like, I don't know. I loved it. I love John Denver. And I always get emotional when I hear just about any song. If you want to make Robbie cry instantly put on a John Denver song because it instantly takes me back to childhood and everything. But also, it's just so beautiful. It's so beautiful. What's your relationship to John Denver at all? I didn't grow up listening to John Denver's music, and I really only knew him as like,

John Denver, the songwriter, but I'd never really listen to any of his songs or knew him beyond country roads. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But his music is so beautiful and so anthemic. And another theme that we've talked about with reset music is how comforting it is to hear another person's story of starting over and another.

person's journey because you relate to them and you're able to follow their path. And that's so much of what I hear in this song. I want to know what station Ed in North Carolina was listening to. Yeah. If this song just came on the radio. But maybe this is an older memory when this song would have popped up on the radio. Yeah. John Denver, Sweet Surrender from the album Back Home Again. So many of his songs, John Denver songs, are about hitting the road and getting out and being free

and you talk about being in nature, letting go, all those sorts of things. And like vast landscapes and being able to just kind of look over it all and see it at once. That album came out in 1974. I have another classic. It's kind of like we should have started

this series by asking the listeners because they clearly had a much better idea on like the ultimate ones. The pick is by the Isley Brothers, but it's a cover of a Seals Croft song from a few years earlier. The song is Summer Breeze, and this was sent in by Corzon Cozy Sailor, and they say, this song is very inspirational to anyone on any journey. It took me forever so many years to finish my college degree, and I was the first in my family to attend

university. But I did not give up. Music is my heaven here on earth. Really, it's my gateway to healing from dark places to celebrating life's grand spaces and everything in between. Summer breeze Makes me feel fire The jasmine in my mind Makes me feel fire Blowing through the jasmine in my mind See the curts hanging in the window

In the evening On a Friday night Window Let's me know Everything's all right I've never liked summer very much Me neither. But I hear this song.

I know you and I are totally the same there. But I don't know. I hear a song like this. I'm like, I don't know, maybe summer's kind of awesome. Right. Well, that's the thing. It's like I hate the summer because I hate being hot. But the best thing ever is when there's a summer breeze

and when it's over for like one second. Well, there's an interesting thing going on in this song. The person singing here is, I think, out on a walk. Yeah. neighborhood and they're just seeing like people's windows open and the curtains billowing through the open windows and they're finding great comfort in community basically just the idea of being in this beautiful world with this nice breeze and you can see these signs of life around you and everyone else is just

chilling out on a summer day and enjoying the breeze as well I don't know there's there's something really beautiful about that idea everyone is experiencing the same thing together which can be great when you're feeling really stuck and you're like, oh, I'm having a universal experience, even if it doesn't feel like it right now. Right. I'm not alone. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, this is the version to play, I think, the Isley Brothers version of Summer Breeze. Yeah. The original came out in 72. This version came out in 74. Didn't get a lot of songs out of all of the listener picks that just rocked really, really hard. I mean, the Florence and the Machine, maybe one of the loudest ones, biggest ones that we got. And we talked about on our episode, I played Sabotize.

There were some others that we've played that were like, if you just need that sudden jolt of adrenaline. Yeah, and get it out. But one that someone did send in is a Green Day song. This is from Lois in Pittsburgh who writes, this song carried me through my divorce, the death of my dog, the recent passing of my father. Anytime I need to remember that I'm still alive despite all of the things that have been thrown at me, this is the song. It's Green Days still breathing. Unlike a child looking off on the horizon, Unlike an ambulance is turning on the sirens,

Oh, I'm still alive Unlike a soldier coming home for the first time I dodged a bullet and I walked across a landmine Oh, I'm still alive Am I bleeding? Am I bleeding from the storm? We did this episode a couple of years ago called Why We Still Love Green Day, and it was a very long episode. We went through every single record that the band put out.

We went through their entire discography. And this is from an album that came out in 2016 called Revolution Radio that didn't get a lot, you know, certainly compared to some of their other stuff, didn't get a lot of traction, but this is a great song from it. Yeah, this really is. I mean, you can count on Green Day for coming in with like a really excellent song to make you want to run away and leave all your problems behind. Yeah. Most people, I think, if they were thinking like, oh, if I need an emotional reset from Green Day, they always want to go for Good Riddins time of your life. Like, how many times does that song come up? But no, this is a great one. Great pick. So Green Day is still breathing from the album Revolution Radio came out in 2016. We got so many picks. as always from listeners more than we could ever play on this show. When we did our first show back in April,

we created a playlist called Need a Reset. And we'll just add these songs and a bunch of the other listener picks all to that playlist. If you search for Need a Reset with a question mark in Spotify or Apple Music, you will find that playlist that we put together. Bedora, we've got one more that we're going to go out on and I'll let you set it up for us.

Yeah, so this, is I feel like a really great one to go out on. It's from Mary Alice and Baltimore. And the song is called Level Up, which was a new song to me by Vienna Tang. And Mary Alice says, this song starts most of my runs and became my sobriety theme song when I gave up drinking five years ago. It's a swelling, soaring, sparkling anthem of moving up and moving on. So come out. You have been waiting long enough. You're done with all the talk to. We'll go out on this Vienna-Tang, Dora Levitt. Robin Hilton.

Always awesome to hang out with you and play music. Always a pleasure. And you're listening to All Songs Considered from NPR Music. If you're free, come.