Festivals are great, but there’s nothing quite as intimate as putting on a pair of headphones and blissfully slipping away from the world as you let the music take over.

A good pair of cans will bring out the best in the music and more; the clarity of the instruments, the closeness of the vocals, and of course, the sweet highs and lows.

In recent years, musicians have begun making music to accommodate our increasing use of headphones and dependence on audio streaming services on our personal devices.

Producers now make music that sounds better on smaller speakers and at lower quality streams, and as genres such as ambient, ASMR and binaural beats become more pervasive, your quiet moments with your headphones will only get better.

But what music sounds the best with headphones?

Songs that are specially engineered to be loud and punchy? Featuring ethereal vocals or church acoustics? Or even 8D music on YouTube?

The answer, of course, are your favourite jams. Simply said, your personal preference in music trumps everything else.

Now, there are many headphones-centric playlists out there, but as we’ve discovered, most of them tend to be focused on meeting the audiophile’s requirements. There is perhaps only so much classical music or rock that you can listen to, at any one time.

If you’re not looking to get technical, Sound of Life presents a headphones playlist for you to lose yourself in.

Here, we’d like to think that we’ve checked most of the boxes in terms of balance, dynamic range and quality, but there’s one additional factor that we’ve prioritised above all else; you’re definitely going to feel like nodding your head all the way through. 

So, sit back, relax and put on your headphones!

Cover Credit: KEF

Writer: Suffian Rahman

When not working on ad campaigns as a creative consultant, Suffian Rahman is either talking nonsense on Twitter or working on his next Soundcloud mixtape as Kamo.