Readers recommend: new year songs – results

It's not every day we usher in a new year. (It's every year.) So a new year requires something big-sounding to mark the occasion. George Harrison's Ding Dong Ding Dong fits the bill. It has a title worthy of Eurovision, but has a wall of sound (though it was produced not by Phil Spector, but by George). Also noted: the promo film for the 1974 song features the Quiet One donning Beatle era oufits, their first outing since 1967. The Watersons were in some ways the folk Beatles, by virtue of their distinctive harmonies and their success in pusheing back boundaries and reaching new audiences. Here We Come a-Wassailing from their landmark album Frost and Fire is a traditional song brought to life by the vibrancy of their performance. And the English tradition of wassailing, as treefrogdemon says, is "about waking up the cider apple trees for the new year so that there's a good crop come next autumn. And what one drinks while wassailing is, obviously enough, the previous season's cider." A new year also brings a craving for the comfort of musical loveliness, and our new year RR blog was festooned with many pretty baubles. One was Camera Obscura's breezy Happy New Year, skips along prettily with a spring in its step. Just the tonic after the rigours of New Year's Eve. Another snapshot of that delicate, elated feeling is New Year's Day by Atlas Sound , a track that was apparently recorded at 5am on 1 January 2008. Also mellow in a Jeff Buckley-on-Mogadon kind of way is New Year Son by the Amazing Broken Man, aka São Paulo-based singer-songwriter Odorico Leal. It's simple, but effective. Hope you remembered, on New Year's Day, to phone your dear old mum. Bert Jansch's The Bright New Year takes the form of a love letter to his mother, but the melancholic, yearning tone suggests she may no longer be with us. The Breeders' messianic New Year – from Last Splash, for my money one of the best albums of the 90s – is simultaneously super-complex and punkishly basic, tight yet shambolic. How did they do it? Regina Specktor, for her part, sings a refreshingly straightforward piano hymn to the new year. Nothing wrong with that. Cheers! Meanwhile Flemish electro-popster Dieter Sermeus, alias the Go Find, takes a cue from Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon in the sinuous New Year ("the new year I've been waiting for"). It's low energy, but loaded with hooks. Lootpack – aka Madlib and Wildchild – take a David Axelrod sample as the basis for their New Year's Resolution. One thing, though: Lootpack's resolution appears to be "spontaneous freestyles are the solution". Can that be right? Doesn't sound like much of a challenge. Certainly easier than, say, quitting smoking. But it's Donovan who has a resolution we can all get behind on his beautiful 1970 song of the same name: "Get on your back and do what you like." Last word to Loudon Wainwright III, whose song This Year captures the fragile optimism of those moments after midnight on 1 January when, tired and emotional, you find a sliver of hope – perhaps against the odds – that the coming year will be fantastic. Here's the playlist: Ding Dong Ding Dong – George Harrison Here We Come a-Wassailing – The Watersons Happy New Year – Camera Obscura New Year's Day – Atlas Sound New Year Son – The Amazing Broken Man The Bright New Year – Bert Jansch New Year – The Go Find New Year – The Breeders My Dear Acquaintance (Happy New Year) – Regina Spektor New Year's Resolution – Lootpack New Year's Resolution – Donovan This Year – Loudon Wainwright III * Listen to these songs on a YouTube playlist or watch them right now * Read all the readers' recommendations on last week's blog , from which I've selected the songs above * Here's a Spotify playlist containing readers' recommendations on this theme * We'll reveal the next Readers Recommend topic at guardian.co.uk/readersrecommend at 10pm on Thursday.