The Most Requested DJ Songs, by Event and Decade

The most requested song at weddings and parties over the past year is ABBA's Dancing Queen, ahead of The Killers' Mr. Brightside and Whitney Houston's I Wanna Dance With Somebody, on DJ Intelligence's chart of requests made through its event-planning system. For the first dance, Elvis Presley's Can't Help Falling in Love tops an analysis of public Spotify playlists, and each list below names its source and date.

Weddings and parties: the most requested songs

Based on requests, not sales or streams. DJ Intelligence is an event-planning system that mobile DJs put on their websites, where clients list the songs they want played before the event. It adds up those requests every year, and its Mobile Beat Top 200 ranks the songs most requested at weddings and parties over the past 12 months. Its charts may not be republished, so the full list is on its site; when read on 12 October 2026 it was led by ABBA's Dancing Queen, The Killers' Mr. Brightside and Whitney Houston's I Wanna Dance With Somebody.

Wedding playlists on Spotify

Based on how often songs appear on wedding playlists. Givetastic scraped 100,000 public Spotify playlists found with searches such as "wedding", "first dance", "wedding party" and "just married", and counted the songs that turned up most, as reported by Mental Floss in August 2023. The list mixes reception songs with first-dance songs, because the searches did.

First dance

Based on Spotify playlists. Jewellery retailer Diamonds Factory used The Playlist Miner, a tool that collects the top songs from public Spotify playlists matching a search, on searches for "wedding playlist" and "first dance songs", with data collected on 16 January 2025, as reported by Mental Floss.

Recent hits: Spotify's most-streamed songs of 2025

Based on global streams. Spotify's 2025 Wrapped named the most-streamed songs worldwide, counting listening from 1 January to mid-November 2025, per its Wrapped methodology. Streams measure listening, not requests at events.

The 1980s, 1990s and 2000s: the UK's biggest singles

Based on UK sales. The Official Charts Company ranked the best-selling singles released in each decade, using what it calls pure, physical sales up to 2022, in lists dated 14 October 2025 on its site. Sales aren't requests: the lists include Christmas records, charity singles and ballads, so pick the floor-fillers for a party.

The 1980s

From the Official Top 20 biggest singles of the 1980s.

The 1990s

From the Official best-selling singles from the 1990s.

The 2000s

From the Official Top 20 best-selling singles from the 2000s.

Using request lists at a gig

DJ Intelligence's planning system asks clients for three lists before the event: Must Play, Play if Possible and Do Not Play. You can ask for the same three lists without the software. The guide to what a mobile DJ is covers the rest of the wedding and party job.

Where to find more lists

DJ Intelligence also publishes request charts for the last dance, father-daughter and mother-son dances, ceremony music, each decade from the 1950s to the 2020s, and genres from country to reggaeton. They are free to download in exchange for an email address, and they aren't reproduced here.

Get the edits you need

Most of these songs need a clean edit for a family wedding or a school event, and an intro edit makes them easier to mix. Record pools carry both; see the best DJ pools. For where to get music without paying, see free and legal DJ music downloads.

How these lists are made

Each list is the top of one published ranking, linked above with the date it covers, in that source's order. We haven't added or reordered songs, and we haven't built a list where no source could be loaded, which is why there is no last-dance list: no data-based last-dance ranking was open to read for this page. Song and artist names follow each source, tidied for capitalisation and obvious typing errors. The methodology explains the whole process.