The classics
Drum and bass classics are made in public, by radio support, chart runs and long afterlives, and this page measures rather than ranks: no sourced canon of the genre's best exists here, so it works through the chart runs that do.
- Red Mist VIP UK Dance peak No. 1
- Ill Behaviour UK Singles peak No. 36
- Tonight UK Singles peak No. 91
Drum and bass classics are the tracks the genre is measured by, and 3 public forces make them: radio support, a chart run, and longevity beyond the release.
Any list of the best drum and bass songs of all time is editorial opinion; no chart, body or archive certifies a canon, and this site does not pretend to hold one. What it holds instead is the measurable part, documented through the sourced chart runs of Danny Byrd, the Hospital Records producer whose singles put a number against each of the 3 forces.
What makes a drum and bass classic
A drum and bass classic is made by the 3 forces above, in roughly that order.
- Radio support puts a track in front of listeners who never buy white labels; a national playlist is the strongest form.
- Chart runs convert that exposure into a recorded, dated fact: a UK Singles or UK Dance Chart position that stays checkable forever.
- Longevity confirms the verdict, when a track keeps appearing in compilations, films and games years after release.
The genre these forces act on is drum and bass, electronic dance music that emerged in the United Kingdom in the early 1990s, built on fast breakbeats at 165 to 185 beats per minute with heavy bass and sub-bass lines; the fuller definition lives on the Drum and bass page. A note for arriving searchers: the bass drum, the percussion instrument, with its sizes, triggers and tuning, is a different subject entirely, and this page does not cover it.
The chart runs, measured
The chart runs below are the worked examples this site can source, all from Danny Byrd's catalogue on Hospital Records: 6 records across 3 years.
| Year | Record | UK Singles peak | UK Dance peak |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | Red Mist (feat. IK) / Red Mist VIP | No. 147 (Red Mist) | No. 1 (Red Mist VIP) |
| 2010 | Sweet Harmony (Danny Byrd remix) | No. 64 | No. 6 |
| 2010 | Ill Behaviour (feat. I-Kay) | No. 36 | No. 7 |
| 2010 | We Can Have It All | No. 144 | No. 22 |
| 2011 | Tonight (feat. Netsky) | No. 91 | No. 11 |
3 details sharpen the table. Red Mist VIP took its UK Dance peak No. 1 in the week ending 25 July 2009. Sweet Harmony, at UK Singles peak No. 64 on 7 February 2010, was Byrd's first UK Singles Chart entry. Tonight also reached No. 75 in Flanders on the Ultratop chart in 2011, the one sourced chart fact outside the UK. Read down the columns and the genre's shape appears: the UK Dance Chart sits far higher than the UK Singles Chart for the same records, which is why drum and bass classics are usually Dance chart stories first and crossover stories second, driven by the radio support the next section measures.
Radio support, the first force
Radio support opens most classic runs, and the sourced record shows it working twice, a decade apart. In 2000, BBC Radio 1's Fabio championed Danny Byrd's remix of London Elektricity's Wishing Well. On 8 September 2010, Ill Behaviour (feat. I-Kay) was promoted to BBC Radio 1's A-list, with support from MistaJam, Annie Mac and Sara Cox; released on 26 September 2010 digitally and 27 September 2010 on 12 inch vinyl, it went on to its UK Singles peak No. 36 and UK Dance peak No. 7. Radio built whole subgenres the same way: Fabio, alongside Sarah Sandy, began championing liquid funk under that name in 1999, a thread the liquid classics section below picks up. Once radio has done its work, longevity decides whether the track stays a classic.
Longevity, where a classic is confirmed
Longevity is confirmed when a track outgrows its release, and Red Mist VIP is the sourced case study: after its UK Dance peak No. 1 in 2009 it appeared on Hospital's compilation Sick Music, in the film Dead Man Running and in the games Midnight Club LA and DJ Hero, 4 placements across 3 different media. Lineage runs backwards too. Ill Behaviour's lyrics are based on One For The Trouble by A.D.O.R., and the genre's parent, jungle, which developed in the 1990s out of the UK rave scene and Jamaican sound system culture, built its foundations on the Amen break, among the most sampled breakbeats in the style. A classic, in other words, is a track that other records keep touching.
Liquid classics and the album question
Liquid drum and bass classics come from liquid funk, the subgenre with more instrumental layers, harmonies and melodies, which grew massively around 2003 to 2004 and by 2005 stood among the genre's biggest-selling subgenres; its proponents include Calibre, Netsky, LTJ Bukem, High Contrast, London Elektricity and Nu:Tone, with Hospital Records among its main labels.
On albums, the chart facts this site holds are Danny Byrd's: Rave Digger reached UK Albums Chart peak No. 68 after its release on 10 October 2010 digitally and 11 October 2010 physically, Golden Ticket reached No. 181 on the UK chart after 24 June 2013, and Supersized (26 May 2008) did not enter the UK Albums Chart at all. That last miss is the closing lesson: Supersized carries Red Mist, the track whose VIP version took a UK Dance peak No. 1 the following year. A classic can start on an album the charts ignored.