Top 10 Brian Eno Songs

Photo: By AVRO (Beeld En Geluid Wiki – Gallerie: Toppop 1974) [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Brian Peter George Eno grew up in Woodbridge, Suffolk, and began treating sound as an artistic canvas while studying at Ipswich and Winchester art schools, where his fascination with tape machines and chance operations first took shape. In 1971 he stepped onto the public stage with Roxy Music, operating a self-built rig of VCS3 synth, tape loops, and processing that gave the group its other-worldly veneer. Two hit LPs and relentless touring convinced him he preferred the studio to the spotlight, and by 1973 he left the band, cutting Here Come the Warm Jets the same year. That debut reached the UK Top 30 and launched a solo catalogue that now stands at 29 studio albums, ranging from the art-pop of Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy) to the landmark Ambient 1: Music for Airports, the 1978 release that crystallised an entire genre.

Parallel to his own records, Eno built a reputation as a catalytic collaborator. His early duo projects with Robert Fripp, No Pussyfooting (1973) and Evening Star (1975), pioneered long-form tape-loop soundscapes. In 1977 he entered Berlin’s Hansa studios with David Bowie, co-writing and co-producing Low and “Heroes,” the first two instalments of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy. At the same time he produced and played on Talking Heads’ More Songs About Buildings and Food (1978) and Remain in Light (1980), introducing Fela-inspired polyrhythms and studio layering that redefined American new wave. His production résumé soon counted U2’s The Joshua Tree and Achtung Baby, Laurie Anderson’s Bright Red, and Coldplay’s Viva la Vida, underscoring his role as rock’s most adventurous studio thinker.

Although Eno never chased hit singles, his fingerprints are on several. He co-wrote and produced “Once in a Lifetime” for Talking Heads, steered U2’s “With or Without You,” and provided the spacious atmosphere behind Coldplay’s chart-topping “Paradise.” His own highest-charting UK single is the 1975 art-pop gem “Seven Deadly Finns,” while his collaboration with David Byrne, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts (1981), reached the US Billboard 200 and became a sampling touchstone.

Industry recognition has followed the innovations. He received the Brit Award for Best Producer in 1994 for his work with U2, an Ivor Novello Award for Outstanding Contribution to British Music in 1995, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Roxy Music in 2019. In 2019 he also earned the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication for his ability to bridge art and technology, and in 2023 he accepted the Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement from the Venice Biennale of Music.

Eno’s influence extends far beyond record jackets. With artist Peter Schmidt he devised the Oblique Strategies cards in 1975, a deck of cryptic prompts that remains a studio staple for creatives seeking lateral solutions. His generative art installations, from 77 Million Paintings to the continuously evolving light-and-sound piece at Sydney Opera House, re-frame music and visual art as living organisms. Tech circles know him for composing Microsoft’s 1995 Windows startup chime, a seven-second micro-composition he produced on a Macintosh, and for advising the Long Now Foundation on projects addressing 10 000-year time scales.

The breadth of Eno’s collaborations underscores why he is revered: he treats the studio as an instrument, the creative process as a conversation, and sound itself as a sculptable material. Whether crafting ambient works that invite quiet reflection or producing arena anthems that dominate airwaves, he approaches each project with curiosity and a refusal to repeat himself. His career demonstrates that innovation thrives at the intersection of art, science, and playful experimentation—an ethos that continues to inspire musicians, visual artists, technologists, and thinkers worldwide.

Our Top 10 Brian Eno Songs list takes a look at the music that Brian Eno released on his solo albums. For this list, we’ll start with his first album and select songs from his solo album catalog in chronological order.

# 10 – Baby’s On Fire

Since we are doing this Brian Eno Songs list in chronological order, there is no way we could pass on listing one of the most cherished Brian Eno songs of all time. “Baby’s On Fire” was released on Brian Eno’s first album, Here Come the Warm Jets. The excellent album was released in 1974. Listen to that incredible guitar solo by Robert Fripp at the end. The video will freak you out!

“Baby’s on Fire,” was cut in September 1973 at Majestic Studios, London, with Eno producing and Chris Thomas credited for additional production. The session line-up placed Eno on vocals, VCS3 synthesiser and “snake” guitar, flanked by Paul Rudolph on bass and rhythm guitar, Marty Simon on drums, and Robert Fripp—invited from King Crimson—for the song’s celebrated three-minute lead-guitar improvisation, recorded in one take through a fuzz-soaked Hiwatt stack. Clocking in at 5:19, the track marries a locked two-chord groove to surrealist lyrics inspired by J. G. Ballard.

# 9 – Third Uncle

“Third Uncle,” the propulsive opener of side two on Brian Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy), was cut at Island Studios, London, during July–September 1974 with Eno producing alongside engineer Rhett Davies. The track captures a lean quartet: Eno on treated vocals, keyboards, and additional guitar; Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera firing rapid-strummed lead lines; bassist Brian Turrington anchoring the harmonic drone; and drummer Freddie Smith driving the song’s relentless motorik pulse. At 4:48, its two-chord assault and opaque, cut-up lyrics anticipated post-punk minimalism by several years, prompting later critics to tag it “proto punk” and “a blueprint for art-rock velocity.” Although Taking Tiger Mountain peaked modestly at No. 28 on the UK Albums Chart and missed the U.S. listings on its November 1974 Island Records release, “Third Uncle” went on to become one of Eno’s most covered compositions—most notably by Bauhaus in 1982—and a touchstone for artists exploring the intersection of repetition, texture, and controlled dissonance.

# 8 – Sky Saw

Tough to pick only one track from Brian Eno’s amazing third album entitled Another Green World. The track “Sky Saw” also featured Phil Collins on drums and John Cale on viola. Another Green World was mainly an instrumental album and marked a dramatic departure from his previous work. “Sky Saw” was recorded at Island Studios, London, during July and August 1975 with Eno and engineer Rhett Davies sharing production duties. Clocking in at 3:27, the track assembles an unlikely chamber of contributors: Phil Collins supplies clipped, polyrhythmic drums; John Cale threads a distorted, scraping viola; Percy Jones underpins the piece with fretless bass; and Eno layers processed guitars, EMS synth, and abstracted vocals mixed so low they function more as texture than narrative. The result marked a decisive pivot from the glam‐tinged art-rock of Eno’s earlier records toward the ambient and electro-acoustic collage that would define his later career.

Released by Island Records that November, Another Green World reached No. 24 on the UK Albums Chart and introduced critics to a sound world where rock instrumentation, studio experimentation, and quasi-ambient atmospheres coexisted in unprecedented balance—an aesthetic “Sky Saw” establishes in its opening moments with slash-and-drone urgency.

# 7 – The Big Ship

Well, we could not do it. We had to pick at least one more. “The Big Ship” is a legendary Brian Eno Song. We could not pass on this one. Brian Eno played all the instruments on this great track. “The Big Ship,” placed deep on side two of Brian Eno’s Another Green World, was recorded at Island Studios, London, in July–August 1975, with Eno and engineer Rhett Davies co-producing; unlike most cuts on the album, this 3:01 instrumental is a solo construction, Eno himself layering EMS synthesizer swells, Yamaha organ chords, and subtle treatments over a steadily rising pulse generated by his own drum machine and processed guitar.

Conceived as “a picture of enormous uncertainty slowly resolving into optimism,” the track provides the record’s emotional apex, its shimmering crescendos foreshadowing the long-form ambient pieces Eno would release in the following years. Issued by Island Records in November 1975, Another Green World reached No. 24 on the UK Albums Chart; although “The Big Ship” was never a single, it became a cult favorite, regularly cited as a touchstone of Eno’s transition from art-rock songwriter to architect of ambient soundscapes.

# 6 – Discreet Music

This is haunting and beautiful in the same breath. Side one of Brian Eno’s Discreet Music album should not be missed.“Discreet Music,” the 30-minute composition occupying the entire first side of Brian Eno’s 1975 LP of the same name, was recorded in September 1975 at his London home studio using an EMS Synthi AKS, graphic equaliser, and twin Revox A77 tape machines arranged in a delay-loop configuration that allowed the music to generate itself with minimal intervention. Produced solely by Eno and issued that November on Island’s Obscure Records imprint, the track marked his formal pivot from song-based art rock toward systems-driven minimalism: a slow-evolving lattice of synthetic tones designed, in his words, to be “as ignorable as it is interesting.”

Unlike the chamber-music interpretations of Pachelbel’s Canon that fill side two—performed by the Cockpit Ensemble under Gavin Bryars—“Discreet Music” features no additional musicians; every note originates from Eno’s generative rig, captured in real time and left unedited. Though the album did not trouble the charts, its radical premise—music created to enhance, rather than dominate, the listening environment—became the cornerstone of Eno’s subsequent ambient catalogue and a foundational text for modern electronic and installation artists.

# 5 – King’s Lead Hat

“King’s Lead Hat,” a manic anagrammatic salute to Talking Heads, closes the first half of Brian Eno’s Before and After Science, recorded between September 1976 and September 1977 at Basing Street, AIR, and Olympic Studios in London and released by Island Records in December 1977 (the single followed in January 1978). Produced by Eno with engineer-co-producer Rhett Davies, the 3:57 track matches Eno’s rapid-fire vocal over Phil Manzanera’s jagged guitar, Percy Jones’s fretless bass, Paul Rudolph’s additional rhythm guitar, and Simon Phillips’s hyper-precise drums, all driven by Eno’s Yamaha CS-80 sequences and EMS processing.

Issued as the album’s only UK single (Island WIP 6425), “King’s Lead Hat” failed to chart, yet critics cited its nervous energy and studio layering as a template for the emergent new-wave aesthetic—anticipating Eno’s subsequent production work with Talking Heads. The parent LP, split between uptempo side-one experiments and ambient-leaning side two, peaked at No. 26 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 171 on the Billboard 200.

# 4 – Thursday Afternoon

The ambient Brian Eno at his best. This is basically one 60 minute track that took up the entire album. Brian Eno played all the instruments. This one was released in 1985. If you have a massage chair, this is a great piece of music to just get lost in.“Thursday Afternoon,” issued by E.G. Records in September 1985, is a single uninterrupted 60-minute ambient composition conceived and produced solely by Brian Eno at his private studio in London during 1984.

Created for a video art installation of the same name, the piece was assembled from layered DX7 synthesizer textures, piano treatments and digital delay systems, then transferred directly to the compact-disc format—making the album one of the first major releases designed specifically for CD rather than vinyl. Presented without additional musicians, the work extends Eno’s generative-music methodology pioneered on Discreet Music and Music for Airports, unfolding as a slowly evolving field of harmonic washes intended for low-level playback and environmental listening. Although it registered no commercial chart positions, Thursday Afternoon drew critical notice for its technological foresight, its seamless hour-long structure, and its role in cementing Eno’s reputation as the foremost architect of long-form ambient soundscapes.

# 3 – Fractal Zoom

We jump ahead another seven years to 1992 and a return to rock with the Nerve Net album. “Fractal Zoom,” the jittery opener to Brian Eno’s 1992 album Nerve Net, was recorded between 1990 and early 1992 at Wilderness Studio in Woodbridge, Suffolk, with Eno producing and co-mixing alongside Markus Dravs. Built on a looping drum-machine lattice and distorted bass programmed by Eno, the track features Robert Fripp’s angular lead-guitar bursts, John Paul Jones on fretless bass overdubs, Benmont Tench adding Hammond organ swells, and Wayne Duchamp on treated saxophone, while Eno supplies lead and processed backing vocals.

Clocking in at 4:24, “Fractal Zoom” signalled Eno’s return to rhythm-driven art-rock after a decade focused on long-form ambient works, blending techno-inflected beats with the dissonant guitar atmospherics pioneered on his 1970s collaborations. Released by Opal/Warner in September 1992, Nerve Net reached No. 51 on the UK Albums Chart; although “Fractal Zoom” did not chart as a single, its accompanying video, directed by digital artist Hugo Heppell, reinforced the album’s forward-looking fusion of electronic texture and live improvisation.

# 2 – And Then So Clear

This one is absolutely stunning. “And Then So Clear,” the luminous opener of Brian Eno’s Another Day on Earth, was recorded at Eno’s private studios in West London between 2004 and early 2005 and self-produced in collaboration with engineer Peter Chilvers. Across 4:22, Eno sings in an elevated, almost androgynous register treated with formant-shifting software, while layering his own synthesizers, piano, and programmed percussion; Jon Hopkins contributes additional keyboards, Leo Abrahams adds textured guitar, and Nell Catchpole supplies subtly looped violin lines. The track introduces the album’s hybrid of songcraft and ambient impressionism—Eno’s first full vocal project since 1977—and became a fan-favorite despite no single release, earning critical notice for its serene melody set against digitally fractured rhythms. Another Day on Earth emerged on Virgin/Opal in June 2005, reaching No. 131 on the UK Albums Chart.

# 1 – Fickle Sun (iii) I’m Set Free’

The closing movement from Brian Eno’s 2016 album The Ship is the perfect way to end our chronological Top 10 Brian Eno Songs List. “Fickle Sun (iii) I’m Set Free,” was recorded at Eno’s private studios in Norfolk and London between 2014 and 2015 with long-time engineer Peter Chilvers co-producing and programming; the track re-imagines the Velvet Underground’s 1969 composition, featuring Eno’s own lead and harmony vocals, his EMS Synthi and digital treatments, Chilvers on keyboards and processing, Jon Hopkins supplying additional electronics, and Leo Abrahams on textural guitar. Running 5:17, the performance slows the original’s folk-rock cadence into a reverberant elegy that closes the album’s meditation on technological hubris and maritime catastrophe. The Ship reached No. 28 on the UK Albums Chart and No. 168 on the US Billboard 200