Thanksgiving is an underrated holiday. You don’t have to buy presents for people, you have an excuse — an obligation, really — to eat copious amounts of delicious food, and there’s no religion involved, so nobody feels left out. And yet for some reason, very few people have written songs about America’s favorite feast. There’s Adam Sandler’s “Thanksgiving Song” and…well, that’s about it.
In the absence of classic Thanksgiving tunes, I put together a playlist of my own. You can listen to it on TIME’s Spotify account here. There are songs about food (The Kinks’ “Maximum Consumption”), songs about returning home (Simon & Garfunkel’s “Homeward Bound”) and songs about being thankful for something (Sly & the Family Stone’s “Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Again)” counts, right?). The playlist is an hour long, so while it might not keep you company during the entire time that your turkey is baking — those suckers take forever — it’ll definitely come in handy as you preparing some side dishes. Think of it as TIME’s way of saying thank you for reading.
As I started to create the list, I noticed that it was tending towards country, blues and classic rock, so I went all in on that. I tried to make the songs flow together, and as a result I left off some obvious choices because they didn’t fit with the others. (As much as I love them, Blondie’s “Eat to the Beat” and Def Leopard’s “Pure Some Sugar On Me,” didn’t make the cut.)
Take a listen and let me know if there are any songs I should add.
