Lianne La Havas is one of those rare artists who makes you feel everything at once — warmth, longing, joy, and a beautiful kind of ache that only the best music can conjure. Her voice is extraordinary, rich and supple, capable of whispered intimacy one moment and soaring emotional weight the next. Whether you’re discovering her catalog for the first time or returning to revisit these songs on headphones late at night, the experience always feels deeply personal. Here are the 20 best songs of Lianne La Havas, drawn from her critically acclaimed studio albums and beloved fan favorites — a journey through one of contemporary soul music’s most treasured voices.
Lost & Found
“Lost & Found” is the triumphant title track from her 2019 self-titled album’s predecessor, released in 2012 as part of her debut Is Your Love Big Enough?. Actually, it stands as a central piece of her catalog that perfectly encapsulates her artistry: fingerpicked acoustic guitar layered with warm, understated production and vocals that feel like they’re being sung just for you. The lyrics explore themes of self-discovery and emotional reckoning, delivered with a maturity that belied how young she was when she wrote it. On headphones, the delicate interplay between the guitar and her voice is nothing short of stunning — one of those songs you replay just to catch another nuance.
Elusive
From her debut album, “Elusive” captures Lianne at her most vulnerable, chasing something just out of reach — maybe love, maybe herself. The production is sparse and breathtakingly intimate, built around guitar work that echoes classic folk-soul traditions while feeling entirely contemporary. Her phrasing on the chorus is a masterclass in restraint; she never oversings, letting the emotional weight come through in the spaces between notes. This is the kind of track that lives in your chest long after it’s finished playing.
Forget
“Forget” showcases Lianne’s ability to transform heartbreak into something luminous. The track builds from a quiet, contemplative opening into a full emotional bloom, her voice gaining power and urgency as the arrangement opens up around her. There’s a particular moment in the bridge where the instrumentation pulls back and she’s left almost alone — it’s one of those shivers-down-the-spine moments that reminds you why live music and great recorded music share the same DNA. The production feels organic and unhurried, never rushing toward resolution.
Age
“Age” is a gorgeous meditation on time, growth, and the softening that comes with experience. Lianne’s vocal performance here is remarkably controlled yet deeply emotive, threading a needle between wisdom and wistfulness. The arrangement draws from classic soul influences while feeling unmistakably modern, with subtle rhythm guitar and understated percussion giving the track a grounded, earthy feel. It’s the kind of song that means something different to you at 22 than it does at 35 — a rare quality in contemporary songwriting.
Au Cinéma
With “Au Cinéma,” Lianne takes a cinematic turn — the title itself tells you everything about the dreamy, almost film-score quality of this track. The guitar work is particularly evocative here, drawing out long melodic lines that feel like establishing shots in a French New Wave film. Her vocals float above the arrangement with an ethereal quality, conjuring images of late evenings, flickering projector light, and the bittersweet feeling of watching someone else’s story unfold. If there’s a better song for a quiet evening with a glass of wine, it hasn’t been written yet.
No Room for Doubt (feat. Willy Mason)
“No Room for Doubt” is a stunning collaboration with folk singer-songwriter Willy Mason, and the chemistry between these two voices is undeniable. Mason’s rougher, earthier tone provides the perfect counterpoint to Lianne’s silky precision — together they create a tension-and-release dynamic that makes the song feel genuinely conversational, like overhearing two people working through something real and important. The production strips everything back to essentials, letting the vocals do all the heavy lifting. For fans of great soul and folk songs, this track is an essential listen.
Is Your Love Big Enough?
The title track of her 2012 debut album, “Is Your Love Big Enough?” announced Lianne La Havas to the world with complete confidence. The song asks a deceptively simple question but unfolds with layers of emotional complexity — the arrangements grow and recede like breath, and her voice navigates the dynamics with stunning control. It peaked on UK charts and earned her comparisons to Nina Simone and Erykah Badu, though her sound is deeply her own. Hearing it now, years later, it still feels like a genuine arrival rather than a beginning.
Unstoppable
“Unstoppable” is arguably the most joyful song in Lianne’s catalog, a buoyant, groove-driven track that feels like sunlight coming through a window on the first warm morning of the year. The rhythm section here is particularly infectious, propelling the track forward with an energy that contrasts beautifully with her more introspective material. Her vocal delivery is looser and more playful than usual, and you can hear the smile in her voice. This is the Lianne La Havas song you put on when you need to be reminded that music can just feel good.
Green & Gold
“Green & Gold” is, for many listeners, the definitive Lianne La Havas song — and it’s hard to argue with that. Released from her debut album, the track is built on one of the most beautiful guitar riffs in modern soul music, a rolling, hypnotic figure that anchors everything else in place. The lyrics are rich with nature imagery and longing, and her voice on the chorus reaches for something transcendent and finds it. It’s been featured in countless playlists, TV syncs, and those personal “desert island” lists that people actually mean. Whether you’re hearing it through a top-tier pair of high-quality headphones or a car stereo, the song delivers.
What You Don’t Do
“What You Don’t Do,” the lead single from her second album Blood, is a masterpiece of romantic soul writing. The production here steps up considerably from her debut — richer, fuller, with a lush string arrangement that lifts the chorus into genuine emotional territory. The lyric is clever and specific in the way the best love songs are: it’s not about what’s there but what isn’t, the absence and consideration that defines real care. When this track came out, it confirmed that the promise of her debut was fully realized.
Wonderful
“Wonderful” does exactly what its title promises — it is, simply and completely, wonderful. Built on a shimmering guitar progression and driven by a rhythm that feels almost like a heartbeat, the song is a celebration of connection and presence. Lianne’s vocal here has a particular warmth and roundness, a fullness that suggests deep contentment rather than performance. There’s a looseness to the arrangement, too — moments where the instruments seem to breathe together — that gives the track a live, in-the-room quality that studio production sometimes sacrifices.
Tokyo
“Tokyo” has a gorgeous sense of displacement and longing built into its very structure — the melody drifts and circles like jet-lagged thoughts at 3am in an unfamiliar time zone. The production is notably more textured here, with layers of guitar and subtle electronic elements creating a shimmer that feels genuinely atmospheric. Lianne’s vocals take on a slightly more distant quality, as if singing from across an ocean, which perfectly suits the subject matter. It’s a standout for headphone listening, where the spatial production really opens up.
Midnight
“Midnight” captures that liminal, slightly unreal quality of the late hours when feelings are closest to the surface and filters fall away. The track is among the more minimal in her catalog, built on a quiet, cyclical guitar figure and her voice doing the emotional work almost entirely alone. The restraint here is striking — in lesser hands this would feel bare, but Lianne turns the space into atmosphere. It’s the kind of song that demands to be heard at the hour it describes.
Ghost
“Ghost” is exactly as advertised — a haunting, spectral piece of soul music that lingers long after playback ends. The arrangement creates space for unease and longing to coexist, with guitar tones that feel slightly suspended, unresolved. Her vocal performance navigates the emotional ambiguity with remarkable precision — there’s grief here, but also something like peace, an acceptance that makes the song feel fully realized rather than incomplete. Fans of emotionally complex soul music will rank this among her very best.
Bittersweet
“Bittersweet” holds both poles of its title in perfect balance — it’s genuinely moving and genuinely warm at once. The production has an almost nostalgic quality, drawing on classic soul and R&B production techniques while maintaining Lianne’s distinctly modern sensibility. Her phrasing on this track is particularly sophisticated, hitting certain syllables with unexpected emphasis that makes familiar emotional territory feel freshly observed. This is the kind of song you pull up when you need to feel something specific that you can’t quite name.
Paper Thin
“Paper Thin” explores vulnerability with a directness that takes real courage as a songwriter. The sparse production — primarily acoustic guitar and voice — puts everything on the line, leaving nowhere to hide, and Lianne doesn’t try to. The lyrical writing here is among her most precise, with imagery that conveys emotional fragility without self-pity. There’s a dignity in the performance that transforms the vulnerability into something empowering rather than diminishing. For those building a carefully considered playlist of soul essentials, this track earns its place.
Can’t Fight
“Can’t Fight” has an irresistible pull — a groove-laden, warmly produced track that captures the surrender to feeling with real energy and joy. The rhythm guitar work is particularly satisfying here, interlocking with the bass line in a way that gives the track genuine forward momentum. Her vocal delivery leans into the song’s central conceit with playful commitment, making the emotional surrender feel like liberation rather than defeat. It’s one of the more upbeat entries in her catalog and benefits enormously from being played loud.
Read My Mind
“Read My Mind” is a sophisticated examination of the communication gaps that open up between people who care about each other. The arrangement is warm but laced with a subtle tension, reflecting the lyrical content with real craft. Lianne’s vocal here moves between pleading and assertion in a way that feels psychologically true — the frustration of wanting to be understood without having to explain everything is captured with precision. The production suits the theme perfectly: lush but never comfortable, beautiful but slightly unsettled.
Please Don’t Make Me Cry
A cover that became something entirely her own, “Please Don’t Make Me Cry” demonstrates Lianne’s gift for inhabiting material — she doesn’t so much perform this song as she lives in it. The emotional stakes feel completely genuine, her voice at its most naked and unguarded. The sparse, intimate production frames the vocal without crowding it, and the result is one of those performances that reminds you why great singing — not technically perfect singing, but emotionally truthful singing — is one of the most powerful things in music. To fully appreciate the nuance in her vocal textures, pairing this with a quality set of earbuds calibrated for vocal detail is genuinely worthwhile.
Weird Fishes
Lianne’s cover of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes/Arpeggi” became a defining moment in her career and in the broader conversation about what cover songs can achieve. Released as part of a Spotify session, the track strips away the original’s atmospheric electronics and reimagines the material as intimate, guitar-led soul music — and remarkably, it works completely on its own terms. Her voice handles Thom Yorke’s phrasing with both respect and genuine transformation, and the guitar arrangement is breathtaking in its simplicity. It introduced countless Radiohead fans to her work and confirmed her status as an artist capable of making anything her own.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Lianne La Havas best known for?
Lianne La Havas is best known for her distinctive blend of soul, folk, and R&B, built around fingerpicked acoustic guitar and a voice of extraordinary range and emotional depth. Her debut album Is Your Love Big Enough? (2012) earned widespread critical acclaim and fan devotion, while her 2020 self-titled album was hailed as one of the finest records of that year. Songs like “Green & Gold,” “What You Don’t Do,” and her celebrated cover of Radiohead’s “Weird Fishes” are among her most recognized and beloved works.
How many studio albums has Lianne La Havas released?
As of 2025, Lianne La Havas has released three studio albums: Is Your Love Big Enough? (2012), Blood (2015), and Lianne La Havas (2020). Each album has been met with critical praise and has built her reputation as one of the most singular voices in contemporary soul and R&B. Her self-titled third album debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart.
What genre is Lianne La Havas?
Lianne La Havas occupies an intersection of several genres: soul, neo-soul, folk, and R&B are all present in her music, with jazz influences surfacing in her harmonic choices and vocal phrasing. She’s often grouped with the wave of British soul artists who emerged in the 2010s, though her guitar-centric sound and folk-inflected songwriting set her apart from many of her contemporaries.
Is Lianne La Havas a guitarist?
Yes — and guitar is not incidental to her sound but absolutely central to it. She plays acoustic and electric guitar with real skill and distinctiveness, and her fingerpicking style is a defining element of her sonic identity. The guitar arrangements on her recordings are an integral part of what makes her music feel so intimate and organic, rather than a backdrop for vocals.
What is the best Lianne La Havas album to start with?
For new listeners, her 2020 self-titled album Lianne La Havas is arguably the best entry point — it represents her most fully realized artistic vision, with lush production, sophisticated songwriting, and vocal performances at the peak of her powers. That said, her debut Is Your Love Big Enough? contains some of her most beloved songs and captures a raw, intimate energy that’s also deeply compelling. Either album makes for an excellent starting point.
Has Lianne La Havas won any awards?
Lianne La Havas has received significant recognition throughout her career. She won the Critics’ Choice Award at the BRIT Awards in 2012, which helped launch her to wider public attention. She has also received Grammy nominations and has been consistently cited by critics as one of the most important voices in contemporary British soul music. Her 2020 self-titled album appeared on numerous “best of the year” lists across major publications.