Taylor Swift and Frank Ocean can cure your 'Sunday Scaries', new study discovers

As the weekend comes to a close, a lot of people have during their working lives, with feelings of dread and anxiety on Sunday evening for the week ahead - otherwise known as the "Sunday Scaries."

Many have since taken to TikTok to share their methods to get rid of those feelings, with the hashtag #sundayscaries receiving more than 341m views.

One of the way to relax is by listening to music, and SpaSeekers.com have discovered which songs and artists are best to add to our playlists to accompany our own Sunday evening wind-down routines.

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There were over 27,000 tracks on Spotify which have been added to playlists titled “Sunday Scaries” and those of been analysed.

From this research, it was revealed that Sunday Morning’ by Maroon 5 is the song added most frequently, featuring more often than other soothing songs such as ‘Stick Season’ by Noah Kahan and ‘Cigarette Daydreams’ by Cage the Elephant.

Fleetwood Mac’s ‘Landslide’ and Frank Ocean’s ‘Lost’ complete the top five, with Ocean also being the most popular artist in the top 25, with ‘Pink + White’ and ‘White Ferrari’ also making the cut.

Ocean's music appears to relax many since three songs of his were featured more than 24 times in Sunday Scaries playlists, with Ocean also ranked as the most popular artist overall, appearing over 300 times in the playlists analysed.

Other songs that feature in the top 25 include wind-down favourites ‘Yellow’ by Coldplay and Vance Joy’s ‘Riptide’, as well as Bon Iver’s ‘Skinny Love’.

The 10 best songs to soothe the Sunday scaries, according to Spotify data

The 10 Most Popular Artists For Soothing Sunday Scaries

This research also looked at which artist featured most on Sunday Scaries playlists, and Frank Ocean was number one with 300 appearances among the 199 playlists analysed.

Ocean’s atmospheric blend of R&B, soul and hip-hop has long been the subject of critical acclaim, but with the artist last releasing music in 2016, it’s unknown as to when fans may get some more tracks to build out playlists further.

Country pop icon Taylor Swift, having been featured 294 times in the playlists - although she has upbeat pop hits, her recent albums ‘Midnights’, ‘Evermore’ and ‘Folklore’ have taken on a more whimsical folk style, which fit hand-in-hand with the dreamlike feelings many of us look to cultivate on a Sunday evening.

Rapper Mac Miller followed in third at 256 features, with SZA and Harry Styles rounding off the top five in 4th and 5th places respectively, with 238 and 216 inclusions apiece on Sunday Scaries playlists.

“Unfortunately, the Sunday Scaries are something that many people experience on a regular basis, and they do put a damper on otherwise restful and relaxing weekends," Jason Goldberg, Director at SpaSeekers.com commented.

The last thing we want for a Sunday evening is to feel full of stress and anxiety, so creating a routine to help you stay calm can be very helpful.

He added: “As well as creating a playlist to help reduce your stress levels, activities such as meditation and journalling, or even things like swimming and gardening, can be very effective for helping you wind down on a Sunday afternoon.

"Equally, spending time on a Friday planning your next work week can also help you to feel more prepared ahead of Monday morning and help to put the scaries to bed.”

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