Best Turnstile Songs Ranked — The Definitive Guide

Glow On is the definitive Turnstile song and the best single piece of evidence for what makes the band extraordinary. Under two minutes long. Opens hard, drops into something almost pretty, comes back heavier, ends before it has worn out its welcome. The economy of the thing is part of what makes it so effective — nothing is wasted, every second is doing something, and the transition between the gentle melodic section and the returning riff creates a dynamic contrast that larger, more elaborate songs spend five minutes trying to achieve.

Brendan Yates' vocal performance is at its most warm and direct here — the aggression is present but the dominant feeling is openness, almost generosity. That quality — a hardcore song that feels like an embrace rather than a challenge — is rare and genuinely difficult to achieve without sounding either soft or dishonest. Turnstile do it completely naturally, and Glow On is the moment where that comes through most clearly.

The song has been used in everything from sports broadcasts to film trailers, which is both a measure of its accessibility and a testament to how well the energy translates outside the hardcore context it was built in. It is the track that most consistently introduces new listeners to the band and the one that most consistently makes those listeners want to hear more.

Mystery is the most immediately melodic and radio-shaped track on GLOW ON and the song that went furthest in demonstrating Turnstile's ability to write something that exists in the same space as alternative pop without compromising any of their identity. The guitar hook is one of the best in their catalogue — immediately memorable on first listen and still rewarding on the fiftieth — and Yates' delivery achieves the rare quality of sounding both relaxed and urgent at the same time.

The production on this track is particularly sophisticated. The interplay between the guitars, the way the low end sits under the melody, and the space left in the arrangement create something that feels genuinely atmospheric rather than just heavy and fast. It is the track that most clearly shows what Turnstile can do when they slow down slightly and let a song breathe — not softening it, but opening it up.

Holiday is the most straightforwardly joyful song Turnstile have recorded and the track that best shows how far they can push the warmth in their music without losing the physicality that makes them a hardcore band. The verse is tight and driving, the chorus opens into something genuinely euphoric, and the overall feeling of the song is of pure release — the kind of music that makes you want to throw your arms up rather than throw your fists.

It appeared prominently in the cultural conversation around GLOW ON's release as one of the tracks most clearly demonstrating the band's ability to cross genre boundaries without a seam showing. The hook is big enough to work on mainstream radio, the energy is intense enough to work in a pit. The co-existence of those two things is what Turnstile do, and Holiday is one of their cleanest executions of it.

Underwater Boi is the track that best represents Time & Space at its most distinctive — the album where Turnstile first made their genre-crossing intentions fully explicit, and this song is its most memorable and most emotionally resonant moment. The combination of the hard-edged verse and the floating, almost shoegaze-influenced chorus creates a dynamic contrast that anticipates everything GLOW ON would later perfect.

The title and its associated imagery — being submerged, muted, carried by something larger than yourself — gives the song a specific emotional texture that stands out within the catalogue. It is the track that most clearly shows the band processing interior psychological states rather than expressing outward aggression, and the honesty of that approach gives it a staying power that more conventionally energetic hardcore songs often lack.

Big Smile opens Time & Space with arguably the best opening sixty seconds of any Turnstile album — a riff that declares immediate intent, a vocal delivery that is simultaneously aggressive and inviting, and a hook that lodges itself in the memory without any apparent effort. It is the track that proved Time & Space was going to be something different within the hardcore landscape.

The song's energy is the closest Turnstile come to pure hardcore without the genre-blending that defines their more celebrated work — but even here the production is wider and more textured than the genre average, and the emotional quality of Yates' performance is warmer than the standard hardcore vocal. It is a perfect introduction to the band for listeners who want to understand the foundation before the more expansive work.

Drop is the heaviest and most aggressive track on GLOW ON and important in the context of the album because it demonstrates that the warmth and melody of tracks like Glow On and Mystery are not the band abandoning their roots but choosing when to deploy them. When Turnstile want to hit hard, they still hit harder than most bands operating in any adjacent genre.

The track has a brutality that is refreshing amid the more expansive material around it on the album — the riff is dense and fast, Yates' delivery drops the warmth in favour of something more primal, and the overall dynamic suggests a band that has total control over its tonal range rather than one that has permanently softened. For fans who came to Turnstile through the heavier early material and were uncertain about the direction of GLOW ON, Drop is the reassurance.

T.L.C. (Turnstile Love Connection) is the most stylistically adventurous track on GLOW ON and the clearest indication that the band's musical appetite extends well beyond the rock and hardcore tradition. The funk and R&B influences that run through the track — the groove in the bass, the rhythm guitar approach, the vocal phrasing — are fully integrated rather than grafted on, suggesting that these are genuine musical influences rather than crossover gestures.

The track was also the most discussed on the album for its departure from expectation — a song from a hardcore band that could comfortably sit on a playlist alongside D'Angelo or Prince without sounding displaced. That versatility is not something many bands in Turnstile's world can claim, and T.L.C. is the most explicit statement of it.

Fazed Out is the most atmospheric track on GLOW ON and the clearest example of the band's shoegaze and dream pop influences making themselves fully felt. The Blood Orange (Dev Hynes) feature brings an R&B melodic sensibility to a production that is otherwise hazy, reverb-drenched and emotionally suspended — the combination creates something genuinely beautiful in a way that most hardcore-adjacent music does not attempt.

It is the track that most surprised critics who came to the album expecting something more conventionally abrasive, and it is the track that most expanded the range of listeners who could find a way into the Turnstile sound. Dev Hynes and Brendan Yates seem like an unlikely collaboration on paper; in practice the track feels completely natural, which is a mark of both parties' musicality.

fly again is the essential early Turnstile track and the best argument for Nonstop Feeling as a foundational album for understanding where the band's sound came from. The song has the raw, unadorned energy of their hardcore roots — the production is leaner, the arrangements are tighter, the emotional warmth is present but less fully developed than on later material — but the fundamental qualities that would make GLOW ON exceptional are all there in seed form.

For listeners who discovered the band through the more expansive later albums and want to trace the lineage back, this is the most direct path. It shows the band before the influences were fully integrated, which is a different kind of interesting: you can hear the elements that would later combine into something new while they still exist in their separate states.

New Heart Design closes Time & Space in a way that feels genuinely earned — slower, more meditative, with a sense of arrival and resolution that most hardcore albums do not attempt. The title is a statement of intent: something being rebuilt, redesigned, made new. In a catalogue that is consistently about openness and the willingness to feel things fully, the closing track of the transitional album is where that philosophy is most clearly articulated.

It also shows Yates' lyric writing at its most direct and unguarded, which is saying something in a catalogue that is consistently more emotionally honest than the genre average. The song rounds out this ranking because it represents the thoughtful, reflective dimension of Turnstile that exists alongside the physical energy — the part that makes them worth listening to repeatedly rather than just experiencing live.