Tell us why you like it. And specify the artist/version if it’s an old chestnut like Auld Lang Syne. Extra credit given for good, obscure songs.
You mean there is more than one? (Auld Lang Syne, of course.)
I wouldn’t lump it into the “kick ass” category by any means, but I recall that Barry Manilow did “Another New Year’s Eve” back in the 70’s.
Well, right off the top of my head there’s What Are You Doing New Years? and The Happy New Years Blues (an obscure ditty that you can hear on the Broadway Christmas CD).
Prince’s 1999 always gets play in our house at midnight New Year’s.
While hardly traditional, one song will always have a special New Year’s place in my heart.
December 31, 1998 a friend and I went to Atlanta for a New Year’s Eve show by Gov’t Mule. The opening act was the Derek Trucks Band and lots of “special guests” were on hand. Unknown to the audience, the show was being recorded and was released in '99 as Gov’t Mule - LIVE…With A Little Help From Our Friends, both a two CD and a four CD “Collector’s Edition”. (A milestone in Man’s cultural development, but I digress…)
At midnight, the band took a couple of minutes to celebrate (baloons falling, champagne corks popping, friends and lovers kissing, all that stuff). The first song of our New Year…
Black Sabbath’s War Pigs!!!
:dubious:
:eek:
Not exactly a kick-ass song, but there’s also Dan Folgelberg’s Another Auld Lang Syne.
I agree with stuyguy and “The Happy New Year Blues.” Who knew that Vicki Lewis of News Radio could belt out a blues tune like that?
ABBA did “Happy New Year” and a Spanish cover, Sunset Boulevard has “The Perfect Year” with an excellent German version by Helen Schiedner as “Die Gutest Jahr.”
But the best is Jim Laev’s “The Next New Year.” I can’t find a link to the lyrics, but the version the cast of “Caberet” does on the first 1999 Carols for A Cure CD defines the term “Kick-Ass”:
The next new year is happening right now.
The next new year I can start over again somehow
The next new year it’s like having steak
Or maybe tak-
ing on the whole damn cow.
Cause the best part of the next new year is it’s here.
One for every day it is here.
I vote the best “What Are You Doing This New Years Eve” to be Rufus Wainwright’s, as heard years ago in a GAP commercial snippet, and just finally released in full on his mother’s The McGarrigle Christmas Hour.
I’ve been listening to a lot of U2 lately, so I nomimate their song “New Year’s Day”…kind of a grim song, but Starbuck’s had it in their holiday mix, I noticed.
“The New Year” by Death Cab for Cutie.
This thread is dying from post-Christmas Day neglect.
Give me the paddles. Clear!
BUMP!
Ella Fitzgerald’s version of “What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve” just started playing on my iPod, and it’s the song I came into the thread to vote for. Creepy. 
[sings along]
Maybe I’m crazy to suppose
I’d ever be the one you chose
Out of the thousand invitations you’ll receive
Ah, but in case I stand one little chance
Here comes the jackpot question in advance
What are you doing New Year’s, New Year’s Eve?
[/sings along]
I love this song! I also have Harry Connick Jr.'s version of it, but no one beats Ella. 
The Mike Flowers Pops covered this one well.