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The 11 best Gary Barlow songs

Dropping bangers, ballads – and a million love songs – Gary Barlow’s Songbook Tour 2025 could be the greatest day of our lives…


Robbie was the clown. Mark was the man-baby. Howard was the body. Jason was the gymnast. But if you’re scanning a vintage Take That poster, you’d have to cast Gary Barlow as the genius. When the pub chat turns to boy bands – and how they’re all prancing drones spewing out committee-penned pop – his name alone is all it takes to destroy your mate’s argument. And by last orders, even the haters will be howling along to ‘Back For Good’.

For three decades, Barlow’s songs have soundtracked it all: our first snogs, breakups, holidays, graduations, reunions, office parties, marriages, baby showers and too many karaoke nights to count. Line up his hits and you could see them from space; his back catalogue beating any of the achingly hip artistes on the cover of Mojo. And while the bulk of Barlow’s best material has naturally come within Take That, a supernova this prolific can’t help moonlighting. From solo albums and movie soundtracks to West End musicals and guest-writes for Donny Osmond, Marc Almond and more, this six-time Ivor Novello Award-winner knocks out all-time classics like most people make cups of tea. 

No wonder Barlow’s Songbook Tour 2025 is one of our hottest tickets right now. And here are 11 of the moments we’ll be waiting for on the front row. 

11. ‘A Million Love Songs’

(Take That & Party, 1992)

There’s nothing to make you feel slightly inadequate like the revelation that Barlow had already written ‘A Million Love Songs’ by the age of fifteen. A staggeringly mature piano ballad, full of bruised yearning and worthy of George Michael at the peak of his powers, it was the highlight of the demo tape that Barlow handed to future Take That manager Nigel Martin-Smith. When the gaping music exec finally accepted it wasn’t a cover, he identified this brush-haired kid from Cheshire as a world-class songwriting talent, and built the entire band around him.

10. ‘Pray’

(Everything Changes, 1993)

The verse is sheer agony: the sound of a man realising he’s lost the best girl he’ll ever have. But it’s the moment when Barlow’s vocal sails up the octaves to that stone-cold chorus that makes ‘Pray’ a classic, as thrilling today as when you first heard it at your school disco circa ’93, slick with hair gel and hopped up on Hooch. Throw in an artsy, erotic video – with the topless band pouting and preening like aftershave models – and Take That’s imperious phase was up and running.  

9. ‘Never Forget’

(Nobody Else, 1995)

As pop’s most generous genius, Barlow had a habit of handing his greatest songs to his bandmates. So Mark Owen got ‘Babe’, Robbie Williams got ‘Everything Changes’ – and Howard Donald was gifted lead vocals on this deathless chant-and-clap classic from Take That’s final ’90s album. With the line-up already wobbling – Williams quit during the song’s promotion – ‘Never Forget’ was meta before the term existed, toasting the band’s glorious early run while acknowledging that nothing lasts forever. Just make sure you do the chorus clap in the right place at the Songbook shows.

8. ‘Forever Love’

(Open Road, 1997)

Barlow was always a balladeer at heart, hence this slow-burn, tear-streaked torch song released as his debut solo single when the dust settled from Take That. It was hardly the comeback we were expecting – and it made the twenty-something singer-songwriter seem like an elder statesmen compared to Robbie’s anarchic cover of George Michael’s ‘Freedom’ (also released in July 1996). But ‘Forever Love’ has aged beautifully, its ode to a life partner sung with a heart and purity that can’t be faked.  

7. ‘Patience’

https://open.spotify.com/track/4DxybsoSiMUW0JI2oM0SSN?si=a2d6573e4a1d4047

(Beautiful World, 2006)

The wilderness years were tough on Barlow. Bad enough watching bitter rival Robbie Williams go stratospheric, worse still that the songwriter’s own career had collapsed, with Barlow writing in his memoirs of a grim period spent “over-eating in my pop star mansion, scared to go out of the gates, terrified of my piano”. ‘Patience’ marked the moment it all came good, the reunited Take That announcing Phase Two with this wistful anthem, its chorus soaring to places that only Barlow can reach.   

6. ‘Greatest Day’

(The Circus, 2008)

Is there a more electrifying opening salvo in modern pop than the piano-clanging call to arms on ‘The Circus’s lead single? The credits will tell you that ‘Greatest Day’ was written by the whole Take That line-up (reportedly in less than four hours). But you sense the master’s touch on the skyscraping melody and urgent, idealistic lyric.       

5. ‘Rule The World’

(Stardust soundtrack, 2007)

When director Matthew Vaughn tapped Take That to soundtrack his 2007 fantasy film Stardust, the band turned in this aching us-against-them ballad, which deserves its status as the band’s best-selling single. When Barlow hits the ‘stars-are-coming-out-tonight’ climax this spring, your entire body will be one giant goosebump.   

4. ‘Dare’

(Calendar Girls soundtrack, 2015)

As a man whose songwriting talent sprawls in every direction, it was only a matter of time before Barlow took on the West End. If you stream just one track from his musical theatre oeuvre, make it this Calendar Girls showstopper, whose twinkling, bruised-but-not-beaten melody captures the mischief and mortality at the heart of Tim Firth’s tale of silver strippers.       

3. ‘Sing’

(Single, 2012)

Creating an original track for Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012, admitted Barlow, was “probably the biggest challenge I’ve taken on musically”. Yet he rose to the daunting commission, composing ‘Sing’s stately melody in a single afternoon with co-writer Andrew Lloyd Webber, then scouring the Commonwealth countries for 200 guest vocalists. Epic is an understatement – and Her Majesty reportedly loved it.  

2. ‘Let Me Go’

(Since I Saw You Last, 2013)

Never the most open interviewee, Barlow had always revealed himself most through his music – and this bitter-sweet, country-flavoured strummer was a moment so personal you almost felt you shouldn’t be listening. The inspiration, of course, was the songwriter’s beloved stillborn daughter Poppy, with the songwriter reflecting that he hoped it might keep her “flame” burning bright.     

1. ‘Back For Good’

(Nobody Else, 1995)

In a time before Spotify, when the Top 40 was king, there wasn’t a man, woman or child on the planet who couldn’t croon the somersaulting chorus to Take That’s all-conquering ballad of 1995. It’s perhaps the ultimate example of Barlow’s brilliance as a writer, managing to be both minutely observed (revisit the famous line about a departed lover’s “lipstick mark still on your coffee cup”) and utterly universal (topping the charts in no fewer than 31 countries).  

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7lfB1ZCwzk0EZFO59e5rBp?si=7cdc775b098a43fb

Gary Barlow brings his Songbook Tour 2025 to venues around the UK from 17 April. Find tickets here.