What does Paris sound like? Is it Yann Tiersen's stereotypical accordion drifting over the Seine, or Ashley Park’s glossy pop ballad Mon Soleil from Emily in Paris? Ahead of Art Basel Paris, we asked members of the local team to share the tracks that capture the spirit of the French capital. The result is not a definitive playlist – Paris would never tolerate something so pragmatic. It is a messy collective portrait, produced from individual desires, tastes, and memories, representing different eras, arrondissements, and cultures.

If you’re arriving by plane, before you touch down at Charles de Gaulle, tune into the city with Air’s La Femme d’argent . Elegant and floating, it belongs to the moment when Paris is still a mere promise, loaded with unrealistic expectations. Now in the taxi, the Grand Palais passing by your window, what could be more fitting than Joe Dassin’s timeless Les Champs-Élysées?

The playlist then moves through auteur cinema soundtrack, jazz, and Saint-Germain-des-Prés. Miles Davis’s Générique from Louis Malle’s film Ascenseur pour l’échafaud (1958) summons the capital in crime noir black and white. Sidney Bechet’s Petite Fleur offers a gentler ode to the Rive Gauche, while Joséphine Baker’s J’ai deux amours and Dalida’s Laissez-moi danser evoke a Paris of glamour, exile, and reinvention. Hemingway called the city “a moveable feast” – Dalida turned it into a discotheques.

If you need spiritual support, head to Père-Lachaise, with Jim Morrison’s Feast of Friends as your soundtrack. Niagara’s Quand la ville dort belongs to the side of the city that never sleeps, while Juliette Gréco’s Sous le ciel de Paris recalls its quieter streets. Clara Luciani’s Respire encore, L’Impératrice’s Paris, and Jungle’s The Wave take the playlist into the present day: nightlife, dancing, and the collective energy of fair week.

A new day dawns. Oklou and underscores’ harvest sky is gritty, chaotic, and exhilarating – excellent for an early morning gym session. Havana D’Primera’s Después de un Beso evokes people gathering after work by the Seine, at Rosa Bonheur, or at Cabaret Sauvage. The mood changes again with Âme Strong’s Tout est bleu, capturing the blue hour after a long and sultry day. Then onto Cerrone’s Supernature, a disco anthem of hedonist excess.

Elsewhere, built around a sample from Serge Gainsbourg and Brigitte Bardot’s Bonnie and Clyde, MC Solaar’s Nouveau Western folds French pop mythology into 1990s hip-hop. Charles Aznavour’s Comme ils disent and Vincent Delerm’s Quatrième de couverture offer a precious moment of solitude and introspection.

Stuck in traffic after a full day at the Grand Palais? Daft Punk’s Veridis Quo is the ideal track to wind down to. French Touch remains a defining Parisian music genre, but Justice’s Stress pushes that lineage somewhere more extreme: nervous and stylish, it captures a city that is permanently 15 minutes late but still looks good. Biga*Ranx’s Paris Is a Bitch says out loud what the rest of the playlist is thinking. And if your private chauffeur hasn’t shown up, Philippe Katerine’s Paris-Vélib’ turns the bike ride into something joyful and absurd.

There is much more. Fair week has its own soundtrack: the hum between booths, conversations at museum and gallery openings, laughter at dinners, tears in hotel rooms. Press play. And if the whole thing feels too much, Édith Piaf has the only acceptable response: Non, je ne regrette rien. See you at the Grand Palais!