Back in 2013, Pitchfork staffers turned their ears to “That One Part”—i.e. a specific moment in a song that eternally lingers in your mind, that one instrumental line or chorus shout or casual ad-lib that really gets its claws in. We all have them. Five years later, it felt right to celebrate those moments again.

Arab Strap: “New Birds” (live version from Mad for Sadness), at 3:22

“New Birds” is more of a winding, drunken ramble than a song. Vocalist Aidan Moffat speaks his story rather than singing it, unspooling a yarn about running into an old girlfriend (and, likely, his first love) at the pub, after not seeing her for years. At first they avoid each other but, a few pints later, they pause to say hello and bring each other up to speed on their new lives and their new homes and their new partners. As they talk, it becomes clear that they’re both interested in going home together, and there’s a delicious tension that builds in the music while they consider the implications of it all. Finally, at the 3:22 mark, the music falls away except for the bass; they’re looking at each other in the cold, their now-visible breath gathering in front of their faces, and they realize they have a decision to make. As the narrator’s verdict comes down (no spoilers) the guitar melody kicks in and quickly builds to a screaming blast of distortion, the drama of the words shaped into blistering sound. There’s a world of possibility in that brief moment between the music falling away and then roaring back; you really sense that two lives that could be forever changed, and every time I play it and hit that point, I start breathing more quietly to make sure I take it all in. –Mark Richardson, Executive Editor

Georges Delerue, performed by the London Sinfonietta: “Catherine et Jim,” at 1:09

There are some musical moments so special, so uncynical, you have to save them for when your life has risen to meet them. So I police how often I’m allowed to play the London Sinfonietta’s gorgeous amble through “Catherine et Jim,” from the composer Georges Delerue’s score for the French New Wave classic Jules et Jim. In a song cycle that veers from austere waltzes to bawdy can-cans, “Catherine et Jim” is its idyllic pause—a gentle motif for the fleeting, fragile moment where two romantics recognize themselves in each other.

Conducted by Hugh Wolff, the London Sinfonietta approaches “Catherine et Jim” with grand designs; their dynamics ebb and burst florally from the shadows, balancing the strings’ libidinous yearning with the woodwinds’ shuddering intensity. When the violins glide into that irrepressible melody at 1:09, they capture a swell of hope and happy surrender so all-consuming, I must save the part for when my heart already feels too full and the world too exquisite. This moment has joined me under bougainvillea trees in Argentina, meandering through a snowfall in Iceland, raising a hand to the mist of Victoria Falls. It translates everywhere beautiful, and suggests that can be anywhere. –Stacey Anderson, Senior Editor

Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers: “Moanin’,” at 4:01

The altissimo G is very difficult to play on saxophone. There’s a kind of zen art to it—the note will come to you when you are ready, maybe. For many young saxophone players, it’s unattainable; in my years of playing the sax, I never mastered it. Sometimes, though, I would sit in the practice room after high school and transcribe sax solos from jazz records. One was Benny Golson’s from Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers’ 1959 hard bop standard “Moanin’,” one of my favorite solos in jazz. Maybe it’s because, having tracked it by hand, I know it intimately, where every note belongs on the staff and the approximate rhythm Golson played it that day in the studio in 1959.