Songs Like Wandering Star by Portishead
By Dan Cohen · Published 2026-09-05
Wandering Star reads intensity 60, dynamic range 8, 90 BPM, complex texture, soft vocals, moderate shifts. Three mood tags: cathartic, heavy, melancholy. Three records share all three — and none of them is from the 1990s.
The full three-tag matches
- Smokestack Lightning — Howlin’ Wolf (1962). Intensity 61, dynamic range 8, 90 BPM — the seed’s exact tempo, one point of intensity apart, and moderate shifts like the seed. It is the closest thing to Wandering Star we have, by a distance.
- You’re Gonna Miss Me — 13th Floor Elevators (1966). Intensity 60, dynamic range 7, 120 BPM.
- Paint It Black — The Rolling Stones (1966). Intensity 64, dynamic range 8, 140 BPM.
Bristol trip-hop was built from records like these — and our columns, which know nothing about sampling or scenes, put them in the same place anyway.
The wider band, all at intensity 60
- Since I’ve Been Loving You — Led Zeppelin. Dynamic range 8, 72 BPM.
- Many Rivers to Cross — Jimmy Cliff. Dynamic range 8, 80 BPM, with no sudden changes.
- Gracias a la Vida — Mercedes Sosa. Dynamic range 8, 75 BPM.
- Ain’t No Sunshine — Bill Withers. Dynamic range 7, 74 BPM.
- Ghost Town — Kanye West. Intensity 62, dynamic range 7, 80 BPM.
- Ecstasy of Gold — Ennio Morricone. Intensity 63, dynamic range 9, 120 BPM, instrumental.
Wandering Star appears on Portishead’s 1994 album Dummy. The observation about trip-hop’s blues lineage is our interpretation of where the measurements land, presented as such. Figures are our own measurements, read from the public API at build time. The genre and era spread is a consequence of measuring sound rather than style — it is not a claim that these artists resemble each other in any other way. No lyrics are reproduced.