As anyone who has watched the classic episode of The Office where the Dunder Mifflin team learned CPR (sort of) knows, the Bee Gees’ “Stayin’ Alive” is the perfect song to do CPR to. While the episode is hilarious, CPR is no laughing matter. Lyrically, “Stayin’ Alive” is a bit on the nose. But it is also 100 beats per minute, which is the perfect pace to administer CPR.
You shouldn’t be picky about music when administering CPR, of course. Time is of the essence. But just in case, New York Presbyterian Hospital has a playlist of songs at 100bpm. Though the playlist has 57 songs and runs 3 and a half hours, we picked the funniest and oddest ones to play in the crucial moment of saving someone’s life.
Per the Mayo Clinic, Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) is a lifesaving technique that’s useful in many emergencies, such as a heart attack or near drowning, in which someone’s breathing or heartbeat has stopped. If you’re afraid to do CPR or unsure how to perform CPR correctly, know that it’s always better to try than to do nothing at all, so pick a tune and get to pumpin’ because the difference between doing something and doing nothing could be someone’s life. But, hey, why not dedicate a little time so that you are actually prepared to take action if you need to. Learn more about the basics here.
Incidentally, in the aforementioned scene from The Office, the CPR instructor tells Steve Carrell’s Michael Scott to sing “Stayin’ Alive,” and he instead starts singing Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” That song is also at 100bpm, so that would have worked as well (assuming that Michael is better at administering CPR than he is at keeping secrets). But you wouldn’t want to start with the intro of that song, which is slower than 100 bpm, just jump right to the chorus.
See below our 10 favorites from the list:
