Best guitar songs to play at a party

I was going to begin my 2 Cents on this topic with "in my opinion", but it's not opinion. It's 15 years of observation, and ample, endless demonstration of seeing delusional guitarists bomb at parties.

A party is a party, not a gig. It seems to me that there are 3 categories of people debating on this thread:

a) - guitarists who play obscure, technical pieces at parties
b) - guitarists who play semi-recognisable, but non-anthemic songs
c) - guitarists who endeavour to make every song recognisable, and thereby inclusive to the revelers.

Some of the thread commenters falling into category 'b' are trying to convince us (or perhaps themselves) that they're somehow the voice of reason between two extremes, or a happy medium of sorts. In my experience, they bomb just as spectacularly as the musos in category 'a'.

I recently attended a party with a few guitarists, one of whom has lead duties with a prominent 'nearly' band from the Irish scene. He honestly couldn't understand why he was being practically booed into submission. He began by playing his own stuff, and when that lead-ballooned, fell back upon some technical Stone Roses and Hendrix renditions -- none of them crowd pleasing or sing-along.

Visibly frustrated by mounting indifference and criticism, he made what he thought was a final concession into pop. When one bird finally asked, "will you play something we know?", he replied in exasperation, "it's the f*cking Beatles." But in my opinion, she was right and he was wrong, because whilst he was indeed playing The Beatles (my favourite band), it was something obscure from their catalogue, unfamiliar to casual fans.

It's not a competition, but I stuck to the hits and wiped the floor with him that night, as has happened at every party where I've had to share guitar duties with someone who deviates from the ethos of inclusion. Tiny windows of opportunity can arise for a sliver of self-indulgence (e.g. when the last 2 people at 6:00 am, half-awake, yawn "play something you like to play"), but generally there is no room for self indulgence at a party: it's atmosphere versus onanism.

I wholeheartedly agree that Wonderwall is done to death at parties, but accepting it as the benchmark of ultimate party cliché, is anybody really suggesting that it DOESN'T unite pretty much any party -- anywhere in the Western world -- at 3:00 am in chorus? There's a hundred songs I'd rather be playing, but when somebody asks me to play it at a party (which usually happens), I'm not going to ignore their request just so I can destroy the atmosphere by proving I have more technical and less popular pieces in my repertoire.

To reiterate, a party is an inclusive experience. Lots of guitarists delude themselves that it is a gig.