I like using the most streamed songs of the past few years:
One of the annoyances I was dealing with when performing my listening tests was constantly skipping to parts of songs that had enough useful audio information, so to fix this problem I downloaded around 80 of the most streamed songs on Spotify and then edited them into little bits containing just the choruses or just parts where the vocals and instrumentals are playing together. Enjoy.
Note: I also included a few songs I personally like that are not a part of the most streamed list of songs.
This way, my target will translate across a wide range of modern music.
However, there are a few other test tracks that I find valuable. The first one is "One Dance" by Drake. There is excessive ear gain energy on his vocals, like around 2 kHz. You'll be tempted to cut this out, but if you do, your target will sound bad on most other songs. So this is a flaw in the recording that you actually want to hear.
Another good test track is "Closer" by The Chainsmokers. When the chorus first comes in, it will quickly expose if you have overly boosted the treble. Then, when you hear the female vocal come in after the first chorus, you will be very tempted to boost the treble a ton. However, when you do that, you will quickly be humbled again by the chorus with its ear bleeding treble. The takeaway with this one is that the female vocal on this track was simply mixed very dark and the chorus was mixed too bright. Another great example of a very popular song with major flaws.
"As It Was" by Harry Styles has a lot of extended treble information past 10 kHz particularly in the vocal and cymbals. If you cut out too much extended treble, you will simply not hear it. "Hangin' Around" by The SteelDrivers is another great song in this regard. The strumming sound of the guitar in this song exists in the past 10 kHz range, so if you don't boost enough in this region then you simply won't hear critical audio information.
For nailing the sub bass, pretty much any modern pop song will do. For example, "A Bar Song" by Shaboozey is good. When the chorus comes, you really see how critical the sub 80 Hz region is for giving the song its energy. Boosting in the upper bass will make the sound bloated, so your real only option here is boosting the sub bass.
I think the big takeaway in my experience doing these extended listening tests is that there is significant variation in how songs are mixed, not just over the past 50 years but even in the songs released today. In my opinion, a good target will follow current industry standards. It's also important to have some objective standards instead of just following how the target feels. You have to pay attention to the sub bass and extended treble to make sure you can actually hear the information in these regions.
