The soundtrack of your life.
Exploring how to think about the music that defines us: our musical DNA, the music of me.
Music is ubiquitous in most of our lives, wherever we are. It’s estimated that out of an estimated 8 billion people, around 7 billion of them listen to music and the average person (if there is such a thing) listens to around 961 hours of music a year, that's over a month.
These statistics hide a more important fact, the why, which is that for most of us, it’s a profound, powerful force. Music is in the words of my best friend Meredith ‘A shortcut to emotion, to the heart’.
It is something that can move us unlike anything else: It can transport us not just across time, but into completely different states of being. It can create a sense of belonging amongst people who have very little else in common, it is a universal language.
As someone who grew up in a musical family, with a singer songwriter father in a house where music was everywhere and in everything, it is hard to imagine a life without it, it is hard to explain how important it is, it is a part of the fabric of my existence, but the more I speak to others, the more I have come to realise that they feel a similar thing.
I have also long been an avid listener of BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Disc’s, a remarkable programme that forces a guest to choose eight tracks and talk about their life within the context of those songs, and crucially they are not told how to do it. I have often wondered what my tracks would be: How to choose from hundreds of thousands of songs that have touched my life so far (it's also estimated that in our lives we will hear around 1.3 million songs). How would you go about organising them, then prioritising them? What would make the long list, what would be on the final list and why? Is eight the perfect number to capture an average life? If not, what would be?
I decided to explore these questions.
It will come as no surprise that I quickly realised that this was not just a lovely thing to do, to revisit your life through the lens of music, to rediscover so many wonderful pieces of music and memories, but also that it is a very difficult thing to do. But out of the fires of the exploration and heated debate emerged a system, a way of thinking about it that allowed me to get close to agreeing with myself.
I realised that there were essentially three types of song:
Firstly, there were songs that very clearly have a time and a place, they were often not my favourites, in fact a number of them I found deeply irritating (Tainted Love by Soft Cell in particular) but they played an important role in the journey my life has taken, they provided a sort of connective tissue to what had happened. They were contextual.
The second group had two things in common: I loved them, they brought joy at a very deep level, and they were often born of both a specific time and of specific people.
Then there was a third type that had something else entirely: It was those songs that would pain me to imagine never hearing them again. It was those songs that I can listen to over and over without the magic ever seeming to wear off. It was the ones I return to time and time again. It was often the ones that give me solace when things aren’t great. It was the songs, when I remember them, that I feel regret at not listening to more often. All of them gave me goosebumps when I first heard them, they often still do.
They were precious to me, I didn’t want to let them go.Â
This also gave me a measure, a way to trade them off against one another: ‘Is this more precious to me than this one? ‘Side by side which one would I let go before the other?’.
For me, out of all those hundreds of thousands of songs, there weren’t that many that get over that last hurdle, it’s a list that felt remarkably consistent and only very occasionally would I find something new worthy of a place.Â
But how long should it be? The size of this list feels like it’s the kind of conversation you have about a wedding: who has to be there, not because you feel obliged to invite them, but because you can’t imagine it without their presence, there is no perfect number but you kind of know when the list is done.
What was fascinating about this process was not only that it provided a wonderful window into my musical journey, the music that has shaped me and the people and places that have played their part, what my wife Amelie dubbed ‘the soundtrack of your life’; but also a fascinating glimpse into who I was deep down, into my musical DNA, into the music of me.
I debated whether to include my most precious songs in this article, I wasn’t sure anyone would be interested, but then it just felt weird not to…
Prince - Raspberry Beret.Â
Bossa nova - Elvis.
Chaka Kahn - Ain’t nobody.
Toots and the Maytals - Get Up, Stand Up.
Talking Heads - Once in a lifetime.
The Nextmen - Blow wind blow (hand up, this is my brothers band, and it was a very close run off with the favourite song from my Dad ‘Go the distance’ which he wrote for our wedding).
Leena Conquest - Boundaries.
King Creosote & Jon Hopkins - Bats In The Attic.
The Pharcyde - Runnin’.
Sigur Ros - Ekki múkk.
David Gray - Say Hello, Wave Goodbye. (Soft Cell’s Marc Almond making amends).
Miles Davis - All Blues.
Bon Iver - 8 (circle).
In The Bleak Midwinter - Gustav Holst (especially: Tenebrae conducted by Nigel Short).
Michael Jackson - Don’t Stop 'Til You Get Enough (very close run off with ‘Wanna be startin’ something').
Phosphorescent - Song For Zula.
1975 - Falllinforyou.
Peter Gabriel - Blood of Eden.
Beatles - Blackbird.
Massive Attack - Teardrop.
Everything Is Recorded - Close But Not Quite (ft. Sampha).
A Tribe Called Quest - Check The Rhime (Mr Muhammed Mix).
This bitter earth On the nature of daylight - Daniel Hope, Max Richter, Joy Denalane.
If I had to do a Desert Island Disc’s (there is always hope): this is largely chronological and there is an important story behind each one.
Toots and the Maytals - Get Up, Stand Up.
Talking Heads - Once in a lifetime.
Prince - Raspberry Beret.
Peter Gabriel - Blood of Eden.
Chaka Kahn - Ain’t nobody.
David Gray - Say Hello, Wave Goodbye.
A Tribe Called Quest - Check The Rhime (Mr Muhammed Mix).
This bitter earth On the nature of daylight - Daniel Hope, Max Richter, Joy Denalane.
And if I had to choose just one?!
1. Talking Heads - Once in a lifetime.Â
https://headphonesaddict.com/listening-to-music-statistics/