Category: 41-4-40

Magnetic Man - Perfect Stranger So there we go. 41 songs representing the 41 years that (almost) I've been on the planet. One of the hardest years to choose for, too, because since the advent of Spotify I've listened to more new music this year than I have done since I was in my 20s. … Continue reading 2010

Lily Allen - The Fear And so we get to the 40th track on this long old playlist, and the penultimate one at that. I was going to pick something by the Kings of Leon, but in the end have plumped for a track by Keith Allen's daughter. The first track from Lily's second album, … Continue reading 2009

Elbow - One day like this I have to admit that before their 2008 Mercury Prize-winning album, the only thing that I knew of Elbow was their cover version of Independent Woman, which had been used to a soundtrack of an animation of some animated cats. The album was a revelation, and this song (which … Continue reading 2008

Groove Armada - Song 4 Mutya I know that some people think that they are a naff as flock wallpaper, but as you can see from that analogy I'm no arbiter of taste and fashion. Never have been, and certainly never will be. I like Groove Armada. The Renault-flogging cheese of I See You Baby, … Continue reading 2007

Peter, Bjorn and John - Young Folks Sometimes a song will consume me. For a period it will be all that I will want to listen to, and I will be addicted. There's no rhyme or reason to it. A particular drum, a guitar hook, a specific vocal... Young Folks was one of those songs. … Continue reading 2006

Emilliana Torrini - Today has been OK I seemed to spend most of 2005 trying to sell a house in South West Herts, and commuting by car from there down to Gatwick Airport on a daily basis at a time when most of that stretch of the M25 was being worked on. Given the tumultuous … Continue reading 2005

Scissor Sisters - Comfortably Numb In late September 2004 my life seemed, for a while, to enter something of a soap opera. In the space of about five days I handed in my notice at the BBC after nearly eight years there, saw my first marriage break up, and lost my grandfather (in the dying … Continue reading 2004

Seth Lakeman - Kitty Jay 2003 was a rubbish year for music. From memory I think I spent most of it listening to stuff from the late sixties and early seventies, and often from Brazil. The bridge point between the dying embers of the dance music era, and the emerging new indie scene, there was … Continue reading 2003

Belle & Sebastian - If you find yourself caught in love The second example of a song discovered in a moment of random shuffle, I first came to hear this track a few years later in 2005, a year a spent an awfully large amount of time stuck in a car on the M25. I … Continue reading 2002