Someone has to start the ball rolling on this blog-sitting lark and so, I will. Taking my prompt from PPQ’s last post, I’ll give you the five songs that mean the most to me... but hopefully, and maybe more importantly why. I ask your forgiveness in advance for a fair amount of lyrics quoting.

The Last CD I Bought Was:
Kings Of Convenience - Riot On An Empty Street
Song Playing Right Now:
Kings Of Convenience - Sorry or Please

Tanita Tikaram – Valentine Heart
If I was a Londoner, rich with complaint
Would you take me back to your house
Which is sainted with lust and the listless shade
If I could have held you once more with that light
It's nothing to you, but it keeps me alive
Like a valentines day, it's a valentines heart, anyway…

Built around a very simple and repeating piano rift, the fist minute of this piece is weaves Tanita’s voice with four or five melancholy notes, repeating yet ever changing in weight and pace, even without her voice the tune is enough to move me. After over a minute the piano is joined by both violin and double bass, pulling against each other. Violins lifting me with hope and promises of better things while the bass pulls you down; wan, wanting, moody. I can be in almost any mood and this song will drag me down, introverted, longing for things I’ve lost and maybe never even had. My relationship to this song is almost fantasy in nature; it encompasses every unrequited love, and every daydream romance.

Aimee Mann – Wise Up
It's not, What you thought
When you first began it
You got, What you want
Now you can hardly stand it though,
By now you know
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
It's not going to stop
'Til you wise up

Another incredibly simple song; similar in many ways to Valetine Heart opening with a three or four cords repeating unaccompanied on piano with Aimee’s voice ringing clearly over the top. Yet despite the similarities this song takes me in another direction. Where Valentine Heart pushes me deeper into the fantasy and encourages a rose tinted view of the world, this song pulls me out, like smelling salts to the unconscious; Wise Up slaps me around the face and forces me to look around me. Pulling my head from the sand… “No, it's not going to stop, so just...give up”

Ani Difranco - You Had Time
how can I go home
with nothing to say
I know you're going to look at me that way
and say what did you do out there
and what did you decide
you said you needed time
and you had time

As I write this I’m starting to see themes; strong female vocals, strong piano, clear, uncluttered. This song is no exception; starting with a breathtakingly beautiful piano solo which mesmerises me and full two and half minutes before any lyrics are sung. Where the others were simple, this is anything but; the song evolves, slowly emerging into its final form taking the shape slowly almost randomly, discordantly, distracted, stumbling and unsure. Which, to my untrained ear is finally mirrored by the lyrics, lovers; confused, uncertain; I can find almost every doubt from every relationship in this song.

Cruiser - Red House Painters
So drive down Beverly Drive
Where my room's lit up all night
I've been so lonely in this bed
It's good to sleep with you instead
It's good to talk all night instead
Morning pours the ocean deep
Into the hollow of my sleep
But the ocean can't be mine
Your perfection can't be mine

At over eight minutes long; this song as its name suggests cruises casually along, again fairly simple but with a raw and low production sort of quality, full of fingers sliding on strings, short draws of breath and even the occasional cough or sniff. All these elements, combined with effortless guitar work and an easy laidback singing style provide a completely natural and honest overtone to the song. You feel it in his voice, he loved her, he lovers her still, she is unique, exotic, erotic… but ultimately it didn’t work out. They separate and he leaves, it hurts but beyond it all this song fills me with joy and hope.

Gorecki - Symphony No. 3
I’m not a huge classical music fan, I only own a handful of CD’s and honestly I really need to be a rare mood to dust them out and relax. However, this is one piece of music that never fails to send shivers down my spine. When I close my eyes, I find myself transported to where I first heard it. Staying at a friend’s house in South Africa, a huge lightning storm had blown out the electrics in the house, so we dug out old battery powered ghetto blaster and the first tape to hand. I sat in the bath, the house lit only by candles and frequent flashes of lighting, the storm rolled on; the drumming of rain on the tin roof only broken by the howling of dogs and long rumbled of thunder. And through all that, a haunting voice of soprano Dawn Upshaw; sings a lament of such sorrowful beauty that I am chilled to the bone, sitting in a piping hot bath.

|