Whether it’s the food I eat, the drinks I enjoy or the music I listen to, the main reason always seems to be a particular memory of a place, a person or a moment. This is a list of my favourite music with a few autobiographical grace notes…
| Artist | Song | Memory |
| ABBA | Take A Chance On Me | My sister bought the single and I still remember I’m A Marionette on the B-side! |
| Amy Stroup | Alas We Aspire | |
| Anna Nalick | Breathe (2 A.M.) | |
| Annie Lennox | Waiting In Vain | Call me a softie, but Kate Beckinsale in Serendipity |
| Annie Lennox | Walking On Broken Glass | My dancing partner Vicki Kereszteny found this for rehearsing our cha |
| Apollo 440 | Stop The Rock | Claire Forlani at the foam party in Boys and Girls |
| Beatles | Here Comes The Sun | Does anyone remember this as the theme to the Holiday programme…?! |
| Beatles | Let It Be | I sang this to myself while cycling to every one of my finals |
| Bell X1 | Eve, the Apple of My Eye | |
| Berlin | Take My Breath Away | Who can forget the Top Gun theme…?! |
| Bette Midler | In My Life | |
| Bette Midler | From A Distance | |
| Billy Joel | My Life | This was the theme to Bosom Buddies, which gave us Tom Hanks and Donna Dixon! |
| Black Eyed Peas | I Gotta Feeling | |
| Blur | To The End | Watching Blur at Mile End in the rain |
| Bon Jovi | Livin’ On A Prayer | Watching with Joe Oatley in Milton Keynes as he walked in front of 12′ screens full of feedback snow! |
| Boyz II Men | End Of The Road | Vicki gave me the Brit Awards CD from 1993, and this was on it… |
| Bruce Springsteen | Born In The USA | One of the best presents I ever had was the MTV Plugged CD given me by Mark Highman, and all these songs were on it… |
| Bruce Springsteen | I Wish I Were Blind | |
| Bruce Springsteen | Thunder Road (MTV Plugged) | |
| Bruce Springsteen | My Beautiful Reward | |
| Bryan Ferry | Oh Yeah (On The Radio) | |
| Bryan Ferry | More Than This | |
| Cars | You Might Think | My first girlfriend Paula Buster from Canyon, TX |
| Carter Burwell | Overture | I have a soft spot for great theme tunes, and Carter Burwell pulled out all the stops for Conspiracy Theory… |
| Carter Burwell | Conspiracy Theory | |
| Carter Burwell | Riding | |
| Chicane | Don’t Give Up | |
| Chicane | Halcyon | |
| Chicane | No Ordinary Morning | To Anne Crary, the only girl I ever asked to marry me, who introduced me to Chicane when I tried to put on the Bee Gees! |
| Clem Snide | Moment In The Sun | |
| Corey Hart | Sunglasses At Night | Another one from my time in the States with Paula |
| Craig Amstrong | Portuguese Love Theme | Love, Actually didn’t go down well with the Belgians next to me, but to me it was as if the director had exactly the same view of love (and good music!) |
| Craig Amstrong | Glasgow Love Theme | |
| Craig Amstrong | PM’s Love Theme | |
| Darude | Sandstorm | |
| David Bowie | Rebel Rebel | |
| David Bowie | Life On Mars? | |
| David Gates | Goodbye Girl | The Goodbye Girl is one of the great (forgotten) romantic comedies. Richard Dreyfus and Marsha Mason at their best. |
| David Gray | Disappearing World | To my musical friend Eden James, who introduced me to David Gray in Brisbane when we ended up singing along to the guitar (and the odd possum on the roof!) after every house party… |
| David Gray | Babylon | |
| David Gray | My Oh My | |
| David Gray | Please Forgive Me | |
| David Gray | ||
| David Gray | ||
| David Gray | January Rain | |
| David Gray | The Other Side | |
| Dido | Here With Me | I have a bit of a weakness for US teen dramas, so I was easy meat for Shiri Appleby in Roswell |
| Dire Straits | Romeo And Juliet | When I made the mistake of showing my diary to Elizabeth at Oxford, this is what I taped back-to-back and listened to over and over again to make the break-up hurt a bit less |
| Dire Straits | So Far Away | |
| Dire Straits | Sultans Of Swing (Live Aid) | When I was away in Germany, I had to ask my mum to tape Live Aid, but this was the only song I liked (until I accidentally pressed the record button on my tape deck and had to do without it until Napster came along!) |
| Dire Straits | Your Latest Trick | |
| Dire Straits | Telegraph Road | |
| Dire Straits | Private Investigations | |
| Don Henley | The Boys Of Summer | |
| Emily Barker & The Red Clay Halo | Pause | Another great TV theme from The Shadow Line |
| Enya | Promontory | |
| Etta James | At Last | |
| Fats Waller & Benny Payne | After You’ve Gone | The other contender for the greatest present of all time. I told Claudine Kenny this was my favourite (unobtainable) jazz track, and she managed to track it down for my birthday. |
| Fine Young Cannibals | Good Thing | |
| Flo Rida | Club Can’t Handle Me | |
| Foo Fighters | Next Year | |
| Frank Sinatra | One For My Baby | One of the few songs to which I know all the words, which was embarrassing when my mum caught me singing it in Newton Abbot! |
| Geoffrey Burgon | Brideshead Revisited | One of the happiest moments of my life came when we all trudged across the gravel on a perfect sunny October morning at Christ Church to have our matriculation photograph taken…and the second years played this from one of the windows in Peck! (They were fined £150…) |
| Gerry Rafferty | Baker Street | My sister caught sight of a list I was making of my favourite music and made me a couple of treasured mix tapes including this classic of urban disaffection |
| Haddaway | What Is Love | Another one from the Brit Awards CD from Vicki |
| Herbie Hancock | Cantaloupe Island | My friend Tio made me a tape of ‘E-type jazz’ in exchange for a ride down the King’s Road in my 1965 carmine red Series 2 roadster, and this was my favourite |
| Herbie Hancock | Driftin’ | |
| Imogen Heap | Hide And Seek | I heard this played over the funeral scene in The OC, so it was perhaps inevitable I should end up living there (Ormonde Court, not Orange County!) |
| Jon & Vangelis | I’ll Find My Way Home | |
| Kasabian | Club Foot | I actually met Kasabian while playing the referee in Sky Sports’ last World Cup advert! |
| Kate Bush | Wuthering Heights | Thanks again to my sister Katharine for buying The Kick Inside. Did Kate Bush really write these songs when she was only 19?! Astonishing… |
| Killers | Human | |
| Little Feat | Willin’ | One of the best days of my life came when I took a day off to visit Singapore for a birthday treat for my ex-boss at Mercer. Champagne breakfast, waterskiing, sevens, a rickshaw ride, Singapore slings in Raffles, two beautiful girls and this song… |
| Loreena McKennitt | Dante’s Prayer | More thanks to Anne Crary for introducing me to this |
| Lynyrd Skynyrd | Tuesday’s Gone | |
| Marshall Crenshaw | Someday, Someway | |
| Martin Solveig & Dragonette | Hello (Single Edit) | |
| Matt Cardle | When We Collide | |
| Miley Cyrus | When I Look At You | |
| Morten Lauridsen | O Magnum Mysterium | I heard this for the first time sitting next to Marina at a concert given by our friend Sam’s choir, and we were both blown away. What a perfect way to discover a wonderful piece! |
| Mussorgsky | The Great Gate of Kiev | |
| Nick Lowe | I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass | This memory is so far back, I don’t even know where it came from, but 1978 was a great year for new music (think Wuthering Heights!) |
| Norah Jones | Turn Me On | |
| Norah Jones | The Nearness Of You | |
| Old 97s | Question | This is taken from the moment when Ed proposes to Carol in Ed (obviously!) |
| OneRepublic | Good Life | |
| Paul McCartney | No More Lonely Nights | |
| Peter Best | Echo Billabong | I’m not ashamed to say that Linda Kozlowski in a swimsuit had something to do with this…! |
| Peter Gabriel | Biko | |
| Peter Gabriel | In Your Eyes | Cameron Fairchild, where are you now?! I met him in Amarillo, TX, and we were best friends for a few months during my year off. He was a fan of Peter Gabriel, and we played Risk, Axis & Allies and Conquest of Empire until the early hours before retiring to Denny’s for the all-day (and all-night!) breakfast… |
| Peter Gabriel | Red Rain | |
| Peter Gabriel | Solsbury Hill | |
| Peter Gabriel | Mercy Street | |
| Peter Gabriel | Book Of Love | |
| Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush | Don’t Give Up | |
| Pogues | Love You ‘Til The End | |
| Pointer Sisters | Jump (For My Love) | |
| Pretenders | Human | This is the theme from Cupid with Jeremy Piven and Paula Marshall, the best TV show never to be given a full season |
| Propaganda | Duel | |
| Puccini | O Mio Babbino Caro | I have to admit I heard this first on the soundtrack to A Room with a View, but they certainly picked the right version and the right soprano to sing it! |
| Puccini | Chi Il Bel Sogno Di Doretta | Again from A Room with a View, and I almost prefer this aria now |
| Puccini | Nessun Dorma | I had a friend Pete Bouman at Oxford, who was an exchange student passionate about opera. One day in his rooms, he tried to play me an aria in which a soprano hit top C, but while he was fumbling with the fast forward and rewind buttons I heard this wonderful classic and made him play it for me. An early taste of Italia ’90! |
| Rachmaninov | Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini | Groundhog Day is my favourite film ever, and this music has an important part to play! |
| Rachmaninov | 2nd Piano Concerto, Mvt 1 | Who but the most cynical of viewers could fail to be moved to tears by the score of Brief Encounter (even if my mother happened to catch me…!)? |
| Rachmaninov | 2nd Piano Concerto, Mvt 2 | |
| Rachmaninov | 2nd Piano Concerto, Mvt 3 | |
| Ray Charles | What’d I Say | |
| Remy Zero | Fair | |
| Remy Zero | Save Me | This one’s from Smallville. US teen dramas don’t get any cornier (so to speak…) |
| Rolling Stones | Gimme Shelter | |
| Rolling Stones | Start Me Up | |
| Rolling Stones | Sympathy For The Devil | I was once at a party with Damian Hinds, who insisted on playing this even though nobody could dance to it! |
| Rolling Stones | Wild Horses | Vicki again. Sigh… |
| Run DMC & Aerosmith | Walk This Way | This was the soundtrack to my very first race off the lights in Amarillo, TX. Eighty miles an hour, top down all the way. Glory… |
| Sam Fonteyn | Pop Looks Bach | |
| Sarah McLachlan | Possession | |
| Scorpions | Wind Of Change | |
| Semisonic | Closing Time | |
| Sinead Lohan | No Mermaid | |
| Sixpence None The Richer | Kiss Me | |
| Sixpence None The Richer | There She Goes | |
| Smashing Pumpkins | 1979 | |
| Steve Reynolds | House I Built | |
| Stiltskin | Inside | What a great Levi jeans advert! The music and pictures were in perfect harmony. Amish girl in black and white plus heartthrob and rock music – sounds like Witness! |
| T Rex | Cosmic Dancer | From the soundtrack to Billy Elliot… |
| Take That | Back for Good (Radio Mix) | |
| Toploader | Dancing In The Moonlight | Anyone who went to Bananas in Val d’Isere around midnight would remember this one (and Angel by Robbie Williams)! |
| Train | Drops Of Jupiter | Stand up, Craig Campbell. I only managed to make you dinner once that season in Mottaret, but we told so many stories while listening to so many songs that I have to credit you with the inspiration for this post! |
| Trespassers William | Lie In The Sound | |
| Trevor Jones & Randy Edelman | Ascent/Pursuit | From The Last of the Mohicans. Definitely a better film than the book! |
| Trevor Jones & Randy Edelman | Last Of The Mohicans (Main Theme) | |
| U2 | Walk On | |
| U2 | Where The Streets Have No Name | This is the theme to the promotional video of the Gnat Display Team, which I managed for a while in 2010-11 |
| U2 | Who’s Gonna Ride Your Wild Horses | |
| Vanessa Carlton | A Thousand Miles | |
| Verdi | Dammi Tu Forza, O Cielo! | Julia Roberts ‘peed her pants’ to this in Pretty Woman. What more can you say?! |
| Waterboys | The Whole Of The Moon | |
| Who | Baba O’Reilly | |
| Who | The Seeker | |
| Yazoo | Only You |