My Desert Island Discs

Desert Island Discs.  Whether you're familiar with the Radio 4 programme or not, you'll no doubt have had that conversation with your friends about tracks which changed your life or your top three songs of all time.  It's up there with the other questions we all ask after a few too many at the pub; 'Who would be your five dinner party guests; dead or alive?', 'If you could have one superpower, what would it be?'

The concept of Desert Island Discs (created by Roy Plomley, 1942) is that a  guest chooses eight records they would take with them to a desert island.  They can be chosen for sentimental reasons such as 'this was the first dance at our wedding' or more simply, 'it's a cracking tune which would keep me sane on a solitary island.'

As the child of two music obsessed and Radio 4 listening parents (a mother with a Led Zeppelin problem and a father who's probably spent more money on CDs and vinyl than on my education!), the quandary of what my desert island discs would be has long puzzled me.  However, after years of thought and collection, I think these are the ones (in no particular chronological or preferential order).

1) West End Girls by The Pet Shop Boys - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p3j2NYZ8FKs
Anybody who knows my mum, knows she is a massive PSB fan so the first song I ever heard was very likely to have been a snyth laden, 80s floor filler from them but this song, particularly, is just amazing.  I have loved it since I was tiny and I think it's quite edgy both for its time and for PSB.  I once read that Neil Tennant took the inspiration for this song from Grandmaster Flash's 'The Message' so there's a slight hip-hop/rap influence in there.  As a lover of all things 80s (please see: my hair!), this song delights me and how sexy is that beat?  Seriously?  So hot!

2) Music Sounds Better With You by Stardust - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sWCjHoIoUOI&nohtml5=False
We all know Daft Punk, right?  We all love Daft Punk, right?  Then you should know and love Stardust who were a French house outfit comprised of Thomas Bangalter (of Daft Punk) and Alan Braxe (he of 'Intro' fame).  I'm going to put this out there and say that this song is my favourite song of all time!  It really is!  It's been my ringtone on my mobile for about ten years (as anybody who was in the office on Tuesday this week will attest to!) and I get ridiculously excited whenever this comes on in a club.  I mean, ridiculously excited!
I once asked a DJ somewhere in Southampton to play this for me and he looked at me blankly.  I'm sorry but if you call yourself a DJ and purport to know your house music, then you will know this song.  I was very unimpressed and pretty sure I made him aware of my displeasure!
What makes this track so special for me is that I was only 8 when it came out and I heard it on TOTP that Christmas and fell in love.  My absolute obsession with house music has only continued to grow and this is where it all started and who doesn't have happy memories of being 8.
Another thing which makes this song so awesome is the Chaka Khan sample - sublime.
(N.B My mum hates this song and describes it as 'boring and repetitive'.  Thank God for the thick walls in our place)!

3) Welcome To The Pleasuredome by Frankie Goes To Hollywood - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SVDC6kPCkWA
The title track from one of the albums which, literally, defined British music in the 80s.  Before I get into the personal reasons for choosing this, please give it a listen whether you're familiar with it or not.  It's got so much happening; so many different sounds, so many different instruments and it's composed of different phases which, when all put together, produce this incredible piece as the whole.  I don't think Welcome To The Pleasuredome was a concept album but it bloody should have been.  When you listen to this track, you create characters in your head singing Holly Johnson's vocals and the tribal chanting and the plot changes each time you do it.  That slicing sound which kicks in at 8m55s with the Spanish-esque guitar over the top?  How awful does that sound on paper but how amazing in reality!
This track, I have to say, was all my mum's influence.  She has had this disc (permanently!) in her car for as long as I can remember and it provided the soundtrack to my daily school runs, family holidays and trips to the shop as I was growing up.

4) Gimme Shelter by The Rolling Stones - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WJDnJ0vXUgw
That guitar intro.  The Rolling Stones.  That's, essentially, all that needs to be said about this track.  You may have noticed by now that I love a sexy sounding song and this song has sex by the bucket-load (if you'll pardon the image that has just created!).  Come on, it's Mick Jagger!
My earliest memory of this song is hearing my parents playing it with some of their friends after a dinner party at home.  It was long past my bedtime (and I'd probably long been asleep until this point!) but mum, dad and their guests had spilled over into that postprandial drunken haze when the ladies want a dance and the chaps want to play air guitar!
I was lucky enough to see The Rolling Stones live at The O2 with my mum when I was 17 and every single hair on my body stood on end when they performed this song.

5) I Bet You Look Good On The Dancefloor by The Arctic Monkeys - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK7egZaT3hs
I should preface this paragraph by telling you that Arctic Monkeys are my favourite band and that's not just because their front-man, Alex Turner is one of the most beautiful men on the planet.  Anybody who's seen my bedroom in the past decade will know that I have three huge monochrome prints of them on my walls as well as copies of every b-side they've ever released and every issue of NME and Q they've graced the cover of.  Mildly obsessive?  Perhaps but please, dear reader, continue...
This song came out during my last year of secondary school.  Indie music was huge, Pete Doherty was cool (really!) and every boy at school was 'in a band'.
I first heard this song when a boy in my science class was playing it aloud on his i-Pod during a 'revision period' for our biology GCSE.  By my own admission, I hated the song and thought it was just a load of thrashy guitar noise with nothing resembling a tune to follow.  It wasn't until about three years later that I fell in love with Arctic Monkeys (and Alex Turner's side project 'The Last Shadow Puppets') and their subsequent albums have provided the soundtrack to many a milestone in my life.  I was lucky enough to be at their secret gig at Brixton Academy in August 2009 when they were supported by the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures (I implore you to look them up if you're not aware of them!) and they blew me away.  I truly consider Matt Helders to be one of the greatest drummers of all time (see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q4RFpP5V1vY&nohtml5=False ) and Alex Turner is easily one of the best lyricists.

6) The Fight Song by Marilyn Manson - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GFI6Rf-IkI&nohtml5=False
Take yourself back to summer 2001.  I'm eleven years old and starting to dabble in heavy metal.  Dad surprises me with a gift one day of Marilyn  Manson's 1996 album 'Antichrist Superstar' and, at the risk of sounding like a jaded cliché, my life changed.  From the minute I heard the opening thrash of that album's first track, I fell in love with Marilyn Manson and the band he once had and fully immersed myself in Gothic culture for about three years.
Marilyn Manson was an obsession for me and I collected every piece of paraphernalia I could get my hands on; books, action figures (yes, they exist!), lunch boxes, t-shirts, VHS cassettes (those were the days!).
What I, particularly, admire in Marilyn Manson, I think, is his intelligence.  The man is ridiculously clever and has made a career out of jeering at America and the more stupid parts of its culture; The American Dream, their gun laws, the American obesity crisis etc.  Take the video to this song, for instance.  Fight songs are used by American sports teams as their anthems and are performed before matches.  Here, Manson has taken the stereotype of the high school American football team, complete with obligatory cheerleaders in short skirts and proceeds to take the mick by 'gothing up' the whole concept.  See also the video for his cover of Tainted Love which is a very entertaining mockery of most hip-hop videos you've ever seen!

7) No Access by Michael Woods - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SbxxhnOlA8
This isn't the full length version of this song, obviously, but this video sums up many of the reasons why I've chosen this song as one of my Desert Island Discs.
2011 was a massive year for me, possibly the biggest yet.  I graduated with a 2:1 degree in Sport Studies, I was in ridiculously good shape, I turned 21 and had an amazing celebration and I had the summer to end all summers which involved going to my first proper music festival.  Ohhh what a festival!  I went to Global Gathering that year and was sent this launch video a few weeks before we went.  This song quickly became my song of the year.
Michael Woods was at Global that year and the minute he dropped this one, the whole crowd fell under some sort of spell and I just lost it.  I didn't touch a drop of booze all weekend (never been able to drink in the sun!) nor am I the drug-addled type but one of my friends thought I was utterly trollied when I started jumping around to this.  I must have looked like I was completely out of my tree and to be fair, I felt I was (see below!).
 
An absolute banger like this does very funny things to me and it's (what I imagine!) being high must be like.  I'm starting to sound like a real ponce now...  As well as Michael Woods, I saw some other incredible artists at Global like Underworld, Skrillex, Gareth Emery, Fedde Le Grand and Mark Knight - a feast for the senses!
Autumn 2011 was when I got my first proper, grown up, adult, office job (another milestone, possibly millstone!) and this song kept me going with amazing memories of the summer only a few months before.  I'm still taken straight back to that glorious July evening on Long Marston Airfield whenever I hear it.    

8) Who Do You Think You Are by The Spice Girls - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-YriinrRGug
As a 90s girl who spent many of her formative years shouting 'GIRL POWER!' and begging family members to buy me a pair of Buffalo trainers for my birthday, I couldn't possibly leave The Spice Girls off my list, could I?
I was six when The Spice Girls' first album came out and it was played constantly on Dad's big sound system in our front room (much to his 'delight', no doubt!) and at every friend's party I went to, every sleepover I had and at any time I could possibly get away with it!
All women of this generation had a group of friends who would all pretend to be The Spice Girls when they got together, each one taking on a different role.  You'll no doubt be unsurprised to hear that I was always Posh Spice - just something about the black Gucci dress and stylish bob, I guess!
This has to be my favourite Spice Girls song.  I love the jazzy sax intro, the confident lyrics and the 'Swing it. Shake it. Move it. Make it.' chanting.  Highlight of the video?  Vicky B's fantastic chain mail bikini!  

If you've made it all the way to the end of this post, congratulations and I am very appreciative of your commitment.  I hope you've enjoyed reading it and if I've got you thinking about your own Desert Island Discs, I'd be delighted to hear about them.