desert island discs

we were talking on discord about everybody’s desert island discs which means picking eight tracks, a luxurious item and a book. here are mine I THINK, i think, i do not commit this to stone, only to this BLOG post no one asked for

I want Blue Monday by New Order because I used to listen to it when I went running and it still makes me feel like a body who can move forever. I also think it would be important in this scenario to have some music that’s basically wordless, but not completely, so that I don’t get sick of all the stories in the songs to come ->

I want These Foolish Things, but the Bryan Ferry version, no offence to everyone else. I just grew up listening to this song and it is a really good one to perform at family parties. It has enough drama, enough funny lilts in the speech that it sounds like Bryan Ferry has invented his own accent (when he says Gardenia perfume ling’ring on a pillow LINGRING). And it is 4 minutes but it feels like 40 so it is good bang for your buck

La Tortura by Shakira because it makes me think i am fluent in spanish even though I’m not. and if I’m stuck on an island with no one and nothing to bounce off of, i need a tortured song to grapple with. it’s poetic. when I listen to this song I feel like I am a woman whose man is stepping out on her. and for some reason i LIKE IT

because I think about the time the icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson got The National to play their song Sorrow for six hours straight ALL THE TIME, I think I have to pick it. Because it has become appropriate to listen to it on repeat which is incredibly suitable for desert island living. Plus, every time the man sings ‘I don’t wanna get over you’ it fills me with big man bleeding emotion in a way songs hardly ever do and I… i just seem to like songs about bad relationships even though my relationship is fun and light and great

I realise these previous songs are kind of on the negative side so it’s time to add other emotions to the list: Don’t Delete The Kisses by Wolf Alice. This one has doubt and happiness and giddy private squealing stamping your feet joy. Plus I imagine if I am on a desert island I will be quite hoarse and it will be hard to sing like Bryan Ferry but this is a whispery karaoke song and I can definitely do it even in dehydration

more joy: Paprika by Japanese Breakfast. This is actually my favourite song about being an artist. it’s about the rush that comes from the person appreciating your artwork, and the way it floods from audience to artist like a kind of life force, one you don’t expect, or feel like you deserve, because when you make the thing on your own it’s so grueling sometimes. I posted a review today and somebody commented ‘I think your writing is extraordinary’ and I felt the rush :D the music itself is sooo uplifting in this one too, those trumpets at the end, feels like artist heaven

Love Really Hurts Without You by Billy Ocean. I wonder if this is the ‘old song’ i have listened to most in my life? Probably. It makes me want to kick something. Hahaha. The discord between the music and the lyrics is very funny to me, and the octave change(?) towards the end is obviously one of the best things any musician can do in a song. It makes me want to kick something, it makes me want to dance, it makes me want to run really fast, it makes me want to be at a family party with the elders wiggling their hips

and finally, BB’s Theme by Ludvig Forssell. Because I cannot listen to this without crying haha. I am crying now while it plays. It’s the last song in the 2019 video game Death Stranding. It is a song that plays while you have to do something in the story that you really don’t want to do. “Come on, Lou. One last delivery.” I just think when I reach breaking point on the island and I’ve stopped dancing to Billy Ocean, I can listen to this and think about death with some grandeur.

as for a book: Concrete Island by JG Ballard because I think it would help me love the island I’m stranded on. I think I would decide I want to be stranded. And then I could stop crying to BB’s Theme and go back to Billy Ocean and kicking the air.

as for a luxury: I would quite like a loaded film camera. That way, if I ever get off the island, I would have 36 cursed and possibly beautiful pictures, and it would turn the whole ordeal into something fine. If I never got stranded, I would enjoy thinking about what the pictures might turn out like. Somewhere to channel and endless but maybe non-urgent hope : )