A friend on Twitter, @littlemunchkin, posed the question today: What song is your guilty pleasure? I have two songs that I always think of when asked this question. The first is Alcazaar's Crying at the Discoteque. I first heard it on my now all-time favourtite TV show, Queer as Folk and I adore it. Every single time I hear it I have to turn it up and sing along. I often have a little dance too. It never fails to cheer me up. The other song is Aztec Camera's Somewhere in my Heart. This is on my Fantastic 80s CD. My Mum often had this on in the car when we were going on days out. My brother often had it on in his bedroom. When I hear it I remember happy summer days with my family. It never fails to make me smile. I treasure how this song makes me feel.
The power of music always amazes me. How hearing a particular song takes you right back to a particular time in your life. It can make you so happy or so sad and sometimes it makes you both at the same time.
Music has always been hugely important in my life. My Mum had a very eclectic taste and I grew up hearing her play her records. I was surrounded by music.
I hear In My Life by The Beatles and it reminds me of my Mum. It was one of her all-time favourite songs. We had it played at her funeral and it was perfect. The lyrics are so meaningful.
I hear Always Look on the Bright Side of Life and it reminds me of hearing it in the car with Mum after she was diagnosed with cancer. She laughed and said she wanted it played at her funeral. Then she heard the line "Life's a piece of shit when you look at it' and said she couldn't have that because older members of our family would freak out if they heard bad language in church. This was when I told her I would wear red and joked that they would be so outraged by that they wouldn't notice the swear word in the song. Mum laughed so hard, it was the last time I saw her properly laugh. She made me promise I'd wear red. I kept my promise.
I hear The Steve Miller Band's The Joker and remember my first proper kiss.
I hear The Searchers' Needles and Pins and I remember going on fairground rides with my brother at Butlins when we were kids.
I hear Sisqo's The Thong Song and Aaliyah's Try Again and I remember the amazing times I had with my best friend just before she died.
I hear The Nolans' I'm in the Mood for Dancing and I remember my wonderful Nan dancing with us at my cousin's 18th birthday party. My Nan died the following year and I miss her even now, twelve years on. I always remember that party as such a happy time though.
I hear Crocodile Rock and I remember singing with my Mum at the top of our voices at an Elton John concert; we both lost our voices for a whole day after that gig!
I hear Stay by Shakespear's sister and I remember being 13 years old and in hospital for the first time waiting to have my appendix out. Top of the Pops was on and that song was number one; the doctor said the video was about a girl dying. Not what I needed to be thinking about!
I hear Amarillo by Tony Christie (and Peter Kay... sort of) and although I'm not a fan of the song, my whole family is so it reminds me of great times with them. At my brother's wedding reception it got requested and played three times. I grudgingly joined the end of the chain of people dancing in a follow my leader style around the room. It was all caught on video. It makes me emotional now because my brother's wedding was only five years ago and in that time we've lost our Mum, our Grandad and a friend. They're all on that video dancing to Amarillo. Bittersweet memories but I'm glad I have them and I'm glad the video exists.
I hear Whitney Houston's I Wanna Dance with Somebody and I remember the embarrassment of winning the disco dancing competition at club at Butlins when I was about 8 years old. I had to walk on stage in front of everyone to get my prize!
I hear The Prodigy's Spitfire and I remember my poor heartbroken brother and his friends, all just 18, carrying their friend Ash's coffin into his funeral. It was haunting and heartbreaking.
I hear The Way We Were by Barbra Streisand and I remember it being on the radio when I came running home from school with my GCSE results. I remember my mum hugging me and then sobbing with happiness at what I'd achieved.
I hear Bye Bye Baby by The Bay City Rollers and I remember crying in the back of the car on the way home from a holiday and my holiday romance when I was 15. This song came on the radio and my brother, then aged 12, thought it was hilariously appropriate. He sang that song at me over and over again for days and days and days. Whenever we're at a party together now though one of us always requests it because it makes us both laugh now.
I hear Mambo No. 5 by Lou Bega and remember it being on the radio all the time when I was learning to drive. I also remember my Mum laughing hysterically when this song was on The Royle Family while Jim was decorating.
I heard Groovejet by Spiller on the radio that other day when we were driving to the house to do more renovating. It made me smile. I had somehow known I would hear that song while we were working on the house. Last time my Mum decorated the kitchen she had the radio on and I remember her phoning me that night saying that she had heard Groovejet about a million times while decorating. She could never hear the song after that without commenting on how it drove her mad while doing the kitchen up. It's funny that I heard it while being driven mad by decorating too.
Music has a huge part to play in how Paul and I got together too. After our initial conversation about books a lot of our tweeting was about music. Paul is a real music lover, it's his passion in life. It's a huge part of who he is. I love song lyrics and always had books where, as a teenager and beyond, I wrote down lyrics that I loved; that inspired me; that spoke to me. I had recently seen the lyrics to a Madness song called One Better Day and was inspired to copy down these lyrics...
'Walking round you sometimes hear the sunshine
Beating down in time with the rhythm of your shoes
The feeling of arriving when you've nothing left to lose'
because they jumped out at me. They caught exactly how I was feeling at the time. You can imagine how strange/amazing it was when Paul randomly tweeted this lyric; it wasn't even to me, it was a public tweet. I immediately tweeted back the song title and he was stunned that I knew it. From then on he often tweeted song lyrics and I nearly always knew what they were. One night just before he said goodnight to me he told me to download What If I by Ben's Brother. I'd never even heard of this band but I trusted his judgement. I listened to that song on a loop for ages and couldn't work out if he was trying to tell me something about how he felt about me through that song. About a week and a half later we met up in real life and the rest, as they say, is history! We try to regularly have music nights at home, we're planning one this weekend and I can't wait.
The strange thing is that the songs I've talked about aren't necessarily my favourites songs; some of the songs I don't even like but they remind me of a really happy time. If I was asked for a list of my favourite songs, it would be a completely different list. I don't think events have quite the same impact for me without music. Just about everything in my life has a song attached to it, I can't think of many things where music didn't play a part. The power of music is a wondeful thing.
