The sound that made me
Ten albums. One selection per artist. And a desert island with a remarkably reliable electricity supply.
Having chosen the books I would take to a desert island, it was probably inevitable that I would get round to the records.
They’re records that became part of my life.
Some have been with me for decades. Others arrived much more recently and somehow found an immediate place alongside them. Some changed what I listened for in music; some are inseparable from a particular time in my life; and some put words and music around experiences that are difficult to express any other way.
The sound that made me is still being made.
These aren’t necessarily the ten greatest albums I’ve heard. They’re not even a definitive list of my ten favourite artists. They’re albums that have stayed with me, for reasons that have as much to do with where I was, who I was and what I heard in them as with any attempt at musical objectivity.
And favourite albums are rather different from favourite songs.
There are records with one extraordinary track and quite a lot I could happily live without. There are albums I recognise as important but rarely feel the urge to put on. Then there are those whose opening moments make me want to settle in and stay until the end.
With my fiction choices, I kept coming back to the pleasure of entering another world. Looking at these ten, I suspect something similar is happening again.
Sometimes that world is as elaborate as anything in a novel. Sometimes it is simply the space created by a voice, a piano and a song that seems to understand something.
The rules
One album per artist.
This is the same rule my mate Mike and I use when discussing favourite records. Otherwise, the Beatles have a tendency to occupy more than their fair share of the luggage.
I am also choosing albums as albums. The order of the songs, the changes of mood and the feeling of reaching the end all count.
There is a separate discussion to be had about the albums I admire and the ones I actually play. The two lists would overlap, but I am fairly sure they would not be identical.
For this exercise, the question is which ten I would want to keep listening to if the rest of my collection disappeared over the horizon.
The order below is a way of organising the records, rather than a league table. Deciding which ten to take has caused quite enough trouble already.
The island record collection
- The Joshua Tree — U2
- The Dark Side of the Moon — Pink Floyd
- Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band — The Beatles
- Café Bleu — The Style Council
- Steve McQueen — Prefab Sprout
- Love Over Gold — Dire Straits
- Court and Spark — Joni Mitchell
- Aja — Steely Dan
- Selling England by the Pound — Genesis
- Lifeline — RJ Thompson
1. The Joshua Tree
There are certain album openings that seem to change the size of the room.
Where the Streets Have No Name is one of them. The slow build, the arrival of the guitar and the eventual release create a feeling of space before Bono has sung a word.
And then come I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For and With or Without You. That is quite an opening sequence.
For me, I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For is one of the greatest gospel songs ever written. It holds faith and longing together, allowing belief to coexist with the sense that the journey is unfinished. I recognise something in that.
The Joshua Tree also feels like the peak U2 had been climbing towards. Boy and October developed their songwriting and the urgency of their sound. War brought those qualities into sharper focus and reached a much wider audience.
Then The Unforgettable Fire showed how far they were prepared to explore. Its atmosphere and experimentation opened up possibilities that fed into The Joshua Tree. That fourth album is an essential part of the journey.
By 1987, the earlier energy, the spiritual and political concerns, and the growing confidence had come together with American roots influences to create something extraordinary. For me, this was the summit.
But I do not put it on to work through the history. I put it on because I can get lost in it. Running to Stand Still brings the scale down to something painfully intimate; One Tree Hill offers warmth and sadness. The album gives me somewhere else to be for a while.
Why take it to the island?
For the searching, the hope and that ability to take me out of myself. However familiar it becomes, those opening tracks still promise a journey I want to make.
2. The Dark Side of the Moon
Last year, I bought a new turntable. It was moderately expensive, which is the sort of phrase you use when you would prefer not to dwell too long on the actual amount.
The Dark Side of the Moon was (deliberately) the first vinyl album I tried on it.
It confirmed that I had made the right decision, and even Julia agreed.
The sound filled the lounge with a purity and brilliance that made me want to hear every detail. I kept turning it up, listening for every moment. A record I already knew became something I was discovering again.
That experience is part of why it belongs here. Familiarity can make an album’s reputation seem more noticeable than the music. Hearing it properly again reminded me what all the fuss was about.
The sound effects and transitions create a continuous experience, but the songs deal with recognisable things: time slipping away, money, conflict, fear and the difficulty of keeping ourselves together.
Time is an especially uncomfortable song once you have gained a little more experience of time passing. The clocks are impressive. The thought behind them is rather harder to dismiss.
Then there is the space in Us and Them, the wordless intensity of The Great Gig in the Sky and the way the final stretch gathers the record towards its conclusion.
On that first evening with the turntable, I wanted to hear all of it. Preferably a little louder.
Why take it to the island?
Because it can still make a familiar room feel different. And because that evening reminded me how much pleasure there is in giving an album my full attention.
3. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
Only one Beatles album is an unreasonable restriction. Unfortunately, it is my restriction, so I cannot complain too much. Abbey Road, Revolver and others could all make a case, but Sgt. Pepper wins because no other Beatles album gives me quite the same sense that absolutely anything might happen next.
Sgt. Pepper offers the pleasure of a record on which almost anything seems possible. A song can lead into a completely different musical setting and somehow still belong to the same experience.
There is the theatrical welcome of the opening, the friendly company of With a Little Help from My Friends and the strange, colourful world of Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.
But there is also She’s Leaving Home. For all the studio invention, that small family drama can be one of the album’s most affecting moments. The daughter’s need to leave and the parents’ inability to understand her are both allowed to exist.
There is, however, one absence I find difficult to ignore: Strawberry Fields Forever.
It was recorded during the sessions that led to Sgt. Pepper, but released with Penny Lane as a double A-side single and left off the original album. I understand the history. I still wish it were here. The idea of this record containing Strawberry Fields Forever as well is almost unreasonable.
Within You Without You takes the album somewhere else again. Then, eventually, comes A Day in the Life.
That song contains an extraordinary amount: everyday observation, disconnection, humour, unease and those orchestral passages in which the familiar world appears to come apart.
And then that final chord.
The impact of it, followed by the long decay, is brilliant. I find myself listening into the sound as it fades, reluctant to decide that it has finished. After everything that has happened in the song, that single sustained chord somehow has the weight to conclude it.
Why take it to the island?
For the imagination and the songs, and for an ending I would never want to lose. I may still spend some time wondering where I could have fitted Strawberry Fields Forever.
4. Café Bleu
Paul Weller’s willingness to keep changing has always impressed me. The Jam’s punk energy, mod influences and political edge would have been enough to build a career around; having lived in Woking, I also hear a place I know in Town Called Malice.
But Weller kept moving. The Style Council opened out into soul and jazz, and Café Bleu captures a particularly appealing stage in that journey.
With Mick Talbot, there is room for instrumentals, different voices and songs that approach things from a new direction. The piano-led album version of My Ever Changing Moods has space to breathe. You’re the Best Thing brings warmth, while Headstart for Happiness provides a welcome lift.
Dee C. Lee’s vocals add something special, and the interplay of voices is part of the album’s character. I like the musical curiosity running through the record: it gives this collection a different atmosphere and reminds me how much I enjoy an artist prepared to change.
Why take it to the island?
For the warmth, the variety and those voices. And because this particular part of Weller’s journey remains somewhere I would happily spend a great deal of time.
5. Steve McQueen
Prefab Sprout brought a particular kind of sophistication to pop songwriting. In Paddy McAloon’s hands, a memorable melody can carry an idea that becomes more interesting the longer you live with it.
Steve McQueen contains some of his most intelligent songs. I love them.
That intelligence is there in the turns of phrase, the unexpected perspectives and the way the music can complicate what the words appear to be saying. But the songs also have feeling. Their cleverness never prevents them from being moving.
Bonny and When Love Breaks Down show how much emotion this music can hold without becoming heavy-handed. Appetite brings a different energy, while Faron Young makes a wonderfully unexpected entrance to the album.
Thomas Dolby’s production is a great part of the pleasure. The songs have space and detail, with a clarity that lets the arrangements unfold around them. There is always something else worth noticing.
I find myself returning to the combination: McAloon’s songwriting and Dolby’s sense of how to let it be heard. The record is carefully made, yet the emotions inside it remain wonderfully untidy.
Why take it to the island?
Because I love these songs, and because their intelligence gives me more to enjoy each time. An album can be immediately appealing and still have plenty left to reveal.
6. Love Over Gold
Telegraph Road and Private Investigations almost made me give up playing the guitar.
I realised, with a clarity I had not quite experienced before, that I would never produce a purity of sound like this.
I would, of course, keep trying. But the distance between what I could do and what I was hearing had become rather difficult to overlook.
That is part of what makes this album special to me. Mark Knopfler’s playing can be technically remarkable, but what stays with me is the sound of a note and the judgement behind it. The space around it matters too.
Telegraph Road takes its time. The landscape develops, the story expands and the music gradually builds around it. By the final stretch, the length feels part of the point.
Private Investigations creates tension differently. The quiet details and the sudden force make it feel almost like a scene being played out in front of you. It rewards listening closely, even when doing so is slightly discouraging for the amateur guitarist.
There are only five tracks, but plenty happens within them. Industrial Disease interrupts the atmosphere with something brisker and more sardonic; the title track and It Never Rains give the second half its own weight.
The album has the confidence to let the music develop. On an island, I should at least be able to give it the time it asks for.
Why take it to the island?
For the storytelling, the atmosphere and that extraordinary guitar sound. It makes me aware of what I cannot do, while somehow leaving me wanting to try again.
7. Court and Spark
Choosing a single Joni Mitchell album may have been more difficult than choosing a single Beatles album.
Leaving behind Blue, Clouds and Hejira is one of the more complicated decisions in this entire exercise. Any of them could make a persuasive case, and I suspect each would have something to say about being left on the quayside.
Court and Spark gets the place.
Its familiar songs can make it seem an immediately approachable record, but I find considerably more complexity underneath. For me, that is part of the attraction. It does not give everything up in the first few listens.
The interesting territory is often inside a conversation or a relationship: what someone wants, what they think they want and what they can bear to admit. The richness of the musical setting gives those observations room to develop.
Help Me has a lovely combination of momentum and emotional hesitation. Free Man in Paris opens out into a different kind of release. Elsewhere, the record keeps finding complications beneath apparently ordinary encounters.
Mitchell allows people to remain contradictory. Attraction does not automatically lead to contentment. Freedom can be desirable and difficult. Knowing something about yourself does not necessarily mean you know what to do next.
The more closely I listen, the more there is to hear in the phrasing, the arrangements and the relationships inside the songs. That gradual unfolding makes this a particularly rewarding album to return to.
Why take it to the island?
For the warmth, the musical detail and the things it reveals over time. I am still not entirely comfortable about leaving the other three behind.
8. Aja
Aja has a sound and a feel that I find difficult to separate from the pleasure of listening to it.
There is the extraordinary musicianship, of course. I can follow a bass line, a keyboard part, a small rhythmic adjustment or the way a solo develops, and find something worth hearing in each.
But there are also moments when I stop following the individual parts and simply get lost in the record. I can forget where I am for a moment. In that respect, it offers something similar to The Joshua Tree, although it gets there by a very different route.
I almost chose The Nightfly by Donald Fagen instead.
Strictly speaking, a Fagen solo album alongside Steely Dan might get past my one-artist rule. I am less convinced it would honour the spirit of it. There would certainly be questions from the desert-island selection committee.
The fact that it came so close says something about the sound I respond to. These are records I can inhabit.
On Aja, the title track gives me an extended musical landscape to explore. Peg packs a remarkable amount of detail into something immediately enjoyable. Then there is Deacon Blues, with its mixture of aspiration, self-invention and melancholy.
Donald Fagen and Walter Becker also populate their immaculate recordings with some rather less immaculate people. I enjoy the uncertainty about how much to trust a narrator, or how far to sympathise with him.
But sometimes I leave the analysis alone and let the sound take over. That is a substantial part of why this album is here.
Why take it to the island?
For its sound, its feel and its ability to make me forget my surroundings for a little while. The Nightfly would be the record I was most tempted to slip into the same sleeve.
9. Selling England by the Pound
I chose Selling England by the Pound because, for me, it captures the widest emotional, musical and lyrical range of Genesis in one coherent album that I want to play again.
It has breadth without bloat.
There is pastoral delicacy, symphonic scale, satire, melancholy and extraordinary playing. A desert-island album needs variety, and this one can move between very different experiences without losing its identity.
Dancing with the Moonlit Knight begins with that spare, delicate vocal before opening into something much larger. I Know What I Like offers warmth and eccentricity; The Cinema Show provides an epic sweep I can happily disappear into.
Then there is Firth of Fifth, with its piano, flute and guitar each helping to shape the journey. Steve Hackett’s solo is a particularly good reason to stop doing anything else for a while.
This is also the point at which the classic line-up feels most balanced to me: Peter Gabriel, Steve Hackett, Tony Banks, Mike Rutherford and Phil Collins. The theatrical storytelling and instrumental passages seem to give each other the space they need.
Foxtrot is a masterpiece, but I find it more uneven. The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway is brilliant, but sprawling and, at times, a little claustrophobic. Selling England by the Pound gives me the most complete expression of what I love about Genesis.
Given my affection for books that create another world, perhaps it is unsurprising that I would choose an album with so much scenery.
Why take it to the island?
For the range, the balance and a world that remains a pleasure to revisit. With this and Tolkien in the luggage, being stranded might occasionally resemble a fairly ambitious retreat.
10. Lifeline
This is the most recent album in my ten, but its place is as personal as any of the others.
Lifeline spoke to me at a time when I was feeling low in life. I needed to know that I was not the only person who had ever gone through something like this.
There is a particular comfort in finding that recognition in music. Someone you have never met can put words and sound around something you have been struggling to express, and leave you feeling a little less alone.
The album’s exploration of childhood, mental health and relationships matters to me. So does its hope. It acknowledges difficult experiences while still allowing for the possibility of connection and change.
And Let Your Guard Down may, indirectly, be one reason I am writing these blogs now. Opening myself up a little more, and giving a little more of myself away.
I would not want to turn that into too neat a story. But I do wonder whether a song that encourages a little more openness helped me find the confidence to put more of myself into words.
That gives it a rather particular place in a list like this. Some records change what you listen for. Others may change what you feel able to say.
It also completes the thought at the beginning. An album does not need to have been with me since my teens to become part of my life; music can still arrive at the right moment and change what I feel able to hear, understand or say.
Why take it to the island?
Because it helped me feel less alone when I needed that. And because a record that may have helped me find something of my own voice is one I would be very sorry to leave behind.
A Few Final Thoughts
Looking at the ten together, I can see certain habits emerging.
I like melody. I enjoy musicians who give me something to follow beneath the main tune. And I am quite happy for a song to take the long way round if the journey is worthwhile.
Looking back, though, the most revealing things are probably the memories attached to the music: the turntable filling the lounge with sound, the guitar playing I knew I could never match, the recognition of a town I had lived in, and a song that may have helped me become a little more open.
Those connections help explain why these particular records are here. I can admire an album’s construction, but the reason I would miss it is often much more personal.
I can also see that much of this collection comes from a fairly concentrated period. That will surprise absolutely nobody who has ever discussed favourite records with someone of my age.
Lifeline is a welcome reminder that the door remains open.
For now, though, these are ten records I would be very sorry to lose, and very happy to hear again.
Over to You
Which ten albums would you take?
I am particularly interested in the records you actually want to hear from beginning to end, including the less obvious choices that would mean very little to anyone else but matter enormously to you.
Would your collection be full of old companions? Would something you discovered recently make it into the bag? And which artist would make the one-album rule hardest to obey?
One selection per artist, please.
Even on a desert island, we have to maintain some standards.
P.S. I am assuming the turntable, amplifier and speakers are provided. If I have to fit those into the luggage as well, we may need to revisit the books.