Mr. Brightside - Killers

I'm not sure this is the greatest song of all time, as voted by xfm listeners, but it's very very good. It still bugs me that an American band was voted top by the UK's only indie music station. We invented this stuff!!!

Back to the song - when I listen to this, I can picture the scene and it's very naughty. Is that wrong? I can remember this kind of paranoia as I made my first steps into the world of sex and relationships. I was usually right!

Mr. Brightside

Ruby - Kaiser Chiefs

I'm not sure this is going to be too high in the list but it's very hard not to sing along as loud as possible to this. No idea what the lyrics are about but as my youngest daughter is Alice Ruby, it's become her song in the family.

Due to lack of interest
Tomorrow is cancelled

Ruby

Bittersweet Symphony - The Verve

Was it worth paying all those royalties to The Rolling Stones? I think so.  Urban Hymns is one of my favourite albums and I know this gets into a few 'best of' lists.

Try to make ends meet
You're a slave to money
Then you die

Richard Ashcroft is such a cheerful chap. It must be all those violins.

Bittersweet Symphony

All Together Now - The Farm

Any song that can combines a sample from Pachelbel, Canon in Fugue, with the First World War gets my vote. The Farm didn't last long but they did deliver this and another classic, Groovy Train, in the early 90s.

I think I saw them twice live and even then it was a case of waiting through a set of forgettable songs to get to these two as their encore. The lyrics are a bit of a nonsense but you do get drawn into the drama of a Christmas Day cease-fire with English and German troops popping out of their trenches to play football in no man's land...fact ot fiction?

In terms of Christmas anti-war protest songs, it sits comfortably alongside John Lennon's Merry Xmas..War Is Over and who can forget Jonah Lewie's Stop the Cavalry?

All Together Now

My Top 100 Songs - Introduction

Maybe I have too much time on my hands but I've thought about doing this for a while and resolved to do it having listened to most of  xfm's  Top 1000 Songs of all time over Christmas.

This is much harder than it sounds and I have struggled mightily in a number of areas. For example,  when it comes to a favourite band or album, which tracks do I choose and in what order? In the case of my favourite band, I would probably have 10-15 songs from each. This would become a little dull.

As a result, I decided to have one rule - only one song per band. Yes, this is a little arbitrary and in a few cases (The Smiths, Cure, Jam, Pink Floyd, Arctic Monkeys...) ends up being representative of what I like rather than nailing the best song. I have probably got it wrong in a few cases but it does allow for a little more breadth.

When I look at my list, it certainly tells a story about me and my life since I started taking notice of music in the late 1970s. Most, if not all, conjure up a memory of a time or place that goes beyond an appreciation for the music or lyrics themselves. It is quite narrow in terms of genre and certainly misses out on any number of classic songs and bands that will probably indicate that my music taste is shallow and predictable. I can live with that.

I am clearly a lyrics man. The ability to read, play or write music is quite clearly beyond me and leaves me in awe of those that can pick up an instrument and play it, let alone put together a unique arrangement with drums, guitar, keyboard and whatever else. I reserve my jealousy for the lyric writers. I have a reasonable command of the English language and can put together a cogent sentence every now and then and yet I am light years away from the likes of "punctured bicycle, on a hillside desolate".

I will add them over the next few weeks (knowing my reliability, it could take months). Let me know what you think