Since it became available as a podcast and as we don't have to listen to it when actually broadcast, my wife and I have become regular listeners to Radio 4's Desert Island Discs. In case you are not familiar with the format, a guest chooses eight records, a book and a luxury that they would like to have with then should they find themselves stranded alone on a desert island. Which got me thinking, what would I choose? The luxury was fairly easy, or so I thought: lots of paper and pencils. I like to write and draw, but don't have enough time to practice the latter. It could be my chance to get really good. But what about a family album? Could I be happy without access to those pictures? Or a camera, I love photography. No, presenter Kirsty Young is strict, she wouldn't allow me to take a computer and a digital camera without a computer is not complete. OK, how about a book? Hmm, tricky, a favourite from my youth or something really thick that would keep me going for a bit while I awaited rescue? Will have to mull that one over, perhaps the records are the place to start, there are eight if them after all.
And that is where the futility of the exercise started to hit me. What sort of Island is it? Dream-tropical with abundant food, water and shelter and no poisonous bugs? Or does it promise the threat of slow starvation, sunstroke and despair? That would certainly change your music choices, lighthearted, inspirational, uplifting, depressive, contemplative? Something to simply get you through the day? Desert Island Discs has never made the conditions on the island clear, at least in the time I have been listening to it.
There are some rules that are explicit, you can't take whole albums, so it has to be singles (perhaps this is why a lot of people choose classical music, the tracks are longer). Right, how to start then?
Are there any artists I would definitely want? Well there would probably have to be some Kate Bush in there so which one? Running up that Hill, maybe? But then what about Aerial, or Sat in Your Lap, or Suspended in Gaffa or Hounds of Love or Man with the Child in his Eyes or Oh England My Lionheart or Army Dreamers, Babooshka, Breathing, Deeper Understanding or 50 Words for Snow? More than eight there, each of them good enough to make the list and none of them head and shoulders above the others. Some chosen because they were for one reason or another important to me at some stage of my life, others simply because I like the music. And that is just one artist.
So I could pick eight, but they would not be my eight favourite songs, merely an arbitrary selection from maybe a thousand songs by maybe hundreds of artists that mean something to me and could justifiably be taken to the mythical desert island. Compiling such lists is indeed an exercise in futility, but hey, sometimes futile can be fun.
PS in the meantime, I will continue to occasionally post random candidates on Twitter with the hashtag #SongOfTheDay
