30 Minute Song Challenge

There's a thing doing the rounds on Facebook at the moment. No, not crabs (though no doubt they're positively thriving among certain local Twitter groups) but a little list thingy that people seem to be enthusiastically embracing.

It's called the 30 Day Song Challenge and basically, if the title isn't quite self-explanatory enough for you, you have to choose one song per day for a month, with a different criteria to consider with each new dawn. Tedious and self-indulgent to everyone else, this is a source of great fascination for those of us who love compiling lists and would put their own poos in order of satisfaction if the demand was there.

But I can't be arsed taking a month over it, so I'm going to knock out my candidates now. Only to immediately regret my choices and think of something else tomorrow, I expect, but there's impatience for you. I make no apology for the fact that Elbow will probably be all over this because, like it or not, they seem to have written a song for just about every emotion you could expect to encounter in this life, from agonising heartbreak over a lost love to the mild disappointment brought on by a poor episode of Springwatch. But I'll try to restrain myself.

Here goes... (where the category is blank, I just couldn't muster the brain power to come up with an answer right now.)

My favourite song
Mirrorball by Elbow
(Obviously, this is practically impossible to answer. One can't spend 31 years on this planet and undergo the relentless audio assault that brings, then be able to choose one three-minute piece of music that I prefer emphatically to all else. And music is so subjective, according to your mood. Christ, ask me in the middle of an office party after four glasses of sauvignon blanc and I'd probably claim that Wham's Club Tropicana was the greatest piece of composition in living memory. But today, at this time in my life, it's this.)

My least favourite song


A song that makes me happy
I Believe in a Thing Called Love by The Darkness

A song that makes me sad
Don't Leave by Faithless

A song that reminds me of someone
1999 by Prince

A song that reminds me of somewhere
Bootylicious by Destiny's Child
(This song and its video reminds me of bumming around the Greek Islands for the summer when I was 21 - unfortunately I seemed to spend more time in English-speaking bars with MTV than traditional Greek tavernas, doh!)

A song that reminds me of a certain event
Wings of Speed by Paul Weller
(My parents' divorce. Bummer.)

A song that I know all the words to
Upside Down by Paloma Faith

A song that I can dance to
You Can Do It by Ice Cube
(Though only when simultaneously drunk and horny.)

A song that makes me fall asleep
Heartbeats by Jose Gonzalez

A song from my favourite band
Forget Myself by Elbow

A song from a band I hate
Year 3000 by Busted

A song that is a guilty pleasure
Don't Stop Movin' by S Club 7

A song that no one would expect me to love
Rock 'n' Roll by Led Zeppelin

A song that describes me
Creep by Radiohead

A song that I used to love but now hate
I'll Stand By You
(I remember buying The Pretenders' original version on cassette when I was at school and playing it to death, Chrissy Hynde's distinctively reedy voice giving the rather saccharine lyrics a genuine sense of gut-wrenching heartache. Only for Girls Aloud to turn it into a ballad-by-numbers yawnfest a few years later, crushing the life out of it like a kitten under a washing machine. Surely there have got to be laws against this sort of thing?)

A song that I often hear on the radio
Kiss Me by Sixpence None The Richer
(AAAARRRRRGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!!)

A song that I wish I heard on the radio
Statues by Foo Fighters

A song from my favourite album
Some Riots by Elbow

A song that I listen to when I'm angry
White Lies by Paolo Nutini

A song that I listen to when I'm happy
Do I Do by Stevie Wonder

A song that I listen to when I'm sad
I Shall Believe by Sheryl Crow

A song that I want to play at my wedding
Gravity by Embrace

A song that I want to play at my funeral
Let's Face the Music and Dance by Frank Sinatra

A song that makes me laugh
Wonderboy by Tenacious D

A song that I can play on an instrument
I'm Not In Love by 10CC

A song that I wish I could play
Stranger Things Have Happened by Foo Fighters

A song that makes me feel guilty
White Blank Page by Mumford & Sons / Jesus is a Rochdale Girl by Elbow

A song from my childhood
Love in the First Degree by Bananarama

My favourite song at this time last year
Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons