My 2025 playlist is DONE.

Fifty-two songs. No analysis. No liner notes. Just the year, as it sounded.

It was a shit year, but we got there in the end. I managed to make something warm and sustaining out of it.

And also there were potatoes.

On music as memory, misdirection, and rescue

In another life I would have been a rock star. All ego and wild wardrobe choices, making an artistic choice to stain my fingers black à la Michèle Lamy, and crying at the end of every concert.

But the closest I ever got was being a radio producer, and occasionally hosting some lunchtime shows. We won’t talk about the disastrous time I had to read the news. Local radio really used to be all hands on deck.

I miss the radio show, the playlists, the variety of niche music programmes. I don’t get that much any more.

I love music.

Mixtapes Were a Language

I grew up in the era of mixtapes.

Actual tapes. Hours spent deciding what went where, which song opened, which one closed, what you were saying by putting that track after this one. You couldn’t skip casually. You had to commit. Making a mixtape for someone meant effort, attention, intention.

It was a way of saying this is how I feel, without having to say it out loud.

I was good at making them too. Handing one over with no track list, keeping you guessing with each pause between tracks. Could you pick out the theme before the end?

Why Covers Hit Harder

Cover songs were clutch at keeping folks guessing, but also making them listen, really listen, to the lyrics.

Hurt.

Nine Inch Nails? Melancholic. Empty. A song of absence. A quiet, furious piece that closed Trent Reznor’s live shows like a final fuck you.

Johnny Cash’s cover of Hurt.

Ooft.
Tears.

Sinéad O’Connor — Nothing Compares 2 U
Faith No More — Easy
Yael Naim — Toxic
Muse — Feeling Good
I Fight Dragons — The Power of Love

I could go on, but I’ll save the Patrick Bateman monologue for another time.

I love music.

And I think that’s why the Upside Down idea lodged itself in my brain.

In Stranger Things, when one of the characters gets taken away, and they’re panicked, hurt, untethered from the real world, their friends don’t argue them back to safety. Nobody explains. Nobody instructs.

They play the song that knows them.
And they find their own way out.

Music as a tether.
Music as a way home.

What I loved most wasn’t the drama of it, but the simplicity. The idea that you don’t have to be clever in the moment you’re overwhelmed. You don’t have to articulate anything. You just need the right sound to pull you back into yourself.

And maybe after all this year’s therapy, a grown-up realisation: you’re allowed to choose that song in advance. You’re allowed to tell people what will reach you. You don’t have to hope they guess.

How You Find Me

So when I’m lost. When I’m untethered, overwhelmed, and unable to ask for help. When I’m upside down, this is how you pull me back.

You’ve Got the Love — Florence + the Machine.

I suppose it makes sense that it’s a cover.
I’ve always been better at saying things with other people’s songs.