Soundtrack

One of those days. You feel old, maybe grey. You've heard the compliments, you've heard the jazz. Fact remains, your joints creak, and if that's what 'articulate' means, you'd rather be quiet. Your muscles hurt when you wake up and it takes an hour or two to prepare to exercise, which means that warm-up seems to be followed too quickly by cool-down.

I used to have a soundtrack in my head. Music played in there, and it made me feel young and vigorous. I'm going to talk about it for a while, because that's what old people do. And then I'll go to sleep for a while.

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I was curious to see what music had made the strongest impressions on me in the last three decades or so. And like many people in such a situation, I looked at my music collection, especially at the music I'd rated 5-star. Of course, that music collection is now on iTunes, so it's easier to examine and sort. And it's terrible mish-mash there, I must say.

I had a classical phase, and I still do. Peter Warlock's Capriol Suite is there, with a lot of Vaughan Williams, a smattering of Beethoven, Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Rodrigo's Concierto de Aranjuez; it's actually quite amazing what I rated 5-star (which most people wouldn't). There's a lot more classical, but it's mostly 4-star and below.

There's a whole lot of modern British. This ranges from urban to neo-Celtic. A bit of Enya, a lot of Beatles, some folk melodies (Star of the County Down, anyone?) and a lot of St Etienne (especially the amazing tracks from Tales from Turnpike House, like The Milk-Bottle Symphony and Side Streets). Always, there's the Queen Symphony, by Tolga Kashif. Not easy to find, but a great, absorbing tribute to the mercurial.

Speaking of urban, there's also Annie Lennox's Don't Let It Bring You Down, from Medusa, a bunch of Simon and Garfunkel and... the main theme from Firefly? (Hmm. How did that get here?) And Convoy, which I shall always remember as the song which reminds us not to pay the toll. I'm not sure where Alan Parsons Project comes in, with Eye in the Sky but it's techno. Is techno urban? No. But what was Firefly?

There's some of the emotional glasshouse stuff too. Aimee Mann (especially One), Mannheim Steamroller (and of course, Chip Davis's compositions – things like Sunday Morning Coffee), The Piano, and Secret Garden.

And there's the man in a category by himself: Billy Joel.

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I'm surprised. Nothing else made it to the 5-star list. I wonder what that says about my personality.