This is the soundtrack of the film about my life.

So, if you were asked to create a soundtrack for the film about your life, what would it be? Would you include the albums that make it on to your own ‘venerable’ desert island disc collection, or would you go with the songs that have personal resonance but are potentially social minefields when mentioned at parties?

It’s one of those random things that came into my head today while I was walking around doing errands, because anyone with an iPod is making a soundtrack to the next 5 minutes, forget about the film or their own life. We are creating and remaking our filmic soundtrack everyday, so what then lends any weight to the song I listen to today versus those I would immortalise with an idealised filmic version of my own life? For example, at the moment I am listening to The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret by Queens of the Stone Age, so if this particular moment, me writing this were immortalised on film, would the same song be playing?

The most obvious distinction is that the film version of your life has the potential to be seen by other people, who for a concentrated amount of time will feign interest in you, but when I am walking down the street –unless I am looking for trouble – the only people engaging with me and my iPod, are, well me and my iPod.

If that’s the only distinction, what then is the music in the soundtrack to the film version of my life supposed to symbolise? As a music geek, the idea of a film soundtrack is more appealing than the idea of the film itself. I mean do I choose things as they happened – like when I had my first kiss to Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine – and therefore should fact colour fiction, dressed as fact? Or, is the distinction between actual reality and an actualised reality something that is even still pertinent? My first kiss to Only Shallow is the soundtrack to reality, but would the filmic version need something else, would someone else’s interpretation of my reality entail them to choose something daft like Katy Perry’s I Kissed a Girl and I Liked It song

So if you were scoring your own biopic, how much is about sticking to the real? Choosing songs because they were what was actually playing when those experiences went down might make for potentially disjointed, although appealing listening, and it would better establish an idea of context. But the context of why that song was playing then only makes sense to me, because I was actually there. There is of course the ability to completely rewrite history with a few casual song changes: what was once happy can now be sad, what was once simply sad could now be catastrophic. Songs are the cheapest form of manipulation, thus adding emotional content where there might be none and enhancing whatever was/is there.

It’s kind of obvious I haven’t come to any real conclusion on this matter, I have merely asked a lot of questions. But to go back to my original question: what would the soundtrack to the film version of my life be?

In a very particular order, although I am not sure what scenes they would correspond to. other than the opening and closing credits, the list includes:

Opening Credits: Mark Farina – Dream Machine

David Bowie – Absolute Beginners
The Rolling Stones – Brown Sugar
Pil – Bad Baby
The Sex Pistols – No Feelings
Carly Simon – You’re So Vain
Film School – He’s a Deep Deep Lake
Windsor for the Derby – Nightingale
PJ Harvey – Victory
Arab Strap – Coming Down
Archers of Loaf – Worst Defence
Alexandra P. Spaulding – untitled
Beastie Boys – What Comes Around
Black Flag – My Rules
The Buzzcocks – Just Lust
Minor Threat – I Don’t Wanna Hear It
Fugazi – Public Witness Program
My Bloody Valentine – Only Shallow
Bright Eyes – Take It Easy (Love Nothing)
Nirvana – You Know Your Right
Greg Dulli – Cigarettes
Fugazi – Margin Walker
Radiohead – Black Star
Sonic Youth – Teenage Riot
Radiohead – My Iron Lung
Groove Armada – Superstylin’
Hot Chip – Over and Over
Wu Tang Clan – Protect Ya Neck
The Streets – Has it Come to This
Heartless Bastards – New Resolution
Herbaliser – When I Shine
LCD Soundsystem – Someone Great
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds – There She Goes My Beautiful World
Arcade Fire – Neighborhood #1
Beck – Lost Cause
The Breeders – Do You Love Me Now?
Radiohead – Let Down
Built to Spill – Goin’ Against Your Mind
New Order – Temptation
Katio – Color of Feels
The Field – From Here We Go Sublime
The Clash – London Calling

…. more to come

Closing Credits: Scott Walker – The Escape

APS

*I reserve the right to continually amend this list.