As both Nick Hornby and my good friend MSKP know well, a list will solve anything - be it an argument, writers' block or the blues. So without further fanfare...

Five songs I love:

Hearts and Bones - Paul Simon
This song has the same effect on me as a warm cup of tea in my favourite mug. I fucken love Paul Simon. Sad, plaintive, melodramatically romantic. I want this played at my wedding.*
Favourite line: 'one and one half wandering Jews, free to travel wherever they choose'.

Boulder - Ned Collette
Ned is part weird 70s prog (think War of the Worlds or the Monkey theme tune), part Steve Kilbey, part Go Betweens. He's not scared of a complicated melody line and he knows his way around a jaw harp (or at least a sample of one). We went to a Ned gig a couple of weeks back and heckled and mugged at him all night. But it's like the old law of the playground where the little boys tease the girls they like the most, isn't it? Favourite line: the moog solo.

I Wanna Know What Love Is - Foreigner
OK - I'm allowed to return periodically to the big-haired ballads of my childhood, because I didn't discover them yesterday.** This only gets a mention because we were in South Preston Safeway when it came on, and we entertained the checkout chick with the bit where the emotion cracks through just before the big chorus... which makes my favourite line *squints meaningfully and draws clenched fist in tight to the chest*: 'in my life, there's been heartache and pain, I don't know if I can face it again, can't stop now, I've travelled so far, to change this lonely la-ha-hafe....'

Upwards Over the Mountain - Iron and Wine
Another topical rather than all-time favourite, I&W being a gig I reviewed recently. Intimate and other-worldly and completely without pretension, the stories within the songs are so personal and evocative. I've recorded my own version of this on Garage Band. Be thankful that I have neither the technology nor the know how to inflict it upon you here.
Favourite line: That would be 'Mother, remember the night that the dog had her pups in the pantry.'

Scenic World - Beirut (sorry to be painful, but the version on the Lon Gisland EP)
I love this song so much. That hypnotic riff, the trumpet line that sounds like some old highland refrain, his gorgeous voice. This one's for the funeral. It fills my eyes with tears every time.
Favourite line: 'I lie down like a tired dog, licking his wounds in the shade.'

*I know, I know, it's about a marriage break-up. But I still want it played at my wedding.
**Upon re-reading, this is a violently snobbish and hateful thing to say, but I'm leaving it in. If someone wrote that about T-Rex, whom I didn't discover "at the time" (because I would've been about two), I'd hate them. Chris often rails against this nasty, ignorant ageism. But I'm yet to find a person who hasn't engaged in it.