Laura Hird has the best tunes

12 November 2006

"It was Boyzone who got me into Cat Stevens. As one of those snobbish pricks who is obsessed by music, lives his through music, wears his elitism on his sleeve and even makes a living from criticising and cajoling those who make the music, this is not an easy thing for to me to admit."

A new feature on Laura Hird's site, The Devil Has All The Best Tunes, has writers, artists and musicians consider their favourite tunes. Read Ben Myers on Cat Stevens; R.C. Edrington on the Stiff Little Fingers; Peter Wild on Rogue Wave; Dan Fante on Little Richard and Tony O'Neill on Chet Baker's Almost Blue:

The song used to float out of my Los Angeles motel room, intertwine with the smell of the heroin I was cooking and the chemical stench of the crack. I used to send it up into the endless California skies and let it float away like a lost childhood balloon. His voice, fractured, grown husky and thin from the ravages of the drugs and the heartache, every word seemed on the verge of collapsing in on itself. It was the saddest music in the world.