Top 5 Songs

5. Tip of Memory - elixir

I can still remember the first time that I heard this song. I won a National Youth Week online competition by answering a question about safe sex and scored myself a Sanity Online voucher. With it I bought elixir's self-titled album and an Andrews Sisters CD (the shame...). I put the CD in our surround sound system at home when it came in the mail. I was home alone and it was dusk. Katie Noonan's soaring ethereal notes absolutely set my soul adrift. It's such a serene song... I love that it doesn't take me somewhere foreign but inside myself. Isaac Hurren on saxophone is to die for.

4. Spawn - george

Again... perhaps I am a tad obsessed... but this song is what it is because of Katie and her amazing high notes. Her high D is to absolutely die for. The song closes george's debut album Polyserena and certainly leaves a lasting impression. Spawn is very out of character with the rest of the songs on the album... it manages to both retain the joyful, soulful feel of the album by while twisting it with a much darker, rock feel. The piece starts and ends in G minor, and the chorus fluctuates between G major and G minor, creating a very surreal effect of being uplifted and left to sink again. I listen to this song when I'm in a really happy mood, it escalates my mood through the ceiling and then mellows out at the end, leaving every muscle in my body feeling wonderful. I suppose you could say listening to this song is a lot like having sex.

3. How To Disappear Completely - Radiohead

This is perhaps the most surprising addition to this list. If you thought my obsession with Katie Noonan ended with the last two songs, you're wrong. My love affair with this song began when I saw Katie perform it with the Australian Chamber Orchestra in their 2008 Sublime concert series. In fact, somebody did a bit of a camera-under-the-coat recording of the concert in Melbourne and put the video on YouTube... I highly suggest you check it out, it's not a great recording and it ends before the song does right before the climax, but you get an idea of how truly spectacular the performance was. Thom Yorke wrote the song about his experience touring after the band's very successful album OK Computer was released. The constant attention and touring got too much for him and he thought he couldn't go on with it anymore, however Michael Stipe from R.E.M. offered the advice to him, "Pull the shutters down and keep saying, 'I'm not here, this is not happening.' " These words form the basis of the song, and the idea of moving aside and pulling the shutters down resonates so well with my own life. This is my favourite song to listen to when I need to get away from the world. I go for a walk somewhere dark and empty late at night, and play this song on my iPod as loud as my ears will allow me to. The almost mechanical drone from a foreign key is unsettling, and the falling third motif played in guitar and strings grounds the piece and assures it's assuring tonality against this drone. The string orchestration by Johnny Greenwood is utterly sublime. I listen to this song when I am in real pain. This song, for me, is the ultimate song for escapism.

2. Let Go - Frou Frou

As the title suggests, this song is all about letting go. I was introduced to this song by a group of friends who were discussing it in context of it's use in the film Garden State. So, I hired the film and really enjoyed it, but it was this song which closed the film that caught my attention. I bought the soundtrack the next day and sat in my room listening to Let Go on repeat. How To Disappear Completely is my ultimate escapist song, helping me leave my existential angst and ennui behind me... Spawn is my ultimate energising song, liberating me from the confines of a stagnant mood... Let Go is a very strange medium. Logically this reasoning would suggest that it creates a neutral mood, but actually it is somewhat more enigmatic. The experience of this song for me is based entirely on context. I have wept to this song, it has healed my broken heart, I have danced drunkenly in a state of ecstasy to this song, I've had sex while this song played, I've vented amazing amounts of anger to this song... and I've simply listened to this song en route to Uni and have been entirely emotionally unaffected. It's this song's shape-shifting ability, durability and comforting nature that draws me to it... I feel as though when it's playing it's in my bones.

1. Gorecki - Lamb

This song is based on Henryk Gòrecki's 3rd Symphony, 'Symphony of Sorrowful Song'. I won't start talking about that piece, because I am certain you will be hearing about it when I do my Top 5 Pieces of Music. Lou Rhodes and Andy Barlow wrote the song after hearing Gòrecki's symphony for the first time. I find it hard to describe what effect this song has on me. Attempting to do so here will not do the song or the experience any justice whatsoever. All I can say is, this song means more to me than all four others in this list together and then some. If it's a song you've never heard before, it's time that you heard it. You can listen to it on YouTube here (although I suggest closing your eyes to listen to it... the only video with the complete song I could find on YouTube was a Tomb Raider video). This song has left a very lasting impression upon my soul. I have grown up with this song, not in the sense of having had it from childhood, but it has been there for some of the most formative experiences in my life. This song is a part of the fabric of my existence, part of my story. It has become a part of me and I will carry it with me as though it were a fragile bird's egg for rest of my life. Listen. Love. Read...

Gorecki - Lamb

L. Rhodes / A. Barlow

If I should die this very moment
I wouldn't fear
For I've never known completeness
Like being here
Wrapped in the warmth of you
Loving every breath of you
Still my heart this moment
Or it might burst

Could we stay right here
Till the end of time

Until the earth stops turning
Wanna love you until the seas run dry
I've found the one I've waited for

The one I've waited for

All this time I've loved you
And never known your face
All this time I've missed you
And searched this human race
Here is true peace
Here my heart knows calm
Safe in your soul
Bathed in your sighs

Wanna stay right here
Till the end of time
Till the earth stops turning
Gonna love you until the seas run dry
I've found the one I've waited for
The one I've waited for

All I've known
All I've done
All I've felt was leading to this
All I've known
All I've done
All I've felt was leading to this

Wanna stay right here
Till the end of time until the earth stops turning
Gonna love you till the seas run dry
I've found the one I've waited for

The one I've waited for
The one I've waited for

Wanna stay right here
Till the end of time until the earth stops turning
Gonna love you till the seas run dry
I've found the one I've waited for

The one I've waited for
The one I've waited for