Preface: I thought I’d make an effort to dust my “writing” blog off a bit before the end of the year, as much for the discipline of getting something written every day as anything else. So I’m going to do that 30 Days meme that’s doing the rounds, but there are 5 days that I don’t want to do – the topics are not something I can easily talk about, mostly just for practical reasons. So the first five people to pipe up get to pick (non-fiction) topics for me to write about. Anyway, back to “my favourite song”:

God, I hate it when I’m asked questions like this. I always worry that my answer is going to come across as “I’m a pretentious music nerd snowflake who couldn’t possibly pick just one song because I’m sooo eclectic”. But on the other hand, half my friends probably say the same. So y’know, whatever.

For now, let us simply accept that it is actually impossible to have a single favourite song. Music is a thing of emotion and mood, and humans are mercurial creatures. My favourite song to listen to when lying in bed alone at 2am is not going to be my favourite song to dance to in the middle of a nightclub at 2am.

So: it is a bright and sunny December afternoon. The first frost of winter showed up last night. What do I listen to at at this time of year? There’s a handful of albums I regularly reach for when the nights draw in – Firewater’s “The Man On The Burning Tightrope”, Tom Waits “Real Gone”, The Pogues “The Rest of the Best” (I prefer it to “The Best Of”), The Tansads “Shandyland” and The Sisters of Mercy “First and Last and Always” are all regular winter listening.

But the winter also tends to make me want to reach back to older music, or modern reinterpretations of same. I’ve a CD called “Vox Humana: Ancestral Voices For A Modern Europe” that gets played a lot. As do choral workings of Christmas carols. Recently, Miranda has been playing me various bits of medieval polyphony, and that’s definitely going to be part of my winter playlist from now on.

But that’s not getting me any closer to talking about today’s favourite track. After some thought, it’s this little beastie:

That’s Beef Wellington’s inspired remix of Bing Crosby’s “Happy Holidays”. Enjoy.