What kind of music are you into? Who’s your favourite band? What’s your favourite song? I can never seem to answer these perfectly normal questions. But what I can tell you is that each of the songs on this playlist gives me the unholy and profound emotional shivers.

For my first rental payment to Myxomatapesis Towers I’ve decided to go ventricles-deep and bring together those songs that, for whatever reason, hit me straight in the aorta every single time, without fail. Whether by beloved association, cherished or painful memory, direct link to my serotonin/melatonin transmitters, or through some less tangible connection, these songs are among the ones that hold the most power over me. Needless to say, dragging myself through them all at once like this is quite a trip… I hit the ‘can’t possibly cut any of these’ point at well past double the Landlord’s allowable time limit.

Having interrogated my iTunes library from all directions for this playlist, I’ve noticed some common themes in the music that moves me most:

• Sturdy reliable backbone around which to safely hang the noise and the feels
• Sucker for a well-placed key change and an unabashedly melodramatic finale
• Minor chords are my currency
• Women with epic pipes and weedy sounding men seem to be my people
• Forever chasing that ineffable sense of fighting valiantly against impossible odds
• The guitar is still clearly my most enduring love, despite best efforts to evolve from my indie kid roots

I’ll leave it to the algorithm jockeys, the weapons manufacturers and the otherwise heartless to use these songs to determine the formula for cutting straight through my defences to the vital organs. To the rest of you, I grant safe passage.

Perhaps these, after all, are my favourite songs.