Pet Shop Boys - left to my own devices seven inch version, 1988

"Che Guevara and Debussy to a disco beat" – Ernesto "Che" Guevara (1928-1967) was a Marxist revolutionary born in Argentina who became a major figure in the Cuban Revolution of Fidel Castro. (His visage has become such a commonplace symbol of the counterculture that it's now a virtual cliché.) Claude Debussy (1862-1918) was a French composer, one of the leading figures of the impressionist movement (though he himself apparently disliked having the term "impressionist" applied to his own work). Both Guevara and Debussy may be viewed as revolutionaries in their respective realms. Their juxtaposition and association with a "disco beat" has often been interpreted—rightly or wrongly—as the Pet Shop Boys' own encapsulization of their musical style and ambitions."

Keane - your eyes open, 2004

"Blame Coldplay. Since their success - and subsequent absence - everyone with half a tune and a long-lost love thinks they're sensitive. But three-piece band Keane actually are. And they don't need guitars to prove it. Instead, they rely on singer Tom Chaplin's choirboy vocals and some tender piano melodies."

Saint Etienne - duke duvet, 1993

"The drum pattern of "Duke Duvet" is taken from Depeche Mode's "Enjoy The Silence".

Stars - celebration guns, 2004

“There’s been a lot of tears, tears of emotion. The way that music lives in your body, it can bring you back to a certain time, and that’s quite visceral and intense.”

The Moody Blues - question, 1970

"It was written at a time when we were touring America, and a lot of young people of our generation were living in fear of being called up into a terrible conflict [the Vietnam War], so I think we were speaking for them in a way. When I wrote it, I knew what the bass line was going to be and what it needed from the drums, and fortunately I had Graeme [Edge], who could do that on the high hat. He was well up for doing that beat. And it was great — we didn’t do many takes. There’s no real double tracking on ‘Question.’ It was one of those things where we got back to basics. The Question of Balance album had that philosophy, to get back to basics and a simple way of recording."

Saint Etienne - andrew mccarthy, 1999

"Oh, what a headache this one gave us. Our tribute to the St. Elmo's Fire star never quite worked out - this is the demo which sounds better to us than either the lost vocal version or the Sylvie b-side. The original lyric was a haunting tribute to the originator of the 'eye method'."

Club 8 - breakdown, 1996

"Club 8, who are Karolina Komstedt and Johan Angergård, began their career in 1995 and have not stopped making their signature brilliant music since. Each of the seven albums they have released is testimony to Karolina and Johan’s mastery of their talent, the band’s evolution and the refinement of their sound. They make for an interesting study in the life of the pop sensation that they have become."

Prefab Sprout - cars and girls, 1988

"Lyrically, "Cars and Girls" is a comment on Bruce Springsteen's use of romantic metaphors in his songs. McAloon felt Springsteen utilised "a poetry that an Englishman can’t understand". The song is often seen as indicating a personal distaste for Springsteen, but McAloon elaborated on the lyrics in a 1992 interview; "The point of the parody is this: not that I think Bruce Springsteen is crap, it's that I think a lot of his audience get into him on a patriotic level that he doesn't intend. They misinterpret him, their enjoyment of him is inaccurate, all very imperialist American. I wanted to write a song about someone who was thick white trash, listening to Springsteen, and saying 'But our lives aren't like that'".

The Cure - homesick, 1989

"It’s not just that they were making great music; they’d been making great music for roughly a decade already. But these were the years during which they coalesced into this whole iconic thing, the Cure—a sound, a look, and a sensibility that a few kids in every other high school could build whole identities around. Or at least whole wardrobes, decoration schemes, and notebook scribbles. One of my first big memories of listening to Disintegration involves wandering around the Colorado State Fair, from the agriculture show to the gang fights by the midway. This is a kind of reach I doubt Robert Smith ever imagined."

Belle And Sebastian - the wrong girl, 2000

"Chamber-pop arrangements recall the ‘60s pop group the Left Banke, and the alternating of two male and two female singers evokes a softer version of the Mekons - into Romantic poetry rather than revolutionary polemics. But it’s frontman Stuart Murdoch’s wispy voice and fragile lyrics that give the album its identity. In capturing the nature of an easily bruised psyche, he seems directly descended both from ‘70s tragic hero Nick Drake and from Morrissey at his most vulnerable and resigned."

Stars - on the hills, 2017

"There Is No Love in Fluorescent Light is the sound of a band that know themselves. Stars speak to the truths we grapple with, and the internal nature of our emotional experiences. It's a gift to hear this realized."

Paul McCartney - getting better live, 2002

"he's playing for the crowd even more than usual, filling out the set list with sentimental favorites"

Tim Buckley - song to the siren live, 1970

"I would write lyrics, hand them to him and he'd come back with a fully fledged piece. There was some kind of uncanny connection between us."

New Order - round and round, 1989

"The song is about New Order's then-souring relationship with Tony Wilson, the owner of Factory Records, which was the band's label at the time. On the documentary "New Order Story", Bernard Sumner discusses that he did not originally intend the song to be about Tony Wilson and the tension between Wilson and the group, but Sumner admits that growing tension between the two men ultimately was channelled into the song when it was being written."

Pet Shop Boys - london, 2002

"What a strange song: a beautiful melody, a gorgeous production, but strange nonetheless. It's the story of a pair of deserters from the Russian army who make their way to London in hopes of forging a new life for themselves—which they do, although they wind up resorting to credit card fraud in order to get by. Singing to a largely acoustic backdrop, Neil adopts the role of one of these emigrés, his voice digitally (and oddly) manipulated throughout the song in such a way to exaggerate his usual vocal idiosyncracies."

Dido - life for rent, 2003

"This song was one of the first songs I wrote there and it still resonates with me. There's a line in there that says I want to live by the sea"

Beach House - silver soul, 2010

“Silver Soul” has the thick, churning gloom familiar from earlier Beach House records, but they acquire more force by being placed alongside tracks that allow for more light. Front to back, the arrangements and sequencing are superb."

Elton John - the man who never died, 1985

"Released as a B-side to "Wrap Her Up." The instrumental tribute to John Lennon was written soon after he died. But with Taupin having separately written "Empty Garden," this song, strongly resembling "Song For Guy," remained unreleased for five years."

The Mary Onettes - dare, 2009

"With huge melodic choruses, soaring strings, and vocals filled with emotional gut-wrench, “Dare” is four minutes of anachronistic bliss."

Electronic - gangster, 1991

"its strength is in conflict ... The inexorable pounding of the beatbox versus the fragile sadness of Sumner's voice and the he's/she's leaving stories; the symmetry of the synthesized or sampled sounds versus the sheer blood and bone physicality of Marr's guitar"