Nick Hornby’s musical taste test

British writer Nick Hornby hit upon an important human discovery in his first novel, High Fidelity: people love to read lists.

Especially "top ten favorite song" lists. So he put a lot of those in High Fidelity. His latest book is 31 Songs, a selection of essays on (duh!) 31 songs that mean, or once meant, a lot to Nick Hornby. Originally put out by friend Dave Eggars’ McSweeney’s Publishing as Songbook, complete with a sampler CD, the paperback version is thinner and lacks the CD.

Now, you may be asking yourself, how can I get my list of favorite songs published as a book with accompanying CD? Well, sorry, you can’t. Unless you happen to be Nick Hornby, whose novels often contain a sub-theme of music appreciation, and routinely get turned into hit movies such as High Fidelity and About A Boy.

In another lifetime, Hornby pines, he would have been a pop songwriter. Music has meant so much to him during his lifetime that certain songs actually take on new meanings for him decade after decade. Sadly, however, he doesn’t write songs. Instead, he writes novels and, occasionally, music essays for The New Yorker, Granta, and (gulp) Architectural Digest. These essays form the basis of 31 Songs.

And while Hornby is quick to point out he’s no musician, but simply a listener whose tastes run from Nelly Furtado to Patti Smith, the fact remains that his personal opinions get sanctioned by his being a famous writer. By this yardstick alone, 31 Songs is as self-indulgent as any Cameron Crowe or Quentin Tarantino movie soundtrack. Lucky if you share Hornby’s tastes, and ample room for debate if you don’t.

Hornby assures us these are not "what I was doing in my life when I first heard Springsteen’s ‘Thunder Road’"-type essays. These are ruminations on what pop music can mean to a person, growing up, getting older, learning about life, acquiring good and bad experiences. This aspect of 31 Songs is honest and interesting. Hornby is, in fact, an insanely readable author. You can whip through 31 Songs on a short plane flight or a lazy afternoon.

You may, however, froth at the mouth at some of Hornby’s selections and utterances. You may question what business Gregory Isaacs’ "Puff The Magic Dragon" has being on the same list as the Beatles’ "Rain," for example. Or wonder why Rod Stewart’s "Mama You Been On My Mind" rates higher than, say, "Maggie May" or "Every Picture Tells A Story."

And Hornby’s pronouncements can sound willfully ignorant. He claims, for instance, to dislike most classical music "because it sounds churchy, and because, to my ears at least, it can’t deal with the smaller feelings that constitute a day and a week and a life, and because there are no backing vocals and basslines, and because a lot of people who profess to like it actually don’t really like any music (or any culture) at all." This kind of broad, sweeping judgment reveal more about Hornby’s ignorance than his honest ear for music. (He dispenses with much of jazz for different, but equally silly, reasons.)

Because he’s a writer, lyrics apparently mean more to Hornby than, say, guitar solos. Someone (Dave Lee Roth, I believe) once said that most music critics prefer Elvis Costello to Van Halen because those critics in fact look like Costello. In other words, they’re word-driven nerds. Thus it’s understandable that Hornby would find more solace in the lyrics of Ben Folds Five than in, say, the guitar riffs of Jimmy Page or Carlos Santana (two artists who make Hornby’s list, one suspects, merely as a throwaway nod to his Angry Young Manhood of long ago).

As a barometer of musical tastes, Hornby is sort of the politically correct angel to Lester Bangs’ devil. Bangs was a Detroit-based music writer whose record reviews were excuses for personal (and largely entertaining) screeds on everything from politics to racism to corporate rock. Bangs died in 1980 of a drug overdose, though by then he had managed to rein in his misogynist, racist and sometimes just loony rants and "reform" his views a bit. Hornby, being British, sensitive and liberal, has never had such dangerous tendencies to rein in.

Hornby, many also know, has a son who was diagnosed with autism around the time About A Boy was written. So the inclusion of the child’s song "Puff The Magic Dragon" begins to make sense, as does Badly Drawn Boy’s "A Minor Incident." He scores points for emotional honesty in these two essays, even if his aesthetic observations are wobbly.

The essays in 31 Songs are also convenient launchpads for salient observations about the world we live in. For instance, Hornby points out that, unlike the days of old when digging up a rare Buzzcocks or Sex Pistols single was hard work, music is now among us all the time, everywhere we go: in cars, malls, cellphones, stores, ads on TV. Its ubiquity, he feels, makes music somehow less special, more disposable. It’s a point I can’t agree with enough. Hornby also feels that B-sides and alternative takes of songs are our way out of musical saturation – thus he prizes the Beatles’ less-heard "Rain" over, say, "Paperback Writer," which was the A-side of that single.

Being a non-musician, Hornby can sound absolutely gobsmacked by the simplest things, like the three-note piano solo in Paul Westerberg’s "Born For Me." And he goes positively twee over the presence of two-part harmony in Rufus Wainwright’s "One Man Guy." On the other hand, he has a refreshing wonderment about things that most listeners take for granted, like the boppy guitar solo at the end of Steely Dan’s "Kid Charlemagne," which he describes as "the sound of pure, untethered joy; the guitar jumps up on the song’s shoulders and then just launches itself into the clouds." (This, after previously dismissing the solo as having no logical connection to the rest of the song.)

At moments like these, you can forgive Nick Hornby his untrained ears and self-indulgence. After all, it’s not easy to describe a musical event in another form – words – and make it come to life. When Hornby connects with the music honestly, he uses his gifts – for language – in remarkable ways. Apparently that’s what he was born to do all along. And as for the inclusion of Ani DiFranco and the J. Geils Band? Let’s just say, in matters of personal taste, there is no debate.

For the record, and for people who love lists, here are Hornby’s musical selections:

Love Is The Place Where I Come From – Teenage Fanclub

Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen

I’m Like A Bird – Nelly Furtado

Heartbreaker – Led Zeppelin

One Man Guy – Rufus Wainwright

Samba Pa Ti – Santana

Mama You Been On My Mind – Rod Stewart

Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window? – Bob Dylan

Rain – The Beatles

You Had Time – Ani DiFranco

I’ve Had It – Aimee Mann

Born For Me – Paul Westerberg

Frankie Teardrop – Suicide

Ain’t That Enough – Teenage Fanclub

First I Look At The Purse – J. Geils Band

Smoke – Ben Folds Five

A Minor Incident – Badly Drawn Boy

Glorybound – The Bible

Caravan – Van Morrison

So I’ll Run – Butch Hancock and Marce LaCouture

Puff The Magic Dragon – Gregory Isaacs

Reasons To Be Cheerful, Part 3 – Ian Dury & The Blockheads

The Calvary Cross – Richard and Linda Thompson

Late For The Sky – Jackson Browne

Hey Self Defeater – Mark Mulcahy

Needle In A Haystack – The Velvettes

Let’s Straighten It Out – O.V. Wright

Royksopp’s Night Out – Royksopp

Frontier Psychiatrist – The Avalanches

No Fun/Push It – Soulwax

Pissing In A River – Patti Smith Group