1. Peter Gabriel | Family Snapshot
The first time in my life where I heard some lyrics and thought they were talking directly to me and I was just in amazement when I heard him sing the words Come back, Mum and Dad... You're growing apart. You know that I'm growing up sad. I fell in love with Peter Gabriel when I heard that song and it was so formative, it kind of made me a loyal fan for life, a personal relationship where he could do no wrong and, strangely, it was a later totally different piece of Music by him (which was the album Passion - Music For The Last Temptation Of Christ for the Martin Scorsese film) that totally changed my life musically and opened up a whole new pallette of Sound instead of just guitars and pianos playing verse chorus versus chorus. Suddenly I was hearing pipes from The Desert and vocals from far away places that totally made me change the way I made Music and was the birth of 1 Giant Leap.


2. Peter Gabriel | Mercy Street
I could never get bored of this track no matter how many times you play it. Everything about it is perfect to me, the sounds that he used, the haunting melancholy pipe from far away, the soft bass, the sharp little percussion pieces that balance the bass and the treble, the way he’s recorded the vocal tracks and the absolute longing and yearning of the lyrics, it’s one of those pieces of Music that has always gone straight to my heart and it’s like an environment musically that I would love to live inside.

3. Labbi Siffre | (Something Inside) So Strong
This is a song that just makes my heart explode with Solidarity and Pride. It was written during Apartheid and... Give me a Gospel choir on nearly any song and I will be happy. Gospel choirs make all Music brilliant and I can never get enough of them. The true meaning and everything everybody went through in the story of this song moves me so deeply and once, when I was making a documentary in South Africa for a totally different subject (it was a documentary about how the government had abandoned all the children in the country with AIDS)... Luckily the Durban Gospel Choir agreed to come and sing that song with the children and the lyrics The further you take my rights away... The faster I will run! was just as relevant to the children and what they were going through as it was to the whole country of South Africa a couple of decades earlier. I’ve always loved this song. 


4. Solomon Burke | None Of Us Are Free (Ray Charles Cover)
This song for me is the song with the most perfect lyrics in The World. What an amazing chorus, just so simple from an activist point of view. None of us are free... None of us are free! None of us are free, one of us are chained... None of us are free... I was once asked to do something for a woman who ran the Gospel choir in the highest high security female prison in America, in Fresno, so I invited the band Arrested Development to come with me and we sang this song and recorded it actually inside the prison as a message of Solidarity from prison to the Angola Three who were unfairly locked up in Alabama. It was such a powerful day and it was so hard to leave prison that day knowing that all the people we’d been singing with had to stay inside. It really messed me up.

5. James Morrison | Undiscovered 
I don’t really have anything deep to say about this song. It’s just one of those pieces of Music where the singer, the lyrics, the arrangement and the band all came together just perfectly and the way it builds, with every chorus being more backed up by the backing vocals and he sings it more and more passionately each time, until he just lets the Gospel backing vocals take it away and he sings soaring over the top. I know it’s a bit of a Pop song, but I just love listening to it. It gives me goosebumps at the end of the bridge. 


6. Sting | They Dance Alone (Cueca Solo)
When I was told the story of this song there was something about the way the melody and the performance and the production touched the deeper meaning of the disappeared and all the mothers and daughters dancing with their vanished brothers and fathers who’d been murdered or kidnapped, the concept was just so unbelievable. I totally understand why Sting decided to make a piece about this song and let everybody in The World know the beauty of that piece of gentle and potent Activism of all of the women of the country dancing with the disappeared - and whenever I tell someone about this song I can’t stop crying and finish the story of what it’s all about. 

7. Samuel E. Wright | Under The Sea (The Little Mermaid Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
This will always be one of my favourite Disney songs (outside of The Jungle Book, of course). This is just a song that I’ve enjoyed with my daughters and being silly and it has nothing deep and meaningful about it. It’s just perfectly put together, funny, soulful, melodically sound - I’ve been enjoying this song for years. 


8. Elton John | Rocket Man (I Think It's Going To Be A Long, Long Time)
Sorry to put such a cliché on the list, but this is perfect Songwriting. The verse - the chorus - the melody - the way they run into each other - the Music lifts - you’re heart lifts and you just can’t help sing along with the chorus of this song, it’s just perfect. 

9. Ray Charles | Shake Your Tail Feather (The Five Du-Tones Cover) (The Blues Brothers Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
I love this song for one million reasons, but especially because, if I’m ever DJing, this song is absolutely guaranteed to fill up the dance floor the moment you put it on and everyone loves dancing in community to this song - it really joins people together. It’s so fun and light and joyful and it’s also one of my favourite scenes from the movie The Blues Brothers when Ray sings it and the whole street starts dancing, this is one of my happiest musical memories, watching it on The Blues Brothers and enjoying it on the dance floor. 


10. Stereo MC's | Connected
This is another example of Perfection. The drumbeat and the bassline are the most addictive and simple and perfect pattern that they could possibly be. The message of this song is also completely beautiful. Get yourself connected, let’s all be connected, but above all it’s really the way the bassline arrives on the one of the bar over and over again. It’s so satisfying - you could run this track for 25 minutes and I wouldn’t be bored of it - just the way that bassline keeps arriving on the one so perfectly to keep your hips moving. It really is an amazing piece of Music, and one of my favourites for filling up the dance floor if I’m DJing.