Kristian Brodie - OneTrackMinds: True Stories About Life-Changing Songs

For Malin,

who loves stories and music as much as her pappa

KB

To Elizabeth Jane, Molly Grace and Toby William,

for all the fun and loving

AS

With special thanksto

Dave Miller

Haresh Patel

Louis Shakinovsky

Amar Singh

All author proceeds will be donated to Samaritans. A registered charity.

By Deborah Frances-White

A song, like a scent, can bring back a lost loved one, a wild romance or your whole adolescence. If you put a song away at the close of a school year, the last lap of a road trip or the end of a relationship, someday, when you rub that magic lamp in the future, out will come the musical genie. There it is, haunting and magical, right along with the dropped guitar jangle of A Hard Days Night, the erotic wah, wah, wah of Lets Get It On or the hopeful opening arpeggio of Mr Brightside the feel of the first day of secondary school, the image of sunset at the last gas station before New Orleans, or the memory of a lovers hand in your hair under the stars at Glastonbury.

The genius of OneTrackMinds, the live show, is that a track unlocks a memory which releases a story and that story tumbles from the speaker with the hues and shadows the tune has conjured in the speakers mind. You might have come to the show because youre a fan of a certain comedian, actor or broadcaster, but the game of sharing a love for a certain song, shanty or sonata allows that artist to reveal far more than youd see in the average interview, even if the interviewer is excellent. The melody can find recesses of that persons mind the best FBI interrogator couldnt reach.

My first visit to the OneTrackMinds stage had me telling a story about an R. Kelly song.

Before you cancel me, this was 2017, and we didnt know the worst excesses of R. Kellys behaviour then but it was obviously a provocative choice for a feminist.

This is what it unlocked

Happiness is an elusive quality, isnt it?

What is it? And why do we expect it? You often hear people say, I just want to be happy. Or, I dont mind what my children do in life, as long as theyre happy. As if happiness is somehow easier to come by than success or money.

Happiness is what philosophers, poets and lovers have strived for throughout the history of humanity. Those same thinkers and writers accuse happiness of being fleeting. But happiness stays the same. We move the goalposts by wanting different things. You told happiness that if you could just be near him, next to her, in his life, in her bed, youd never want anything else. You promised happiness just the sound of his voice, the smell of her neck, was all youd ask for. Is it happinesss fault that the sound of the very same voice now irritates you beyond comprehension? Is happiness to blame that she gave you everything you wanted, and now you find your longed-for lovers inability to follow a logical argument infuriating when you once found it her most charming quality?

You thought love would bring you happiness. Instead it brought you fear, dread, loss and anguish. Love gifts you happiness in short, sharp, intense bursts, just enough to fool you into thinking its the happiness courier, and makes you look in its post box for more.

Now perhaps youre wondering why R. Kellys Remix to Ignition triggers a diatribe on happiness from me? There is a highly logical reason.

One night I was sitting on the sofa with my husband, Salinsky. (I often call him by his surname as if we are American TV cops.) He doesnt dance. I like to dance. This is only one of the various ways in which we are incompatible. He likes to make me laugh. He makes me feel funny. This is only one of the various ways in which we are highly compatible. Anyhow, the television was on. I flicked over to an MTV-style AllHitsAllDayAllOver music channel. We werent really watching it. We were chatting. Joking. And he started to do a little head bob to the music, a neck dance, to make me laugh. He would never let another soul see him moving in this way. It was an intimate moment. A playful connection. I looked at him. Deadpan.

Are you like R. Kelly, are you?

Yeah, he said. Then after a beat, Whats he like?

It was then I realised that Salinksy did not know the singer on the television was R. Kelly. He was not cool enough to know that a man could have an R as a first name. That hed said Yes because he was a playful comedy improviser, trained to agree. And his curious brain had, a moment later, made him question what hed agreed to who he had claimed to be. This may well not be funny to you. But to me it was hysterical. I started to laugh. He started to laugh. And we could not stop. This was a moment of unbridled joy, affection, understanding, connection, engagement and togetherness to the exclusion of all others. This was a moment where our fears, doubts and worries were not welcome and knew there was no point even knocking. They left us alone. After twenty minutes of laughing at something no one else would really find terribly funny, as the giggles started to subside, I looked at Tom and said, This is it, you know This is happy. This, right now on this sofa in these pyjamas. This joke will not be funnier in a bigger house, with more money in the bank, if we are more successful or celebrated. This. This is happy.

Lets get married, he said.

And I heard happiness sigh. Because wed tried to shut the window to keep her in. As if she couldnt walk through walls.

She comes to visit now and again. But rarely if we pine for her and never if we demand her. She almost always comes when the wifi is down, by way of replacement.

Because happiness for all her faults has got a delightful sense of humour.

Every time I visit OneTrackMinds as an audience member, I learn something about music and something about the individuals revealing themselves through their song choice. Every time I visit OneTrackMinds as a performer, I learn something about myself and reveal something I dont mean to. Music is a lifelong lover and companion. She can make you laugh, move and weep against your will. She will always make you remember. I hope this book inspires you to create a hundred playlists and walk down a city of memory lanes and see a myriad of new views from a familiar window.

Deborah Frances-White is a stand-up comedian, podcaster, screenwriter and corporate speaker. You may have heard her on The Guilty Feminist podcast, seen her on TV on Have I Got News For You or watched the film Say My Name, which she wrote.

By Kristian Brodie

I know what youre thinking.

Can a song really change your life?

Its a question I get asked with uncommon frequency. And given that Ive been curating and hosting a live storytelling show based entirely on this premise since 2016, you wont be surprised that my answer is always the same.

Yes. Of course a song can change your life. And Ill bet that a song has changed yours.

If I needed any proof to back up this claim, I can now point to the over 150 individuals who have taken up the challenge I set them when inviting them on to the show to tell a story about a piece of music that has, in some way or other, changed their life. It could be a song that inspired their greatest work or soundtracked their lowest lows. It could be the song that was playing when they met the love of their life, or the song that reminds them of the one that got away.