Soundwaves With Colin Macleod

This is a short playlist of songs that have become a big part of my life over the years. It's an eclectic mix, as it rightly should be, but flits mostly between folk and indie rock (with a gentle helping of country music, of course).

I am still constantly enthralled and dumbfounded by Bob Dylan - the absolute source of music in my humble opinion - and "Girl from the North Country" is still my favourite song, after first hearing it when I was 18 years old. I'd bought the Freewheeling album to listen to "Masters of War" but got my heart broken by track two and couldn’t go on. I used to sing it in the local pub at open mic night on a Thursday, without ever really introducing it. One day my friend heard it on a mix tape I'd made for the battered old tape deck in my first car. When Dylan started singing he looked at me in astonishment.

“I thought you wrote this song?!”

“No” I said, “Its Dylan.”

“Thank goodness... I thought you were a genius!”

Music being my job I have an annoying habit of picking apart songs and over analysing things, it's rare I find a song where I can switch off the songwriter brain and just listen without any thought. This is my selection of songs that make my brain shut up and my ears do the talking.

Colin