From the moment Desert Island Discs started back in the 1940s, that question has been thrown around a lot – what song would you take with you if you were going to be stranded? What track would you not mind on repeat? The answer says a lot about a person, and David Gilmour’s is surprisingly logical.
Really, if you were going to be stuck forever and alone on a deserted island, a song wouldn’t be much help. As you fought to stay alive, scavenging for food or whatever, surely the soundtrack playing on some mythical survival iPod doesn’t really come into question.
Or, on the other hand, if it did, surely it would only be days until you wanted to rip your ears off or toss that player into the sea. How long can you genuinely last enjoying the same song over and over? How solid is the staying power of any track?
There are so many different approaches here. You could pick a truly thrilling and maximalist track in the hopes that it might stay fresh and exciting for longer to provide entertainment and a boost. Or, you could opt for something easy listening with the hypothesis that something more inoffensive could blur into the background after a while and be calming rather than abrasive.
For Gilmour, his answer all comes down to the energy. “Well I’m gonna need to… I don’t do it very often, of course, at my hugely advanced age, but… I need a little bit of Tamla Motown sort-of ‘dance’ music to accompany me on this beach, wherever I am,” he said to BBC Radio4.
Clearly, there is a vision in his mind. Gilmour is imagining himself on a white and pearly beach, shaking out the stress of the situation with a good groove. He’s imagining a kind of island party, maybe with a fresh coconut in one hand that his exhausted brain could pretend is a pina colada.
“I think I’d just have to take Martha and The Vandellas,” he said, picking the girl group’s track, “‘Dancing In The Street’. Not ‘Dancing On The Beach’”.
His approach does make sense. It’s a well-thought-out one as Gilmour is clearly considering the morale on the island and looking for a track that will lift him up in an admittedly bleak situation. His other picks were far moodier and perhaps more apt for the crisis.
He picked Bob Dylan’s bitter break-up track ‘Ballad In Plain B’, where cheery lyrics about parasitic sisters, jealous lovers and Dylan’s own inexcusable behaviour aren’t particularly island appropriate. Neither really is Tom Waits’ ‘I’ll Be Here’ as the thought of the gloomy avant-garde artist blasting from a sun-soaked sandy land is a funny one. So, his choice to pick the dancier song feels like a beautifully optimistic survival choice.
