Music Interview

Soundtrack Of My Life: Goldie

November 27, 2020

The first song I remember hearing

Supertramp – ‘The Logical Song’

“[As a child], I was moved from one [children’s] institute to another. They put me into one waiting room and it was on the gramophone. I couldn’t stop pulling the arm down and replaying it over and over again until they dragged me from the gramophone. It always stuck with me. Later on the lyrics rang true [for me]: “There are times when all the world’s asleep/The questions run too deep/For such a simple man/Won’t you please tell me what we’ve learned/I know it sounds absurd/Please tell me who I am.” Any kid growing up wants to know who the fuck they are, that song was very much about that. It was about becoming aware of oneself.”

The first song I fell in love with

Smokey Robinson & The Miracles – ‘Tears of A Clown’

“[When I first heard] ‘Tears of a Clown’ I’d just got my idea of what Black urban music was. It really got to me. It’s very important to understand how the trauma of a life drives the music to really mean something. I’d play it repeatedly – over and over. I see my daughter doing that now, mostly old songs. Though she’s doing it with Rick Astley!”

The first album I bought

The Stranglers – ‘Rattus Norvegicus’

“I got it at a place called Ruby Red Records in Northampton. We used to skate to the record shop [from the local rink] and buy music. I bought a lot of records then. I couldn’t have paid a fiver for it, could I? It must’ve been about £3.99 or something. I think the price was 80p for a single back then.”

The first gig I lost my shit at

Public Enemy – Hummingbird, Birmingham, 1988

“It was pretty fucking good. Flavor Flav was there riding a unicycle on stage. I was a bit of a lone wolf back then so I went on my own in a juiced-up Toyota Corolla, wearing my tracksuit and Task Force jacket. I used to have a boombox on the back shelf, pumping out Public Enemy ‘Fear of a Black Planet’. It was a real empowered gig. Mad energy. You knew they were fighting for you, and that’s all that mattered.”

The song that reminds me of home

Pat Metheny – ‘Lonely Woman’

“When Pat was playing at Ronnie Scott’s [jazz bar in London], I left my hat at the venue. I went back on the Friday an hour before the doors had opened and he was rehearsing. I snuck up to the front of the stage and sat down on a chair with no one there, apart from his guitar tech. I can’t remember the track he was rehearsing at the time, but he was just going through it with his eyes closed. I said: “Fuck” – and he stopped, opened his eyes and went: “Goldie, what’s up? Tell me what you want to hear?” And of course I said: “It’s that track Lonely Woman.” He played it right there on the spot for me.”

The song I do at karaoke

Gary Numan – ‘Cars’

“If you look on my Instagram, I just did it with my girl in the car. Karaoke is a big thing in Asia, I mean, it came from here really [Goldie lives in Thailand]. You walk into a place and badly sing something. Usually it’s a very limited selection over here. You can’t get up and do Stone Roses or anything mad, I’d like to, but I could probably squeeze a ‘Spandau Ballet’ out.”

The song I can’t get out of my head

The Beatles – ‘A Day In The Life’

“[This choice] comes from a trip in 1977 that the children’s home organised to Derbyshire. There were like 13 to 15 kids crammed into a mini bus driving through Bakewell to the Derbyshire Hills with the fucking smell of hot plastic and puke while listening to The Beatles‘ ‘Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band’ on a 16-track [tape recorder]. How very Freudian, right? You can’t get away from that.”

The song I can no longer listen to

Sigma – ‘Cry’ feat. Take That

“I just can’t hear another Sigma record or else I’ll top myself. Just give me fucking two bars on an electric heater, a rope and an ice block. Just no gentrified drum and bass music anymore, please! It’s not good for your health. I’ll tell you everything you fucking need to know… just fucking do not put me in a chair and [make me] fucking listen to that record. Just please. I would rather have my knees drilled out by some really horrible cunts from Croatia or Latvia. That was the death of it then.”

The song I want played at my funeral

Pat Metheny – ‘The Bat’

“I’ve got [my funeral all planned out], upstairs in a box put away, man. Yeah, it’s done. This song because it reminds me of an infinite space – the fact that there is nothing else but the energy just moving. That’s it. There is no heaven. This is heaven.”