Travel and live music – two victims of the pandemic that has consumed the last year and a half. It therefore seems a bit on the nose for BBC Radio 6 Music to have envisioned a whole series in which musicians share their favourite travel destinations. Yet this is what The Happiness Map is all about, with the travel journalist Rob Crossan (one imagines his usual work has been in short supply for him during 18 months of lockdowns) quizzing artists from Elvis Costello (New Orleans) to Emmy the Great (Hong Kong) on their faraway adventures and the music they associate with those places.
In one episode (15 August, 1pm), the DJ The Blessed Madonna (real name Marea Stamper) waxes lyrical about Iceland – a land where the sun never fully sets in summer, which boasts the oldest parliament in Europe and which has more authors per head of population than anywhere on Earth. Iceland is currently on the UK green list and accepting fully vaxxed visitors, and listening made me seriously consider booking a flight. “It’s everything that you have in your mind from your Björk fantasies,” Stamper gushes, before introducing a track from the Icelandic singer’s 1980s alternative rock band, the Sugarcubes. (Listening while stuck in traffic on the M40, I find I’m dancing in my seat.)
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