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Read all the pieces in the New Statesman’s Long Players series, available now in our Christmas special issue.
Musa Okwonga on Aquemini by Outkast: “The kind of thing you could play to aliens”
Kate Mossman on The Rhythm of the Saints by Paul Simon: “A kind of musical synaesthesia”
George Saunders on Fragile by Yes: “A window was thrown open in my mind”
Emily Berry on To Bring You My Love by PJ Harvey: “It speaks to your shipwrecked feelings”
Tracey Thorn on Innervisions by Stevie Wonder: “Full of serious intent – and danceable”
David Mitchell on Blue by Joni Mitchell: “It’s art, so it’s ageless”
Will Self on Astral Weeks by Van Morrison: “I felt his words like a corkscrew to my heart”
Deborah Levy on Ziggy Stardust by David Bowie: “Britain needs this so much more than Brexit”
Ian Rankin on Solid Air by John Martyn: “The voice of a whisky-soaked angel”
Suzanne Moore on Fresh by Sly and the Family Stone: “His growl is pure libido”
Joe Dunthorne on Black Sunday by Cypress Hill: “My favourite way to get blazed”
Mark Ellen on The B-52’s: “A crisp cartoon of sound and vision”
Sarah Perry on Rachmaninov: “By the end of the first movement I was in tears”
Billy Bragg on Ronnie Lane’s Slim Chance: “He scours the edgelands of British pop culture”
Meg Rosoff on This Year’s Model by Elvis Costello: “My first rock’n’roll God”
Bernardine Evaristo on Sweet Honey in the Rock: “They encapsulate the early years of black feminism”
David Hepworth on Sail Away by Randy Newman: “You wouldn’t be allowed to make it today”
Eimear McBride on Tindersticks (1995 album): “It has shaped how I think about life”
Jonathan Coe on A Symphony of Amaranths by Neil Ardley: “Epic but still intimate”
Lionel Shriver on Last Exit to Brooklyn by Mark Knopfler: “Eternal notes of lost innocence”
Bonnie Greer on Cheap Thrills and Janis Joplin: “You could hear the bourbon in her veins”
John Burnside on A Natural Disaster by Anathema: “A work of taut beauty and control”
John Harris on A Love Supreme by John Coltrane: “This was heady, elemental stuff”
Fiona Mozley on Cassadaga by Bright Eyes: “A twist on adolescent idealism”
Alan Johnson on Revolver by the Beatles: “The greatest testament to an incredible phenomenon”
Linda Grant on Hejira by Joni Mitchell: “It stamped itself irrevocably on my life”
Ali Smith on her favourite albums: “Trying to choose one ended in mutiny”
Long Players Live! Tom Gatti will be joined by David Mitchell and Deborah Levy at Dublin International Literature Festival on 19 May 2018
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This article appears in the 08 Dec 2020 issue of the New Statesman, Christmas special