Katie Threadgill on The Swell Season's 'Leave'

Listening to songs on repeat and fumbling for notes in my head. Playing it back, fingers grappling for the appropriate strings. Copying my heroes was fun, but it sure as hell never sounded like the real thing. Discovering Glen Hansard and his film Once showed me that writing songs for myself wasn’t the elite endeavour that I had thought myself far too clumsy to attempt.

Songs may be carried on a melody. They might have a standout riff or a star lyric which strikes you for its elegance or wit. Alternatively, ‘Leave’ illustrated that a simple song can be elevated by an honesty which cuts deep into a sentiment. ‘Leave’ has the unusual ability of forcing you into a seat and thrusting you into an audience for the playing of a scene.

It is a theatre - a space for the performance of a brief narrative and a stage for the rawest of conditions. I realised that I didn’t really care if nobody ever heard my music and it didn’t really matter if it never escaped the confines of my bedroom walls. Writing allows me to examine my own stories in a form which is both peculiarly unique and eccentrically human.

Joanne Stewart on Fall Out Boy's 'Dance Dance'

I can remember when socialising became so much more than knocking on neighbours’ doors to watch Hey Arnold and weekend birthday parties to the Pizza Hut Ice-Cream Factory. The arrival of a clunky PC sent my My Little Ponies trotting off to the attic, as I debated whether green Comic Sans or hot pink Curlz MT reflected ‘Joanne’ the best. Being online revealed the personalities of the faces I saw daily in school, yet with whom I had never exchanged words. Bebo flashboxes and lyrical MSN taglines exposed shared favourite bands and became conversation starters.

Chat logs soon became friendships IRL as we swapped the warm glow of our screens for traipsing round local dingy youth clubs. Despite the enthusiastic ‘nudges’ and extrovert emoticons we spoke fluently in online, there was no avoiding our teenage awkwardness in person. Praise be to Pete Wentz then, as the dense beat and pulsating riffs of Fall Out Boy’s’ Dance Dance’ was the needed call to (raise our) arms, and send checked Vans squeaking onto the sticky floor, while sweat bands suddenly became a bit soggy from all the emo exertion. Our erratic limb flailing shouldn’t be called dancing, but those lollypop guitar licks were the sugar highs we all needed to let go.

Jilly Luke on 'I'll Make A Man Out of You' from the Mulan Original Soundtrack

I was five when I first realised I was a feminist.“But I don’t understaaaaanndddd,” I howled at my parents, “They all love her when they think she’s a boy, but now they know she’s a girl they don’t anymore!” I have never been one to choose subtlety when melodrama is an option and so stoically wiping away bitter tears, I turned to my parents and in my best American accent said: “You said you trust Ping; why is Mulan any different?” before throwing myself down on the sofa and weeping at a volume and constancy I felt appropriate to my level of despair.

Further research (for which read “the compulsive film watching of a slightly obsessive child”) made me realise that Mulan was not just as good as the boys, she was actually better. I liked the bit where they gave her a make-over but even better was the song ‘I’ll Make a Man Out of You’. This was partly because I quite fancied Captain Li Shang, who spent most of the montage doing cool stuff with his top off, but also because when he says “Did you send me daughters when I asked for sons?” the answer is: “Yes! Be grateful because she’s amazing.”

‘90s Disney movies weren’t really all that big on letting girls do very much except sing to woodland creatures and get rescued, but Mulan was different. She saved China and got her man, what’s not to like?

Emily Fitzell on The Beautiful South's 'Don't Marry Her'

When I think of childhood nostalgias, I think of Flower Fairies, orange Smarties and notably, of Ford pick-up trucks. I think of my dad’s F-150, and of just one soundtrack to match it. It was 1998 when the bronze-eyed beast first embellished our drive. Its burnished maroon shell encased an interior of intrigue. With curious eyes, I clambered and crooned, sliding flaps, twisting dials and swiftly staking claim. The wheel was on the wrong side, there were three seats in the front, and a cavern of strange, seatless space built in-toe…My imagination soon swelled to fill it: I found a home for bandits, builders, hiders and seekers.

During the construction of our new house, it moved bricks, boxes and weekly roast dinners. Mum would ‘load up the wagon’ and we’d spend Sunday afternoons covered in paint, sawdust and gravy, fleshing out the skeleton of our new home. There is only one soundtrack to my memories of this fair vehicle, and that’s the Beautiful South. It was played on near-repeat throughout our roadtrips; we were explorers of the vineyard, guests of the surf.

Best of all though, perhaps, is my mis-cradled memory of their song, ‘Don’t Marry Her’. Its vulgar, sarcastic and oft’ unrefined lyrics were for years solicitously dubbed out by my Dad. It was a long time before I learnt the true refrain: “Don’t marry her, fuck me”. Even now when I hear it, I’m convinced it’s the band that are wrong.

Dominic Kelly on Miley Cyrus's 'Party In The U.S.A.'

If dancing truly is “the hidden language of the soul”, then consider me illiterate. My relationship with dancing is an uncomfortable one, I could do only do what I liked to call the ‘Awkward Guy at Concert Shuffle’: an arm outstretched briefly before inevitably returning it to its rightful place in one’s pocket. I therefore surprised myself, when one of my passions in 6th Form was running a local disco for special needs students in the sleepy heart of Victoria, British Columbia.

In time I grew comfortable in my role as group leader / ‘Party In The U.S.A.’ literal dancemove co-ordinator, but on that first night, the walls exerted their natural pull on the anxious and I found myself watching from the edge of the room. Noticing my loneliness, Kristin, a young woman with autism, asked me to dance with her. It is now that the protagonist of a story is supposed to realise he moves like Gene Kelly in the rain. That did not happen. There was miscommunication, I made missteps in the dance and mistakes in dealing with her special needs, but Kristin put me in the right direction each time.

I still can’t dance, I still look like a complete gobshite, but I learned that some things are more important. And I have the Rt. Hon. Miley Cyrus to thank.