Since launching it back in the fall, Nick Cave has been actively interacting with fans via his online public forum, The Red Hand Files. Back in February, for example, he responded to a 10-year-old fan with a heartfelt letter of encouragement and wisdom. Now, the Bad Seeds frontman has used the ongoing question-and-answer series to issue a list of his top 10 love songs of all time.
The catalog came in response to a collection of prompts that included the eternal question, “What is love?” Asked to summarize the nature of the emotion, Cave ruminated on the fact that he had just “been in the studio all night, working on new songs.” (One imagines he’s still finishing up that seventeenth Bad Seeds album!) “You asked about love, Mack, and maybe that’s what love is right there – maybe songs are the parlance of love,” he wrote. “Maybe that’s what we have conceived them for – to give a voice to this strange, inscrutable feeling that tears away at us, all our lives. I don’t know.”
Cave described certain songs as “simple, plainspoken, incendiary devices that bomb the heart to pieces – something other art forms can’t do with the same sudden and frightening precision.” Before listing his own favorite explosive pieces of beauty, he offered,
“So, here is a list of ten of my most treasured love songs – old, sad songs mostly, and sentimental too, that have travelled with me through the years, holding sway over my world and never failing to rescue me. They are just small unassuming love bombs, but dear Luiza, as important as anything can ever be.”
The musician then offered his top picks, which features a genre-spanning collection of tracks from the late ’60s and across the ’70s. Find the full list below, and read the original post here.
Nick Cave’s Top 10 Love Songs:
01. “To Love Somebody” – Bee Gees
02. “My Father” – Nina Simone
03. “I Threw It All Away” – Bob Dylan
04. “Comfort You” – Van Morrison
05. “Angel of the Morning” – Merrilee Rush & The Turnabouts
06. “Nights in White Satin” – The Moody Blues
07. “Where’s the Playground Susie?” – Glen Campbell
08. “Something on Your Mind” – Karen Dalton
09. “Always on My Mind” – Elvis Presley
10. “Superstar” – Carpenters
Most recently, the “Into My Arms” singer has announced he will bring his intimate “Conversations” tour to Europe this summer. He also confirmed in January that he and the Bad Seeds were finishing up their latest studio album, and that fans should expect new music soon. Meanwhile, stock up on past Cave and the Bad Seeds release on vinyl here.
