The song that is my karaoke go-to
I don’t like karaoke, it makes me really uncomfortable. I did Gangsta’s Paradise at a birthday party once. I felt so self-conscious, but you have to commit to that song, which I definitely did, as I was absolutely hammered. I don’t think I could do it sober.
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The song I inexplicably know every lyric to
My mother used to always put Barry Manilow on in the car, so I know all the words to Copacabana. The last stanza, all about how she used to be beautiful and now she’s lonely and old and her lover has been shot dead, is really bleak and misogynistic!
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The last song I streamed
Scratchcard Lanyard by a band called Dry Cleaning that my good pal Lolly Adefope got me into. They’ve got an art school feel, almost spoken word. The lyrics are these little celebrations of banal, everyday things, and they’re all delivered in a monotone. It’s trying to do the opposite of entertaining you, which I really respect.
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The song I want played at my funeral
Mahler’s Symphony No 5: it’s so emotive. I’ve loved it ever since I first heard it, aged 16, on the soundtrack to Death in Venice, and became obsessed with it. Weirdly, I heard it at a funeral recently and, if anything, it confirmed: “Yeah, this is very powerful music!”
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The song I pretend to like, but I secretly hate
When I’m writing, I can’t listen to anything with lyrics, because it’s too distracting. A friend recommended the soundtrack of The Master, but it was very invasive. Just really difficult to write to. So I told a white lie about liking it and went back to my cheesy three-hour-long YouTube compilations of instrumental Disney piano. It’s naff, but it does the job.
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The song I can’t help singing
When I was about 15 and doing National Youth Theatre, we had to learn this incredible Georgian folk song called Tsintskaro. I don’t even know what the words mean, but when I’m in the shower, it’s the tune that wants to come out. I’d love to speak to a Georgian person to find out what it means! It’s been haunting me all these years.
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The best song to have sex to
I once accidentally had a threesome at university to the [hidden camera comedy show] Trigger Happy TV soundtrack. It has amazing tracks on it by bands like the Waterboys – it doesn’t have the Nokia tune on it! I remember suddenly becoming conscious of what we were listening to, and going: “Have you seen Trigger Happy TV?”, as if I was about to say: “Well, guess what? You’re on it!”
Katy Wix appears on Stath Lets Flats on Channel 4. Her book Delicacy: A Memoir about Cake and Death is out now.
