“Faith is an island in the setting sun,/ but proof is the bottom line for everyone,” wrote a certain songwriter who could well be among a wealth of treasures spilled onto the shores of this week’s nominations. But is an island a place to escape reality, or face it? An adventure where dreams come true, like that of 1970s series Fantasy Island featuring the smooth-talking Ricardo Montalbán and his squeaky sidekick, Tattoo, played by Hervé Villechaize? Or a place where hopes are dashed on the rocks of isolated despair, as in Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, before the protagonist eventually finds inner strength and friendship in Friday? The answer must surely include both – song takes us to a new place, but also seeks a new perspective from it. Islands are a place to provide that relief.
The 17th-century metaphysical poet, John Donne said: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent.” He had something there. Sometimes we may a wish to escape society, catch up with ourselves, perhaps write a song, but we cannot deny our connection with or need for other people – for after all, how can a song exist unless someone else hears it? Abba’s Björn and Benny, for example, escaped to splendid rocky Scandinavian isolation to write their songs, but always came back to perform them. We, like all living things, need the recognition of others, otherwise we are damned. For there is only one good context in which to be dammed - when building a small island because you are a beaver.
Islands in song can be as much psychological as geographical, philosophical as geological. They may be sandy, and tropical, but are often topical, and tell you that life is often less of a beach, more of bitch. Thomas More’s Utopia conceives of an ideal society in the form of a fictional island. The third part of Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels describes the floating island of Laputa where fantastical science experiments take place, but they in fact parody the real world of ideas. Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island brings us escapism and adventure, but also teaches us the moral lessons of greed.
Shakespeare’s The Tempest takes us to a magical, poetic place, a mirror in which to view social control through the words of Prospero and the basics of half-formed humanity in Caliban. Isla Nublar is where dinosaurs are mistakenly recreated in the concept of Jurassic Park. Craggy Island is the place from which Father Ted wants to escape, but where others cannot function without him. Either that or it’s just a brilliant sitcom. Danger Island is where the Banana Splits have no danger, only fun. And Lost, the behemoth fantasy TV series about plane crash survivors on a remote island, reveals one universal truth about how screenwriters can, where plot is concerned, become utterly and completely – lost.
BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs is, however, a true terra firma, a haven of treasure among splashy media awash with rocks, shingle and shite. One of my very favourite episodes features the Hollywood heart-throb actor George Clooney. In a surprisingly witty and charming edition, he revealed that the one record he would keep, if all the others were washed away from his choices, would be William Shatner doing Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, because if forced had to listen to that to the end of his days, it would give motivation to “hollow out my own leg and make a canoe out of it to get off the island”. Pure class.
But let us now also escape back to reality, and quickly fly over some actual islands that may also be mentioned in your song suggestions. What islands are richer in their musical heritage than the reggae of the Caribbean? Or the tropical from the Bahamas, South Pacific, or Hawaii, and the true sound of the ukelele? Or the volcanic beauty and utterly unique culture of Iceland and all of its output? If such songs refer to island culture, then they are valid.
By contrast, songs may be inspired by the more urban Coney Island or Long Island of New York, a different haunt of musical inspiration. And then there are the remoter places – the natural wonders of the volcanic Galápagos islands or Madagascar, where evolutionary isolation brought about extraordinary species such as the giant tortoise and lemur. Then there is the dark history of Easter Island, where former inhabitants destroyed their future by cutting down all the trees, and, perhaps more broadly related to human behaviour this, Vanuata, recently devastated by cyclone Pam, surely evidence of human-induced climate change.
Islands are a prism through which we can see our world, but they have also been prisons from which to escape – if, for example, you are Papillon, aka Henri Charrière, who fled Devil’s Island in 1969, or Robben Island, from which the great Nelson Mandela escaped by other means - his strength of character and the willpower and bravery of those who supported him.
Some islands are artificial, such as the obscenely expensive projects of Qatar’s Pearl resorts or Dubai’s Palm Islands. For less recreational reasons, the Netherlands has the world’s largest artificial island – the Flevodolder – built as part of a vast project to withstand flooding.
But of course thousands of islands made by natural upheaval, and course includes those closer to home – the cluster we call the UK and Ireland, which though are not desert, oceanic or tropical, are continental islands, special in their own form of isolation and interesting genetic mix. Again if they are referred to as islands in song, they can come into contention. In Richard II, Shakespeare referred to it as “this scepter’d isle, this other Eden, demi-paradise, this fortress build by Nature itself”, but perhaps what has given the UK its true fertility, particularly in song, is best summed up by that cantankerous cultural figure John Lydon: “Britain is an island; it’s always had a constant ebb and flow of immigration – it makes it a better place.”
This week’s far from isolated Robinson Crusoe, who, playing the calypso or any other number of styles, is RR’s very own venerably wise veteran sonofwebcore. Make sure you place your songs (optional notes in bottles to wash up on these shores) in comments below by last orders (11pm UK time) on Monday 23 March, for his selection to be published next Thursday 26 March. Land ahoy!
To increase the likelihood of your nomination being considered, please:
• Tell us why it’s a worthy contender.
• Quote lyrics if helpful, but for copyright reasons no more than a third of a song’s words.
• Provide a link to the song. We prefer Muzu or YouTube, but Spotify, SoundCloud or Grooveshark are fine.
• Listen to others people’s suggestions and add yours to a collaborative Spotify playlist.
• If you have a good theme for Readers recommend, or if you’d like to volunteer to compile a playlist, please email peter.kimpton@theguardian.com
• There’s a wealth of data on RR, including the songs that are “zedded”, at the Marconium. It also tells you the meaning of “zedded”, “donds” and other strange words used by RR regulars.
• Many RR regulars also congregate at the ‘Spill blog.
