The five songs Jacob Elordi could listen to forever: “I go straight back to the moment”
In recent years, Jacob Elordi has risen to prominence in Hollywood with a steady stream of eye-catching performances in the likes of HBO’s Euphoria, Priscilla, Saltburn, and, yes, the highly esteemed Kissing Booth franchise on Netflix. The tall, handsome Australian star will next be seen in two gothic literary adaptations: Guillermo Del Toro’s Frankenstein and Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights, which should have audiences both recoiling in horror and swooning at the same time.
Interestingly, music has played an integral role in several of Elordi’s biggest films, most notably Priscilla, in which he played the ‘King of Rock and Roll’, Elvis Presley, and Saltburn, whose soundtrack of 2000s pop hits perfectly underscored the debauched antics of its vain upper-class characters. It was only fitting, then, when Spotify tasked Elordi to offer some insight into his own music tastes by naming the five songs he’d include on his ‘My Forever Favourites’ playlist.
For Elordi, Eminem’s ‘Mockingbird’ simply had to be on the roster, because it has been an integral tune in his life in several ways. “My mum made me an MP3 full of rap music when I was little, and ‘Mockingbird’ stuck,” he recalled. “I remember I dressed up in my dad’s jeans and a baggy shirt and rapped it for show-and-tell in grade four”.
The song, one of Eminem’s most heartfelt efforts, was the fifth single from his 2004 album, Encore, and was dedicated to his two young daughters, Hailie Jade and Alaina Marie. The lyrics found the artist formerly known as Slim Shady apologising to the girls for how their lives had played out thanks to the unrelenting glare of his fame, and expressing remorse over his relationship with their mother falling apart.
Fascinatingly, Elordi once told Esquire that Eminem’s vocals on the song actually helped him concoct a believable American accent when he moved out to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career. He sometimes struggled to keep his natural Aussie twang from slipping through, but by listening to ‘Mockingbird’ again and again on a loop, he was able to stop that from happening. “I feel like more and more, I have to thank him so much, you know, for getting rid of [it],” Elordi mused.
The other songs on Elordi’s playlist were ‘The Whole of the Moon’ by The Waterboys, ‘Australia Street’ by the Aussie indie/reggae band Sticky Fingers, ‘8 (Circle)’ by Bon Iver, and undoubtedly the most famous tune, ‘Father and Son’ by Yusuf/Cat Stevens.
As for why they gained pride of place on his list, Elordi indicated that they are all inextricably linked to the person who first introduced him to their virtues. “The only thing that I think gives these songs a commonality is that they’re each tied quite viscerally to people in my life,” Elordi revealed. “Whenever I hear them, I go straight back to the moment and feeling I had when I was shown them.”
Overall, the actor’s picks and explanations behind them speak to the universality of music and the ability a great song has to remind us of specific times in our lives and the people we were with when we heard them. Sure, everyone has tons of songs they love for a myriad of reasons, but the ones that stick with us for our whole lives tend to have an intensely emotional connection to our souls and are uniquely personal to our own stories.
Jacob Elordi’s five favourite songs:
- ‘Mockingbird’ – Eminem
- ‘The Whole of the Moon’ – The Waterboys
- ‘Australia Street’ – Sticky Fingers
- ‘8 (Circle)’ – Bon Iver
- ‘Father and Son’ – Yusuf/Cat Stevens
