Jamie Lee Curtis’ five favourite songs of all time
Jamie Lee Curtis is known for her versatility, having received widespread acclaim for a range of landmark roles. Her rise to fame in the late 1970s owed itself to John Carpenter and his seminal slasher Halloween. The nailbiting thriller saw Curtis in her debut feature film role as she portrayed Laurie Strode, the victim of the ferocious masked killer. The role established Curtis as a “scream queen”, securing her roles in further top-flight thrillers, including The Fog, Prom Night, Terror Train and Roadgames and six subsequent Halloween films.
Through the ’80s, Curtis made moves to distance herself from the “scream queen” typecast, stirring in a little variety. Most notably, her role in the 1983 cult comedy Trading Places alongside Eddie Murphy and Dan Aykroyd earned her a BAFTA for Best Supporting Actress, and five years later, she was nominated for the Best Actress BAFTA for her role in A Fish Called Wanda alongside Monty Python legends Michael Palin and John Cleese.
Upholding a prolific career through the 1990s, Curtis won a Golden Globe Award for her role as Hannah Miller on ABC’s Anything But Love and once again for her role as Helen Tasker in James Cameron’s action thriller True Lies in 1994. Most recently, Curtis enjoyed widespread acclaim for her prominent roles in 2019’s Knives Out and 2022’s Everything Everywhere All at Once.
In 2014, Curtis was invited to KCRW headquarters in Santa Monica to give a guest DJ set lie on air. For her special Guest DJ broadcast, Curtis was asked to bring five tracks that reserve a special place in her heart.
Amid a heartwarming conversation with host Anne Litt about her personal life, Curtis first picked out Joni Mitchell’s 1971 classic, ‘California’. After moving to a dorm room at her Connecticut prep school, Curtis had to come to terms with loneliness and independence, but thankfully Mitchell was there.
“I played [‘California’] on my stereo in my room over and over and over again,” Curtis told Litt. “It was my connection to my home [Beverly Hills]. And I can’t tell you what it did to hear that song when I was so far away from home.”
Later in the broadcast, Curtis put James Taylor’s moving ballad ‘Millworker’ on the turntable.
“In one song, he tells this incredibly moving story,” Curtis introduced the track. “It makes me cry every single time I hear it because more and more people are trying to source out where something comes from: their food, the clothes they wear, even the art they see or the books they read. We have become inured to any sense of authenticity, and here’s a story about a woman who works in a mill”.
“And there’s a line in it where she says, ‘I’m never going to meet the man whose name is on the label. It’s just me and my machine.’ And this woman, from the moment she sat down to that mill to the day she dies, is going to be in front of that machine. I think it popped my princess balloon, and it made me understand that the world is filled with mill workers and that the privilege of our lives, that we cannot for one second take it for granted.”
Towards the end of her set, Curtis reaffirmed her strong family values as she introduced the final track.
“There is no more sacred exchange in the universe than between two mothers,” she pondered. “I’ve been the recipient twice of that exchange, and I wanted to put a lullaby on it. If I was going to try to put into words what I feel for my children, David Nichtern did it in his song, and I just, I can’t do a guest DJ set without including my family. Because without them, I am nothing, and so here’s ‘The Wind Brought You to Me’.”
See the full five-song tracklist from Jamie Lee Curtis’s DJ takeover below.
Jamie Lee Curtis’ five favourite songs:
- Joni Mitchell – ‘California’
- Spinal Tap – ‘Hell Hole’
- James Taylor – ‘Millworker’
- Alejandro Sanz & Berklee College of Music Students – ‘La Musica No Se Toca’
- David Nichtern (Margaret Dorn on vocals) – ‘The Wind Brought You To Me’
