Matthew McConaughey on his five favourite songs
Matthew McConaughey is one of the most revered leading men in modern Hollywood. Raised in Longview, Texas, he began his acting career in 1991, appearing in student films and commercials. After making his directorial debut with the 1992 short, Chicano Chariot, he was spotted by Richard Linklater, who gave McConaughey his big break on 1993’s Dazed and Confused, undoubtedly one of the best music movies of all time. Like David Wooderson, Matthew has a particular fondness for classic rock, as this selection of his favourite songs demonstrates.
Speaking to Chris Douridas for KCRW’s Guest DJ project, McConaughey opened up about five tracks that have meant something to him over the years. Discussing the significance of John Mellencamp’s 1985 Scarecrow cut ‘Between a Laugh and a Tear’, the actor said: “This was a very Texas song for me. I’d go out on Saturdays and wash and wax my truck, and he kind of shaped what I thought it was to be an American, what I thought it was to be a patriot, the man I wanted to become. It was the first artist I heard that I thought, ‘he’s reading my mail, he’s singing that to me’.”
For young McConaughey, rock ‘n’ roll was everything. Explaining how his brother introduced him to his next track, Ted Nugent’s ‘Stranglehold’, he said: “I grew up on rock ‘n’ roll. My older brother, Pat – he was nine years older than me or eight years older. He would turn me onto his music, and he was a rock ‘n’ roller, so he turned me on to Mellencamp. He also turned me onto guys like Nugent. I remember we went to the Tyler Oil Palace, and we jammed to Nugent, and I remember my brother and I going back in the bathroom, and he was like, ‘it’s so loud, man, look at the water in the bottom of the toilet, it’s shaking!’”
“I love a rock ‘n’ roll tune that he builds,” the actor said of ‘Stranglehold’. It was like seven minutes and 13 seconds long. And I remember loving the bass line. And I would sit there and go (sings) ‘bum dibby dum be doom be dibby dum dum, bum dibby dum be doom be dibby dum dum.’ And it does that over and over and over and over and over. But it’s the best bass line in the business for my money.”
As well as appearing in some of the biggest blockbusters of recent years, McConaughey has also travelled extensively. In the late ’90s, he journeyed down the Amazon after experiencing the same dream night after night. “I’d had a recurring dream, and the first time I’d had the exact dream frame by frame,” he explained. “And I had it three times. And it had to do with being on – I knew the river was the Amazon – ok, in the dream – but the men on the banks of the river were all African. So in ‘96 I chased the Amazon. So I went to Peru and got my Amazon experience. But I came back and thought I had completed the dream.”
After experiencing the dream for the third time, McConaughey decided to travel to Africa.”I was sitting in my hotel room listening to Ali Farka, and I said ‘well where is this guy from?’ And he’s from Mali, a little town called Niafunke on the Niger River. So I said, ‘there’s my dot. I’m going to go to Mali and go find Ali.’ I flew to Bomako. Hitchhiked to Mopti, hooked up with a guy there, got on a boat and about nine days into it, in the town of Niafunke, found Ali Farka. We went to his house, sat there. He had an Orange Crush, I got water. And he played this song for me,” Matthew said, introducing Toure’s track ‘Ai Du’, later released on Talking Timbuktu.
For his fourth track, McConaughey selected James McMurtry’s ‘Every Little Bit Counts’, featured on his 1998 LP Walk Between The Raindrops. “I was in Austin on like so said, Tuesday night. Early ’90s,” the actor recalled. “And in Austin you can find some good live music, and you don’t necessarily know where you’re going to find it. Well, we came up around this corner and there was a dead-end street. And there was this guy jamming. And there was about 40 people hanging around in front of this stage, and we walked up and ended up front row to James McMurtry jamming. I became a fan of his then, went and got his album. A great storyteller. The way he spins a phrase. In this one, ‘Every Little Bit Counts,’ he talks about the high –when you’re trying to work something out — the highs might be slightly higher, the lows are just as low, but hey, every little bit counts.”
The artist who wrote McConaughey’s final track, Mishka, made such an impression on the actor that he later signed him to his record label, Just Keep Livin Records. “This is a guy who I got turned on to by a friend of mine called Hauser, at the turn of the millennium,” he explained. “1999 turns to 2000, I’m in Jamaica with friends, and it sort of became the album — you know you when you go on trips like that, you have a theme album. For the next 10 days, this was our album, and I got to know it backwards and forwards. After calling him up, Mathew became good friends with Mishka and eventually started releasing his albums. “This is the title track off the new album Above the Bones,” McConaughey continued. “It is a bless up song and album. And it’s talking about above the bones, let’s live above the bones. Let’s get past the ashes of the past, the lies, the regrets, the who-you-did-wrongs. Let’s live in the high life. Let’s live in the positive.”
Matthew McConaughey’s five favourite songs
- ‘Between a Laugh and a Tear’ – John Mellencamp
- ‘Stranglehold’ – Ted Nugent
- ‘Ali Du’ – Ali Farke Toure (feat Ry Cooper)
- ‘Every Little Bit Counts’ – James McMurtry
- ‘Above the Bones’ – Mishka
