Tilda Swinton’s five favourite songs of all time
Tilda Swinton is considered one of the greatest British actors ever. She has been adorned with several awards, including an Oscar and a BAFTA, and the list of her best performances is seemingly endless, including We Need to Talk About Kevin, Michael Clayton and The Chronicles of Narnia.
Swinton also once revealed herself to be an avid music fan and named her five favourite songs of all time in a feature with KCRW. She said during the interview: “I always find it a strange question, you know, ‘do you like music?’ It’s like saying, ‘do you like oxygen?’ And also the idea of choosing any particular music is very strange to me. I have what they call a catholic taste.”
Swinton’s first pick is the Marilyn Manson cover of the Depeche Mode song ‘Personal Jesus’. Manson released the track on his greatest hits album Lest We Forget. It was the only previously unreleased track on the compilation.
Swinton said: “Apart from being a very, very romantic song about long distance relationships, is the thing that I used to listen to and rock out to, with my group of monsters when we were making the Narnia film on a mountain in New Zealand. And to keep warm, we would rock out to this.”
Smoothing things down a little, Swinton picked Barry White’s classic ‘You’re The First, The Last, My Everything’ as her second choice. The tune came out in 1974 on White’s third studio album, Can’t Get Enough.
“Also something that is a kind of regular ‘rock out’ track in my household and at film festivals,” Swinton said of the track. “The last time I played it was [at] Roger Ebert’s wonderful film festival in Champagne, Illinois. And when I was there last year, which was only a few days after Roger left us, I told his wife, Chaz, about our film festival, the fact that there was a dance before every screening. When she asked me if I would do it at Ebert fest, I put this on for Roger and we all rocked this.”
Paying tribute to the legendary David Bowie, Swinton selected his ‘Wild is the Wind’ as one of her favourite songs of all time. The tune had been written for the film of the same name, though the best-known versions are Bowie’s and Nina Simone’s.
Swinton said, “A great song which less people know maybe than all the other songs I could have chosen from Bowie. And it’s actually a track that had we had the money we would have the rights to put on the end of a great film I made called I Am Love. It’s very romantic, and I love this version.”
Björk also holds a special place in Swinton’s heart, particularly her ‘Mutual Core’ song. The tune arrived on 2011’s Biophilia, an interactive album, which featured an app being made for each song, where the user moves geological layers around to play the correct chords.
Swinton said: “A really a beautiful piece by Björk and I have a particular love of this Biophilia project that she made because my children, who are now 16, we had the great good fortune to be invited by Björk to take the children and their entire school of 14 children down to the last of her Biophilia concerts in London and to do a two day workshop with her musicians, which was quite mind blowing for these kids.”
When John C. Reilly played the fictional Dewey Cox in Walk Hard – a parody of the biopic genre – he wowed audiences with his musical ability. Swinton was among those impressed, and she chose one of the songs from the film – ‘Beautiful Ride’ – as her final choice.
“John and I worked together on a film called We Need To Talk About Kevin and I used to embarrass him by playing ‘Beautiful Ride’ whenever he came into the room,” Swinton said. “It’s truly one of my favourite songs. It has a line in it which can reduce me to tears about traveling, not just for business, which I really love. It’s just Dewey’s Cox’s wisdom about how to live a long and good life and how to pick your priorities.”
Tilda Swinton’s five favourite songs:
- ‘Personal Jesus’ – Marilyn Manson
- ‘You’re The First, The Last, My Everything’ – Barry White
- ‘Wild is the Wind’ – David Bowie
- ‘Mutual Core’ – Björk
- ‘Beautiful Ride’ – Dewey Cox (John C. Reilly)
Stream the playlist, below.
