Music Sounds Better With You #1

Now I get the chance to redeem myself. Following on from the last music-centred series, Criminal Records, comes Music Sounds Better With You. Over the next few days I'll be revealing the songs in my record collection that have irreversibly shaped my tastes and exerted the most influence over my listening habits. As you might well imagine, whittling this list down to just ten has not been at all easy. The idea is to progress from earliest to most recent, the songs being dated to the time when they first entered my life.

So, to kick us off...

'Ring Ring' - Abba (c.1983? 1984?)

How this could be left off the first Abba Gold album I really don't know. Collectively Frida Lyngstad, Benny Andersson, Bjorn Ulvaeus and Agnetha Faltskog made pop music the unstoppable cultural juggernaut it is today, and from the moment I heard this track (along with the likes of 'Dancing Queen', 'Mamma Mia' and Sweden's winning entry in the 1974 Eurovision Song Contest, 'Waterloo') I was smitten. My parents had (and, I think, still have) the original Singles collection in the fantastic double LP format, and I recall listening to 'Ring Ring' so many times that it was a miracle the groove didn't wear through. There never has been and I don't think there ever will be a band that does joyously ebullient pop better than this.

Inspired a love of: Bananarama, early Pet Shop Boys, Wham!, early Madonna, much 80s pop

Inspired a general tolerance of (despite occasional attempts to affect the musical elitist's sneeringly superior tone): most mainstream pop