1. Whitney HoustonWhitney

This was one of my first records, probably my very first. It was on cassette. I spent plenty of time in my room listening to it, singing along and dancing. It was my first real favourite. I got it around when it was first released so I suppose I was about eight or nine years-old or something. So I didn’t really understand the lyrics… I just sang along and made my own interpretations of what it was about.

I guess it has changed over the years for me. The songs that are more uptempo were so much fun then, and I still want to dance whenever I hear them but when I was a child I didn’t really read or know much about the album. Growing up in Norway I wasn’t close to America or Whitney Houston becoming a huge star so it was quite interesting to watch the documentary that was released about her last year because I just didn’t know a lot of these things about her that are in the film. She had such a heartbreaking story.

tQ: I guess what’s powerful about this album is that she made these songs that make you want to dance but when you start to think about what the lyrics are and what she’s saying…if you were to strip the song back to be just piano it would be a much sadder collection…

I actually did that! I did a piano and vocal version of ‘Love Will Save The Day’ for a radio programme once and it really was that kind of experience. Sometimes a sudden gripping lyric really takes you, especially when you don’t necessarily catch at all when you just listen to the track.