6. Luciano PavarottiCaruso
I’ve picked two singles for my thirteen, and I hope that’s OK, but sometimes there are a few songs in your life that are absolutely transformative the moment you heard them. I remember precisely where I was when I heard this, and how time stopped: I was on the deck of a boat in Spain, and this came over the speakers, and I was frozen. It was a crossover thing for Pavarotti, quite modern, and I’ve heard other versions of it, but they’re not the same – his voice makes it something else – it lifts off. And it does because there’s such wonderful humanity in his voice and the timbre of his sound. You can be full of bravado in opera but his voice is something different: it’s warm and it’s touching. That combination of technical ability, and humanity, is something that’s always attracted me to certain records. It’s human ability on a scale that’s still accessible, that still moves us.
