4. The BeatlesHelp!

Obviously, it’s difficult to choose a Beatles album but this is their younger side, and there’s something so hopeful and complete about it. You hear these young men and their extraordinary abilities but it’s still in a manageable size. It’s a great record to hear great songwriting. It’s still connected to them playing live, obviously they had to evolve and ended up doing genius things, but there’s something so optimistic about that. My dad used to write on the side of his albums what he thought everyone is playing. It’s funny to think of your parents as huge music fans, because they get to a certain age and end up with a really different relationship to music, but again I can see the young man obsessively listening to this to work out what everyone is playing. He wanted to call me Cynthia, after Lennon’s wife, and my mum said ‘no’.