One Song a Year: Lewis Taylor Writes the Memoir as a Mixtape

Someone asked me recently, in that way people do at merch tables between the t-shirt sizes and the small talk, whether I'd ever write a book. I said no. Then I got home, put the kettle on, and spent about three hours doing exactly that — except instead of chapters, I did it properly. In songs.

Because here's the thing: nobody's life is written in prose. It's written in whatever was playing at the time. So this is my memoir, the only way I'd ever trust it — one track per year, the memory attached, no skipping allowed.

1988 — "A Change Is Gonna Come," Sam Cooke

My mum's kitchen, Sunday mornings, the radio doing its job while the toast burned. I didn't know what soul was. I just knew that voice made the washing-up feel like something. First lesson in music: it doesn't need to be understood to be felt.

1995 — "Waterfalls," TLC

First proper record I bought with my own money from Our Price. Played it until the cassette physically gave up. Learned that a pop song could be sad underneath and nobody would tell you. That's been my whole career, basically.

1999 — "Golden," Jill Scott

Sixth form, walkman headphones, walking home the long way on purpose. The year I realised a song could make an ordinary street in North London feel like the opening credits of a better film.

2003 — The first demo

Not a song by anyone else — my own, recorded on a four-track in a basement that smelled of damp and instant coffee. It's unlistenable now. It's also the most important record I own. Every take is out of time. Every take is me deciding this is what I do.

2007 — "Untitled (How Does It Feel)," D'Angelo

The year I understood restraint. I'd been over-singing everything, filling every bar like I was being charged by the note. Then I sat with this and learned that the space between the notes is where people actually live. Took me another decade to get anywhere near doing it myself.

2011 — "Back to Black," Amy Winehouse

A British voice doing American soul without apologising for the accent. I remember exactly where I was when I first heard it — a friend's flat in Hackney, rain doing its usual thing against the window. It gave a whole generation of us permission to sound like where we're from.

2015 — "The first album"

The one nobody bought. My mates bought it. My mum bought several, which I suspect. But making it taught me the only rule that's stuck: finish the thing. Perfection is just procrastination with better lighting.

2018 — "Redbone," Childish Gambino

The year I stopped worrying about genre. Soul, funk, pop — it's all just feeling with a beat behind it. Anybody still arguing about categories at a gig is missing the gig.

2021 — Silence, by everyone

No gigs. No rooms. I learned what the songs sound like without an audience, and honestly, it made me a better writer. Also learned to bake bread, but that's another article.

2024 — "The Manchester night"

Last spring, a small room in Manchester, sold out, absolutely bouncing. During the last chorus of the last song, the crowd took the vocal and I just... stopped. Stood there like a fan at my own show. Twenty years after the four-track demo. That's the track. That's the closer.

The liner notes

If there's a moral, it's this: a career isn't a ladder, it's a playlist. Shuffle it and it makes no sense. Play it in order and every skip, every B-side, every year you thought was wasted turns out to be sequencing.

Right. Kettle's cold. Someone pass me a pen — I've got a few more years to write yet.