7 SONGS THAT CHANGED MY LIFE
7 songs that changed my life with Adrian Crowley
The Dublin-based artist on listening to Scott Walker in the dark, why he doesn't mind being compared to Leonard Cohen and the Robert Wyatt song which sounds like a friendly and beautiful creature.
Photo: Steve Gullick
23 May 2026
Sea Song, Robert Wyatt
1.
from the album Rock Bottom
Adrian Crowley: I first heard this when I was living in Toulouse about twenty-five years ago. A friend put it on a mixtape. It was like a psychedelic reveal to me, you know. It sounded like a creature speaking to me from another world, a very friendly creature, friendly and beautiful. It spoke to me in many ways. I grew up by the sea and I've always been very close to nature. And there's also humour in there and sweetness and mystery as well. And then it just goes off into another plane.
State of Sound: Yeah, there's this long discordant passage which comes out of nowhere. But you go with it, I think, because the song is already beautifully weird. It's such an imaginative take on being in love. I love that line: 'in the morning, when it's time to play at being human for a while'.
Yes. Isn't that amazing? I first heard it in the 1990s, so quite late, but I think you can be changed by music at any time in your life.
Linden Arden Stole the Highlights, Van Morrison
2.
from the album Veedon Fleece
This song is so mysterious to me, even now. I've never tried to find out what it was about. I don't know if the character in the song really existed or not. But it actually doesn't matter. It's from an album that comes very close in time to Astral Weeks. And of course, that album is the one that's fabled and famous and classic. It's the one that people mention most, but I think Veedon Fleece is equally beautiful.
Yeah, Veedon Fleece isn't as celebrated, but people who know about it think it's as good as or better than Astral Weeks. 'Linden Arden Stole The Highlights' is actually quite a shocking song. You start out thinking this is a colourful local character, and then there's this violence.
Yeah, exactly. There's this idea of him having this love for little children, and then there's the image of putting his fist through a pane of glass. So you imagine him to be this giant playing with kids on the corner, and then maybe, you know, knocking out twenty men in a bar. And the song is followed by a sort of sibling song, 'Who Was that Masked Man', where Van Morrison's voice goes into that falsetto. It's so beautiful, isn't it? I always put those two songs together. Yeah, but 'Linden Arden Stole The Highlights' is astonishing, truly a beautiful song.
Farmer in the City, Scott Walker
3.
from the album Tilt
It took me a very very long time to appreciate Scott Walker. I just sat with the music for ages and then something clicked. Of course there's huge variation in his back catalogue. It's fascinating.
Do you think his album Scott Walker Sings Jacques Brel contributed to his vocal style on 'Farmer in the City'?
Yeah, I think you're right. I actually sang this song this summer at the National Concert Hall with an ensemble called Glass House. They were commissioned to arrange a whole show of Scott Walker songs. And they asked me to sing. So that was one of the songs I chose. It was my first holiday in six years and I went to a little village in Portugal, and I learned these songs while I was there. I didn't speak to a soul all week. I was listening to Scott Walker, walking along the seafront in the daytime. At night I remember crossing this park with a merry-go-round, closed for the night, covered in canvas. And I was just passing this with no one else around, not a soul, and listening to [the lyrics from 'Farmer in the City'] 'Do I hear 21?'. It was surreal.
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Photo: James Edmond / Alamy Stock Photo
Pale Blue Eyes, The Velvet Underground
4.
from the album The Velvet Underground
There's something about this song – the whole atmosphere, the words – it's really just brilliant writing. It's confessional and sweet and unselfconscious. But I love so many of their songs. I could have easily chosen another one of theirs for this. So many of their songs knock me sideways.
Je suis Venu te Dire que Je m'en Vais, Serge Gainsbourg
5.
from Vu de l'extérieur
There's definitely a French element going on with your selections.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm a Francophile and a Francophone and I love Serge Gainsbourg. The title translates as: 'I've come to tell you I'm leaving'.
There's something so cold about that.
Absolutely. He's really just a man of another time, such beautiful music, beautiful melodies. There's this real dryness to the vocal. And I love how the song just starts straight in, you know, there's no setting the scene, you're just immediately there.
The Partisan, Leonard Cohen
6.
from the album Songs from a Room
I get compared to Leonard Cohen a lot, of course.
How do you feel about that?
I don't mind. When someone compares me to other artists, I prefer to be surprised, but I don't mind. I love Leonard Cohen so much. It's funny because if I'm in a taxi somewhere with my instruments, the driver will say, inevitably, 'what kind of music do you do?' or 'who do you sound like?' And I'm usually feeling carsick and I don't want to be rude so, just for convenience sometimes, I actually do say Leonard Cohen. And then we usually just sit in silence for the rest of the journey!
This song started out as one of the so-called resistance songs during the Second World War, I believe, broadcast by the BBC into Nazi-occupied France to inspire underground resistance fighters. The way Leonard Cohen transforms the song is incredible.
Yeah, absolutely, it's a beautiful conversion.
Wild is the Wind, Nina Simone
7.
from the album Wild is the Wind
The very first time I heard this was on David Bowie's Station to Station. And what a vocal performance; it's gorgeous! It's quite different from all the other stuff in that Berlin trilogy, I think. Years later I discovered this recording by Nina Simone. I was listening to the radio in New York and it came on. Yeah, it was astonishing. She wasn't only an incredible singer and interpreter of songs, but an incredible piano player too.
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