Sam Leith on wedding first-dance songs

Groom's choice ? Sonic Youth's Kim Gordon. Photograph: Sipa Press/Rex Features

The music-loving world, temperamentally, seems to divide neatly into two. There are those who spend their idle hours thinking about which songs they would like to have played at their wedding; and those who spend their idle hours thinking about which songs they would like at their funeral. (There is a third category: people who spend their idle hours planning for Desert Island Discs, but these characters exist in a separate psychological sphere and need not detain us here.)

Until very recently, I fell into the second category. Planning one's funeral suits the auteur in me: as the sole honoree of that ceremony, I?shall choose what music (and what readings) I jolly well like. I incline to the melancholy yet uplifting: music designed to induce a grave contemplation of my good taste, spiritual heroism and sensitivity. I'd like to pretend that I'm the sort of person who wants their funeral to be "a celebration of life", but really I want people crying awfully hard.

The main reason for wishing to be surprised by the existence of an afterlife is that one could look down, or up, on the proceedings, so as to glory immodestly in the eulogies, thrill to the huge turnout of very famous people, and make a list of those not bawling satisfactorily through Faur?'s Sanctus in order to subject them to an Amityville-style haunting.

Unfortunately, this happy line of contemplation has been interrupted by the business of making plans to get married this summer. Disagreeably, not only is "a celebration of life" more or less obligatory, but you have to share control over the playlist with somebody else, viz your Intended. And what on earth are you supposed to do when your dream playlist for the disco consists of Pixies, H?sker D? and early Sonic Youth; and your Intended ? who has already made it quite clear that she has right of veto over everything ? will countenance only Sufjan Stevens, the Jackson Five and (for reasons obscurely connected with Newcastle United) Mark Knopfler's instrumental theme from Local Hero?

You need ? having settled the other issue of whether you spend a fortune hiring a band to play less good versions of songs you like, or simply plug in an iPod ? to think of songs that will get your friends dancing, and prevent your parents from doing so while not actually driving them out of the room. "Seether!" you exclaim triumphantly, digging out your Veruca Salt CD. "You can't dance to that," she says. So you show her that you can, and she makes this face and counters with the song played at that wedding in Mad Men. "I?can't dance to that," you say. So now you're taking Charleston lessons.

When it comes to aisle-walking and register-signing and first-dancing, it's even worse. The brief seems to be: songs meaningful to you both. We met at a Bugsy-Malone-themed fancy-dress party, to a collection of profoundly mashed people dancing to Fat Sam's Grand Slam. Dignity-wise, that presents all kinds of pitfalls walking up the aisle. And how are you supposed to sign a register when your hands want to do that waxing-the-car move?

Another song we love in common is A Minor Place by alt-country eminence Bonnie "Prince" Billy. Imagine walking down the aisle to that: imagine the frisson sent through the crowd by its, like, melancholy grandeur. But then again, it does seem to be about clinical depression, or death, or similar ? and the line about "maggots" will totally harsh everyone's buzz. Superstar, Sonic Youth's scouring cover of the Carpenters' song, is current favourite but I've started to worry that it might be about a stalker.

Love Is a Stranger? Paedophiles. Roxanne? Don't go there. A Good Idea, by Sugar? No, it's not. Woman in the Wall, by the Beautiful South? Uh-uh. A musician friend of a friend who had been asked to play at a wedding takes the laurels for, having overdone the champagne, opening his set with his fallback busking tune Suspicious Minds: "We're caught in a trap ..."

Since we're doing it in a register office, church music is out. That's a shame: even the most fervent atheist can enjoy a hymn. Churches, oddly enough, are more relaxed: my sister-in-law walked down the aisle to Survivor's Eye of the Tiger, their very accommodating celebrant having drawn the line at AC/DC's Back in Black.

I'd be grateful for any suggestions. At the moment, I've settled on repurposing all those hours spent thinking about my funeral to the task in hand. If people aren't crying by the end of my wedding, I shall consider the whole thing a write-off.

Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2012/jan/08/sam-leith-first-dance-songs

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