I’m not sure that I have a favourite song as such. Or, rather, there are a number of songs that could be candidates for that description. So what I’ve done is picked something that isn’t so much my favourite song per se, but rather my favourite performance. I hope that’s not bending the rules too much!

Musically, I’m a child of the 80s. Physically, I’m a child of the 60s, but I didn’t really get that much into music until my late teens so that’s when it all started for me. This is a theme that’s likely to recur throughout this series, so if you like 80s music as well then there’s a good chance you’ll find plenty to enjoy in the rest of my 30 days. But midway through the 80s, something happened which significantly changed my musical outlook. That something was Live Aid. And, in particular, that something was this song.

I watched Live Aid on TV. Like, I suspect, many people, I used the Radio 1 simulcast for the audio and had the sound turned down on the telly. And, also like a good many other people, I bootlegged it onto cassette as I watched and listened. I then made a mixtape of my favourite bits, and played it to death in the weeks and months thereafter. But there was one section which got played more often than the rest.

I was aware of this band before Live Aid, of course. And, up to a point, I liked their music. But I wouldn’t have called myself a fan. At the time, I’d have described myself as a fairly dedicated New Romantic follower, and I primarily listened to synth-pop and electronica – this was the music that made me a musician, after buying a cheap (for the era) synth and discovering that I, too, could play this stuff. So when this band came on stage at Wembley, I was hoping that they’d play their recent hits – which I liked – but didn’t expect anything particularly mind-blowing.

They started off with one of their older songs, which was fairly so-so as far as I was concerned. I was hoping that they’d follow it by playing their most recent hit. But they didn’t. They played a song that I’d never heard before. And kept on playing it. And created one of Live Aid’s most iconic performances. And, in the process, hooked me. By the end of a set which spectacularly broke Bob Geldof’s rule for performers (“Play the hits”), I was a fan.

I bootlegged the song then. So did a lot of people. Fortunately, it didn’t kill music. Even more fortunately, the BBC bootlegged it as well. Despite being told not to, they recorded the event anyway, and their recording later became the basis for the official DVD release – a set which I now own legitimately! And my current mp3 of the song is still the most commonly played track in my collection.

Anyway, enough of that. This, as a mullet-haired, pre-global-superstar Bono introduced it, is a song called “Bad”: