Sum up your musical tastes...

OK, here's a challenge...

I was listening to the 'Almost Famous' soundtrack on my way to work today. A couple of the songs on that CD contain almost all the hallmarks of my favourite music. So I started wondering - how few songs would be needed to more-or-less sum up the span of my musical tastes?

So here's the challenge: select a small number of songs (5 or less?) which would convey the span of your musical tastes to someone who doesn't know you.

I'll try and figure it out for my own musical tastes and post a list here in a day or so.

For example, one of my songs is likely to be 'Out of my life' by Fish - I've chosen this one for a few reasons; Fish is one of my favourite artists, the song bridges the gap between Scottish folk & general rock, the song also spans acoustic guitar music & rock and it has a slightly bitter & angry vibe to the lyrics - something which I generally like (possibly because I am not generally bitter or angry). You see? In one song I have identified many 'hallmarks' of my favourite music. How many other songs do I need to pick to cover all the other hallmarks of my taste?

So what are your songs?

---

Update: Having thought about it for a couple of days, here are the songs that summarise my span of musical tastes:

1. 'Out of my life' by Fish (for the reasons given above)
2. 'Make me' by Heart (acoustic riffing, mid-rock beat, great hook)
   
3. 'The Millionaire's Waltz' by Queen (art rock, prog rock, epic, fun, ott vocals, heavy guitars)
   
4. 'The ballad of Curtis Loew' by Lynyrd Skynyrd (blues rock, classic 70s rock)
   
5. 'There's a touch' by The Proclaimers (acoustic, fun, Scottish, great singalong)
   

And that should do it.