Playlist: Insects

I cast the net out for ideas for themes for the next playlist and it was my son who came up trumps this time. So, this time around we will be focusing on Insects - ten interesting and varied tracks about everyone's favourite part of the animal kingdom!

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1. Adam & The Ants: Antmusic

This was the last single off of debut Kings Of The Wild Frontier, only being held off the UK top spot by Lennon's Imagine (fair enough). Interestingly, the video was the first directed by Steve Barron, who would go on to produce Billie Jean (Michael Jackson), Run To You (Bryan Adams), Money For Nothing (Dire Straits) and Take on Me (A-Ha) - and lets not forget his contribution to film, which includes the masterful Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Coneheads! The video also includes Ant's then 16-year old girlfriend Amanda Donohoe, who would go on to be an actress and star in L.A. Law, Castaways and The Rainbow.

Adam & The Ants: Antmusic (official music video)

2. Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Mosquito

Mosquito is the title track of Yeah Yeah Yeahs lo-fi 2013 release, their fourth - and the first one where the reviews of their work were somewhat mixed. It is one of the more upbeat and energetic tracks on the record, especially Karen O's vocal delivery, but many (including me) found the lyrics disappointingly weak.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs: Mosquito (audio only)

3. Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers: Hey There, Little Insect

This simple little tune is taken from Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers eponymously titled 1976 debut. It is one of quite a few fairly light and whimsical tunes Richman was writing in this phase of his career. Whether this is 'joyful' and subversive in its innocent simplicity, or a bit too much like a nursery rhyme, might be for you to decide. I kind of like it - a quirky little number.

Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers: Hey There, Little Insect (audio only)

4. The Cure: The Caterpillar

This Robert Smith and Lol Tolhurst tune was another Top 20 song for The Cure, perhaps surprisingly amongst the general upbeat nature of the 1984 UK charts (think Wham and Duran Duran). The album as a whole was perhaps their most bleak and depressing - nihilistic and often claustrophobic. The Caterpillar is weird and a little bit off-kilter and yet has enough hooks and charm to draw you in; I love the discordant bits of piano and violin at the start, but it's definitely an odd choice for a hit single.

The Cure: The Caterpillar (official music video)

5. Wire: I Am The Fly

1978s Chairs Missing saw Wire start to move away from the more minimalist punk of debut Pink Flag; with some synthesizers and wider range of lyrical topics included. I Am The Fly is a tense tune, complete with repetition of both lyrics and the buzzing sounds, perhaps reflecting the narrator as being full of self-loathing (and possibly a reference to Kafka's Metamorphosis).

Wire: I Am The Fly (audio only)

6. The Dead Milkmen: Earwig

The Dead Milkmen are a punk band from Philadelphia, formed in 1983, and noted for their upbeat punk sound and humour, which got them noticed by many college radio stations. The band name is a re-working of a character in Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon. Second LP Eat Your Paisley! was described by the Ottawa Citizen as being "intentionally tasteless and occasionally funny" and is a general attack on the hippie culture of the late 60s.

The Dead Milkmen: Earwig (audio only)

7. Smashing Pumpkins: Bullet With Butterfly Wings

I know it is hard to believe, but in 1995 Smashing Pumpkins put out an album with a pretentious title, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, from which this was the lead single. It is an absolute banger of a song, but there are further clear signs of Billy Corgans growing ego at the time - "Tell me I'm the chosen one" and all that.

Smashing Pumpkins: Bullet With Butterfly Wings (official music video)

8. Echo & The Bunnymen: Bedbugs & Ballyhoo

Another track from an eponymously titled album, this one the fifth by Echo & The Bunnymen, and sadly the last to feature drummer Pete de Freitas, who would be killed in a motorcycle crash two years later. He almost didn't make this record either, having gone off the rails a bit as 1985 turned into 86; he quit the band - returning to the fold later that year, initially as a session musician, as his friends assessed his fragile mental state. The recording of the album was given an extra boost when Ray Manzarek of The Doors was invited in to add keyboards to the Bunnymen's version of People Are Strange (for The Lost Boys soundtrack), and he also added keys to Bedbugs at the same time. Overall though, Laurie Latham's production and Bruce Lampcov's mixing, were felt to have left the record feeling too over produced - as bassist Les Pattinson noted, "I like the songs, just hated the mixes."

Echo & The Bunnymen: Bedbugs & Ballyhoo (recording for the Whistle Test, 1985)

9. The B-52s: Junebug

Having kept a fairly low profile in the years following the tragic death of co-founder Ricky Wilson, The B-52s came roaring back in 1989 with Cosmic Thing, a joyously delirious Nile Rodgers and Don Was produced romp. Everyone remembers it for hits like Love Shack and Roam, but there were plenty of other gems to be found in there. Junebug was the first fully formed song to come out of their jam sessions and was more than good enough to spur them on to write the rest of the record. It is a quirky and upbeat dance track, full of the funk you would expect from those producers, and full of the charm and eccentricity you want from the B-52s - and it builds to a great and frenetic end.

The B-52s: Junebug (live from 1990)

10. Blur: Beetlebum

Photo: Localworld / REX / Shutterstock

This, the lead single from the fifth self-titled album in 1997, is a reflection by lead man Damon Albarn on his past issues with heroin. Despite not being obvious single material, with its laid back rhythms and deadpan vocal delivery, it went straight to UK number one (120,000 physical sales in week one alone). Beetlebum, it seems, is just a word made up when Albarn was singing the song to himself, and it meant that many (including producer Stephen Street) did not initially realise its connection to drugs.

Blur: Beetlebum (official music video)