Comedian Lucy Beaumont was careful to separate the man from the band while explaining why she cannot listen to Coldplay. Chris Martin seems like a nice guy, she said, before admitting that the tone of the band's music, Yellow in particular, gives her a visceral, physical reaction. It is not personal, she made clear, it is just a sound she cannot get past.
That line came out of a wider playlist interview covering the songs that shaped her, and the full list says more about her taste than the Coldplay comment alone. Her first musical love was Caravan of Love by The Housemartins, and the first single she ever bought was Michael Jackson's Thriller. She still knows every word to TLC's Waterfalls without trying.
For a party, she reaches for Stevie Wonder's Superstition, and for getting out of bed in the morning it is Movin' on Up by Primal Scream. She also copped to a guilty pleasure she does not usually admit to, Ed Sheeran's Supermarket Flowers, tucked in alongside more expected picks like The Stone Roses' Waterfall, which she credits as a genuinely life changing discovery, and Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here as the song that moves her most.
Beaumont says she has never done karaoke and does not plan to start, though she has an answer ready if she is ever forced into it, Nancy Sinatra's These Boots Are Made for Walkin'. For her own funeral, she has already settled on Otis Redding's Try a Little Tenderness, a choice with a warmth that sits pretty far from the one artist she has publicly ruled out, even while insisting she has nothing against him personally.