When you load up Spotify, a great big chunk of the time you can’t think what to play, right? You default back to your old favourites, those albums and songs you played on repeat when you first discovered you could make them yours.

This isn’t about guilty pleasures; it’s about those songs you’ll still be listening to when you’re old and in your rocking chair. So, enter Teenage Kicks – a playlist series that sees bands running through the music they listened to in their formative years.

Next up, VILLANELLE.

→ Jack: This song completely shaped my tastes as a teen. My nana introduced me to The Beatles very young, but once I got more into music, I noticed the scale of this song's impact - the loops and experimental sounds still shaping music today. For a tune that's 60 years old, it still sounds like the future.

→ Ben: I remember hearing this song for the first time and immediately wanting to start learning how to play guitar. It was in that pocket of time between 'Suck It and See' and 'AM', before the Monkeys really broke the US. That song/album is what kick-started my interest in guitar-led music.

→ Gene: Just an absolute masterpiece. 'Quadrophenia' was the first album I ever listened to, and I feel like the movie moulded my whole personality and everything about me. The songs on there are beyond holy to me.

→ Jack: This soundtracked my mid-teens when I became very interested in hip hop, jazz, and samples. First of all, a quality tune to drive around to, but on a musical level, I loved the use of Ahmad Jamal's 'I Love Music' (a big favourite of mine as a pianist), and this sample was used to craft another favourite, 'Me or the Papes' by Jeru the Damaja.

→ Ben: Graham is one of my all-time favourite guitarists - he has some amazing solo albums outside of his stuff with Blur, but this was a song I used to blast as loud as I could on my way to school. Funnily enough, over 10 years later, this was an album I came back to when we started recording with VILLANELLE to draw inspiration from. There's something really interesting about how he approaches solos, tone, and layering multiple guitars together.

→ Gene: Best lyrics of all time.

→ Jack: My favourite Nirvana tune. Always felt like a bit of a change of pace from the usual chaos within their library - it kinda swaggers along, the rhythm section so laid-back but simultaneously locked-in.

→ Ben: Arguably one of the best rock riffs. I remember spending hours figuring out how to play this by ear. This was a year or two into me learning guitar, and I'd started exploring some of the golden era decades for rock music. So many of those records sound just as relevant today as they did back in the day.

→ Gene: Best guitar intro of all time.

Taken from the May 2026 issue of Dork. VILLANELLE play Dork's Night Out at The 100 Club, London on 5th May.