Julian Cope, the former lead singer of the Teardrop Explodes and erstwhile rock mystic, used to say that it was topography that most influenced a band’s sound. This is why he took the unexpected step of moving to just outside Swindon. The nearby Avebury stone circle was “the oomphalus of the universe”, and Cope needed to “hook up to the placenta, and rock”.
Bill Drummond, of the KLF, meanwhile, claimed that Mathew Street, Liverpool - home of the Cavern – had a ley-line running down it which was responsible for making the Beatles what they were.
Whatever their influence on the original making of the music, it’s certain that landscapes and cities suggest listening to soundtracks of differing suitability. Some records simply make better sense in certain environments. Radiohead, Coldplay or early U2, say – with their wide, bleak, moor-like verses and sudden, vertical surges – find their perfect visual accompaniment in the Highlands of Scotland, or among towering cityscapes. Althea and Donna’s sweet, laid-back Uptown Top Ranking doesn’t make as much sense in the driving rain in Achiltibuie. And no one wants to listen to Moby’s 1,000 bpm track, Thousand, during breakfast in Bath. When assessing the bpm preferences of the UK, what comes across is how prosaic the musical choices are. Often it seems to come down to what people are wearing. Londoners, for instance, prefer a pace fast enough to be metropolitan – but not so fast they get sweaty and ruin their look.
As to the generalisation that the beats get faster the farther north you go, the more practically minded of us might suggest that this is something to do with the climate. Once you get to Newcastle and Glasgow – and have, of course, queued for an hour to get into a club in shirt sleeves, or with bare legs – then even working out at 160bpm may not be enough to ward off hypothermia.