20 - 16: Southern Boogie and Northern Croonin'

20:  Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd

Basically an 'answer' song, written in response to Neil Young's 'Southern Man'.  In a nutshell - we're Southern and we're proud of it.  So don't be slaggin' us off with your trendy Yankee ways because we're just fine and dandy down here!  And so they are.  But it's not really the sentiment in the song that does it for me - it's the groove and the feel - the opening guitar riff is one of the slinkiest there is - not a note too many, not a note out of place.  Lynyrd Skynyrd could do overblown when they wanted to - Freebird being a case in point - but Sweet Home Alabama is tight as a gnat's chuff.  As, no doubt, they say in Montgomery.

19:  Kashmir - Led Zeppelin

Again, it's all in the riff.  The spiralling, three-note stab that invokes so well the Eastern 'vibe' implicit in the song's title.  A word of warning though - don't listen to the lyrics.  Really.  They make Spinal Tap's 'Stonehenge' sound profound.  But none of that matters.  This was a band at the height of its powers, pushing the boundaries in any number of directions, and exploring Eastern rhythms and time signatures that they would return to later in their careers.

Of course, there are many Zeppelin songs I could have chosen.  But for me, Kashmir is pure essence of Zep.

18:  Coles Corner - Richard Hawley

I love this song.  Often - erroneously - described as South Yorkshire's answer to Roy Orbison but more accurately referred to (by himself) as 'that specky twat from Sheffield', Hawley is an absolute superstar.  In the ideal world, he would sell more records than U2.  With his slicked back hair, his twangy guitar style and his rich, baritone crooning, Hawley evokes an earlier age.  And never better than on this song, a slice of pure romance about one of Sheffield's old department stores and a historic meeting spot for the city's youth.

17:  Voodoo Chile (Slight Return) - The Jimi Hendrix Experience

My, it's a rockin' selection this time round, for some reason.  Jimi needed to be in the top twenty somewhere, and this is the track for me - a track that doesn't outstay its welcome, that rocks like a mother and that demonstrates just what a fine guitar player Hendrix was.  Of course, describing Jimi's guitar playing as 'fine' is like describing Zinedine Zidane as a 'capable' footballer.  He was the best.  Voodoo Chile was one of the final songs recorded with the original Experience, before Jimi moved on to looser, jazzier and funkier work - but this, for me, is the peak.

16:  Angel - Aretha Franklin

And changing the mood completely, it's the Queen of Soul at her most soulful.  By some considerable distance, Aretha is the best female singer the world has ever seen - in any form of music.  This is an uncontestable fact.  Whenever any X-Factor wannabe starts warbling in a Mariahesque way, in the mistaken belief that the amount of soul in a performance is directly proportional to the number of notes you can squeeze into a single line, she should be slapped firmly across the face with a copy of Aretha's Greatest Hits and locked in a darkened room with the CD until she learns the error of her ways.  Angel is just a beautiful song, written by her sister, with a (no doubt contrived) spoken intro that sets the scene perfectly.  In fact why am I writing this?  Rather than get into a long, drawn-out thing, I think the melody on the box will help me explain.  It's there for you. below - just listen.