Down wid da kids? David Cameron's musical choices focus on "gloomy" guitar music. Photograph: Andrew Parsons/AFP/Getty
Quite what a person's musical taste reveals about their personality and beliefs is uncertain, but I'm sure I'm not the only one tempted to use preferences in pop as a blunt tool of character analysis.
When Tony Blair, for instance, recently professed to a fondness for the Darkness and Coldplay, his musical tastes seemed thoroughly in tune with what we know of his personality - self-consciously sensitive but ideologically neutral, consumer-friendly stuff.
That said, quite what is revealed of David Cameron by his musical choices is hard to say.
In a searching grilling by Colin and Edith for Radio 1 in which he was also bullied into revealing his favourite Girl Aloud (Cheryl Tweedy), the Tory leader said that his iPod features a lot of "quite gloomy" music by the Smiths, Radiohead, Pulp and Blur. Bob Dylan and reggae music are also in regular rotation between policy seminars and PMQs, it seems, and topping his personal chart at the moment are the Killers.
Cameron's ideology is still coming into focus, but such choices would usually suggest more militant opinions than he has so far confessed to. However, since he's previously said that his favourite album of all time is The Queen is Dead, but gone on to stress that of course he has no sympathy with the song's sentiments, perhaps he's better than most music fans at blocking out lyrical content.
Certainly it seems unlikely that these records can have been selected by focus group to appeal to young voters, since surely only an electorally insignificant number of today's youngsters are sufficiently committed to their own alienation to have discovered the Smiths?
Surely the Vulture community can suggest some more appropriate listening for the Right's new poster boy?
