10 favourite love songs chosen by Bard of Ely

As a singer-songwriter I have many influences and I love love songs. I have selected 10 of my favourites, all being very different in style, and often in subject matter, apart from being on the theme of love.

Perhaps you will find some of my choices surprising but I hope you enjoy the songs and videos.

Bob Dylan was my inspiration to become a writer. In Wedding Song, from his album Planet Waves, he is at his finest and full of raw and earthy passion. This is probably not one of his most well-known songs but I think it is one of Bob's best.

Cat Stevens is another of my all-time favourite singer-songwriters. How Can I Tell You? from the album Teaser and the Firecat, is a song that shows his most sensitive side. The lyrics are ones that I have so often felt. It is all very well being a writer but we still struggle for the right words when it comes to matters of the heart.

Cat Stevens was a man who had it all when it came to good looks, success as a singer and world fame and wealth, but he was looking for love and looking for the truth. He found them both many years later when he became a Muslim.

I have watched Titanic several times and confess the film is one of the ones that brings tears to my eyes. Celine Dion's My Heart Will Go On is simply an amazing love song and coupled with its use for the movie I am not at all surprised at its phenomenal success.

Take That had a massive hit with Back For Good and I loved this song so much when I first heard it. At a free festival in Cardiff about 10 years back, at which Gary Barlow was one of the stars, many of my friends were amazed to find me wanting to watch his set but he sings this song he wrote so well and he is a brilliant songwriter.

Kevin Ayers is one of my favourite acts and here he teams up again with Bridget St John for a duet on the song Baby Come Home that features on his most recent album The Unfairground. Bridget and Kevin had both made a comeback to performing and are both at their best here. This is a simple love song that speaks directly to our hearts.

With Ask Me No Questions we have Bridget on her own singing one of her finest songs, one that I used to play over and over and over again on her first album all those years back when it was released on the late great John Peel's Dandelion label.

I remember seeing Kate Bush on Top of the Pops many many years back and was instantly hooked. I have been a fan ever since. Kate was singing Wuthering Heights.

I rushed out and bought Barry Manilow's single Mandy when it first came out and found myself playing it over and over and over again.

My first girlfriend's name was Mandy. I lost her three times in all. She finished with me back in 1972 and then we got back together briefly some 20 years later. I found out last year that Mandy died of a heart attack so there is no hope of us reuniting, at least not in this life.

Tupelo Honey is a song of Van Morrison's that gives me goose bumps. This is Van at his best, and I am not surprised it was chosen as the title track for his album Tupelo Honey.

Unfortunately, there are no videos of Van's songs by him on YouTube so I have had to include this cover version, but it is very well performed.

As a young teenager some of the first music I really got into was the Tamla Motown and Soul hits of the day. There is something about that era that has never been captured again.

Many truly brilliant songs were recorded then by acts that were destined to become mega-stars. River Deep Mountain High is one of the classic love songs from that period.