But other songs on the list made me wonder how these guys won back the Ashes.I personally share the England team's love of Bob Dylan's "A Simple Twist of Fate" and "Most of the Time" But, guys, these are not good songs for the dressing room They are sombre and quite depressing They also leave you brooding. This features playlists compiled by some of the great and good in music and some non-musicians too. A selection of these was published in The Independent yesterday.I was particularly intrigued by the choices of the former England cricketer Ed Smith. His playlist was made of the songs that the England team listened to in the dressing room before going out to bat Bruce Springsteen's "Born to Run" topped the list.

This could be because there haven't been enough years to build up much of a CD collection, and anyway they would be more interested in new singles releases than their parents. But sociologists and future students of the playlist as philosophical and personality statement might find a different reason.The best examples of playlists as life statements are features in a new book, The Rough Guide Book of Playlists. And so most of the conversations I have had over the past week have been about which albums I, and whoever I have been talking to, have put on our iPods, and, crucially, which tracks have not been included. At least, those have been the conversations with the over-30s. The under-30s seem to be far more concerned with downloading tracks than transferring albums Teenagers in particular swap downloads from friends.

I have most belatedly become the owner of an iPod and have spent every spare night-time moment in the past week transferring tracks from CDs. It would have been a poor use of time to do this labour of love in daylight hours. As iPod users know, these are much better spent talking about your playlists than compiling or even listening to them. For what I have discovered is that the playlist has overtaken the record collection as the physical statement of one's values, loves, hates and philosophy.