Dear Noelle,

I thoroughly enjoy listening to you on Radio New Zealand National when I get the chance. However, I stumbled on your blog on the Herald website, which was a pleasant surprise.

I was intrigued by your comment about Jeff Buckley. I'm wondering perhaps if that is where I am going wrong with my relationships. Is Jeff Buckley like some sort of relationship repellent? On second thoughts, I doubt Jeff is of any concern to my relationships - it doesn't seem to get to the "let's get to know each other's music taste" stage. Nonetheless, I'd love to hear your opinion.

Cheers,

Alexander

Dearest Alexander,

God, Jeff Buckley. Where to begin? We can begin with me at 19. Predictably naive, with a penchant for knee-high boots and short skirts, Rimmel Black Cherry lipstick and good-looking boys in flannel shirts. So far, so textbook.

The boys in the flannel shirts came with their own soundtrack, of course. Circa 2000, it was The Pixies, mostly. Nirvana, certainly.

There was Leonard Cohen for wooing, and the wannabe-cerebral ones listened to Pavement in order to look smart.

The drinkers had the Stone Roses, there was Portishead and Leftfield for the ones who liked taking pills, and Nick Cave was the man they all wanted to be.

None of this was a bad thing, necessarily.

Like most girls (even the ones who won't admit it), I got most of my musical education from men.

I fell in love with my first proper boyfriend at the age of 16 when he played the opening chords of Boys Don't Cry for me on a borrowed guitar.

He was just the first of a succession of blokes to broaden my musical horizons.

The year after that, it was my best friend's dodgy older brother who gave me a Carl Cox mix-tape and snuck me past the bouncer at Sir Henrys, the only place you could hear proper house music in Cork City.

Then there was the poor fool who used to play Metallica Nothing Else Matters for me on piano, weeping as he played (he works with special-needs kids nowadays, incidentally), and the sweet drama student who would put on Pictures of You when we were in bed.