Bruce Springsteen recently sat down with BBC 4’s Kirsty Young for the station’s long-running “Desert Island Discs” series, which features celebrity “castaways” discussing some of the songs that they would bring with them if they were stranded on a desert island. Springsteen’s choices will probably be familiar to most, but the Boss has some great reasons to back them up. 

Springsteen start off with Elvis Presley’ “Hound Dog,” which Springsteen says is the first song of Presley’s he ever heard when he was a young child. “When I first heard it, it just shot straight through to my brain,” he remembers. “And I realized, suddenly, that there was more to live than what I’d been living.” The tune comes from Presley’s Sun Sessions, which Springsteen says would be his choice for Desert Island Disc if he had to choose an album. 

Springsteen continues with some British Invasion tracks in The Beatles’ “I Wanna Hold Your Hand,” The Rolling Stones’ “It’s All Over Now” before discussing his complicated relationship with his father growing up. His next choice is Van Morrison’s “Madame George,” off the songwriters iconic Astral Weeks album, which Springsteen notes inspired his own “New York City Serenade.” “The Divine just seems to run through the veins of that entire album.

Song number five is “What’s Goin’ On” from Marvin Gaye, followed by “Outta Sight” by James Brown, a track that Springsteen calls “Pure excitement, pure electricity, pure get-out-of-your-seat, move your ass, pure sweat-filled, gospel-filled rock-and-roll rhythm-and-blues.” With the next tune, which Springsteen says “could be at the top of the list,” is Bob Dylan’s “Like A Rolling Stone,” which Springsteen performed at Bob Dylan’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony. “The snare drum that opens the song feels like someone kicked open the door to your mind,” he says of the song. Springsteen then rounds out his list with “Baby I Need Your Lovin'” by the Four Tops. “I had to have some Motown,” Springsteen says. “If you wanted to know how to write, how to structure successful pop records, you could learn it all from Motown.”

Listen to the full interview here.