This month's Q is a songwriters special, featuring the world's finest tunesmiths discussing the nuts and bolts of their craft, including Michael Stipe, Bjork, Rufus Wainwright, Pete Dohertyand many, many more. The issue also counts down the ten most perfect songs ever, as voted by a panel of experts such as Travis' Fran Healey, Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody and John Cale. There wasn't room to run everyone's choices in the mag, so we thought we bring them to you on Q4music instead, complete with obligatory YouTube clip.

Michael Stipe
Perfect song: Ashes To Ashes by David Bowie (1980)
"He jumped off such a cliff with that song. He was writing about a character he'd made popular twenty years before. It was the sequel to Space Oddity, where he'd produced perhaps the most famous song of his career. It's so audacious as a piece of writing. You can go into any bar in the world and if they play that song, watch people around the room. Each will sing along to a separate part. There's about seven parts people sing along to. It's the audacity of not only writing about Major Tom, but then making it this flawless mess. I'd also choose Like A Rolling Stone by Bob Dylan and Beautiful Day by U2. Who could take a phrase like ""It's a beautiful day," and make it into a pop song? Any time that phrase comes up, it's in my head."

James Blunt
Maybe Not by Cat Power (2005)
"I first heard this song at South By Southwest in Texas a few years ago. I went down to some open-air venue and this girl - Cat Power - was playing. She struck me as being really shy - she had her hair in front of her eyes because she didn't want to look out into the audience - but the people watching knew the songs so well they were actually filling in the blanks left for the backing vocals. It was a magical moment. Maybe Not leapt out at me because I instantly got what she was on about: "Maybe not with words but with a look instead" is the key lyric. It's about how language can be limited and how words are limited, but the eyes are the windows to the soul. Musically it's very simple, but the great philosophers always say things in the simplest way possible. And it's really miserable, so it's perfect for 90% of situations. I bought her album there and then, and when I was offered my record deal later that week, I immediately put Maybe Not on so I could feel really sullen and temper the excitement for a little bit. I've never met Cat Power but I'd love to get her out on tour some time. She's great."

Rufus Wainwright
Somewhere Over The Rainbow by Harold Arlen and E.Y. Harburg (1939)
"I wish I could choose a more esoteric song but honest to God, I've sung it so man times and each time I do I have to fight back the tears. On the one hand it's extremely simple, and on the other it's extremely complicated - just those changes in the song. It's really my song."

We’ll go for Sarah Vaughan rather than, say, Judy Garland.

Gary Lightbody (Snow Patrol)
California Soul by Marlena Shaw (1969)
" The first time I heard this song was also the first time I met Tom Simpson. He was (and still is when the mood takes him) a DJ in Dundee and played various house and hip hop clubs in the city. When I was at Dundee University in the mid-90's I would go to his clubs, mostly on my own as my uni friends weren't that partial to dance music whereas I liked nothing more than rolling round on the dance floor covered in shame and drugs. The first night I found myself at his club he finished the night with California Soul.
My spirits were fairly high already I have to say but hearing that song for the first time at that moment was something I'll never forget. It has one of the most triumphant and recklessly joyful choruses of all time. Coupled with the simple beauty of it being a song that celebrates music itself means it never fails to thrill me. It's a toss up between this and the A-Team theme for what gets played at my funeral.
When Tom played it I went up and asked him what it was and since that day, over a decade ago, we've been friends. In fact we still live together. Not like Bert and Ernie though, more like The Monkees minus the cameras, laugher, general good vibes and the Machiavellian svengalis writing songs for us. California Soul is a short, succulent slice of deliciousness guaranteed to make you feel better than you already do, unless you died while straining to turn on your stereo. Although if any song could raise the dead..."

The Marlena Shaw version is absent from Youtube, so here’s a slightly cheesier alternative…

Tim Rice-Oxley (Keane)
She's Leaving Home by The Beatles (1967)
"It's about as perfect as it gets. It's depressingly simple. The story [in the song] is both depressing and uplifting. It's powerful if you're a teenager, but it's not whiny angst - he sees things from the parents' point of view as well. The music is beautiful, the voice is perfect. Those are the songs that are impossible to force. You have to be a natural genius to be able to write those."

There is of course, very little Beatles footage on YouTube, so here’s Macca live in 2002.

Ronnie Wood
Teardrops by Womack And Womack (1988)
"I love the solo. It's just two-notes. Really simple, but a clever song. Cecil Womack, Bobby's brother was a great friend of mine for years, but when I first heard it, I wondered who it was by. And it's got Linda Womack, who is Sam Cooke's daughter, too. It's catchy and timeless. I can imagine hearing it in 20 years time and still loving it."

John Cale
She Belongs To Me by Bob Dylan (1965)
"It's the balance of it. To me it was about a perfect relationship. But it also had the feeling of having just arrived - a sense of improvisation about the song. I always had trouble with which end of the stick to grab first - sit down and write the lyrics or improvise the music. But I have faith that you can sit down and boom there it is. That's what it is like with this song. Emotionally it's about someone who is puzzled by this personality - completely charmed and entranced by this other person."

Fran Healey (Travis)
Another Sleep Song by Graham Nash (1973)
"I heard it first in 2002. It was written in 1973, the year I was born. The melody was so fresh and new to me and the lyric felt poetic and conversational at the same time. I listened to pretty much this same song for a whole year till I knew it inside out. I was addicted to it.
Then, a year later, in a wierd twist of fate, I bumped into Graham in the lobby of a hotel in Manchester. He was in town to hang a photography exhibition. He invited me down to the gallery. After our soundcheck a runner drove me to the Richard Goodall Gallery and we chatted about the song. He said it was about a very famous actress/singer he knew and about how isolated she had become. He was so affected by the sight of her vegging out that he went into another room of her house and wrote it then and there.
Downstairs in the Goodall gallery we spotted an old out of tune upright piano so he rushed over and started retracing the chords saying as he did that he hadn't played it for 25 years! After a minute of chopping and changing he performed the song right there, while he was playing his wife came up and told me that if I asked him to play it on stage tonight with the band he would probably do it. After he finished I popped the question and without a second thought, he accepted.
I rushed back to the venue, heart on fire and got Nora to play it down the phone so we could hear all the parts...That evening at the encore he came on and played. Coincidentally there was a documentary team following him about at this time and they filmed the whole thing."